Nithyananda sacked as Madurai mutt pontiff

New Delhi, July 10: Hours before gangster Vikas Dubey was killed in an alleged police encounter on Friday, a plea was filed in the Supreme Court demanding urgent listing for action into his "possible killing" by Uttar Pradesh Police.

Advocate Ghanshyam Upadhyay had apprehended in his plea that there is a high possibility that Dubey will also be killed in a 'fake' encounter after his arrest from Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh a day ago.

Upadhyay claimed that the UP Police was expected to "concoct the same story of encounter" for Dubey like it did when four of his associates were killed after the 2 July incident.

Dubey was the primary accused in the killing of eight policemen in Kanpur on July 2. He was arrested from Ujjain on Thursday. He was killed in a police encounter, when he allegedly tried to flee on Friday morning.

"During the hunt for Dubey and co-accused, five of his accused aides were arrested/caught and then killed by the police in the name of encounter...Thus, there is every possibility that even Dubey shall be killed by Uttar Pradesh Police like other co-accused once his custody is obtained," Upadhyay feared.

He submitted that the killing of the accused by the police in the name of encounter no matter how heinous the crime was "against the rule of law and serious violation of human rights and nothing sort of Talibanisation of the country". Upadhyay sought hearing in the matter on Friday itself, citing extreme urgency.

Jaipur, Jan 27: Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said that if the Citizenship Amendment Act leads to the implementation of the NPR and the NRC, it would be a complete victory for Pakistan's founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

He said that Jinnah's idea of a country was already winning in India with the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) coming into effect, but asserted that there was still a choice available.

"I would not say Jinnah has completely won, but I would say Jinnah is winning. There is still a choice available to the nation between Jinnah's idea of a country and Gandhiji's idea of a country," he said on the sidelines of the Jaipur Literature Festival on Sunday.

The CAA came into force in India in December amid protests across the country and around the world.

The MP from Thiruvananthapuram said that the amended Citizenship Act took Jinnah's logic by declaring that religion shall be the basis of nationhood, reaffirming that Gandhi's idea is that all religions are equal .

"The CAA is, if you are talking Tennis, you would say one set up or big first set lead for Jinnah. But the next step would be if the CAA would lead to the National Population Register (NPR) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC). If that happens, then you would consider that Jinnah's victory is complete," he said.

The CAA seeks to grant citizenship to migrants belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Christian, Jain and Parsi communities who came to India from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan on or before December 31, 2014.

On the BJP's defence that the NPR was carried out during the UPA regime, Tharoor said that the Congress government had utilised a decision of the NDA government led by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

"It never asked where were your parents born. It never authorised the enumerators to note on the margin 'dubious citizenship', a term used in the NPR rules crafted by this government. That is purely BJP's invention," he said.

If we go around this country authorising people to interview all the citizens, or identify some who have 'dubious citizenship', you can be pretty sure which Indians are going to be found on the 'dubious citizenship', he said.

"That will principally be one community that is not mentioned in the CAA. And if that happens, then it is indeed Jinnah's victory.

"From wherever he is, he can point to this place and say, 'see I was right in the 1940. We are separate nations and Muslims deserved their own country because Hindus cannot be just'," Tharoor said.

Speaking about the Delhi election, the three-time MP said that the maximum development in the national capital happened under the Congress government.

"What Sheila Dikshit did in her 15 years as Chief Minister of Delhi, no other leader could do it before or after her," he said.

New Delhi, Apr 8: The death toll due to the novel coronavirus rose to 149 and the number of cases to 5,194 in the country on Wednesday, according to the Union Health Ministry.

While the number of active COVID-19 cases is 4,643, as many as 401 people were cured and discharged and one had migrated, it said.

The total number of cases include 70 foreign nationals.

According to the ministry's data updated at 9 a.m., 25 new deaths have been reported since Tuesday.

Sixteen deaths were reported from Maharashtra, two each from Delhi, West Bengal, Haryana and Tamil Nadu and one from Andhra Pradesh.

Maharashtra has reported the most coronavirus deaths at 64, followed by Gujarat  and Madhya Pradesh at 13 each and Delhi at 9.

Telengana, Punjab and Tamil Nadu have reported seven fatalities each.

West Bengal has registered five deaths, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have reported four each, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan have recorded three deaths each.

Two deaths each have been reported from Jammu and Kashmir and Kerala.

Bihar, Himachal Pradesh and Odisha reported one fatality each, according to the health ministry data.

However, a PTI tally of figures reported by various states as on Tuesday 9.45 p.m. showed 5,192 testing positive across the country and at least 162 deaths.

There has been a lag in the Union Health Ministry figures, compared to the numbers announced by different states, which officials attribute to procedural delays in assigning the cases to individual states.

The highest number of confirmed cases in the country are from Maharashtra at 1018, followed by Tamil Nadu at 690 and Delhi with 576 cases.

Telengana has reported 364 COVID-19 cases followed by Kerala at 336.

Rajasthan has 328 cases, Uttar Pradesh has 326 and Andhra Pradesh reported 305 coronavirus cases.

Novel coronavirus cases have risen to 229 in Madhya Pradesh, 175 in Karnataka and 165 in Gujarat.

Haryana has 147 cases, Jammu and Kashmir has 116, West Bengal has 99 and Punjab has 91 positive patients so far. Odisha has reported 42 coronavirus cases.

Thirty- eight people were infected with the virus in Bihar while Uttarakhand has 31 patients and Assam 27.

Chandigarh  and Himachal Pradesh have 18 cases each while Ladakh has 14 positive patients so far.

Ten cases each have been reported from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Chhattisgarh. 

Goa has reported seven COVID-19 infections, followed by Puducherry at five cases. Jharkhand has reported four cases and Manipur two. 

Tripura, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh have reported one case each.

"State-wise distribution is subject to further verification and reconciliation," the ministry said on its website.