Man arrested for questioning Mamata, activists condemn incident

August 11, 2012
mamatha
Kolkata, August 11: A man, who had publicly questioned West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee about her government policies towards farmers, was Saturday arrested from West Midnapore district for "disrupting a public rally and assaulting police officers", police said.

The step has come in for criticism from civil society who slammed Banerjee for her "growing intolerance".

"Shiladitya Chowdhury was arrested Saturday morning and booked for disrupting a public rally, entering into a high security zone and assaulting police personnel," Superintendent of Police, Jhargram, Bharati Ghosh told IANS.

He was later remanded to 14 days' judicial custody by a court.

Banerjee, on a visit to the Maoist-affected Belpahari area in the district Wednesday, was addressing a public rally when Chowdhury stood up and asked her: "Farmers are dying because they have no money. Empty promises are not enough. What are you doing for farmers?"

Stunned by the question, an angry Banerjee immediately branded him a "Maoist" following which Chowdhury was detained and taken for interrogation by the police.

He was, however, allowed to go that day but was arrested Saturday morning.

The arrest has drawn condemnation from the civil society and yet again brought to the fore the temperamental nature of Banerjee, who is known for losing her cool over the slightest of uncomfortable questions.

"What can I say? The arrest is highly unwarranted and highlights not only Banerjee's growing intolerance, but also her dictatorial attitude. I don't know what has happened to her," social activist and writer Mahasweta Devi told IANS.

Earlier Banerjee had stormed out of an interactive programme on a TV channel following a barrage of questions by students, over the arrest of a professor for forwarding a cartoon depicting her.

Branding them as "Maoists", Banerjee had even instructed police to take photographs of those in the audience who had asked the questions.

"I can only say that whatever has happened is highly deplorable. Being a people's representative, Banerjee should have answered his questions and not had him arrested," noted poet and novelist Sunil Gangopadhyay said.


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News Network
July 1,2020

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.

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News Network
January 15,2020

New Delhi, Jan 15: The Delhi government Wednesday told the high court that execution of the death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case will not take place on January 22 as a mercy plea has been filed by one of them.

The four convicts -- Vinay Sharma (26), Mukesh Kumar (32), Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and Pawan Gupta (25) -- are to be hanged on January 22 at 7 am in Tihar jail. A Delhi court had issued their death warrants on January 7.

Justices Manmohan and Sangita Dhingra Sehgal were told by the Delhi government and the Centre that the petition filed by convict Mukesh, challenging his death warrant, was premature.

The Delhi government and the prison authorities informed the court that under the rules, it will have to wait for the mercy plea to be decided before executing the death warrant.

They also said that none of the four convicts can be executed on January 22 unless the present mercy plea is decided.

The Supreme Court had on Tuesday dismissed the curative pleas of Mukesh and Vinay.

The mercy plea hearing began Wednesday morning and will continue in the afternoon.

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News Network
January 12,2020

Kolkata, Jan 12: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said a section of the youth is being misguided about the Citizenship Amendment Act and asserted that it will not take away anybody's citizenship.

Modi also said whoever has faith in India and believes in its Constitution can become an Indian citizen.

“There are a lot of questions among the youth about the new citizenship law, and some are being misled by rumours around it... it is our duty to clear their doubts,” the PM said during an address at Belur Math in Howrah district.

“I want to make this clear again that the CAA is not about taking away anybody's citizenship, but about granting citizenship,” he added.

Modi said that some people with political interests are deliberately spreading rumours about the new citizenship law.

Lauding the youth for speaking against religious persecution of minorities, the prime minister said the energy of the country's young will form the basis of change in the 21st century. The PM is on a two-day visit to the city.

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