No subsidy, but record number of pilgrims will go to Haj this year: Naqvi

Lucknow, Jan 21: Defending his brainchild, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), Union home minister Amit Shah on Tuesday said the new law will not be scrapped despite the countrywide protests against it.

Addressing a rally here to drum up support for the CAA, Shah also declared that construction of a Ram temple "touching the skies" in Ayodhya will begin within three months.

He said there is no provision in the amended law for taking anyone's citizenship away. "A canard is being spread against the CAA by the Congress, SP, BSP, and Trinamool Congress. The CAA is a law to grant citizenship," he added.

"I want to say that irrespective of the protests this will not be withdrawn," he added.

Shah challenged Congress leaders to hold a discussion with him on CAA at a public forum.

He named Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Samajwadi Party's Akhilesh Yadav, Bahujan Samaj Party's Mayawati and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee while throwing the "challenge".

Congress has become blind due to vote bank politics,"he said. He also blamed the Congress for Partition.

As the Indian workforce navigates a shrinking job market in lockdown times, two in five professionals believe that the number of jobs and scheduled interviews will decrease in the next two weeks, a new LinkedIn survey said on Tuesday.

The news comes as bittersweet for Indian professionals as more than one in three stated they will now spend more time working on their resumes and preparing for interviews.

Professionals from healthcare, manufacturing and corporate service industries anticipate a decrease in personal spending and personal investments in the next six months, according to the findings of the fortnightly LinkedIn Workforce Confidence Index based on responses from 2,903 professionals in the country.

This findings showed that while India's overall confidence remains steady, the country's confidence in jobs is beginning to trend downward.

However, employees at large enterprises (firms with over 10,000 workers) are more confident about the future of their employers when compared to their peers from mid-market and SMB companies.

The findings showed that 41 % of enterprise professionals think their companies will do better in the next six months, while 63 % think their companies will be better off one year from now.

However, "the enterprise professionals are least confident about the future of their jobs, finances and careers, when compared to their SMB and mid-market peers".

The findings showed that 52 % of healthcare, 48% of corporate services, and 41 % of manufacturing professionals anticipate a decrease in investments in the next 6 months.

Over the past three months, many organizations have shifted to a remote working model to circumvent the pandemic and ensure business continuity.

Three in five marketing professionals feel confident about being effective when working remotely, joined by more than half of project management and engineering professionals, who are also confident about the effectiveness of remote working.

In contrast to this optimism, only 39 % of HR, 36% of finance, and 31 % of education professionals think they would be effective when working remotely, said the survey.

Dhaka, Jan 3: Bangladesh's paramilitary force chief said on Thursday that a total of 445 Bangladeshi nationals returned from India in last two months following the publication of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) by the Indian government.

Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) Director General Maj Gen Md Shafeenul Islam disclosed the figure during a press briefing here.

"About 1,000 people were arrested in 2019 for illegal border crossings from India to Bangladesh, with 445 of them returning home in November and December," he said.

After verifying their identities through local representatives, BGB came to know that all the intruders are Bangladeshis, Islam said, adding that 253 cases were lodged against them for illegal trespass, while initial investigations found that at least three of them were human traffickers.

The BGB Director said the trespassing did not create any tension between the border forces of Bangladesh and India.

Last week, Islam visited India where he said that the creation of the NRC is completely an "internal affair" of India and the cooperation between the border guarding forces of the two countries is very good.

He said the BGB will continue to do its work of preventing illegal border crossings as per its mandate.

A BGB delegation, led by Islam, was on a bilateral visit to India to hold DG-level border talks with its counterparts, the Border Security Force (BSF).

The talks took place from December 26-29, during which a host of issues related to cross-border smuggling and activities of criminals and others along the 4,096-km-long front were discussed.

Responding to a question, Islam said, "No discussion was held at the conference over the (NRC) issue".

He said during the five-day talks held in New Delhi, the BGB demanded that the BSF should take effective steps to prevent killings of Bangladeshis on frontiers as casualty figures sharply rose in 2019.

"The number of border killings in 2019 was highest in the last four years. As per our calculation, the number of such unexpected deaths was 35," the BGB chief said.

However, the BSF estimate of the casualty figure is much lower than our calculation, he said.

Islam said the BSF is following the policy of maintaining maximum restraint and minimal use of force even after being attacked by "armed border offenders".

A statement issued by the BSF last month in New Delhi after the conclusion of the DG-level talks said, "On the concern of the BGB regarding the death of Bangladeshi nationals on borders, it was informed to them that a non-lethal weapon policy is strictly followed by BSF personnel on borders.

"Firing is resorted to only in self-defence, when BSF patrols are gheraoed and attacked by ‘dah’ (a sharp-edged weapon) etc. It was specified that the BSF does not discriminate between criminals based on nationality," it said.