Hyderabad: YSR Telangana Party (YSRTP) chief YS Sharmila attempted to besiege the TSPSC office to protest against the TSPSC paper leak case. However, she was detained by the police, on her way before she reached the TSPSC office.
Sharmila alongside YSRTP activists staged a protest on the road in front of the office gate.
Following a ruckus, the police arrested Sharmila to avoid any possibility of tension due to the agitation.
Women police personnel bodily lifted Sharmila and shifted her to a waiting police vehicle. Other protesters were also detained by the police. She was later taken to a police station.
Earlier, the YSRTP leader alleged that only small fish were arrested in the paper leak case while the powerful ones were roaming freely. She demanded a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Sharmila slammed the state government for not allowing her to stage a protest in a peaceful and democratic manner. She said whenever she is trying to protest, police are placing her under house arrest.
She alleged that hundreds of policemen were deployed around her house. “They have also issued a lookout notice for me. Am I a criminal,” she asked.
While protesting, Sharmila asked if arrests and filing cases would solve the fair demands of the students. Tensions prevailed after the YSR leader entered into arguments with the police.
The TSPSC conducted examinations on March 5 for 833 vacancies of Assistant Engineer, Municipal Assistant Engineer, Technical Officer, and Junior Technical Officer in various engineering departments.
A total of 55,000 candidates attempted the written exam.
However, the Commission suspected leakage of the question paper and complained to the police.
On March 13, the police arrested nine people, including two employees of the TSPSC.
Following the arrest of the accused, the Commission cancelled the exam and also postponed other exams scheduled to be held later this month.
Hyderabad Police Commissioner C.V. Anand handed over the investigation to SIT.
New Delhi: Senior RSS leader Indresh Kumar has said that interference in someone else’s religion or attempts to convert someone hinders the country’s development and harmony.
Speaking as the chief guest at the ‘Vibrant North East’ programme in Maharashtra Sadan here, Kumar who is also the patron of the Bharatiya Christian Manch and Muslim Rashtriya Manch said that all religions should follow their respective religion and respect each other. “Whatever may be our religion, but above all, we all are Indians,” Kumar emphasised.
Addressing the gathering, the RSS leader said that this event is a commendable step to introduce the people of Delhi to the cultural heritage of the North East. “The people of North East are always ahead to contribute in the progress of the country. Be it the fight for freedom or working to make the country a developed nation after independence, they have always contributed.”
Kumar further said that more attention has been paid to the North East since the Narendra Modi government came to the Centre. “Today, the northeastern states are moving ahead on the path of all-round development, which is the impact of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governance,” he added.
BJP national spokesperson Tom Vadakkan, Rajya Sabha MP S. Phangnok Konyan, Pratap Palla from Bharatiya Christian Manch and national media in-charge of Muslim Rashtriya Manch Shahid Sayeed were also present in the programme.
Aurangabad: An ongoing agitation to protest the renaming of Maharashtra’s Aurangabad will be halted ahead of a rally here on Sunday, said AIMIM leader Imtiaz Jaleel, claiming that attempts are being made to disturb communal harmony in the city.
“People are coming from outside (out of Aurangabad) to address the rally organized by Sakal Hindu Samaj here. We have brought our agitation to a halt. Now it is the responsibility of the police to maintain peace,” Jaleel told reporters after meeting city police chief Nikhil Gupta on Friday.
Jaleel said a relay hunger strike, which started nearly two weeks ago, outside the collector’s office will be paused from Saturday.
“We shall continue to make efforts to strengthen the legal battle against the renaming,” said the MP from All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM).
The Union government last month approved the renaming of Aurangabad city as Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar’ and that of Osmanabad city as Dharashiv’. Aurangabad derives its name from Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, while Osmanabad was named for a 20th century ruler of the princely state of Hyderabad.
Jaleel said attempts are being made to disturb the peace. He said, “People who are facing cases for making provocative speeches are going to come and address the rally here on Sunday.”
The lawmaker said their agitation has been peaceful. “Now, efforts are on to give the renaming issue a communal colour,” he said. He said it is the responsibility of police to ensure that no hateful speeches are given in Sunday’s rally.
Democratic D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson said at a press conference he had withdrawn the passed changes to D.C.’s criminal code. President Joe Biden said last week he would not veto a congressional resolution axing the updates, after the House passed a measure last month that would overturn the changes and the Senate is expected to clear that legislation this week. The measure only requires a simple Senate majority to pass, and a number of Democratic senators have indicated they would vote for it.
“It’s clear that Congress is intending to override that legislation,” Mendelson told reporters.
Whether he can do so is up for debate, however. Asked if the city council had withdrawn a bill before, Mendelson said “I have not found precedent” for doing so but argued there was no provision in the law against him pulling it back either.
“There’s no prohibition on what I’m doing,” he said.
It was not yet immediately clear if the D.C. Council could call back the legislation, which many in Congress have characterized as a “soft on crime” approach. Democratic D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser had vetoed the bill, saying it would not make the city safer, but the council overrode that veto.
“The messaging got out of our control, and that the messaging got picked up by Republicans who wanted to make a campaign out of it for next year against Democrats,” Mendelson said.
The House on Feb. 9 voted 250-173 to overturn the move by D.C.’s government to revise its criminal code, with 31 House Democrats joining Republicans. A Senate vote is expected this week.
“If the Republicans want to proceed with a vote, it will be a hollow vote because it really isn’t there before them,” Mendelson argued.
Mendelson said the congressional action would not affect how D.C. approaches city issues.
“I don’t plan on doing a gut check. Let’s be clear, I don’t plan on installing a hotline to Republican leadership in the House in the Senate and calling them every week and asking for permission to move forward,” Mendelson said.
[ad_2]
#D.C #Council #attempts #pull #criminal #code #revisions #looming #Senate #vote
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Surat: A woman allegedly attempted suicide after poisoning her two daughters in Surat, an official said on Monday.
The woman identified as Asmita, on Sunday afternoon, first poisoned her two daughters — Ritanshu and Divya, and later herself consumed poison.
The woman and her two daughters have been admitted to a Surat hospital.
The Pandesara police have booked the woman in an attempt to murder case.
The woman’s husband Dinesh Patel, an embroidery worker and a resident of Satyanarayan Nagar area falling under the Pandesara police station jurisdiction, said that his uncle learned about the incident and rushed all the three to the hospital.
He said: “Both of my daughters are in critical condition.”
Patel added that on Saturday, he and his wife quarrelled over a domestic issue. This had disturbed Asmita, and that might have led her to take this step.
Hyderabad: Harassed by a senior, a post graduate student of a government-run medical college in Telangana attempted suicide by administering a lethal injection to herseld.
The first year Post Graduate (MD) student in the department of Anaesthesia of the Kakatiya Medical College (KMC) in Warangal took the extreme step at the MGM Hospital while she was on duty on Wednesday.
She was found unconscious around 6.30 a.m. and was admitted to the emergency ward where CPR was administered. As her condition deteriorated, she was shifted to Hyderabad.
The student was admitted to Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) and her condition is stated to be critical.
Her father Narendra broke down while talking to media persons at NIMS. He also slammed the management of the college for not taking any action on her complaint.
He said a senior student had been harassing his daughter since November last year and though the issue was brought to the notice of higher officials of KMC, no action was taken.
Narendra, who works as Assistant Sub-Inspector in Railway Protection Force (RPF) in Warangal, claimed that her daughter sought the support of her fellow students but they backed out, saying they have to study another two years in the same college.
The girl’s father demanded that the college management take strong action against the student who was harassing her.
When Hong Kong police arrested dozens of pro-democracy politicians, lawyers, scholars, journalists, NGO workers and activists in early morning raids across the city on 6 January 2021, a sense of terror spread across the city.
Under Beijing’s new national security law, the most influential members of Hong Kong’s civil society were accused of “conspiring to subvert state power” by holding primaries for pro-democracy candidates in the Hong Kong legislative election.
In the following months, many who had been active in pro-democracy activities fled the city. Some who tried to escape got arrested at the airport.
Observers say the current trial of the group, who came to be known as the “Hong Kong 47”, symbolises the death of the city’s civil society and is an extension of Xi Jinping’s crackdown on their mainland Chinese counterparts. During Xi’s decade in power, China’s fledgling civil society has almost completely dissolved after a series of crackdown on human rights lawyers, liberal scholars, journalists, NGO workers and underground churches.
Chinese authorities want to send the same chilling message to Hong Kong that, as on the mainland, critical voices deemed a threat to the regime will be severely dealt with, veteran Chinese activists say.
“The Communist Party believes civil society is a threat to a dictatorial regime. They need to crackdown on the most outspoken voices in society because those are the free voices that refuse to bow to government control,” said Dr Teng Biao, a former mainland rights lawyer who called for the abolition of death penalty and has himself been detained in extralegal “black jail.”
“[The party] feared the influence of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movements and liberalism would spread to mainland China,” said Teng, now a visiting professor at the University of Chicago. He noted Hong Kong’s pro-democracy groups have supported mainland dissidents and their families for decades and staged vigils to commemorate victims in the Tiananmen crackdown for 30 years.
Among those arrested were Hong Kong’s most outspoken figures in its previously robust civil society. They include legal scholar Benny Tai, a key initiator of the primaries, dozens of pro-democracy lawmakers and district councillors, journalist-turned-lawmaker Claudia Mo, young activists Joshua Wong, Tiffany Yuen and journalist Gwyneth Ho, as well as political novices such as Winnie Yu, a health worker unionist and Mike Lam, founder of a retail chain.
Former law professor Benny Tai, a key figure in Hong Kong’s 2014 Occupy Central protests who was arrested under Hong Kong’s national security law, is escorted by correctional services officers. Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP
“We believed we were doing something open and transparent, how could we have guessed [the authorities’] ridiculous, twisted mentality?” said Ted Hui, an opposition lawmaker who fled Hong Kong just a month before the mass arrests. Hui, who faced a raft of criminal charges over the 2019 anti-government protests, said he too would have been arrested if he had not escaped.
In the following months, more than 50 civil groups including unions, rights groups, independent media outlets and political parties shut down, often after being contacted by so-called “middlemen” who delivered threats or admonishments.
Since the national security law was imposed, more than 230 people have been arrested on national security charges, including newspaper editors following police raids on outspoken media outlets such as Apple Daily and the Stand News. Politically sensitive books have disappeared from bookshops and libraries.
Chang Ping, an influential mainland Chinese writer who was fired from the state-owned Southern Weekend newspaper for his liberal views and denied a work visa in Hong Kong, said the city was now experiencing a “condensed” version of China’s crackdown.
He noted how the Chinese authorities crackdown on not only political activities but also the non-political initiatives aimed at raising people’s consciousness of rights. Groups that have been closed included those advocating patients’ rights, education rights and gender equality.
“They are repeating this pattern (of crackdown) in Hong Kong as they fear this sense of rights will extend to political demands,” Chang said.
William Nee, a researcher at US-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said the Chinese leadership “go after what they see as the ultimate source of instability in Hong Kong – anyone dedicated to electoral democracy, anyone opposed to their authoritarian rule.”
“Going after the most vocal and capable pro-democracy leaders is a way to systematically crush dissent and instil fear in the population,” he said.
In the short term, the government has succeeded in “killing the chicken to scare the monkey” – silencing critics by making an example of the most outspoken ones.
“Those going to trial may be detained for two or three more years before final judgement, so the government can’t lose in its effort to wipe out the leadership of civil society even if the court of final appeal should ultimately grant acquittal to an accused,” said China law expert Jerome Cohen at New York University, on the 47.
Staff members from Hong Kong’s Apple Daily pose at newspaper’s headquarters in June 2021. Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP
Sociologist Prof Chung Kim-wah, who fled Hong Kong last year after receiving threats from national security police over his independent opinion polls, believed the crackdown in Hong Kong has been even more intense than in China in the past few years, with more than 10,000 arrested over a range of public order charges over their involvement in the 2019 anti-government protests.
Chung said he expected prosecutions to intensify in the years to come “to frighten and intimidate more people into silence.”
Eva Pils, a law professor at King’s College London, said “by trying to understand these trials in mainland Chinese terms, we are beginning to normalise political persecution in Hong Kong – which is no doubt what the central authorities want us to do.”
But observers say that Hong Kong civil society’s strong roots cannot be so easily eradicated.
Hong Kong’s robust civil society has enjoyed a long history of fighting for ordinary people’s rights and checking the power of the government. Even under persecution, like their mainland counterparts, Hong Kong activists, NGO workers, journalists and lawyers are finding ways to continue their mission through less sensitive work. For instance, some journalists whose media outlets have closed turn to operating bookshops while others found new media outlets focused on non-political issues.
“The crackdown sends a chilling message to society, but it also appeals to people’s sense of justice and inspires people to get involved,” said a mainland Chinese NGO worker who declines to be identified for fear of reprisals. “The ‘Blank paper’ movement is an example.”
Ted Hui says he looks forward to a day when he could return to Hong Kong, although it might be a long wait.
“We have to compete with (the Chinese Communist Party) to see who will last longer,” he said.
[ad_2]
#Trial #Hong #Kong #symbolises #Chinas #attempts #dissolve #civil #society
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Hyderabad: A man from Choppadandi Mandal attempted to set himself on fire on Friday, over the alleged unfairness of the allocation of a 2 BHK house at the NTR statue circle in the mandal headquarters.
Living in Choppadandi for the past 50 years, Chidyala Suresh said that his name was not on the list of recipients of the double-bedroom homes and that officials had deleted it because they viewed him as an outsider. He also produced his ration card and Aadhaar card to demonstrate that he was a permanent resident.
The environment became tense and chaotic as a result of Suresh’s attempt to set himself on fire by dousing himself with fuel. Party workers raced to the spot and stopped the suicide attempt as a nearby BJP corner meeting was taking place at the time of the occurrence. As the official list of allocations for 2BHKs was leaked and publicised on social media, residents reacted in disbelief.
Sarpanch’s husband attempts self-immolation in Nizamabad
Hyderabad: The sarpanch of Nandipet along with her husband staged a protest outside Nizamabad Collector’s office on Monday.
Sarpanch’s husband also attempted to immolate himself, claiming they were not getting the pending bills. The couple claimed to implement projects worth crores of rupees but the sub sarpanch is not signing the cheques.
In a highly dramatic incident in front of the Nizamabad collectorate, the sarpanch of Nandipet and her husband staged a protest. The husband even attempted to immolate himself demanding justice distressed that they were not getting the pending bills.
They claimed to have implemented projects worth crores of rupees but the sub sarpanch is not signing the cheques.
According to Nizamabad Zilla Panchayat Officer, “Nandipet Sarpanch S Vani along with her husband has given a complaint against the sub sarpanch.
They stated that the sub sarpanch is not signing the cheques for the developmental works undertaken and also not cooperating in the village’s developmental activities. They have demanded to take action against the sub-Sarpanch.”
He tried to light himself on fire by pouring kerosene but was rescued by the security officials.
New Delhi, Jan 28 (PTI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday cautioned against attempts to sow differences and create divisions in the country but asserted that such efforts will not succeed.
Addressing a rally of the National Cadet Corps (NCC) at the Cariappa Ground in Delhi Cantonment, Modi said the mantra of unity was the only way for India to achieve grandeur.
The prime minister said that the entire world was looking towards India because of the youth of the country.
“This is the time of new opportunities for the youth of India. Everywhere it is evident that India’s time has arrived,” Modi said addressing the NCC cadets who took part in the Republic Day celebrations.
At the same time, the prime minister urged caution against attempts to divide the country.
“Desh ko todne ke kai bahane dhoode jaate hai. Bhaanti, bhaanti ki baatein nikaal kar, Maa Bharti ke santaano ke beech main doodh mein daraar karne ki koshishe ho rahi hai (Several pretexts are being raised to break the country. Several issues are raked up to create divisions among the children of Mother India),” the prime minister said.
“Despite such efforts, there will never be differences among the people of India,” he said.
“Maa ke doodh main kabhi darar nahi ho sakti (there can be no fissures in the mother’s milk),” he said.
“For this, the mantra of unity is the ultimate antidote. The mantra of unity is a pledge as well as India’s strength. This is the only way India will achieve grandeur,” the prime minister said.
The prime minister’s remarks came against the backdrop of the raging controversy over a BBC documentary on the 2002 Gujarat riots and Modi that has been banned in India.
Modi lauded the NCC cadets who participated in the Republic Day celebration and said the priority for the country would always be the young people who are brimming with energy and enthusiasm.
He said the youngsters have immense opportunities as his government was encouraging private participation in space and defence sectors where start-ups were making huge strides.
Modi said his government had unleashed a digital revolution, start-up revolution and innovation revolution.
He highlighted the reforms in the defence sector, saying assault rifles that were imported earlier were now being manufactured within the country.
The prime minister said fast-paced border infrastructure work was taking place and it would open a new world of opportunities and possibilities for the youth.
Modi said it was also a time of great possibilities for the daughters of the country.
“Police and paramilitary forces have witnessed the number of women doubling in the last eight years. The path has been paved for the deployment of women on the frontiers of all three armed,” he said.
He said women have been recruited as sailors in the Navy and have also started entering combat roles in the armed forces.
“First batch of women cadets has started training at the National Defence Academy in Pune and 1500 girl students have been admitted in Sainik Schools which were thrown open for the girl students for the first time,” Modi said.
The prime minister said the National Cadet Corps too has seen a consistent rise in women participation in the last decade.
Earlier, the prime minister released a special Day Cover and a commemorative specially minted coin of Rs 75 denomination, commemorating 75 years of NCC.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, NCC Director General Lt Gen Gurbirpal Singh, Chief of Defence Staff Anil Chauhan, Chief of Army Staff Gen Manoj Pande, Chief of Naval Staff Admiral R Harikumar, Chief of Air Staff V R Chaudhari and Defence Secretary Girdhar Armaane were present on occasion.
