Rajasthan Assembly passes resolution against CAA

Perambalur, Jan 2: Veteran Tamil writer Nellai Kannan was arrested in Perambalur for criticizing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah during a protest against Citizenship (Amendment) Act.

The Tirunelveli Police had registered the FIR against the writer for the speech delivered at a meeting, which was called by the Social Democratic Party of India on December 29 last year.

The police have booked him on the basis of multiple complaints filed by BJP leaders.

Kannan has been booked under Sections 504, 505(1) and 505(2) of the Indian Penal Code.

New Delhi, May 9: The Trinamool Congress on Saturday responded to Union home minister Amit Shah’s charge that the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government is not facilitating the movement of stranded migrant workers.

Amit Shah has written to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, saying her government is doing “injustice” to migrant workers by not allowing the special Shramik trains to reach the state.

“Union home minister Amit Shah speaks after weeks of silence only to mislead people with lies,” the TMC’s Abhishek Banerjee was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.

“The Centre is lying… West Bengal is running 711 camps for migrants in the state. We are taking good care of them,” Abhishek Banerjee, who is also the chief minister’s nephew, said.

Amit Shah had pointed out in his letter that the Centre was not receiving the “expected support” from the state government in helping stranded migrant workers from West Bengal.

“West Bengal government is not allowing trains with migrants reaching the state. This is injustice with WB migrant labourers. This will create further hardship for them,” Amit Shah had said in his letter to Mamata Banerjee.

The issue of migrant workers is the latest flashpoint between the Centre and the West Bengal government amid a row over the state’s efforts to control the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).

The Centre and the state have exchanged allegations over the criteria for reporting deaths from the infection, and while While Bengal says the Centre is trying to politicise a public health crisis, the Union government maintains that state officials are ignoring repeated warnings to step up the fight against the disease.

Federal officials have said that the region has not conducted adequate tests and that there has been mismanagement over identifying hotspots and containing them.

Union home secretary Ajay Bhalla also slammed the state government for a very low rate of testing and high rate of mortality, 13.2%, by far the highest for any state.

The Centre has also accused the state government of not allowing cross-border movement of goods trucks to Bangladesh.

There are 1,678 Covid-19 cases and 160 deaths in West Bengal until Saturday morning.

United Nations, Apr 16: WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has welcomed the world health body's cooperation with India to leverage strategies that helped the country win its war against polio into the response to COVID-19 outbreak, saying such joint efforts will help defeat the pandemic.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said it will work with India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to leverage the strategies that helped the country eradicate polio to fight the pandemic.

Migrants who returned to UP and Bihar were hurriedly housed in schools and panchayat buildings, which were turned into quarantine centres. However, unhygienic conditions and people running away have proved to be a problem

The WHO's national polio surveillance network will be engaged to strengthen COVID-19 surveillance and its field staff will continue to support immunization and elimination of tuberculosis and other diseases.

“Great news: @MoHFW_INDIA & @WHOSEARO initiated a systematic engagement of @WHO's national polio surveillance network, and other field staff, for India's #COVID19 response, tapping into the best practices & resources that helped win its war against polio,” the WHO director-general tweeted, referring to India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and World Health Organization Regional Office for South-East Asia.

According to the Johns Hopkins University data, over 2 million people are infected by the virus and more than 136,000 people have died of the disease globally.

Ghebreyesus expressed gratitude to Health and Family Welfare Minister Harsh Vardhan “for his leadership and collaboration” with WHO. “Through these joint efforts we can defeat the #coronavirus and save lives. Together!”

India eliminated polio in 2014.
According to a WHO press release, Vardhan said in New Delhi that “time and again the Government of India and WHO together have shown our ability, competence and prowess to the whole world. With our combined meticulous work, done with full sincerity and dedication, we were able to get rid of polio.”

“All of you in the field – IDSP (Integrated Disease Surveillance Project), state rapid response teams and WHO - are our ‘surveillance corona warriors'. With your joint efforts we can defeat the coronavirus and save lives,” Vardhan added.

WHO South-East Asia Regional Director Poonam Khetrapal Singh said the National Polio Surveillance Project (WHO-NPSP) played a critical role in strengthening surveillance for polio that generated useful, timely and accurate data to guide policies, strategies and interventions until transmission of the poliovirus was interrupted in the country,” adding that the other WHO field staff involved with elimination of tuberculosis and neglected tropical diseases and hypertension control initiative were also significant resources.

Singh added that “it is now time to use all your experience, knowledge and skills, with the same rigor and discipline that you showed while monitoring polio activities, to support districts with surveillance, contact tracing and containment activities.”

The WHO release said strengths of the NPSP team – surveillance, data management, monitoring and supervision, and responding to local situations and challenges – will be utilized to supplement efforts of National Centre for Disease Control, IDSP and Indian Council of Medical Research to strengthen COVID-19 surveillance.

The NPSP team will also support in sharing information and best practices and help states and districts calibrate their response based on transmission scenarios and local capacities.

The WHO field staff will continue to support immunization and surveillance and elimination of Tuberculosis and Neglected Tropical Diseases, Singh said, adding, “disease outbreaks can negatively impact progress in a range of areas, from maternal and child mortality to vaccine-preventable diseases and other treatable conditions. India had been making stupendous progress in these areas and we cannot afford for India's remarkable progress to be set back or reversed.”