Bajrang Dal leader turned anti-Sangh Parivar crusader Mahendra Kumar dies of cardiac arrest

New Delhi, Jan 11: Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Friday said that he has never seen innocents like the Indian people, who believe the claims made by the government on the implementation of its programmes. The former Union Minister, addressing a literary event, said, "I have never seen innocents like the Indian people. If something appears on print (and named two newspapers also), we believe it. We believe anything."

Claims like all villages having been electrified in the country and toilets built for 99 per cent of families in India were being believed, he said.

Similar was the case of the Ayushman Bharat scheme, (Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana or PM-JAY is a flagship health care scheme of the Centre), he alleged.

Stating that his Delhi-based driver's father had to get a surgery done under the scheme, he said, however, it could not be performed.

"I asked him (car driver) if he had the Ayushman card and he showed a card and I told him to take it (to hospital). In hospital after hospital, they said they were not aware of anything like that (Ayushman scheme). But we believe that the Ayushman scheme has come to the whole of India," he said.

Further, he said "we believe that for any disease, treatment will be done (indicating the Ayushman scheme) without shelling out money. We are being innocents."

Many news items and data were contrary to the truth, he added.

Washington, Mar 18: Hundreds of distressed Indian students, stuck in the Philippines, are seeking help through video messages as they are unable to fly back home due to the travel restrictions imposed by India to contain the spread of the deadly novel coronavirus, according to friends and relatives of some of these students in the US.

The Indian government on Tuesday banned the entry of passengers from Afghanistan, Philippines and Malaysia to India with immediate effect amid stepped up efforts against the spread of COVID-19.

In a video message by one of these students Akhil Bala Nair, around 200 Indian students had booked their flight tickets for India in the next few days. But all of them have been cancelled due to the new policy.

Most of the students, she said, had booked their flights for March 17 and rest were schedule to travel to India on March 19 and 20. But the flights were cancelled and scores of Indian students are now stuck at the airport in Manila, Nair said in the video message sent to Prem Bhandari, head of the Jaipur Foot USA.

“It is need of the hour that the Indian government send a plane to bring these Indian students back home,” Bhandari, who in the past has worked for the cause of the Indian diaspora, and who was approached by these students told PTI.

According to these students, some 100 of them have been at the airport since Tuesday.

They all have confirmed tickets but the airport authorities are not allowing them to check in because of the new travel regulations.

While the airport authorities have asked them to go back to their respective place of residence, the students said they were unable to travel because of the absence of local taxi or shared ride services.

The students said that they are running out of time as the Philippines government has given them 72 hours time to exit the country, which started from March 16, after which the country will go into lockdown.

“This means we would not be able to travel anywhere outside Philippines after March 20,” Nair said in her message.

The students said that there are many of them who have applied for renewal of their visas and are unable to travel to India.

There are nearly 1,000 Indian students presently in Manila who are willing to travel back home, they said.

Meanwhile, the Indian Embassy in Manila, in a tweet, said that they, along with the Ministry of External Affairs, are trying to work out a solution.

“It is requested to all to kindly have patience,” the embassy said.

Jun 4: Mahatma Gandhi’s statue outside the Indian Embassy in Washington DC was vandalised with graffiti and spray painting by unknown persons allegedly involved in the ongoing protests in the US against the custodial killing of African-American George Floyd.

This has prompted the mission officials to register a complaint with the local law enforcement agencies.

The incident is reported to have taken place on the intervening night of June 2 and 3 in Washington DC.

The Indian embassy has informed the State Department and registered a complaint with local law enforcement agencies, which are now conducting an investigation into the incident.

On Wednesday, a team of officials from Metropolitan Police in consultation with the Diplomatic Security Service and National Park Police visited the site and are conducting inquiries.

Efforts are on to clean up the site at the earliest.

Vandalism of the statue of the apostle of peace comes during the week of nationwide protests against the custodial killing of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.

Several of these protests have turned violent which many times has resulted in damage of some of the most prestigious and sacred American monuments.

In Washington DC, protestors this week burnt a historic church and damaged some of the prime properties and historic places like the national monument and Lincoln Memorial.

One of the few statues of a foreign leader on a federal land in Washington DC, the statue of Mahatma Gandhi was dedicated by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in the presence of the then US president Bill Clinton on September 16, 2000, during his state visit to the US.

In October 1998, the US Congress had authorised the government of India to establish and maintain a memorial “to honour Mahatma Gandhi on Federal land in the District of Columbia."

According to the Indian Embassy website, the sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi is cast in bronze as a statue to a height of 8 feet 8 inches. It shows Gandhi in stride, as a leader and man of action evoking memories of his 1930 protest march against salt-tax, and the many padyatras (long marches) he undertook throughout the length and breadth of the Indian sub-continent.

The statue, the design of which was created by Gautam Pal, is a gift from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). The pedestal for the statue of Mahatma Gandhi is a block of new Imperial Red also known as Ruby Red a block originally weighing 25 tonnes reduced to a size of 9'x7'x3'4". It now weighs 16 tonnes.