Islamabad HC clears way for registration of Hafiz Saeed's political party

Agencies
March 9, 2018

Islamabad, Mar 9: A Pakistan court has ordered the election commission to allow the registration of Mumbai terror attack Hafiz Saeed's Milli Muslim League as a political party.

The order came days after a Pakistani court extended a stay against the "possible arrest" of the JuD chief till April 4.

The Islamabad High Court (IHC) yesterday set aside a decision by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to reject the application of Jamaat-ud-Dawah's political front Milli Muslim League (MML) for registration as a political party.

Justice Aamer Farooq sent the case back to the ECP asking it to proceed further on the application by giving the party an opportunity of hearing, Dawn newspaper reported.

The MML through its president Saifullah Khalid approached the IHC and made the ECP and the interior secretary respondents in the matter.

Challenging the ECP's order of October 11, 2017, the petition described it unreasonable, illegal as well as against the Constitution and the law.

"Article 17 (2) of the Constitution confers a fundamental right on every citizen, not being in the service of Pakistan, to form or to be a member of a political party, subject to any reasonable restriction imposed by the law in the interest of the sovereignty or integrity of Pakistan," the petitioner maintained.

He prayed to the court to set aside the order and direct the ECP to scrutinise the documents afresh, strictly in accordance with the law and enlist the party.

The ECP had turned down the plea of the MML because of its alleged links with banned militant outfits.

The ECP took the decision on the basis of a letter from the Ministry of Interior which had asked the commission to ban the MML for having links with banned militant outfits.

The ministry had stated that the JuD and its charity Falah-i-lnsaniyat Foundation (FIF) were banned organisations under the Pakistan Security Council Act 1948.

The court's latest order also comes in the backdrop of a meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental money-laundering watchdog, that put Pakistan on a grey list.

At the FATF meeting in Paris last month, Saeed and his "charities" were top on the list of the groups that the FATF wanted Pakistan to act against.

The US Department of the Treasury has designated Saeed as a global terrorist.

Saeed, who is accused of having masterminded the November 2008 Mumbai attack, was also placed on the terrorism black list by the United Nations in December 2008.

The banned JuD head was released from the house arrest in November last year after the Pakistan government decided against detaining him further in any other case. He was under house arrest since January last year.

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News Network
July 21,2020

New Delhi, Jul 21: With a spike of 37,148 cases and 587 deaths reported in India in the last 24 hours, the total number of COVID-19 cases stands at 11,55,191, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

The total number of cases include 4,02,529 active cases, 7,24,578 cured/discharged/migrated and 28,084 deaths, the ministry informed.

Maharashtra remains the worst affected state with 3,18,695 cases and 12,030 deaths.
The second worst-hit state, Tamil Nadu has reported 1,75,678 COVID-19 cases so far while Delhi has reported 1,23,747 cases, according to the Health Ministry.

Meanwhile, as per the information provided by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), 1,43,81,303 samples have been tested for COVID-19 up to July 20. Of these 3,33,395 were tested yesterday.

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News Network
March 11,2020

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.

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News Network
April 22,2020

London, Apr 22: The toll from coronavirus in the United Kingdom has jumped above 18,000 after 759 more deaths were reported in the last 24 hours, the Department of Health and Social Care announced in a statistical bulletin on Wednesday.

In total, 18,100 people have died in the UK hospitals after contracting COVID-19 as of 16:00 GMT on Tuesday.

A further 4,451 new cases of the disease were reported over the preceding 24 hours up to 08:00 GMT on Wednesday, the ministry said. The total number of cases reported since the start of the outbreak now stands at 1,33,495.

On Tuesday, the Office of National Statistics published a report stating that the coronavirus disease death toll as of April 10, when accounting for deaths in care homes and private residences, was 41 per cent higher than the government's figures.

In parliament on Wednesday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock stated that the United Kingdom has reached the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak, praising the social distancing measures enforced in the country.

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