Ahead of the Union Cabinet rejig, Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) leader Chirag Paswan on Tuesday said that if Prime Minister Narendra Modi led-NDA government induct Pashupati Kumar Paras as Union Minister on the party quota then he will move to the court.

He said, “Pashupati Kumar Paras could not be appointed as Cabinet minister from the LJP quota since he is no longer a part of the party… Making him (Pashupati Paras) a Union minister on LJP quota isn’t possible as the party’s executive board expelled him. I informed Prime Minister Narendra Modi through letter. If he’s appointed minister as MP of my party I’ll go to court.” He however added, “If he’s appointed minister as independent MP or from JDU then there is no problem.”

Chirag pointed out that the Janata Dal (United) will split as soon as the cabinet expansion takes place. “Mark my words, the countdown of this government has begun. JDU politicians should pray that the Cabinet expansion does not take place otherwise the first breakdown will occur in JDU,” he said. Chirag also hit out at Nitish Kumar for denying that he had a role in the engineering split of the LJP.

BARAMULLA: In the aftermath of the Jammu airbase attack, the Baramulla district administration has imposed restrictions/ban on the storage, sale, possession, use and transport of drones/similar kind of unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).

“Keeping in the view of security situation apart from the concern of breach of privacy, nuisance and trespass, it is extremely dangerous to let un-manned aerial vehicles (UAVs) wander around in the skies within the territorial jurisdiction of District Baramulla,” read the order by Bhupinder Kumar, Baramulla District Magistrate.

This comes after two low-intensity explosions were reported on January 27 in the technical area of Jammu Air Force Station. The attack carried out possibly using the improvised explosive device (IED), could not cause much damage and caused minor injuries to two personnel on duty. Two drones were used to drop explosives on the Jammu airbase by the attackers who then navigated their quadcopters out of that area, the sources had said.

According to the order, the persons already having the drone cameras/similar kinds of UAVs in their possession shall ground the same in the local police station forthwith under proper receipt.

ANI

During the first quarter of 2021-22 (April to June 2021), revenue collections from excise have been Rs 1751.04 crore against Rs 1370.86 during the same period in the previous year, registering an increase of about 28 percent, the excise department of Haryana claimed.

Dushyant Chautala, Deputy Chief Minister of Haryana who also holds the portfolio of Excise and Taxation Department, said that during June 2021, the Excise Wing of the department has collected a revenue of Rs. 1004.70 crore whereas during June 2020, a revenue of Rs. 586.32 crore was collected.

Thus, excise revenue has increased by 71.36% in June over the previous year. He said, ahead a total of 1004 zones of retail liquor vends have been renewed in 2021-22 and the department has achieved a revenue of Rs. 3201.46 crore from renewal of these zones against license fee of Rs. 2910 crore in the previous year.

He informed that the process of allotment of the remaining 159 zones for e-tendering has already started as per the decision taken by the Government. Till now, the 12 rounds through e-tendering have been successfully completed. Total 1123 zones have been allotted so far, from which license fee of Rs. 3601 crore shall be collected in the year 2021-22 for these zones. Only 40 zones are now pending in the State for which bids are invited on July 5, 2021. The reserve price of these vends is Rs. 251 crores respectively.

Shri Dushyant Chautala also informed that L-1BF licenses for the wholesale trade of Imported Foreign Liquor (BIO) in the State of Haryana for the financial year 2021-22 have been granted by way of inviting online applications. A total of 14 applicants have been shortlisted as eligible applicants for grant of L-1BF after receiving their applications through the online departmental portal.

He informed that a total of 90 breach cases of lockdown period were instituted. All of these cases have been decided now and a total penalty of Rs.63,15,17,600 has been imposed under Section 72-E of the Punjab Excise Haryana Amendment Act, 2020. It is submitted that out of this amount, a recovery of Rs.6,56,59,853 has been made. further submitted that a number of these licensees have filed an appeal before ETC.

He also informed that during the year 2020-21, a total of 1152 cases of violation of rules were registered in which a fine of Rs. 186.96 crore was imposed, out of which Rs. 60.08 crore has also been recovered.

The Ujh multipurpose project was conceived way back in the year 2016 with an estimated expenditure of Rs 4750 crore. The expenditure has now reached more than Rs 9167 crore, yet the mega-structure is lingering in incompletion.

There are continuous surveys conducted by Central Water Commission’s Chief Engineer Shiv Kumar Nandan, yet there are several hitches that hinder the completion of the product. The Phase II clearances including environment clearance, forest Clearance, etc are still pending to kick start the construction of the dam on the field.

“There are Phase II clearances that are still awaited and we are continuously working on this Ujh Multipurpose Project. We are hopeful that in this year, we would be able to kick start it after getting all the requisite clearances,” SK Haldar, Chairman Central Water Commission, told The Daily Guardian.

The project will store around 0.65 million acre-feet (MAF) of water of the Ujh to irrigate nearly 30,000 hectares of land and produce more than 200 MW of hydro-power.

Project authorities apprised that statutory clearances for Phase-I of the project have been obtained. Member (WP&P), CWC emphasized that meetings for the Ujh multipurpose project requested clearances for Phase-II of the project which may be expedited, and the timeline for the same may be intimated within 10 days.

Further, during an internal CWC meeting, several options were discussed, especially regarding the increase in area under Zaid crop, cropping pattern, canal alignment, power potential studies, etc. to further improve the benefits from the project and optimizing the cost of the same.

Chandigarh: The Punjab Police on Tuesday busted a major cross-border espionage network with the arrest of two Army personnel on charges of spying and providing classified documents to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan, DGP Dinkar Gupta said.

He told that those arrested have been identified as Sepoy Harpreet Singh (23), who hails from village Cheecha in Amritsar and was posted in Anantnag. He joined the Indian Army in 2017 and belongs to 19 Rashtriya Rifles. Sepoy Gurbhej Singh (23), a native of village Punian in Tarn Taran, belongs to 18 Sikh Light Infantry and was working as a clerk in Kargil. He had joined the Indian Army in 2015.

Sharing details further, DGP Punjab said that Jalandhar Rural Police led by SSP Naveen Singla, while investigating an NDPS case, recovered confidential and secret documents related to the functioning and deployment of the Indian Army from cross-border drug smuggler Ranvir Singh, who was arrested with 70 grams heroin on May 24, 2021.

He said that, during interrogation, Ranvir disclosed that he got these documents from Sepoy Harpreet Singh, who was his friend, as they both belong to the same village.

“Ranvir motivated and lured Sepoy Harpreet Singh with financial benefits for sharing defence related classified documents, following which the latter induced his friend Sepoy Gurbhej into such anti-national spying activities,” said DGP Dinkar Gupta, while adding that since Gurbhej was working as a clerk in 121 Infantry Brigade Headquarters in Kargil, he could get easy access to these classified documents containing both strategic and tactical information relating to the Indian Army.

He said that both the accused Army personnel had already shared photos of over 900 classified documents— pertaining to defence of the country and national security to Ranvir Singh— over a period of 4 months between February and May 2021— who had further passed them on to Pakistani Intelligence Officers.

The DGP revealed that Ranvir further used to send these classified documents to either the Pakistan ISI operatives directly or via Gopi, who has been identified as the main drug smuggler from village Dauke in Amritsar having links with Pakistan based drug-smuggling syndicates and ISI officials, who invariably work in tandem with each other. Police have also arrested Gopi, who has confessed to having transferred classified documents to a Pakistan-based drug smuggler.

Meanwhile, sections 124-A and 120-B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sections 3, 5 and 9 of the Official Secrets Act have been added after nominating the names of both the Army personnel and Gopi in the FIR no. 73 dated May 24, 2021, which was initially registered against Ranvir under sections 21(B)/61/85 of the NDPS act at Police Station Mehatpur in Jalandhar Rural. 

Last week, after the Chandigarh Administrator VPS Badnore’s orders, PGIMER Chandigarh started a serosurvey on the pediatric population of Chandigarh. Yesterday, in the primitive report of serosurvey, it was found that two-thirds of the pediatric population of Chandigarh has already gotten affected with Covid-19 during the second wave. As per the experts, this number is huge and the pediatric population of Chandigarh may have acquired herd immunity as well.

With a sample size of 2500, the PGIMER team was able to test 756 kids, and out of 2500 children, 396 kids from the urban area were found to have antibodies in their bodies and 361 kids from the rural area of Chandigarh were found to have antibodies against the virus too. This means 65 percent of the kids’ population of the urban area have already developed antibodies in them, and 73 percent of kids from rural areas are also immune.

Dr. Jagat Ram, Director PGIMER told The Daily Guardian, “Two-third of the kids’ population was affected with Covid-19 and they now have antibodies in their bodies. This implies that the third wave prediction that says the virus would affect kids severely, may not be true, as kids have already gotten affected in the second wave and have recovered too. Nevertheless, One should not lose guards, wearing masks and social distancing is necessary, as this part of the population is not vaccinated yet.”