2G accused rakes up Gauhati HC order to seek stay on trial

November 8, 2013

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New Delhi, Nov 8: Former Telecom Minister A Raja and other accused in the 2G scam today pushed for a stay on the proceedings of the case in a Delhi court in the wake of the ruling of the Gauhati High Court holding as "unconstitutional" the setting up of the CBI.

In a related development, Congress leader Sajjan Kumar wanted the court to declare as "illegal" the probe and charge sheets filed by the CBI in a 1984 anti Sikh riots case against him in the wake of the High Court verdict.

Raja and other 2G accused including top corporate executives said continuance of the trial in the case which has been probed by CBI would amount to contempt of court.

"Before we proceed today I want to mention that the nation today woke up with banner headlines in newspapers that the CBI is not police.

"By coincidence the chief Investigating Officer happens to be in the court today and in view of the Gauhati High Court judgement we should not proceed with the proceedings otherwise it would be a contempt of court," Majeed Memom, appearing for accused Swan Telecom Promoter Vinod Goenka, told the court.

"Sir, I can show you the judgement here," Raja's counsel Manu Sharmahe told Special CBI Judge O P Saini who declined their oral plea to halt the trial and went on with the testimony of Chief Investigating Officer and CBI SP Vivek Priyadarshi.

"I have read the newspaper but I cannot go by the media reports," the judge said.

At the end of the day, the defence lawyers placed before the court judgement of the high court and said they will move a formal application in this regard in the court on Monday.

In its judgement, the High Court has struck down the 1963 resolution through which the Central Bureau Investigation (CBI) was set up and held all its actions "unconstitutional".

The Centre has decided to file an appeal in the Supreme Court against the High Court verdict.

Kumar's counsel mentioned the judgement before District Judge J R Aryan and said if CBI itself is unconstitutional, its probe and charge sheets are also illegal.

The judge, however, said the effect of this judgement is not clear at this stage as it is too early and asked the counsel to proceed with the case which will now come up for hearing on November.

The court had earlier framed various charges including murder and rioting against Kumar, Brahmanand Gupta, Peru, Khushal Singh and Ved Prakash in connection with killing of a man in Sultanpuri area in the riots that had occurred after the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984. Accused Khushal Singh has died.

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News Network
July 19,2020

New Delhi, Jul 19: With the highest single-day spike of 38,902 cases reported in the last 24 hours, India's total COVID-19 tally on Sunday reached 10,77,618, informed the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry on Sunday.

The death toll has gone up to 26,816 with 543 fatalities reported in the last 24 hours.

The Health Ministry said the total number of cases includes 3,73,379 active cases and 6,77,423 patients have been cured/discharged/migrated.

Maharashtra remains the worst affected state with 3,00,937 cases reported until Saturday.
Meanwhile, as per the information provided by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), 1,34,33,742 samples have been tested for COVID-19 till July 18, of these 3,61,024 samples were tested yesterday.

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coastaldigest.com news network
May 6,2020

New Delhi, May 6: The government on Wednesday said no data or security breach has been identified in Aarogya Setu after an ethical hacker raised concerns about a potential security issue in the app.

The app is the government's mobile application for contact tracing and disseminating medical advisories to users in order to contain the spread of coronavirus.

On Tuesday, a French hacker and cyber security expert Elliot Alderson had claimed that "a security issue has been found" in the app and that "privacy of 90 million Indians is at stake".

Dismissing the claims, the government said "no personal information of any user has been proven to be at risk by this ethical hacker".

"We are continuously testing and upgrading our systems. Team Aarogya Setu assures everyone that no data or security breach has been identified," the government said through the app’s Twitter handle.

The tweet gave point-by-point clarification on the red flags raised by the hacker.

"We discussed with the hacker and were made aware of the following... the app fetches user location on a few occasions," it said, but added that this was by design and is clearly detailed in the privacy policy.

The app fetches users’ location and stores on the server in a secure, encrypted, anonymised manner - at the time of registration, at the time of self assessment, when users submit their contact tracing data voluntary through the app or when it fetches the contact tracing data of users after they have turned COVID-19 positive, it said.

On another issue that users can get COVID-19 stats displayed on the home screen by changing the radius and latitude-longitude using a script, Aarogya Setu said that all this information is already public for all locations and hence does not compromise on any personal or sensitive data.

"We thank the ethical hacker on engaging with us. We encourage any users who identify a vulnerability to inform us immediately...," it said.

Responding to Aarogya Setu's clarification, Alderson tweeted, "I will come back to you tomorrow".

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News Network
May 22,2020

New Delhi, May 22: Reserve Bank Governor Shaktikanta Das on Friday extended the moratorium on payment of loans by another three months till August to provide much-needed relief to borrowers whose income has been hit due to the coronavirus crisis.

In March, the central bank had allowed a three-month moratorium on payment of all term loans due between March 1, 2020, and May 31, 2020.

Accordingly, the repayment schedule and all subsequent due dates, as also the tenor for such loans, were shifted across the board by three months.

As a result of this moratorium, individuals’ EMI repayments of loans taken were not deducted from their bank accounts, providing much-needed liquidity.

The EMI payments will restart only once the moratorium time period expires on August 31.

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