Health ministry identifies 170 corona hotspots in India

Feb 26: In his first reaction to incidents of violence in Delhi which have left at least 20 people dead, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday appealed for peace and brotherhood, and said he has held an extensive review of the prevailing situation in various parts of the national capital.

He also said it was important that calm and normalcy was restored at the earliest.

“Had an extensive review on the situation prevailing in various parts of Delhi. Police and other agencies are working on the ground to ensure peace and normalcy,” Modi tweeted.

Stressing that peace and harmony are “central to our ethos”, Modi said, “I appeal to my sisters and brothers of Delhi to maintain peace and brotherhood at all times.”

At least 20 people have been killed since Sunday in communal violence in Northeast Delhi, triggered after clashes between pro and anti-CAA protestors over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.

New Delhi, May 9: Three promoters of Ram Dev International, recently booked by the CBI for allegedly cheating a consortium of six banks to the tune of Rs 411 crore, have already fled the country before the State Bank of India reached the agency with the complaint, officials said on Saturday.

The CBI had recently booked the company engaged in export of Basmati rice to the West Asian and European countries and its directors Naresh Kumar, Suresh Kumar and Sangita on the basis of complaint from the State Bank of India (SBI), which suffered the loss of more than Rs 173 crore, they said.

The company had three rice milling plants, besides eight sorting and grading units in Karnal district with offices in Saudi Arabia and Dubai for trading purposes, the SBI complaint said.

Besides SBI, other members of consortium are Canara Bank, Union Bank of India, IDBI, Central Bank of India and Corporation Bank, they said.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) did not carry out any searches in the matter because of the coronavirus-induced lockdown, the officials said.

The agency will start the process of summoning the accused, incase they do not join the investigation, appropriate legal action will be initiated, they said.

According to the complaint filed by SBI, the account had become non-performing asset (NPA) on January 27, 2016.

The banks conducted a joint inspection of properties in August and October, nearly 7-9 months later only to find Haryana Police security guards deployed there, they said.

"On inquiry, it has been come to notice that borrowers are absconding and have left the country," the complaint filed on February 25, 2020, after over a year of account becoming NPA, the officials said.

The complaint alleged that borrowers had removed entire machinery from old plant and fudged the balance sheets in order to unlawfully gain at the cost of banks'' funds, it said.

Mumbai, Jul 13: In a significant landmark, the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has achieved a doubling-rate of 50 days for COVID-19 cases, a top official said on Monday.

This was possible because of the civic body's 'open testing policy', implying tests without prescriptions, making it the only city in the country to implement it.

"After the open testing policy, our testing has gone up from 4,000 to 6,800, daily. But the total positive cases have come down from 1,400 to 1,200 now," BMC Municipal Commissioner I.S. Chahal told IANS.

Of these 1,200 positive cases, the symptomatic cases are less than 200, so the BMC needs only 200 beds daily, the civic chief said.

Even the BMC's discharge rate now stands at 70 percent, and on Sunday, after allotting beds to all patients, there were still 7,000 COVID beds plus 250 ICU beds lying vacant, said Chahal.

For this achievement, Chahal gave the credit to the entire 'Team BMC' where - despite losing a little over 100 officials to the virus - civic officials and other Corona warriors are engaged 24x7 in controlling the pandemic for over four months.

Since the first case was detected in Mumbai on March 11 (after the state's first infectees in Pune on March 9) and the state's first death notched in Mumbai on March 17, the current Maharashtra Covid-19 tally stands at 2,54,427 cases and fatalities at 10,289, while Mumbai has recorded 92,988 cases with a death toll of 5,288.