Uttarakhand toll may cross 1,000; rescue work to take another fortnight: CM

New Delhi, Jan 30: In a major shift of strategy ahead of the Delhi assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has decided to rope in its senior leaders for massive public rallies.

Its star campaigners like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP chief JP Nadda, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, and other union ministers would now be addressing massive public rallies in addition to ongoing neighbourhood meetings.

"The big rallies would begin from February 1. While 'Nukkad' meetings will take place till the last day of campaigning, there would be big rallies of the top leadership of the party, " informed a senior party leader.

Sources said the BJP has changed its strategy after the success of its grassroots contact programme as the party wants to consolidate its gains.

"As part of the reworked strategy the BJP has asked its various Mandals to organise public meetings of 10,000-15,000 people in each assembly segment to reach out to the masses," sources added.

While there are two planned for Prime Minister Modi, two have been planned for JDU chief and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar along with Nadda and Amit Shah. Yogi Aadityanath too would be addressing 12 rallies.

The party is leaving no stone unturned to secure massive gains, which it feels can be converted to victory in the forthcoming polls.

Party sources feel that the relentless campaigning under the guidance of Amit Shah and Nadda has ensured that the morale of party cadre is at an all-time high.

"The neighbourhood meetings have ensured that we have been able to make the people of Delhi aware of the lack of work under the Arvind Kejriwal led Aam Aadmi Party government. They have also been apprised about the anti-national views of the opponents and we think that this is expected to turn the polls into our favour," sources added.

Delhi is scheduled for assembly polls on February 8 and the results for the 70 constituencies will be declared on February 11.

As part of the new strategy, senior leaders like JP Nadda, Amit Shah, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, ministers like Rajnath Singh and Smriti Irani would be holding public rallies in various parts of the city. Several other chief ministers from various BJP ruled states are also expected to be roped in for the campaign.

The strategy for reach out to the masses is an attempt at weakening the hold of AAP on Delhi. With positive feedback coming after the success of the neighbourhood meetings in the past week, the BJP is now looking to increase its potential reach with polls just days away.

Till now the party had deployed 70 union ministers to hold at least one public meeting and one 'padayatra' each as part of the campaign.

New Delhi, Jun 17: With an increase of 10,974 new cases and 2,003 deaths in the last 24 hours, India's COVID-19 count reached 3,54,065 on Wednesday while the toll due to the virus stands at 11,903.

This includes 1,55,227 active cases and 1,86,935 cured, discharged and migrated patients, according to the Union Health Ministry.

While the spike in the number of cases has stayed below the 11-thousand mark, the death toll has increased manifold today as compared to the 380 death reported on Tuesday.

Maharashtra with 1,13,445 cases continues to be the worst-affected state in the country with 50,057 active cases while 57,851 patients have been cured and discharged in the state so far. The toll due to COVID-19 has crossed the five thousand mark and reached 5,537 in the state.

It is followed by Tamil Nadu with 48,019 and the national capital with 44,688 confirmed cases.

In a startling revelation, cybersecurity researchers have claimed that a hacker has posted personal details of nearly 2.9 crore Indian job seekers at one of the hacking forums on the Dark Web for free.

As part of the regular sweep over the Deep Web and Dark Web, researchers from cybersecurity firm Cyble came across an interesting item, where a threat actor posted 2.3GB (zipped) file on one of the hacking forums.

"The leak actually has a lot of personal details of millions of Indians Job seekers from different states," Cyble said in its blog on Friday.

This breach includes sensitive information such as email, phone, home address, qualification and work experience etc from job seekers spanning across states, from New Delhi to Mumbai and Bengaluru. 

Cybercriminals are always on the lookout for such personal information to conduct various nefarious activities such as identity thefts, scams, and corporate espionage.

"It appears to have originated from a resume aggregator service given the sheer volume and detailed information," it added.

Cyble indexed this information at ‘AmIbreached.com; – Cyble's data breach monitoring and notification platform.

Cyble researchers have identified a sensitive data breach on the dark web where an actor has leaked personal details of nearly 29 million Indian job seekers from various states. 

"Cyble's team is still investigating this further and will be updating their article as they bring more facts to the surface,” it said in a statement.

Cyble said it has acquired the leaked data. 

The same cyber security firm earlier exposed that Bengaluru-based edtech firm Unacademy was hacked.

According to Cyble researchers, nearly 22 million Unacademy user accounts were affected and the data was dumped and sold on Dark Web.

'We would like to assure our users that no sensitive information such as financial data or location has been breached," said Hemesh Singh, Co- Founder and CTO, Unacademy, in a statement.

In April, hackers sold personal data of a whopping 267 million Facebook users for just Rs 41,500 (approximately 500 Euros) that includes email addresses, names, Facebook IDs, dates of birth and phone numbers.

No passwords of the 267 million Facebook users were exposed by the hacker, according to Cyble.