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Pakistan votes for Lahore by-election: Polls seen as test of support for Sharif

Agencies
September 17, 2017

Lahore, Sept 17: Pakistanis began casting votes on Sunday for the parliamentary seat vacated by ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, in a by-election seen as a test of support for the Sharif dynasty ahead of the 2018 general election.

Sharif’s ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party hopes a resounding victory in the eastern city of Lahore would show that support for the family was undiminished despite the Supreme Court’s removal of Sharif in July.

Sharif’s daughter Maryam has spearheaded the PML-N campaign for her mother Kulsoom - who is the PML-N candidate despite receiving cancer treatment in London with Nawaz at her side.

Maryam, who some PML-N leaders see as a future leader, has framed the poll as a chance for voters to give a bloody nose to the judiciary by handing the party a thumping victory.

“Will you take revenge for your disrespected vote?” Maryam asked supporters at a recent rally.

Opposition leader Imran Khan - whose threats of street protests pushed the Supreme Court to launch a probe into Nawaz’s wealth - is seeking to build on the success of his anti-graft crusade by making inroads into Sharifs’ power base in Punjab.

The Supreme Court in July disqualified Sharif because he did not declare a monthly salary, equivalent to $2,722, from a company owned by his son when the veteran leader, who had held power twice in the 1990s, became prime minister for the third time. Sharif denies receiving the salary.

Khan has turned the by-election into a plebiscite about corruption, and has accused the provincial Punjab government, which is run by Nawaz’s brother Shahbaz, of abusing state resources to help the PML-N campaign.

“Your prime minister owns some of the most expensive real estate in the world - all in his daughter’s name. Meanwhile half the children of this country are malnourished,” Khan told a rally on Saturday.

Analysts predict PML-N will win again but they say Khan’s party would build momentum ahead of the 2018 poll if PTI candidate Yasmin Rashid, a gynecologist from the area, substantially reduces the PML-N’s 40,000 vote-winning margin from 2013.

“PTI would be very happy if the margin ended up being small. That would be a victory for them,” said Hasan Askri a political analyst.

Many of the 321,633 registered voters in the central Lahore NA-120 consituency are conflicted.

“My head goes towards PTI while my heart goes towards PML-N,” said Ali Raza, 25, a bank employee.

Kulsoom and Rashid will be competing against about 40 other candidates, including religious parties. One candidate is backed by a new party that is led by an Islamist firebrand who is subject to a $10 million bounty offered by the United States.

Hafiz Saeed heads the Jammat-ud-Dawa (JuD) charity, having founded and formerly led the Lashkhar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group that carried out the 2008 attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai that killed 166 people. The United States has placed Saeed, the charity and LeT on a terrorist list.

Voting began at 9am (0400 GMT) and the polls are due to close at 5pm, with results likely to be announced after midnight.

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Agencies
July 9,2020

The new visa regulations requiring international students in the US with an F-1 visa to take at least one in-person course or face the prospect of deportation is likely to "cause uncertainties and difficulties" for some students, the Indian Embassy has said.

"These new modifications at a time when many of the US universities and colleges are yet to announce their plans for the new academic year are likely to cause uncertainties and difficulties for some Indian students wishing to pursue their studies in the US," said a spokesperson of the Indian Embassy.

Responding to media queries, the spokesperson said the Indian government has taken up the matter with concerned US officials.

At the India US Foreign Office Consultations held on July 7, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla conveyed India's concerns on the matter to Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale.

According to a recent report of Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), there were 1,94,556 Indian students enrolled in various academic institutions of the US in January this year. Of these 1,26,132 were males and 68,405 were females.

Noting that partnership in higher education is a key component of the strong people-to-people ties between India and the US, the spokesperson said in the last two decades Indian students in American universities and colleges have been the harbingers of a strong partnership between technology and innovation sectors between the two countries.

The spokesperson hoped that the US authorities would provide adequate flexibility in their visa rule, keeping in mind the extraordinary circumstances created by the COVID-19 pandemic for the Indian students community.

We continue to engage all the stakeholders in the matters, including the US administration officials, Congressional leaders, universities and colleges as well as the Indian students community in the US as we move forward towards the 2020-21 academic year to further strengthen our bilateral partnership in higher education, the spokesperson said.

Announced by the SEVP on July 6, the new rules provide temporary exemptions for nonimmigrant students on F-1 and M-1 visas taking online classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic for the fall semester of the 2020 academic year.

While these modifications do provide some flexibility for US universities and colleges to adopt a hybrid model -- that is a mixture of online and in person classes -- they also restrict international students on F-1 and M-1 visas from taking courses entirely online, the spokesperson said.

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News Network
August 8,2020

The Kozhikode International Airport located at Karipur is not safe for the landing of flights in rainy season, according to an air-safety expert, who had warned the aviation ministry and the civil aviation regulator about this in 2011. 

The warning was particularly about the dangers of permitting passenger aircraft to land on runway 10 of the airport during rains and unfavourable wind conditions. 

Nine years later, on August 7, 2020, the warning became a reality when an Air India Express pilots landed in tailwind conditions and the aircraft overshot the tabletop runway to drop off the end and crash.

 “An aircraft landing on runway 10 in tailwind will experience poor braking action due to heavy rubber deposits … All such flights … are endangering the lives of all on board,’’ said Capt Mohan Ranganathan, in a letter sent on June 17, 2011 to then director general of civil aviation Bharat Bhushan and Nasim Zaidi, chairman of a civil aviation safety advisory committee, which was formed after the May 2010 Mangaluru air crash which killed 158 people.

“My warning issued after the Mangaluru crash was ignored. It is a table-top runway with a down slope. The buffer zone at the end of the runway is inadequate,” Capt Ranganathan said. Given the topography, he pointed out, the airport should have a buffer of 240m at the end of the runway, but it only has 90m (which the DGCA had approved). “Moreover, the space on either side of the runway is only 75m instead of the mandatory 100m,” he added.

Capt Ranganathan said there is no guideline for operations on a table-top runway when it is raining. “Runway 10 approach should not be permitted in view of the lack of runway end safety area (RESA) and the terrain beyond the end of the runway. RESA of 240m should be immediately introduced and runway length has to be reduced to make the operations safe,” his letter said.

If an aircraft is unable to stop within the runway, there is no RESA beyond the end. The ILS localiser antenna is housed on a concrete structure and the area beyond is a steep slope. “The Air India Express accident in Mangalore should have alerted AAI to make the runway conditions safe. We have brought up the issue of RESA during the initial Casac-sub group meetings. We had specifically mentioned that the declared distances for both runways have to be reduced in order to comply with ICAO Annex 14 requirement,” Capt Ranganathan said.

He said the condition of the runway strip was known to DGCA teams that have been conducting inspection and safety assessments. “Have they considered the danger involved? Did the DGCA or the airlines lay down any operational restrictions or special procedures?”

The letter also refers to Approach and Landing Accident Reduction (ALAR) training, which is supposed to be mandatory before every monsoon, but airlines don’t follow it, he said. “70% of accidents take place during approach and landing and that is why this training is essential,” he added.

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News Network
June 4,2020

Jun 4: Mahatma Gandhi’s statue outside the Indian Embassy in Washington DC was vandalised with graffiti and spray painting by unknown persons allegedly involved in the ongoing protests in the US against the custodial killing of African-American George Floyd.

This has prompted the mission officials to register a complaint with the local law enforcement agencies.

The incident is reported to have taken place on the intervening night of June 2 and 3 in Washington DC.

The Indian embassy has informed the State Department and registered a complaint with local law enforcement agencies, which are now conducting an investigation into the incident.

On Wednesday, a team of officials from Metropolitan Police in consultation with the Diplomatic Security Service and National Park Police visited the site and are conducting inquiries.

Efforts are on to clean up the site at the earliest.

Vandalism of the statue of the apostle of peace comes during the week of nationwide protests against the custodial killing of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.

Several of these protests have turned violent which many times has resulted in damage of some of the most prestigious and sacred American monuments.

In Washington DC, protestors this week burnt a historic church and damaged some of the prime properties and historic places like the national monument and Lincoln Memorial.

One of the few statues of a foreign leader on a federal land in Washington DC, the statue of Mahatma Gandhi was dedicated by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in the presence of the then US president Bill Clinton on September 16, 2000, during his state visit to the US.

In October 1998, the US Congress had authorised the government of India to establish and maintain a memorial “to honour Mahatma Gandhi on Federal land in the District of Columbia."

According to the Indian Embassy website, the sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi is cast in bronze as a statue to a height of 8 feet 8 inches. It shows Gandhi in stride, as a leader and man of action evoking memories of his 1930 protest march against salt-tax, and the many padyatras (long marches) he undertook throughout the length and breadth of the Indian sub-continent.

The statue, the design of which was created by Gautam Pal, is a gift from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). The pedestal for the statue of Mahatma Gandhi is a block of new Imperial Red also known as Ruby Red a block originally weighing 25 tonnes reduced to a size of 9'x7'x3'4". It now weighs 16 tonnes.

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