Govt could ban official use of gmail, yahoo by year-end

October 29, 2013
New Delhi, Oct 29: Wary of cyber snooping, the government could ban e-mail services such as Gmail and Yahoo for official communications by December this year in a move to safeguard its critical and sensitive data.

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The government is expected to route all its official communication through the official website NIC's email service.

The Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY) is drafting a policy on e-mail usage for government offices and departments and the policy is almost ready. The department is now taking views from other ministries on it.

"E-mail policy of the government of India, as this policy will be called, is almost ready and we are taking views from other ministries on this. Our effort will be to operationalise it by mid or end-December," DEITY Secretary J Satyanarayana told reporters on the sidelines of a CII summit.

According to official sources, the policy seeks to protect the large amount of critical government data.

It also aims to make it mandatory for government offices to communicate only on the nic.in platform rather than commercial email services like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail etc.

The policy is expected to cover about 5-6 lakh Central and State government employees for using the email service provided by National Informatics Centre (NIC).

On investments required for the policy, Satyanarayana said: "We immediately require about Rs 4-5 crore to ramp up the NIC infrastructure. But, the total investment needed for the full operationability of the e-mail policy could be around Rs 50-100 crore."

This will also include integrating the e-mails with cloud so that official data can be saved on a cloud platform, which can then be easily shared with the concerned government ministries and departments, he added.

The development comes close on heels of concerns being raised by a section in the government, especially intelligence agencies, over use of email services, provided by foreign firms (mostly US-based), which have their servers located in overseas locations, making it difficult to track if sensitive government data is being snooped upon.

The move also assumes significance in light of the fallout of the Snowden saga, which contended the US intelligence agencies used a secret data-mining programme to monitor worldwide Internet data to spy on various countries, including India.

Former technical contractor for National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency Edward Snowden had leaked what was allegedly details of a top-secret American mass surveillance programme, which led to countries analysing the safety of their official Internet-supported communication networks.

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News Network
January 7,2020

Mumbai, Jan 7: People protesting against the JNU violence were evicted from Gateway of India here on Tuesday morning as roads were getting blocked and tourists and common people were facing problems, a police official said.

Police had appealed to the protesters to shift but they didn't listen, so they were "relocated" to Azad Maidan, the official said.

Hundreds of people, including students, women and senior citizens - who assembled at the iconic Gateway of India since Sunday midnight - demanded action against the culprits and called for Union Home Minister Amit Shah's resignation.

Violence broke out in the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi on Sunday night as masked men armed with sticks and rods attacked students and teachers and damaged property on the campus.

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News Network
June 20,2020

Jun 20: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his remark that neither is anyone inside India's territory nor has any of its posts been captured, alleging that the PM has "surrendered" Indian territory to Chinese aggression.

In a statement on the all-party meeting called by Modi on Friday to discuss the situation at the India-China border, the government said, "At the outset, prime minister clarified that neither is anyone inside our territory nor is any of our post captured."

Tagging PM's remarks with his tweet, Gandhi said, "PM has surrendered Indian territory to Chinese aggression."

"If the land was Chinese: 1. Why were our soldiers killed? 2. Where were they killed?" Gandhi said.

The categorical statement by the prime minister came in the wake of reports that Chinese military has transgressed into the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control, the de-facto border, in several areas of eastern Ladakh including Pangong Tso and Galwan Valley.

Soon after Gandhi's tweet, Union Home Minister Amit Shah posted video of father of a soldier, who was injured in Galwan face-off, and hit out at the Congress leader, accusing him of indulging in "petty politics".

"A brave armyman’s father speaks and he has a very clear message for Mr. Rahul Gandhi. At a time when the entire nation is united, Mr. Rahul Gandhi should also rise above petty politics and stand in solidarity with national interest," Shah wrote.

The prime minister's assertion came even as Congress president Sonia Gandhi, at the all-party meet, questioned the government's handling of the situation, asking if there was any intelligence failure, and seeking assurance that China will "revert" to its original position.

Rahul Gandhi on Friday accused senior ministers in the government of "lying" to protect the prime minister and that the Centre was "fast asleep" while martyred jawans paid the price in Ladakh.

The former Congress chief also tagged a one-minute video of a jawan's father saying the Indian soldiers were unarmed when they were attacked by Chinese troops.

He has been questioning the government on the LAC standoff and asking how the Chinese occupied Indian territory and why Indian soldiers were sent "unarmed to martyrdom" in Ladakh.

Twenty Indian Army personnel, including a colonel, were killed in a clash with Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh on Monday night, the biggest military confrontation in over five decades that has significantly escalated the already volatile border standoff in the region.

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Agencies
February 6,2020

Bijnor, Feb 6: Apprehensions over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) are now so strong that a team of economic enumerators were allegedly manhandled in Uttar Pradesh's Bijnor district and faced stiff resistance from the people.

A team of the economic census enumerators in Bijnor, on Wednesday, sent a letter to the District Magistrate narrating the difficulties they are facing in some parts "due to misinformation".

District magistrate Ramakant Pandey, when contacted, said that he had asked the department concerned to complete the work on time. "If teams are facing any problems, we will sort it out at once. No hurdle in economic census will be tolerated," he said.

According to District Economic and Statistics Officer, Harendra Malik: "Our teams are facing protests in minority-dominated areas as people are linking it to the NRC. Some team members were manhandled.

"We have now asked village heads and municipality chairmen to help our teams in the survey and convince the people. Our teams are trying to convince them that it is a routine work which is being carried out for years. It has nothing to do with the NRC or CAA."

He further said that they plan to hold a series of meetings with people's representatives, including village heads and chairmen, so that they could put an end to this confusion.

The seventh economic census was flagged off in Bijnor by District Magistrate Ramakant Pandey on January 6. There are around 3,000 enumerators and 569 supervisors engaged in the census being carried out under the supervision of economic and statistics department. It is expected to be completed by March 31.

The economic census is aimed at collecting data about the financial status of people engaged in unorganised sector.

Meanwhile, the areas where the enumerators are facing stiff resistance include Kalhari village in Najibabad block, Amipur Narain village in Mohammadpur Devmal block, Anisa Nangli village in Dwarka block and the Mirzapur Bella village in Jalilpur block.

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