Driverless cars won't be allowed in India: Gadkari

Agencies
July 25, 2017

New Delhi, Jul 25: Union minister Nitin Gadkari said driverless cars will not be allowed in India as it will lead to joblessness.nithin

The road transport minister further said that instead the government will focus on training drivers as adequate driving skills can provide employment to about 50 lakh people.

"We will not allow driver-less cars in India. India suffers a huge shortage of 22 lakh drivers...Cab aggregators take advantage of these. We are not going to promote any technology or policy that will render people jobless," Gadkari said.

He said the government is planning to introduce a cab aggregator platform where commuters could choose any mode of transportation like electric four-wheeler taxis or two- wheelers.

The government will only be a facilitator in this but the platform will bring in more competition and help commuters to have affordable public transportation, he said.

Also, he said that the government will promote electric vehicles but would not allow its imports and rather would urge all major automobile companies to manufacture this as per 'Make in India' drive.

Besides, the government is also planning to introduce and make GPS and satellite tracking mandatory in all public and private vehicles.

Besides, plans were afoot to transform public transportation in the country and replace 1.8 lakh buses across the states with luxury buses, the minister said.

"Talks are on with World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB) to help India to replicate the London Transport Authority Model where all the public transportation buses would be replaced by luxury buses and a common man can travel in them by paying about 40 per cent less price as compared to current fares," said Gadkari.

He said double decker and other luxury buses would be introduced where there would be facilities on par with flights.

The project would be complemented by building state-of- the-art bus ports on the line of Indian airports and a special National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) wing with an equity of Rs 500 crore would be set up to undertake this.

The government plans to construct 25 bus ports pan-India at present, he said.

Also, there has been changes in the e-rickshaw and carts designs to facilitate transportation of goods.

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ZAMEER BAIAKDI
 - 
Wednesday, 26 Jul 2017

Inna Lillahi Wa Inna Ilahi Rajiwoon,

Great Personality from Shiroor, Who's given immense contribution to the society certainly People around Udupi will remember.

I pray to Almighty Allah to grant him Jannah.

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Agencies
February 11,2020

New Delhi, Feb 11 Congress's performance touched a record low in the Delhi Assembly election as the party bagged less than 5 per cent of the total votes polled and 63 of its candidates lost their deposits.

The party, which ruled Delhi for 15 years on the trot under former Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, failed to open its account for the second consecutive assembly election in Delhi.

Only three of its candidates Arvinder Singh Lovely from Gandhi Nagar, Devender Yadav from Badli and Abhishek Dutt from Kasturba Nagar managed to save their deposits.

Security deposit of a candidate is forfeited if he/she fails to secure one-sixth of the total valid votes cast in a constituency.

Most of Congress candidates got less than 5 per cent of the total votes polled in their respective constituencies.

Delhi Congress chief Shubhash Chopra's daughter Shivani Chopra, who was the party candidate from Kalkaji, also could not save her deposit.

Former Delhi Assembly Speaker Yoganand Shastri's daughter Priyanka Singh also forfeited her deposit.

The party's campaign committee chairman Kirti Azad's wife, Poonam Azad, lost badly and stood fourth, polling only 2,604 (2.23) votes.

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Agencies
July 23,2020

Expressing concern over the ban imposed on TikTok by the government of India, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly called the development in the south Asian country “worrisome”.

TikTok was amongst the 59 Chinese apps that were banned in India but why it hogs the maximum limelight because TikTok had the second-largest user base in India with over 200 million users.

As per The Verge writer Casey Newton, Zuckerberg was worried about TikTok’s India ban. Although it soon cashed into the opportunity and released a TikTok clone “Reels”, the government’s reason behind banning the app in India wasn’t received well by Mark Zuckerberg. 

He had said that if India can ban a platform with over 200 million users in India without citing concrete reasons, it can also ban Facebook if something goes amiss on the security and privacy front.

Why Mark finds it particularly worrisome because Facebook is already involved in a lot tussle with the governments across the world involving national security concerns. 

“Facebook already faces fights around the world from governments on both the left and the right related to issues that fit under the broad umbrella of national security: election interference, influence campaigns, hate speech, and even just plain-old democratic speech. Zuckerberg knows that the leap from banning TikTok on national security grounds to banning Facebook on national security grounds is more of a short hop,” the report by Casey read.

Facebook till now has not faced any kind of issue in India but considering the debacle with the other governments, it is not entirely wrong to worry about its future in India if any national security issue arises. Back in 2016, Facebook’s Free Basics service, which means a free but restricted internet service, was banned in India by the telecom regulators. 

The TRAI had said that the Free Basic services were banned in India because it violated the principles of net neutrality. With Free Basics services, Facebook had planned to bring more unconnected users online. But since 2016, there has been no major tussle between the Indian government and Zuckerberg due to national security issues.

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News Network
June 15,2020

New Delhi, Jun 15: With an increase of 11,502 cases in the past 24 hours, the COVID-19 count in India reached 3,32,424 on Monday, according to the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry.

The spike is marginally lower than the highest-ever spike of 11,929 new cases the country registered a day earlier.

With 325 deaths being reported from across the country, the toll due to COVID-19 has now reached 9,520.

The COVID-19 count includes 1,53,106 active cases while 1,69,798 patients have been cured and discharged or migrated so far.

Maharashtra with 1,07,958 cases continues to be the worst-affected state in the country with 53,030 active cases while 50,978 patients have been cured and discharged in the state so far. 3,950 deaths have been reported due to the infection so far from Maharashtra.

It is followed by Tamil Nadu with 44,661 cases and the national capital with 41,182 confirmed cases.

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