PM Modi, Jordan king discuss challenges posed by COVID-19

New Delhi, Mar 27: The Delhi government has arranged to serve lunch and dinner to the needy in 325 schools in Delhi, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Friday amid reports of people going hungry without access to food during the ongoing nationwide lockdown.

From Saturday, arrangements will be put in place to feed about four lakh people daily at different centres across Delhi, he said addressing the media. "We have made arrangements to provide lunch and dinner in 325 schools. Around 500 people will be provided with food in all these schools. So far we were providing food to 20,000 people daily, the number will now increase to around 2,00,000 from today."

He also said that "from tomorrow, we'll be providing food to 4,00,000 people daily. We're distributing the centres across Delhi."

Stating that the total number of confirmed positive COVID-19 cases in Delhi is now 39, Kejriwal said "We are ready to face any challenge.".

"There are a total of 39 coronavirus positive cases in Delhi as of today, of which 29 cases are of those who had come from outside and were kept in quarantine and 10 of these were cases of local transmission," said Kejriwal at a press conference.

The Chief Minister said that a team of 5 doctors has been set up to look into the preparedness needed to deal with an increase in the number of positive cases for coronavirus in future.

He said, "The team of doctors under the chairmanship of Dr Shiv Kumar Sarin, the head of Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences, presented a detailed report on March 26 on the preparedness needed to deal with a situation if the number of positive cases for coronavirus increases."

"The report has categorized three situations - if the number of positive cases increases to 100 per day, 500 per day and 1000 per day," he said while adding that the doctors have clearly stated what preparedness should be taken for each situation including the number of ventilators, isolation beds, doctors and nurses required.

He also cited concerns raised by chief ministers of several states including Jharkhand's Hemant Soren and West Bengal's Mamata Banerjee.

Kejriwal said "we consider all those living in Delhi as Delhiites and everyone will be taken care of."
The number of cases tested positive for coronavirus rose to 724 on Friday, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. 

Jan 31: Twenty-three children aged between six months and 15 years, who had been taken hostage by a murder accused after inviting them to his daughter's birthday party, were rescued late on Thursday night after police killed their captor in a village here.

The hostage drama began at Kasaria village in the afternoon and continued for about eight hours.

"The accused was killed and there were about 23 children who were rescued safely," Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Awanish Awasthi told reporters at a hurriedly called press conference at 1.20 am.

"The accused had invited the children for the birthday party of his daughter and held them hostage. It started about 5.45 pm on January 30 and continued for about eight hours," Director General of Police (DGP) O P Singh said, adding that in the entire operation they had tried to "engage" the accused and were successful.

He said the accused, identified as Subhash Batham, had initially released a six-month-old girl by handing her over to his neighbour from a balcony.

Eyewitnesses said a restive crowd gathered outside the house where the children were kept with some women wailing and praying for their safe release.

The crowd broke open the door of the house to rescue the children, they said.

As the accused opened fire, the police retaliated killing him on the spot.

In the exchange of fire, the captor's wife was injured, but none of the children suffered any injury.

A man and two policemen also suffered bullet injuries.

The motive of the accused was not known immediately.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath monitored the situation in Farrukhabad, which is nearly 200 km from state capital Lucknow.

"The CM as soon as he got to know about the incident called a meeting of the crisis management group and personally monitored the situation and ensured children are rescued safely," Awasthi said.

Earlier, a team of NSG (National Security Guard) commandos had taken a special aircraft to reach Farukhabad, a senior security official in Delhi said.

Police said Batham, a murder accused, seemed to be mentally unstable.

Inspector-General of Police, Kanpur Range, Mohit Agarwal, said, "The man called the children for a birthday party and held them hostage in the basement of the house. He fired six shots from inside the building."

Batham initially wanted to talk to the local MLA, but refused to speak to the leader when he arrived, Agarwal said.