Secret tunnel found in Indo-Pak border

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.

More and more Indians have become better prepared in the last one month, as far as stocking of their ration, medicine or money is concerned, according to the IANS-CVoter COVID-19 Tracker.

With the second leg of the lockdown half way through and Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying it's a long haul, 57.2% respondents said they have less than three weeks of stock while 43.3% said they have a stock that will last beyond that

However, if one breaks into weeks, most respondents said they are prepared for a week's time. 24.5% respondents said they have ration, medicine or money to last a week. This is closely followed by 21.9 % respondents saying they are ready for a month.

Meanwhile, 20.4 % said they are ready for a couple of weeks. There are 15.8 % who said they are ready for more than a month with food, ration and medicine. A tiny 5.6 % said they are ready with three weeks of stock.

However, there is 12.3% who still seem to live on the edge with less than a week's preparation.

But, the biggest takeaway from the IANS-CVoter COVID-19 Tracker is that in the last one month, a massive segment of society realised that the fight is long and the preparation should also be to last that long.

o put things into context, on March 16 when the tracker started, a whopping 77.1% said they have stock to last for less than a week. More than a month later on April 21, that number jumped to just 12.3%, which essentially means, people have become better prepared for a long-hauled lockdown period.

Similarly, on April 21, a sizable 21.9% respondents claimed they are ready with ration and medicine that will last them a month. On March 16, not even one respondent could claim they have a month's stock. In fact till March 22, just ahead of the announcement of the first lockdown, no respondent the IANS-CVoter tracker said that they have a month's preparation.

Similarly, when the tracker started, 9.9% said they simply ‘don't know'. As on April 21, that number is a big zero.

May 7: Accusing the BJP government in Karnataka of "medieval barbarism" and treating migrants as worse than "bonded labourers", CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Wednesday hit out at the state's decision to stop workers from returning to their homes in different parts of the country citing requirements of the construction sector.

The Karnataka government has withdrawn its request to the railways to run special trains to ferry migrant labourers to their home states, hours after builders met Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa to apprise him of the problems the construction sector will face in case they left.

"This is worse than treating them as bonded labour. Does the Indian constitution exist? Are there any laws in the country? This BJP state government is throwing us back to medieval barbarism. This will be stoutly resisted,” Yechury said in a tweet.

The railways is running Shramik Special trains to ferry to their home towns migrants who were stranded at their places of work during the lockdown.

So far, it has run more than 115 such trains.

The Principal Secretary in the Revenue Department N Manjunatha Prasad, who is the nodal officer for migrants, had requested the South Western Railways on Tuesday to run two train services a day for five days except Wednesday, while the state government wanted services thrice a day to Danapur in Bihar. However, later, Prasad wrote another letter within a few hours that the special trains were not required. Several migrants in the city were desperate to return home as they were out of jobs and money.

Yechury also lashed out at the central government over reports that it owed states and industry Rs 3 trillion and accused the centre of shifting the burden of fighting the pandemic to the state governments.

“While shifting the entire burden of fighting the pandemic on to the State governments, Modi government is not even paying their legitimate dues. After November 2019, Centre has not paid the GST compensation dues for the rest of the financial year, i.e., March 2020.

“Modi government has the right to loot while crores of people & States are left with nothing but the right to starve?,” he tweeted.