Lucknow, Jul 24: A special CBI court on Friday recorded the statement of veteran BJP leader LK Advani in the Babri mosque demolition case.
The statement of the 92-year-old former deputy prime minster was recorded through video conferencing in the court of special Judge S K Yadav.
On Thursday, the court recorded the statement of BJP veteran Murli Manohar Joshi in the case.
New Delhi, Feb 18: Election strategist-turned-politician Prashant Kishor on Tuesday questioned the Nitish Kumar government's development model, even as he sneered at the chief minister for making ideological compromises to stay in an alliance with the BJP.
Kishor, who has been vocal about his opposition to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), said Kumar needs to spell out whether he is with the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi or those who support Nathu Ram Godse.
"Nitish ji has always said that he cannot leave the ideals of Gandhi, JP and Lohiya... At the same time, how can he be with the people who support the ideology of Godse? Both cannot go together. If you want to stay with the BJP, I don't have any problem with it but you cannot be on both sides," he said.
"There has been a lot of discussion between me and Nitish-ji on this. He has his thought process and I have mine. There have been differences between him and me that the ideologies of Godse and Gandhi cannot stand together. As the leader of the party you have to say which side you are on," he added.
In a direct assault on Kumar's model of governance, Kishor said Bihar was the poorest state in 2005 and continues to be so.
"There has been development in Bihar during the last 15 years, but the pace has not been as it should have," he added.
New Delhi, Jun 6: With 9,887 new positive cases reported in the last 24 hours, India's COVID-19 count touched 2,36,657 on Saturday surpassing Italy's latest tally of over 2.34 lakh, taking India to the sixth spot among countries with the highest caseloads of the virus.
The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) said that India registered a spike of 9887 new cases and 294 deaths in the past 24 hours taking the tally to 1,15,942 active cases and 6642 deaths.
Today's count was the highest single-day spike in the country, which has now overtaken Italy, according to the tally posted by the Johns Hopkins University which posted that globally the coronavirus had infected over 66.64 lakh people and claimed over 3.91 lakh lives so far.
In india, the MoHFW informed that 1,14,073 persons have been cured/discharged/migrated so far.
Maharashtra remains the worst-hit State as the total number of COVID-19 positive cases reached 80,229. While the total number of active cases in the state stands at 42,224.
In Tamil Nadu, 28,694 cases have been detected so far while Delhi has reported 26,334 coronavirus cases.
New Delhi, Jul 6: The Indian Academy of Sciences, a Bengaluru-based body of scientists, has said the Indian Council for Medical Research's (ICMR) target to launch a coronavirus vaccine by August 15 is "unfeasible" and "unrealistic".
The IASc said while there is an unquestioned urgent need, vaccine development for use in humans requires scientifically executed clinical trials in a phased manner.
While administrative approvals can be expedited, the "scientific processes of experimentation and data collection have a natural time span that cannot be hastened without compromising standards of scientific rigour", the IASc said in a statement.
In its statement, the IASc referred to the ICMR's letter which states that "it is envisaged to launch the vaccine for public health use latest by 15th August 2020 after completion of all clinical trials".
The ICMR and Bharat Biotech India Limited, a private pharmaceutical company, are jointly developing the vaccine against the novel coronavirus -- SARS-CoV-2.
The IASc welcomes the exciting development of a candidate vaccine and wishes that the vaccine is quickly made available for public use, the statement said.
"However, as a body of scientists including many who are engaged in vaccine development IASc strongly believes that the announced timeline is unfeasible. This timeline has raised unrealistic hope and expectations in the minds of our citizens," it said.
Aiming to launch an indigenous COVID-19 vaccine by August 15, the ICMR had written to select medical institutions and hospitals to fast-track clinical trial approvals for the vaccine candidate, COVAXIN.
Experts have also cautioned against rushing the process for developing a COVID-19 vaccine and stressed that it is not in accordance with the globally accepted norms to fast-track vaccine development for diseases of pandemic potential.
The IASc said trials for a vaccine involve evaluation of safety (Phase 1 trial), efficacy and side effects at different dose levels (Phase 2 trial), and confirmation of safety and efficacy in thousands of healthy people (Phase 3 trial) before its release for public use.
Clinical trials for a candidate vaccine require participation of healthy human volunteers. Therefore, many ethical and regulatory approvals need to be obtained prior to the initiation of the trials, it added.
The IASc said the immune responses usually take several weeks to develop and relevant data should not be collected earlier.
"Moreover, data collected in one phase must be adequately analysed before the next phase can be initiated. If the data of any phase are unacceptable then the clinical trial is required to be immediately aborted," it said.
For example, if the data collected from Phase 1 of the clinical trial show that the vaccine is not adequately safe, then Phase 2 cannot be initiated and the candidate vaccine must be discarded.
For these reasons, the Indian Academy of Sciences believes that the announced timeline is "unreasonable and without precedent", the statement said.
"The Academy strongly believes that any hasty solution that may compromise rigorous scientific processes and standards will likely have long-term adverse impacts of unforeseen magnitude on citizens of India," it said.
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