Kanhaiya Kumar trails BJP's Giriraj Singh in Bihar’s Begusarai

Agencies
May 23, 2019

Patna, May 23: Fiery young politician Kanhaiya Kumar is trailing BJP leader Giriraj Singh in Begusarai constituency in Bihar, according to leads at 10.46 am. The former student leader from Jawaharlal Nehru University is contesting on a CPI ticket and is making his Lok Sabha election debut.

One of 36 Lok Sabha seats in the state, Begusarai voted on April 23 in the fourth phase of polling. For years known as the "Leningrad of Bihar", it is now a BJP stronghold.

The seat was won by Bhola Singh of the BJP in 2014. He defeated Rashtriya Janta Dal candidate Tanveer Hasan who received 3,69,892 votes. The CPI placed third in that election.

Kanhaiya Kumar's campaign drew much attention, not just for his oratorical skills but because of high-profile supporters like Swara Bhaskar, Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar endorsing him in rallies.

The ruling BJP's candidate Giriraj Singh, notorious for asking critics of the government to "go to Pakistan", pitched the Begusarai vote as a "nationalist versus traitor" battle - a reference to allegations that Kanhaiya Kumar was among the organisers of an event in JNU in 2016 in the memory of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, where anti-India slogans were raised.

The counting of votes polled for the 17th Lok Sabha elections began at 8 am today with the fate of as many as 8,040 candidates at stake.

The 2019 elections, which spanned six weeks registered the highest ever voter turnout in the history of Indian parliamentary elections. The final voter turnout stands at 67.11 per cent, the Election Commission announced on Wednesday.

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News Network
March 18,2020

New Delhi, Mar 18: As many as 276 Indians have been infected with coronavirus abroad, including 255 in Iran, 12 in UAE and five in Italy, the government informed the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.

In a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan said the total number of Indians infected by coronavirus is 276 — 255 in Iran, 12 in UAE, five in Italy, and one each in Hong Kong, Kuwait, Rwanda and Sri Lanka.

A fourth batch of 53 Indians returned to India from Iran on Monday, taking the total number of people evacuated from the coronavirus-hit country to 389.

Iran is one of the worst-affected countries by the coronavirus outbreak and the government has been working to bring back Indians stranded there. Over 700 people have died from the disease in Iran and nearly 14,000 cases detected.

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News Network
January 15,2020

New Delhi, Jan 15: The mother of 23-year-old paramedic student, who was raped and brutally assaulted by six men in December 2012, on Tuesday said she knew that the curative petitions of the convicts will be rejected and is confident that they will be hanged on January 22.

Her remarks came after the Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to stay the execution of two of the four death row convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case while dismissing their curative petitions against their conviction and capital punishment.

"The curative please had to be rejected. This was the third time they had gone to the Supreme Court. Whatever pleas they file, we are ready to face them and we will fight it out. We feel that they will be hanged on January 22. We want that to happen," Nirbhaya's mother told PTI over phone.

The four convicts -- Vinay Sharma (26), Mukesh Kumar (32), Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and Pawan Gupta (25) -- are to be hanged on January 22 at 7 am in Tihar jail as a Delhi court issued their death warrants on January 7.

Vinay and Mukesh had filed curative petitions on January 9.

Shortly after the apex court refused to stay the execution of two of them, Mukesh moved a mercy petition before President Ram Nath Kovind.

Mukesh also approached the Delhi High Court for quashing the death warrant. The high court is expected to take up his petition on Wednesday.

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News Network
July 25,2020

New Delhi, Jul 25: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday accused the government of benefitting by making profits during the coronavirus-induced lockdown when people were in trouble.

He tagged a news report that claimed the Indian Railways was making profit by running 'Shramik trains' for transporting migrants during the pandemic.

"There are clouds of disease and people are in trouble, but one seeks to benefit -- this anti-people government is converting a disaster into profits and is earning," he said in a tweet in Hindi.

The news report claimed that the railways made a profit of Rs 428 crore by running Shramik special trains during the lockdown that transported migrants to their native places.

In another tweet, he lauded the efforts of the Himachal government in conducting a survey to select 'one district, one product', saying he had suggested this sometime back.

"This is a good idea. I had suggested it some time back. Its implementation will need a complete change of mindset," he said on Twitter.

He also tagged a report that stated the state Industries Department is conducting a baseline survey in all districts to select one district, one product for centrally-sponsored Micro and Small Enterprises Cluster Development Programme (MSE-CDP). 

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