Sena chief blasts Congress for Sachin’s Rajya Sabha innings

New Delhi, Apr 19: The government on Sunday prohibited the sale of non-essential items through e-commerce platforms during the ongoing lockdown, four days after allowing such companies to sale mobile phones, refrigerators and ready-made garments.

Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla issued an order excluding the non-essential items from sale by the e-commerce companies from the consolidated revised guidelines, which listed the exemption given to the services and people from the purview of the lockdown.

The order said the following clause "E-commerce companies. Vehicles used by e-commerce operators will be allowed to ply with necessary permissions" is excluded from the guidelines.

The previous order had said such items were allowed for sale through e-commerce platforms from April 20.

However, the reason for reversing the order is not known immediately.

New Delhi, Mar 3: Delhi's Tihar Prison authorities had made all necessary preparations for the hanging of four convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape-and-murder case which was scheduled for Tuesday, officials said Monday.

However, on Monday evening, a city court deferred the hanging till further orders.

Postponing the execution, Additional Sessions Judge Dharmender Rana said the hanging cannot be carried out pending disposal of Pawan Gupta's mercy plea before the President, observing any condemned convict must not meet his "Creator" with grievance against courts for not acting fairly on the opportunity to exhaust legal remedies.

"We had made all the necessary arrangements for the execution of the four convicts which was scheduled for Tuesday at 6 AM. Now, the execution has been postponed and we are waiting for the further order by the court," a senior jail official said.

The hanging of the four men -- Mukesh Kumar Singh (32), Vinay Kumar Sharma (26), Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and Pawan -- who are lodged in Tihar jail, was fixed for March 3 in Tihar jail on a court order.

"We had checked the ropes. Hangman was called and dummy executions were carried out," another senior jail official said.

Barring Pawan, the other three had in the previous weeks moved curative petitions and mercy pleas which were all dismissed.

The first date of execution -- January 22 -- fixed on January 7 was postponed by the court to February 1. But on January 31, the court indefinitely postponed the hanging. On February 17, the court again issued fresh date for execution of death warrants for March 3 at 6 AM.

The court in its orders observed that the four convicts cannot be hanged since a mercy plea of one or the other convict was pending.

New Delhi, Jun 30: Amid calls for boycotting Chinese products after India-China face-off in eastern Ladakh, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government claiming that imports from China have increased under the NDA regime.

"Facts don't lie. BJP says: Make in India. BJP does: Buy from China," Gandhi tweeted along with a graphic of the percentage of imports from China during the UPA rule and the NDA government.

The graphic claims that imports from China were at 12-13 per cent when the Congress-led UPA government vacated office in 2014 but now stood at 17-18 per cent in 2020.

The Congress leader has been vehemently targeting the Centre on the India-China border situation after 20 Indian soldiers were killed in violent face-off with Chinese troops in Ladakh's Galwan valley earlier this month.

Indian intercepts have revealed that the Chinese side suffered 43 casualties, including dead and seriously injured, in the face-off.