Iran urges Muslims to unite against US, including Saudi brothers

New Delhi, Jun 16: With an increase of 10,667 cases and 380 deaths in the past 24 hours, the COVID-19 count in India has reached 3,43,091 on Tuesday, according to the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry.

It is noteworthy that today's spike in cases is lower than the 11,502 registered in the country yesterday and has also stayed below the 11 thousand mark it had been crossing for the past two days in a row.

However, there is an increase in the number of deaths due to the infection from yesterday, with 380 deaths being reported from across the country, the toll due to COVID-19 has now reached 9,900.

The COVID-19 count includes 1,53,178 active cases, while 1,80,013 patients have been cured and discharged or migrated so far.

Maharashtra with 1,10,744 cases continues to be the worst-affected state in the country with 50,567 active cases while 56,049 patients have been cured and discharged in the state so far. The toll due to COVID-19 has crossed the four thousand mark and reached 4,128 in the state.
It is followed by Tamil Nadu with 46,504 and the national capital with 42,829 confirmed cases.

New Delhi, Apr 27: Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has said the monthlong ongoing lockdown has yielded positive results and that the country has managed to save “thousands of lives”.

Modi, who had a videoconference with various heads of the states on Monday, said the impact of the coronavirus, however, will remain visible in the coming months, according to a press statement released by his office. On the issue of getting back Indians who are overseas, the Prime Minister said that this has to be done keeping in mind the fact that they don’t get inconvenienced and their families are not under any risk.

During the meeting with state heads, Modi advocated for social distancing of at least 6 feet and the use of face masks as a rapid response to tackle COVID-19.

He said that states should put their efforts of converting hotspots, or red zones, into “orange and thereafter green zones”.

India last week eased the lockdown by allowing shops to reopen and manufacturing and farming activities to resume in rural areas to help millions of poor, daily-wage earners. But the economic costs of the nationwide lockdown continue to mount in a country of 1.3 billion people.

Modi, who put India under a strict lockdown on March 25, did not say if the lockdown restrictions will extend after May 3.

India has confirmed over 27,000 cases of the coronavirus, including 872 deaths.

Washington, Feb 5: Experts warned a US government panel last night that India's Muslims face risks of expulsion and persecution under the country’s new Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) which has triggered major protests.

The hearing held inside Congress was called by the US Commission on International Freedom, which has been denounced by the Indian government as biased.

Ashutosh Varshney, a prominent scholar of sectarian violence in India, told the panel that the law championed by prime minister Narendra Modi's government amounted to a move to narrow the democracy's historically inclusive and secular definition of citizenship.

"The threat is serious, and the implications quite horrendous," said Varshney, a professor at Brown University.

"Something deeply injurious to the Muslim minority can happen once their citizenship rights are taken away," he said.

Varshney warned that the law could ultimately lead to expulsion or detention -- but, even if not, contributes to marginalization.

"It creates an enabling atmosphere for violence once you say that a particular community is not fully Indian or its Indianness in grave doubt," he said.

India's parliament in December passed a law that fast-tracks citizenship for persecuted non-Muslim minorities from neighboring countries.

Responding to criticism at the time from the US commission, which advises but does not set policy, India's External Affairs Ministry said the law does not strip anyone's citizenship and "should be welcomed, not criticized, by those who are genuinely committed to religious freedom."

Fears are particularly acute in Assam, where a citizens' register finalized last year left 1.9 million people, many of them Muslims, facing possible statelessness.

Aman Wadud, a human rights lawyer from Assam who traveled to Washington for the hearing, said that many Indians lacked birth certificates or other documentation to prove citizenship and were only seeking "a dignified life."

The hearing did not exclusively focus on India, with commissioners and witnesses voicing grave concern over Myanmar's refusal to grant citizenship to the Rohingya, the mostly Muslim minority that has faced widespread violence.

Gayle Manchin, the vice chair of the commission, also voiced concern over Bahrain's stripping of citizenship from activists of the Shiite majority as well as a new digital ID system in Kenya that she said risks excluding minorities.

More than 40 people were killed last week in New Delhi in sectarian violence sparked by the citizenship law.

India on Tuesday lodged another protest after the UN human rights chief, Michele Bachelet, sought to join a lawsuit in India that challenges the citizenship law's constitutionality.