New Delhi, Feb 27: The death toll in the communal violence in northeast Delhi over the amended citizenship law reached 32 on Thursday, senior officials said.
It was at 27 till Wednesday night.
"Five more deaths recorded at GTB Hospital, so death toll at that hospital has gone up to 30, taking total toll to 32," a senior Delhi Health Department official told news agency.
The Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital had reported two fatalities on Wednesday.
Idukki, Aug 7: Several people lost their lives and dozens of tea estate workers are feared trapped under soil in Kerala’s Munnar after torrential rains triggered a massive landslide on today.
As many as five bodies have been recovered and rescue workers are fighting inclement weather to remove the debris.
According to rescue workers, four lanes of quarters and a church are buried under mud and around 80 people are feared trapped.
Seven people have been rescued so far and shifted to the hospital.
Sources said a portion of Pettimudi came crashing down on the workers colony with a deafening roar in the wee hours of Friday.
As people were sleeping in the quarters, there was little time to escape.
Further, with the Periyavara bridge being washed away, it became all the more difficult for rescue workers to reach the spot.
The construction of a new temporary Periyavara bridge however, is underway.
The bridge was previously destructed during the deluge of August 2018. Later during the north west monsoons and the south west monsoon of 2019, it suffered damage again.
The present bridge, which got damaged on Thursday after Kannimala river levels rose, was constructed under the leadership of Coir fed.
Although a new concrete bridge has been constructed near the temporary bridge in Periyavara, vehicle movement has not been possible because the authorities are yet to build its approach via road.
The new bridge is to be constructed at a cost of Rs 4.75 crore from Devikulam MLA S Rajendran's fund.
The entire area has been cut off from outside world and communication networks have also crashed.
Teams of Fire and Rescue personnel, NDRF, revenue officials, estate workers and police are struggling to conduct rescue operations.
Meanwhile, District collector H Dhineshan said a team of rescue personnel was sent to Pettymudy after he was briefed about the mishap and search operations to locate and rescue people are underway.
Facilities have been arranged at the hospitals nearby to provide necessary treatment facilities to the people being rescued.
New Delhi, Jan 7: The Delhi Police has filed an FIR against JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh and 19 others for allegedly attacking security guards and vandalising the server room of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on January 4.
The police registered the FIR on January 5.
In the complaint filed by the JNU administration, the University alleged that the accused were involved in physical violence and pushed the women guards, verbally abused them and threatened them of dire consequences if they opened the lock of university's communication and information (CIS) office.
"They illegally trespassed the University property with the criminal intention to damage the public property. They damaged servers and made it dysfunctional. They also damaged fiber optic power supplies and broke the biometric systems inside the room," the University officials alleged.
This incident allegedly occurred a day before Aishe Ghosh, other JNU students and teachers were attacked by a masked mob inside the campus.
New Delhi, Feb 19: India will switch to the world's cleanest petrol and diesel from April 1 as it leapfrogs straight to Euro-VI emission compliant fuels from Euro-IV grades now - a feat achieved in just three years and not seen in any of the large economies around the globe.
India will join the select league of nations using petrol and diesel containing just 10 parts per million of sulphur as it looks to cut vehicular emissions that are said to be one of the reasons for the choking pollution in major cities.
Sanjiv Singh, Chairman of Indian Oil Corp (IOC) - the firm that controls roughly half of the country's fuel market, said almost all refineries began producing ultra-low sulphur BS-VI (equivalent to Euro-VI grade) petrol and diesel by the end of 2019 and oil companies have now undertaken the tedious task of replacing every drop of fuel in the country with the new one.
"We are absolutely on track for supplying BS-VI fuel from April 1. Almost all refineries have begun supplying BS-VI fuel and the same has reached storage depots across the country," he said.
From storage depots, the fuel has started travelling to petrol pumps and in the next few weeks all of them will only have BS-VI grade petrol and diesel, he said. "We are 100 per cent confident that fuel that will flow from nozzles at all the petrol pumps in the country on April 1 will be BS-VI emission compliant fuel."
India adopted Euro-III equivalent (or Bharat Stage-III) fuel with a sulphur content of 350 ppm in 2010 and then took seven years to move to BS-IV that had a sulphur content of 50 ppm. From BS-IV to BS-VI it took just three years.
"It was a conscious decision to leapfrog to BS-VI as first upgrading to BS-V and then shifting to BS-VI would have prolonged the journey to 4 to 6 years. Besides, oil refineries, as well as automobile manufacturers, would have had to make investments twice - first to producing BS-V grade fuel and engines and then BS-VI ones," he said.
State-owned oil refineries spent about Rs 35,000 crore to upgrade plants that could produce ultra-low sulphur fuel. This investment is on top of Rs 60,000 crore they spent on refinery upgrades in the previous switchovers.
BS-VI has a sulphur content of just 10 ppm and emission standards are as good as CNG.
Originally, Delhi and its adjoining towns were to have BS-VI fuel supplies by April 2019 and the rest of the country was to get same supplies from April 2020.
But oil marketing companies switched over to supply of BS-VI grade fuels in the national capital territory of Delhi on April 1, 2018.
The supply of BS-VI fuels was further extended to four contiguous districts of Rajasthan and eight of Uttar Pradesh in the National Capital Region (NCR) on April 1, 2019, together with the city of Agra.
BS-VI grade fuels were made available in 7 districts of Haryana from October 1, 2019.
Singh said the new fuel will result in a reduction in NOx in BS-VI compliant vehicles by 25 per cent in petrol cars and by 70 per cent in diesel cars.
The switchover, he said, is a tedious task as every drop of old, higher-sulphur content fuel has to be flushed out in depots, pipelines and tanks before being replaced by BS-VI.
"We are confident of disruption-free switchover to BS-VI supplies across the country," he said. "What we will be supplying is the best quality available anywhere in the world. You don't have any better fuel that is supplied in any part of the world. Perhaps our BS-VI fuel will be better than equivalent fuel in some parts of the US and Europe."
India adopted a fuel upgradation programme in the early 1990s. Low lead gasoline (petrol) was introduced in 1994 in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. On February 1, 2000, unleaded gasoline was mandated nationwide.
Similarly, BS-2000 (Euro-I equivalent, BS-1) vehicle emission norms were introduced for new vehicles from April 2000. BS-II (Euro-II equivalent) emission norms for new cars were introduced in Delhi from 2000 and extended to the other metro cities in 2001.
Benzene limits have been reduced progressively from 5 per cent in 2000 to 1 per cent nationwide. Lead content in gasoline was removed in phases and only unleaded gasoline is being produced and sold from February 1, 2000.
The octane number of gasoline signifies the improved performance of the engine. Loss in octane number due to phasing out of lead was made up by installing new facilities in the refinery and changes in refinery operation. RON (Research Octane Number) of gasoline for BS-2000 spec was increased to 88. This has over time been increased to 91.
Singh said sulphur reduction will reduce Particulate Matter (PM) emissions even in the in-use older generation diesel vehicles.
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