UP govt preparing plan to open shelters for stray cows: Yogi

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.

Jaipur, Mar 26: Two new COVID-19 positive cases were registered in Rajasthan taking the total number of coronavirus cases to 38 in the state.
The Union Health Ministry had on Wednesday reported 606 positive COVID-19 cases in India including 43 foreign nationals.

New Delhi, Jul 16: A group of 174 Indian nationals, including seven minors, has filed a lawsuit against the recent presidential proclamation on H-1B that would prevent them from entering the United States or a visa would not be issued to them.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson at the US District Court in the District of Columbia issued summonses on Wednesday to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad F Wolf, along with Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia.

The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court on Tuesday.

"The proclamation 10052's H-1B/H-4 visa ban hurts the United States' economy, separates families and defies the Congress. While the two former points render it unseemly, the latter point renders it unlawful," said the lawsuit filed by lawyer Wasden Banias on behalf of the 174 Indian nationals.

The lawsuit seeks an order declaring the presidential proclamation restriction on issuing new H-1B or H4 visas or admitting new H-1B or H-4 visa holders as unlawful. It also urges the court to compel the Department of State to issue decisions on pending requests for H-1B and H-4 visas.

In his presidential proclamation on June 22, Trump temporarily suspended issuing of H-1B work visas till the end of the year.

"In the administration of our nation's immigration system, we must remain mindful of the impact of foreign workers on the United States labor market, particularly in the current extraordinary environment of high domestic unemployment and depressed demand for labor," said the proclamation issued by Trump.

In his proclamation, Trump said the overall unemployment rate in the United States nearly quadrupled between February and May of 2020 -- producing some of the most extreme unemployment ever recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While the May rate of 13.3 per cent reflects a marked decline from April, millions of Americans remain out of work.

The proclamation also extends till year-end his previous executive order that had banned issuance of new green cards of lawful permanent residency. Green Card holders, once admitted pursuant to immigrant visas, are granted "open-market" employment authorisation documents, allowing them immediate eligibility to compete for almost any job in any sector of the economy, Trump said.

Forbes, which first reported the lawsuit filed by the Indian nationals, said the complaint points out that the Congress specified the rules under which H-1B visa holders could work in the US and balanced the interests of US workers and employers.

"The complaint seeks to protect H-1B professionals, including those who have passed the labor certification process and possess approved immigrant petitions. Such individuals are waiting for their priority date to obtain permanent residence, a wait that can take many years for Indian nationals," Forbes reported.

Meanwhile, several lawmakers urged Scalia on Tuesday to reverse the work visa ban.

"Throughout this administration, the president has continued to lament the alleged abuses of the immigration system while failing to address the systemic problems that have persisted and allowed businesses and employers to exploit and underpay immigrant workers, guest workers and American workers," the lawmakers wrote.

"This misguided attempt by the president to scapegoat immigrants for policy failures during the pandemic not only serves to hurt immigrants, but dismisses the true problem of a broken work visa program that is in desperate need of reform," said the letter, which among others was signed by Congressmen Joaquin Castro, Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus; Bobby Scott, Chair of the Education and Labor Committee; Karen Bass, Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus; Judy Chu, Ra l Grijalva, Vicente Gonzalez, Yvette Clarke and Linda S nchez.