Walking from Delhi to MP, man dies in Agra amid lockdown

New Delhi, Jun 13: Petrol price on Saturday was hiked by 59 paise per litre and diesel by 58 paise as oil companies for the seventh day in a row adjusted retail rates in line with costs since ending an 82-day hiatus in rate revision.

Petrol price in Delhi was hiked to Rs 75.16 per litre from Rs 74.57, while diesel rates were increased to Rs 73.39 a litre from Rs 72.81, according to a price notification of state oil marketing companies.

Rates have been increased across the country and vary from state to state depending on the incidence of local sales tax or VAT.

This is the seventh daily increase in rates in a row since oil companies on Sunday restarted revising prices in line with costs, after ending an 82-day hiatus.

In seven hikes, petrol price has gone up by Rs 3.9 per litre and diesel by Rs 4.

The freeze in rates was imposed in mid-March soon after the government hiked excise duty on petrol and diesel to shore up additional finances.

Oil PSUs Indian Oil Corp (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL), instead of passing on the excise duty hikes to customers, adjusted them against the fall in the retail rates that was warranted because of a decline in international oil prices.

New Delhi, Mar 11: Jyotiraditya Scindia, the Madhya Pradesh politician whose surprise exit from the Congress has brought the Kamal Nath government to the brink of collapse, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday. Scindia joined the BJP at an event in national capital Delhi in the presence of party chief JP Nadda.

Scindia, who was warmly welcomed by Nadda, described 10 March, the day that he exited from the Congress as one of the two life-changing days of his life. The first, he said, was 30 September 2001 when he lost his father. Scindia underscored that the Congress was not the party that it had been and had been living in denial.

Scindia had ended his 18-year-old association with the Congress on Tuesday after meetings with Home Minister Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Scindia’s exit from the Congress was followed by resignation letters by about 22 MLAs who had been sequestered in Karnataka. The resignation letters were, however, sent to the Governor and not the assembly speaker, and threatens to upend the Kamal Nath government which has a wafer-thin majority.

If the resignations are accepted, the effective strength of the MP assembly will come down to 206, leaving the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with a slender majority beyond the halfway mark of 103 with its 107 MLAs. For now, the Congress is trying to persuade the MLAs to not pull down the state government.

In his resignation letter to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi that Scindia put out on Twitter soon after, he alluded to his discomfort in the party over the last year or so. “...as you well know, this is a path that has been drawing itself out over the last year,” he had written in his letter.

It was seen as a reference to the Congress settling for Kamal Nath as the chief minister after the 2018 state elections though it was Scindia who had led from the front to oust the BJP from Madhya Pradesh. Scindia’s supporters had hoped that the Congress would tell Kamal Nath to give up his second charge - as the party chief in the state - but this also didn’t happen.

The first hint that something was amiss came in November last year when Scindia removed a reference to the Congress in his Twitter bio and instead wrote “public servant and cricket enthusiast”. He had then explained the change to an effort to make the Twitter bio shorter.

Jyotyiraditya Scindia’s aunt Yashodhara Raje Scindia appeared to declare soon after that the 49-year-old would join the BJP when she welcomed his resignation, calling it “ghar wapsi” or homecoming. “Jyotiraditya was being neglected in Congress,” Yashodhara Raje Scindia said.

Scindia’s grandmother, Vijaya Raje Scindia, was one of the founders of the Jana Sangh, the precursor to the BJP. His aunt Vasundhara Raje is a former Union minister and ex-chief minister of Rajasthan and another aunt Yashodhara Raje is a former minister in the Madhya Pradesh cabinet.

New Delhi, Apr 11: With 40 deaths and 1,035 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, India on Saturday witnessed a sharpest ever increase in coronavirus cases, taking the tally of the infected people in the country to 7,447, as per the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Saturday.

According to the official data, among 7447 COVID-19 positive cases, 6,565 are active cases and 643 are cured, discharged and migrated and 239 patients who have succumbed to the virus.

Maharashtra has reported the highest number of cases in the country which stands at 1,574, including 188 cured and discharged and 110 deaths, followed by Tamil Nadu with 911 corona positive cases.

On the other hand, the national capital has reported 903 cases, which include 25 recovered cases and 13 deaths.

While 553 have detected positive for the infection in Rajasthan, Telangana has 473 corona cases and Chhattisgarh and Chandigarh have reported 18 cases each.

Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, that borders the national capital, has 431 and 177 cases, respectively.
Kerala, which reported India's first coronavirus case, has 364 confirmed cases.

The newly carved union territories -- Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir--- have 15 and 207 cases, respectively.

The least number of COVID-19 cases have reported from the northeast region of the country. While Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, and Tripura have only 1 corona positive case, Assam has 29 people infected with the virus, which is the highest in the region.