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29 Indian cities and towns highly vulnerable to earthquakes

Agencies
July 30, 2017

New Delhi, Jul 30: Twenty-nine Indian cities and towns, including Delhi and capitals of nine states, fall under “severe” to “very severe” seismic zones, according to the National Centre for Seismology (NCS).

A majority of these places are in the Himalayas, one of the most seismically active regions in the world.

Delhi, Patna (Bihar), Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir), Kohima (Nagaland), Puducherry, Guwahati (Assam), Gangtok (Sikkim), Shimla (Himachal Pradesh), Dehradun (Uttarakhand), Imphal (Manipur) and Chandigarh fall under seismic zones IV and V.

The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has classified different regions in the country into zones II to V, taking into consideration earthquake records, tectonic activities and damage caused, the director of the NCS, Vineet Gauhlat, said.

The NCS, which records earthquakes and carries out studies pertaining to microzonation of cities, comes under the India Meteorological Department (IMD).

Seismic microzonation is the process of subdividing a region into smaller areas having different potential for hazardous earthquake effects.

Zone II is considered the least seismically active, while Zone V is the most active. Zone IV and V fall under “severe” to “very severe” categories respectively.

Zone V includes the entire northeastern region, parts of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarkhand, the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, parts of north Bihar and the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago.

Parts of Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi, Sikkim, northern Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Gujarat and a small part of Maharashtra fall under Zone IV.

Bhuj, which was struck by a massive earthquake in 2001 in which 20,000 people were killed, Chandigarh, Ambala, Amritsar, Ludhiana and Roorkee fall under zones IV and V.

Kusala Rajendran, a professor at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, and an expert on paleoseismology, earthquake recurrence and active tectonics, said most of the cities in the list have a high population density and fall in the Indo-Gangetic plains.

“The Himalayan arc, stretching from the upper Assam region to Jammu and Kashmir, is known to be a high seismic zone and these cities in the Indo-Gangetic belt fall within reasonable limits of the Himalayas. So repercussions are bound to be felt there,” she observed.

M. Rajeevan, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences, said 31 new earthquake observatories will come up in the country by March next year. At present, there are 84 observatories.

This is being done to detect and record earthquake parameters more accurately and identify possible precursors of tremors.

The NCS has also carried out microzonation of cities like Delhi and Kolkata to study the possible impact of earthquake in these mega cities.

 

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News Network
July 1,2020

Chennai, Jul 1: In a case of cluster infection, 58 of the 65 mourners who attended the funeral a Central government official, Selvam, 56, who had worked in the Ministry of Foreign Trade and who died in Coimbatore and was brought for burial at Pannavaadi near Kolathur near Mettur in Salem district, tested positive for Covid-19, after three of them initially tested positive as they neither wore face masks not observed social distancing during the funeral, sources said.

Even as Dr Vijayabaskar said AIADMK MLA from Sriperumbudur, K Palani who tested positive for Covid-19 has recovered and will be discharged from hospital in couple of days, the MIOT International Hospital in Chennai said that the State Higher Education Minister, K P Anbazhagan, who initially showed no symptoms of coronavirus, subsequently tested positive in his second sample. He was now under treatment, his condition very stable and all his vital parameters are normal, MIOT said in a statement.

In what continues to be an unrestrained run, Tamil Nadu added its biggest day-wise spike so far of 3,943 positive Covid-19 cases, while another 60 deaths due to the novel coronavirus confirmed on Tuesday took the total death toll in the state to 1,201.

Of the new positive cases, Chennai alone accounted for its highest per-day jump of 2,393 positives with the number of persons tested today across Tamil Nadu put at 30,053. The total number os Covid-19 positive cases in the State as a whole till date is racing towards the one lakh mark at 90,167.

However, these outcomes are all on anticipated lines with the ICMR's push for more aggressive testing, even if they want lockdown controls to be now more focused at the district level, and want the Chennai model to be taken to the districts.

In this backdrop, the Health minister, Dr C Vijayabaskar chaired a detailed Covid review meeting this evening through video conference with all the hospital deans and other top officials on different facets of the disease prevention and control measures and the state's overall preparedness.

Chief Minister, Mr. Edappadi K Palaniswami in a statement in Chennai assured that with the 'full lockdown' continuing in greater Chennai, parts of three neighbouring districts of Chengalpattu, Thiruvallur and Kancheepuram and parts of Madurai district till July 5, the free community kitchens for the elderly, disabled and destitute will continue to function in those places till July 5 and hygienically cooked food packets served to them.

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Agencies
August 1,2020

New Delhi, Aug 1: Rajya Sabha MP and former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh has died in Singapore where he was undergoing treatment.

Amar Singh, 64, had undergone kidney transplant in 2011 and was not keeping well for a long time.

“Saddened to know about the death of senior leader and parliamentarian Amar Singh,” Defence Minister Rajnath Singh tweeted.

Earlier in the day, the former Samajwadi leader had posted messages on Twitter, paying tributes to Bal Gangadhar Tilak on his 100th death anniversary and also wishing people on Eid.

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Agencies
July 30,2020

Kochi, Jul 30: The Kerala High Court on Thursday refused to grant the extension for the stay of a 74-year-old US citizen, Johnny Paul Pierce, who had earlier said that he felt safer to remain in India than in the United States amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The single-judge bench of Justice CS Dias, which considered the writ petition, observed that the grant or extension of visa to foreign nationals fall exclusively within the domain of the Government of India (GoI) and that judicial review in such matters is minimal.

The power of the GoI to expel foreigners is absolute and unlimited, the bench said.

"In view of the categoric declaration of law by the Supreme Court, the plea of the petitioner to permit him to stay back in India cannot be accepted, as it falls within the purview of the guidelines and the discretion of the Government of India," the order said.

"The petitioner cannot be heard that the guidelines/policies/regulations formulated by the Government of India, that an American national though has been granted a visa having validity of five years has to leave India within 180 days, is irrational or unreasonable," it added.

The High Court, which was hearing a plea to permit the US citizen to stay in India for a further period of six months, said that the petitioner does not have a case that there is an infraction of Article 21 of the Constitution of India.

"The petitioner was well aware of the visa conditions when he arrived in India, and it is too late in the day for him to raise a grievance on the visa conditions," the bench said noting that the petitioner's love for India was heartening.

The High Court also directed the Foreigners Registration Officer to consider the petitioner's representation within a period of two weeks in accordance with the applicable guidelines and policies.

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