In view of the post-poll violence in West Bengal, BJP is on its way to drum up public opinion against the TMC and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at the national level. The BJP state leadership has been instructed to hold regular meetings with its leaders in other states of the country to report allegations of attacks on BJP workers in Bengal.

In the next Lok Sabha elections, the anti-Narendra Modi ‘face’ has recently started campaigning on the net for Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. The BJP aims to counter Mamata’s voice in that atmosphere. According to sources, the BJP has pressed into service leaders such as state president Dilip Ghosh, Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari, Kailash Vijayvargiya, and Bhupendra Yadav.

The BJP has alleged that its workers in the districts have been affected since the results were announced. In many places, workers are being evicted and allowed to return home in exchange for fines. According to the Gerua camp, BJP’s all-India president J.P Nadda first came to Bengal to stand by the state workers. The BJP also staged some protests after that.

The BJP has been telling workers across the country about the ‘attacks’ party cadres are suffering in West Bengal. National BJP general secretary Bhupender Yadav addressed Assam party workers on Tuesday through video conference.

Last week, BJP national general secretary and West Bengal in-charge Kailash Vijayvargiya conducted a meeting with workers from Uttarakhand. The workers from the hill state will now visit West Bengal.

“Many workers were left to fend for themselves. This has only created anger among a group of workers and the central leadership felt it had to be addressed immediately,” said a party functionary.

Virtual meetings have already been held with leaders of 13 states and one union territory. State President Dilip has met BJP leaders in Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur and Andaman, and Nicobar. Opposition leader Shuvendu has joined hands with Gujarat and Meghalaya. BJP will make a poster. The main statement of the party in the poster has been written in the form of the question ‘Bangla is burning, is violence the solution?’

Most meetings with party leaders in the states so far have been held by the BJP. Apart from this, there are states like Chhattisgarh, Punjab, and Rajasthan where the BJP is in the role of the opposition party. However, the BJP has organisational strength in all the states. Gerua Shibir wants publicity in all these states for Bengal. And from this publicity, the claim that misgovernance is going on in Bengal gets national-level limelight in the coming days.

During April and May 2021, no vaccinated patients died after becoming re-infected with Covid-19, according to a study undertaken by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi.

This was the first genomic sequence study conducted on “breakthrough infections” in India during the second wave. Breakthrough infections are Covid-19 re-infections in vaccinated persons.

The AIIMS study confirmed that even in re-infected Covid-19 patients with a very high viral load, no death was reported among those who had received even one dose of the coronavirus vaccine.

AIIMS studied 63 breakthrough infection cases, out of which 36 patients had received both doses of Covid-19 vaccine, and 27 had got the first dose. Most of these patients had got the Covaxin jab (53), and 10 re-infected patients had taken Covishield shots.

As per the study, SARS-CoV-2 lineages were assigned to 57.1 percent of the samples, i.e., 36 of them. Out of these, 52.8 percent (19) were in patients who were fully vaccinated and 47.2 percent (17) in patients who had got just the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine.

The AIIMS researchers divided the B.1.617 variant or Delta strain—which was first detected in India — into three lineages: B.1.617.1, B.1.617.2, and B.1.617.3. They found the B.1.617.2 variant to be predominant in 23 samples or 63.9 percent of the samples. Out of these, 12 were in fully vaccinated persons and 11 in partially vaccinated persons. Meanwhile, the B.1.617.1 and B.1.1.7 lineages were found in four persons or 11.1 percent of the samples and one person, i.e., 2.8 percent of the samples, respectively.

Notably, none of the samples studied had comorbidities that could pose as predisposing factors in such cases.

The AIIMS study read: “Viral load at the time of diagnosis was high in all the patients irrespective of vaccination status or type of vaccine received and the initial course of disease with high-grade non-remitting fever lasted for five to seven days in the vaccinated group, similar to the clinical presentation in unvaccinated patients.”

The patients ranged in age from 21 to 92 years old, with 41 men and 22 women. There were no comorbidities in any of the participants that could have acted as a risk factor for infection.

MUMBAI : Sushant Singh Rajput’s friend Siddharth Pithani has been sent to 14-day judicial custody on Friday in connection with the drug case linked to the actor’s death.

“Siddharth Pithani, late actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s friend, has been sent to 14-day judicial custody, in connection with drug case,” informed Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), Mumbai. On 26 May, the NCB arrested Pithani from Hyderabad and brought him to Mumbai on a transit warrant obtained from a local court there. Pithani was booked under multiple sections of the NDPS Act, 1985.

Following his arrest, a Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) court in Mumbai on Friday remanded Pithani to the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) custody till 1 June.

Earlier on Thursday, the NCB summoned Sushant’s bodyguard for the second day in a row, in the drug case linked to the late actor’s death. Apart from that NCB also arrested a drug peddler named Harish Khan in the drugs case.

Slamming Rahul Gandhi for the political turmoil in Punjab, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said the Congress leader should first look after states ruled by his party before giving lectures to others.

Briefing mediapersons, Javadekar said, “Rahul Gandhi should first look after his (Congress-ruled) states rather than giving lectures to others. Punjab Government has been provided more than 1.40 lakh doses of Covaxin at Rs 400 and they have given it to 20 private hospitals at Rs 1,000.”

The Union minister said the Government of India has given 22 crore Covid vaccine doses to all states for free. He added that it is the state governments that had demanded decentralisation of Covid vaccines. Now when it has been done, the States are demanding centralising the vaccine supply.

Javadekar accused the Punjab government of ignoring the people for petty politics. “Punjab is affected by corona. The vaccination drive is not being managed properly. Their internal fight has been going on for the last six months. The entire Punjab government and Congress Party has been in Delhi for the last 3-4 days. Who will look after Punjab? Even for COVID vaccination, the state government wants to earn a profit. What kind of public administration is this?” he added.

The BJP leader’s remarks come against the backdrop of the factionalism in Punjab Congress and deliberations in Delhi regarding the matter.

Notably, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh is in the national capital to meet the Congress’ three-member panel. The agenda of the meeting is to resolve the widening differences between its leaders, Captain Amarinder Singh and Navjot Singh Sidhu, said Congress sources.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday alleged that the Central government is hiding actual Covid-19 deaths.

The Indian Navy will soon issue a tender worth around Rs 50,000 crore to build six new advanced conventional submarines with the Defence Ministry clearing a proposal for the same at the Defence Acquisition Council meeting on Friday.

“The Defence Acquisition Council meeting attended by functionaries cleared the project and the Navy will soon issue the tender to two Indian strategic partners,” government sources said.

The project named P-75 India has been in the making for a long time now and would be the successor to the Scorpene or Kalvari class submarines being built at the Mazagon Dockyards Limited in partnership with France.

The Navy has identified and cleared MDL and Larsen and Toubro as the strategic partners who can tie up with five global manufacturers including French Naval Group, German TKMS, South Korean Daewoo, Spanish Navantia and Russian Rosoborboexport, they said.

The Indian Navy has two major projects under the strategic partnership policy which had been envisaged to develop the indigenous private sector in defence as major producers. Now, it has also seen public sector firms taking part.

The Indian Navy plans to acquire 24 new submarines, including six nuclear attack submarines, to bolster its underwater fighting capability. It currently has 15 conventional submarines and two nuclear submarines.

As per the requirements stated by the maritime force, it wants the submarines to be equipped with heavy-duty firepower as it wants the boats to have at least 12 Land Attack Cruise Missiles (LACM) along with Anti-Ship cruise missiles (ASCM).

Sources said that the Navy has also specified that the submarines should also be able to carry and launch 18 heavyweight torpedoes in the sea.

Compared with the Scorpene, the firepower required in the next line of submarines is many times more than what is being put on the Scorpenes which have the heavyweight torpedoes and the Exocet surface to surface missiles as their main weapons. ANI

The reins of Punjab Congress will remain with Captain Amarinder Singh as the party has decided that he will remain the Chief Minister till the 2022 Assembly elections.  Highly-placed sources told The Daily Guardian that no change of guard will happen in Punjab till the Assembly polls, due in 6 months. However, the man who raised a banner of revolt against the CM, cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu, will be accommodated respectfully and will be spared this time for targeting his own government and Chief Minister. Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi is expected to take final call on Sidhu.  The development came after CM Amarinder Singh met the three-member panel formed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi to mitigate the Punjab crisis at 15 GRG Road, better known as the Congress war room, for over three hours.  Walking out from the marathon meeting, Amarinder Singh downplayed the issue, saying it was a mere election preparation review meeting. “Elections are hardly 6 months away. This was an introspection meet. I won’t divulge what I discussed with the panel,” Captain said even as questions were hurled upon him about MLAs being miffed with him.  Speaking with The Daily Guardian, former MP J.P. Agarwal, member of the three-member committee, said that the panel heard all stakeholders patiently and a report would be sent to Sonia Gandhi in a day or two, following which the high command would take the final call on the issue.  Congress sources said that several MLAs have asked for complete revamp of Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee, which has been noted by the panel, and might pave the way for replacement of current PCC chief Sushil Jakhar. There are also indications that the party might also appoint a Dalit as a Deputy CM to strike balance with caste equations. It is pertinent to note that Amarinder Singh comes from Jat background and a Dalit deputy CM will enhance electoral prospects of the grand old party in Punjab, which has the highest SC population in the country.

Earlier, apart from meeting Sidhu, the 3-member panel met the party’s MLAs, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs and even other senior leaders of Punjab. Several MLAs had even objected to the entire meeting exercise that summoning the entire Cabinet including CM and MLAs to Delhi in Covid era had dented the party’s image as the Opposition got an excuse to attack the ruling dispensation. 

Union Minister Prakash Javadekar took a dig at the Congress over the ongoing crisis, saying if all MLAs, Cabinet and CM are in Delhi, who is running the Punjab government? He said that this shows that the party was only interested in keeping power rather than serving people of Punjab.