Cops fire tear gas to disperse CAB protesters in Delhi's Seelampur

Washington, Jan 12: The US State Department has described the recent visit of envoys of 15 countries to Jammu and Kashmir as an "important step" but expressed concern over the continued detention of political leaders and restrictions on internet in the region.

Alice Wells, the Acting Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, tweeted on Saturday that she was "closely following" the visit of the envoys to Kashmir, describing it an "important step".

Wells, who will be visiting India this week, added: "We remain concerned by detention of political leaders and residents and Internet restrictions. We look forward to a return to normalcy."

The group of diplomats made a two-day visit to the Union Territory on Thursday and Friday to see the conditions thereafter Jammu and Kashmir's special constitutional status was removed last August.

While some US politicians and media have criticised the action by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, the US has officially appeared to support the abrogation of the Constitution's Article 370 on the special status.

Last October, Wells told the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific that the State Department supported the objectives behind it, while not directly mentioning the abrogation.

"The Indian government has argued that its decision on Article 370 was driven by a desire to increase economic development, reduce corruption, and uniformly apply all national laws in Jammu and Kashmir, particularly in regard to women and minorities.

"While we support these objectives, the Department remains concerned about the situation in the Kashmir Valley, where daily life for the nearly eight million residents has been severely impacted since August 5," she had said.

Washington has banked on India's democratic institutions - the judiciary and public debates - being able to steer the country.

Bearing this out, the Supreme Court last week ordered the government to review its decision to shut down the internet in Kashmir, which it declared was a fundamental right, thus taking a step to address Wells's concern.

Bengaluru, Jul 1: A day after the Government banned several Chinese apps, popular short-form video app Mitron reported that its daily traffic jumped up by more than 11 times.

Just 5 days after crossing the 10 million (1 crore) downloads milestone, Mitron has now announced that the app has been downloaded by 17 million (1.7 crore) users in India. Mitron app has been one of the most downloaded apps in India during the last two months.

"It is incredibly exciting to see the rapid adoption of Mitron by Indian users. 11-fold jump in traffic, immediately after the ban of Chinese apps, was beyond our expectations," said Shivank Agarwal, Founder, and CEO, Mitron.

Anish Khandelwal, Founder and CTO said, " We have built a solid backend infrastructure and our platform is now completely scalable and autonomous and that is helping us to cater to the sharp rise in traffic on Mitron App."

Mitron has been rapidly enhancing the product with several improvements for the users including an updated video upload process that is much easier, enhanced audio library with a wide choice of Indian content, and a feature that enables users to flag any inappropriate content easily.

Users uploaded millions of videos in 10 different languages and the number of videos viewed on the platform increased sharply to cross 30 million video views per hour.

Shivank added "We are a young company and we are hiring some of the best product & engineering talent to scale up Mitron rapidly. We are confident that we can build Mitron into one of the best apps in the short-form video space. Our focus is on building features and content that uniquely resonates with Indian users, while being sensitive to community standards and local laws in India and we believe that will help us build Mitron into a very large business."

Founded by two Computer Science engineers, Shivank Agarwal (alumnus of IIT Roorkee) and Anish Khandelwal (alumnus of Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology), Mitron app is a short-form video app that allows users to create, upload and view entertaining short videos.

Apr 13: The Supreme Court of India has said Indian expatriates stranded abroad cannot be flown back immediately. All petitions before India's apex court which sought directions or orders to 'bring back Indians stranded in various countries abroad' has been deferred for four weeks, according to Indian media reports.

The Chief Justice of India Sharad Arvind Bobde led bench took up matters pertaining to evacuation of Indian citizens stranded abroad amid the Covid19 pandemic.
Supreme Court today deferred for 4 weeks, all the petitions before it which sought directions or orders to 'bring back Indians stranded in various countries abroad'.

A total of seven petitions seeking directions from Court on the immediate evacuation of Indian nationals from UK, US, Iran and Gulf countries were taken up simultaneously.

Bobde said, "Stay where you are. People in other countries cannot be brought back right now"

Foreigners stuck in India granted visa extension

Furthermore, the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has announced a visa extension for all foreigners who are stranded in in India due to ongoing travel restrictions imposed by the government.

Regular visa,e-visa or stay stipulation of such foreigners stranded in India due to travel restrictions by Indian Authorities&whose visas have expired/would be expiring between 01.02&30.04, would be extended till 30 April on gratis basis,after online application by foreigners:MHA