Terrorists in Pakistan frightened after Balakot strikes, says PM Modi in Chitradurga

Agencies
April 10, 2019

Chitradurga, Apr 10: Asserting a strong government at the Centre was imperative for a strong India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the Balakot air strikes have created a fear among the terrorists and those in power in Pakistan were getting nightmares.

Addressing an election rally in Chitradurga, Mr. Modi attacked the ruling Congress-JD(S) combine in Karnataka saying when the whole world stood with India in the aftermath of the air strikes, the two parties were in tears.

Greeting first-time voters across the country, he asked them to vote after thinking, to bring a strong government in the country.

“You can dedicate your first votes to brave soldiers who laid down their lives for the country, for getting house to a poor, for free healthcare for poor, for getting water to farmers land. your first vote should go for getting Mudra loan to some one who may be friend of yours,” he added.

He said in this Lok Sabha elections people have to choose not only an MP or Prime Minister, but a strong government for a strong India. “Only a strong government can take firm decisions for the benefit of the country.” Citing how a strong government functions, Mr. Modi referred to the Balakot air strikes in response to the Pulwama terror strike that claimed the lives of 40 CRPF Jawans in Jammu and Kashmir.

Is your vote bank is in India or in Pakistan, Modi asks Kumaraswamy

“There was a time five years ago, when Pakistan’s terrorists used to attack us and Pakistan used to threaten us. Our brave soldiers used to seek permission for action, but the government then sat in fear.”

“This chowkidar [watchman] has changed the situation. Now if there is fear, it is on the other side of the border. People sitting in power there are getting different types of nightmares… terrorists are frightened after Balakot attack,” he said.

Devoting a significant part of his speech to national security, he asked the crowd, “When we attacked Pakistan’s terrorists, did you like it or not? Are you happy? Did I do right?” to which the people roared in approval.

“When we attacked terrorists it pained Pakistan, but tears could be seen among those in Congress and JD(S),” Mr. Modi said.

He said the whole world stood with India, but “our Mahamilavati dal here” [Congress-JD(S)]), was condemning Mr. Modi instead of Pakistan.

“The Chief Minister [H.D. Kumaraswamy] here went a step ahead and said the bravery of Indian soldiers should not be spoken, because it will affect their vote bank....

“I want to ask the Chief Minister whether his vote bank is in India or in Pakistan? Chief Minister should clarify on this,” Mr. Modi said.

He said the Opposition also made fun of India’s A-SAT (anti-satellite test) “Mission Shakti” on March 27 that put the country as a space power on par with the United States, Russia and China.

“They also made fun of strike in the space, like they did with [Balakot] air strike. Whole world agreed that India has made an achievement relating to space, but in their habit of opposing Modi, they are opposing India,” he said.

The Prime Minister said, these people while in power did not have the ‘courage’ of permitting scientists to conduct missile tests. But now when India conducted space strike, they were the first in raising questions on it, he added.

“These people don’t respect jawans, nor science. Those who don’t care about India’s pride, it is necessary to teach them a lesson,” he said.

'Congress, JD(S) came together for the sake of power'

Mr. Modi pitched for electing a “strong” government at the Centre and not a “mahamilavat [highly adulterated]” dispensation whose remote control would be in the hands of a dozen people.

He lashed out at the Congress-JD(S) government in Karnataka charging it with having come together for the sake of ‘power’ and to serve self-interests.

The Prime Minister said the same would be replicated if the “mahamilavat” came to power, deriding the anti-BJP “grand alliance” of the Opposition parties.

Mr. Modi said nobody knew who was running the government in Karnataka, apparently projecting the frequent frictions between the two coalition partners which is also getting reflected in the Lok Sabha polls despite an electoral pact.

“Their complete effort is towards installing a similar Mahamilavati sarkar in Delhi, and its remote control is in the hands of a dozen people. Do you want such a government or a strong government?” the Prime Minister asked the crowd.

The country should have a Prime Minister whose high command was only 130 crore people of the country, he said.

Hitting out at the Congress-JD(S) govt. for not fulfilling loan waiver promise, he alleged, “leave alone the waiver, they were issuing arrest warrant to farmers”.

“Whether it is farmer or war, Congress-JD(S) does not want to do good to anybody, as their intention itself is not good,” Mr. Modi said.

He claimed injustice had been done the country during decades of Congress rule which “every Indian should remember always”.

In the last five years, the BJP-led NDA government has put in efforts to “reduce this injustice”. “Now the time has come to give justice to country that was affected by the Congress rule. Should those who did injustice for 60 years be punished or not?” he asked.

“It is certain that justice will be done to those who were involved in Bofors scam, in National Herald scam, those involved in Sikh riots, also those involved in Commonwealth scam, 2G, Coal, loan waiver scam,” he said, apparently attacking the Congress.

Those who made billions of rupees of corruption for their families through these scams will certainly be brought to justice. “Also to those involved in helicopter scam, jail doors are waiting,” he said.

“The Congress that imposed its corrupt culture on the country in 20th century, will now be punished by youths of the 21st century,” he said.

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News Network
April 24,2020

Thiruvananthapuram, Apr 24: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday said that there is no community spread or the expected phase three spread of coronavirus in the state so far but the threat continues.

Speaking to media persons here on Thursday, Vijayan said that Kasargod, Kannur, Kozhikode, and Malappuram districts will be in the red zone with full restrictions.

"All the other ten districts in the State will be in the orange zone. With the detection of new cases today, the status of Kottayam and Idukki districts have been changed from green to orange. The district administration will decide on the hotspot areas to be closed," he said.

He said there would be an increase in the number of random tests in the red zones.

"In an effort to confirm that there is no community spread in the State, random antibody tests would be conducted among health workers, police personnel, home delivery persons, volunteers and migrant labourers," he added.

The Chief Minister said that COVID-19 labs set up at the Pariyaram Government Medical College at Kannur and the Kottayam Medical College have got the approval from the ICMR for coronavirus testing. The lab at Kannur Medical College will start functioning from Friday.

The UV sterilised lab, spread over 2,200 sq ft is equipped with four real-time PCR machines. In the first phase, this lab will be able to do 15 tests per day, which will be gradually increased to conduct 60 tests in the next phase.

"With the opening of these two new labs, tests to detect COVID-19 will be conducted in 14 government labs in Kerala. Apart from this, there are two private labs also in Kerala which are doing these tests. Since the number of coronavirus cases is again increasing in the State, the government has decided to procure ten real-time PCR machines to ramp up testing," he added.

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Agencies
February 20,2020

New Delhi, Feb 20: Microsoft has begun testing its free open-source software called "ElectionGuard" in a small Wisconsin town in the US that aims to make voting more secure, verifiable and efficient.

"ElectionGuard" will enable end-to-end verification of elections, open results to third-party organisations for secure validation, and allow individual voters to confirm their votes were correctly counted.

It enables government entities, news outlets, human rights organisations or anyone else to build additional verifiers that independently can certify election results have been accurately counted and have not been altered, according to the company.

The software would create a paper trail and assure voters their votes were properly tallied.

"On Tuesday, Fulton residents are using the technology while choosing who will join the local school board and hold a seat on Wisconsin's state Supreme Court," reports CNBC.

With the test, the company aims to see if voters like the experience and make sure everything works fine.

In May last year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced "ElectionGuard".

According to Tom Burt, Corporate Vice President, Customer Security and Trust, voting system manufacturers will be free to build ElectionGuard into their systems in a variety of ways.

"These are exciting steps that enable individual voters to confirm their vote was properly counted, and assures those voters using an ElectionGuard system of the most secure and trustworthy vote in the history of the US," Burt said in a recent blog post.

"ElectionGuard" is not intended to replace paper ballots but rather to supplement and improve systems that rely on them, and it is not designed to support internet voting.

The software provides each voter a tracker with a unique code that can be used to follow an encrypted version of the vote through the entire election process via a web portal provided by election authorities.

During the process of vote-casting, voters have an optional step that allows them to confirm that their trackers and encrypted votes accurately reflect their selections.

But once a vote is cast, neither the tracker nor any data provided through the web portal can be used to reveal the contents of the vote.

After the election is complete, the tracker codes can be used by voters to confirm that their votes were not altered or tampered with and that they were properly counted, said Microsoft.

On the security front, "ElectionGuard" uses something called homomorphic encryption - which enables mathematical procedures "like counting - to be done with fully encrypted data".

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Media Release
February 14,2020

Veteran journalist P. Sainath has said that the nation is in a crisis. And this crisis is not limited to just the rural area. It has become a national crisis at various areas such as agriculture, education, economy, job creation etc.

He was delivering the endowment lecture on the topic ‘Indian democracy at the post-liberalization and post-truth era’ at Media Manthan 2020 organized by the PG department of journalism and mass communication at St Aloysius College (Autonomous). 

Mr Sainath said that the many policies adopted in the 90s led to India becoming unusually unequal. Referring to the speech Ambedkar had made at the Constituent Assembly while handing over the draft of the Constitution, Mr Sainath said, “Ambedkar had warned about the weakness of Indian democracy that liberty without equality allows the supremacy of a few over the multitude. Liberty, equality and fraternity must be kept together as we cannot have one without the other.” 

Mr Sainath stated that the agrarian crisis was no longer about the loss of productivity, employment or about farmer suicide; it was a societal, civilizational crisis. Commenting on the lopsided policies such as cow-slaughter ban, he explained how cow slaughter ban had adversely affected many industries due to their interdependency. While Muslims who slaughtered cows were rendered helpless, the cattle traders who were mostly OBCs lost their earnings as the cattle prices crashed. An important industry like Kolhapur sandals industry in Maharashtra went bankrupt as a result of the cow slaughter ban in Maharashtra. He said the policymakers had no idea how the rural industries were interconnected. Demonetisation too devastated the rural economy as 98 percent of rural transactions happen through cash. 

Mr Sainath also spoke about the crisis of inequality which affects the Dalits and the Adivasis far more than anyone else as 90 percent of the rural households take home less than Rs 10,000/- per month. “Women are yet another group whose labour is never counted in the gross domestic product. Women and girls globally do unpaid work which amounts to about 12.5 billion working hours per year. Monetarily speaking, this is worth 10.8 trillion dollars,” Mr Sainath added. 

Speaking about the crisis of jobs Mr Sainath said that major companies were laying off employees just to create more profits for the investors and the adoption of artificial intelligence in the industry would further destroy millions of jobs.

Rector of St Aloysius College Institutions Fr Dionysius Vaz SJ, Principal Dr (Fr) Praveen Martis SJ, HOD of Journalism and Mass Communication department Dr (Fr) Melwyn Pinto SJ were present.

‘Veerappan and Vijay Mallya’s business models are interesting!’

Addressing the gathering during his endowment lecture on Friday, Mr Sainath made an interesting comment on the so called ‘revenue model’. “Whenever I visit IIMs and IITs for lectures on my PARI project, the students there ask me what my revenue model for my project is. I tell them that I do not have a revenue model. In fact, journalism does not begin with a revenue model. Gandhiji, Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh were all great journalists. But they did not have a revenue model,” Mr Sainath said.

On a lighter note, he said that the best revenue model that he liked was that of forest brigand Veerappan and liquor baron Vijay Mallya. “Veerappan ruled the forest for forty years and from the top ministers to the villagers he could dictate terms and liver royally. Similarly, Mallya’s revenue model was to steal the banks and run away abroad and live like a king,” Mr Sainath added.

Journalism is not and can never be a business. It is a calling, he opined. While newspaper can be a business, television can be a business, journalism per se cannot be reduced to a business. “Unfortunately today, journalists are recruited on a contract basis and they have no bargaining power; and there are no unions to fight for their cause. Hence, they are at the mercy of the corporate media houses for their survival and are made to write stories that cannot be called journalism,” Mr Sainath said.

Answering a question as to the pressures he faced as a journalist, he said that external pressures from the government or others could be very well handled. It is the internal pressures from once own media house that journalists find it difficult to manage.

 

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