Cabinet revamp: 10 new faces likely, juniors to be promoted

October 27, 2012

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New Delhi, October 27: Union Council of Ministers is set for a major revamp tomorrow with at least 10 new faces likely to be inducted and some Ministers of State to be promoted besides a rejig in Cabinet portfolios wherein Anand Sharma may be made External Affairs Minister.

Ahead of the reshuffle, three Cabinet Ministers Ambika Soni (I&B), Mukul Wasnik (Social Justice) and Subodh Kant Sahai (Tourism) resigned today along with three Ministers of State Agatha Sangma (Rural Development), Mahadev Khandela (Tribal Affairs) and Vincent Pala (Water Resources), saying they would work for the party.

Interestingly, Agatha had to resign on her party NCP's directions after she campaigned for her father P A Sangma in the July Presidential elections in defiance of the party.

With this, the total number of ministers who have resigned has gone up to seven. External Affairs Minister S M Krishna had quit yesterday. All the resignations have since been accepted.

The ceremony for swearing-in of new ministers is scheduled at 11.30 hours at the Rashtrapati Bhavan tomorrow when a number of new faces are likely to be inducted.

Rahul Gandhi, who was earlier speculated to be joining the government, is unlikely to do so. He may be in for a larger role in the party and could be made Working President.

59-year-old Sharma, who is tipped to move from Commerce to take the place of Krishna, has done a stint in the MEA as MoS in UPA one. As Congress leader he had campaigned against apartheid in South Africa.

His place in Commerce is all set to go to 53-year-old Purandeswari, daughter of the late N T Rama Rao, after her eight-year tenure in as MoS in HRD Ministry.

Prominent among the newcomers expected to be inducted are actor-turned politician Chiranjeevi (Andhra Pradesh), A H Khan Chowdhry, brother of late A B A Ghani Khan Chowdhry, Pradeep Bhattacharya and Deepa Dasmunsi (West Bengal), Tariq Anwar (Maharashtra), Pradeep Balmuchu (Jharkhand) and Pradeep Majhi (Odisha).

Besides Purandeswari and Ajay Maken, who could also be promoted as a Cabinet minister, Ministers of State who could be upgraded are Sachin Pilot, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Milind Deora. Maken may get Information and Broadcasting portfolio.

In the rejig of portfolios, Urban Development Minister Kamal Nath is likely to be given additional charge of Parliamentary Affairs, now held by Pawan Kumar Bansal, who is expected to retain Water Resources.

Anwar, NCP MP, is expected to be made Minister of State for Agriculture to work under his party chief Sharad Pawar. Along with the revamp in the Council of Ministers, there is a possibility of long-awaited restructuring in the AICC, to make it ready organisationally for the next Lok Sabha elections slated in 2014.

Submitting their resignations, Soni, Wasnik and Sahai said they will work for the party. Soni was Congress General Secretary for several years and was Political Secretary to Congress President Sonia Gandhi while Wasnik was handling the dual responsibility of Congress General Secretary as well as Union Minister.

Before meeting the Prime Minister, Sahai said yesterday that Congress President Sonia Gandhi called him to draft him for party work. "It is an honour to work for the party. I am offering my resignation to Prime Minister. Party President (Sonia Gandhi) and others want me to work for the party so I will be working to strengthen the party as the party is supreme.We are in the government because of the party. Party is supreme and will always be supreme," he said.

Sahai's name had cropped up in a controversy following media expose that he had recommended for allocation of coal block a company in Jharkhand in which his brother was a Director.

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Agencies
May 26,2020

In a startling revelation, cybersecurity researchers have claimed that a hacker has posted personal details of nearly 2.9 crore Indian job seekers at one of the hacking forums on the Dark Web for free.

As part of the regular sweep over the Deep Web and Dark Web, researchers from cybersecurity firm Cyble came across an interesting item, where a threat actor posted 2.3GB (zipped) file on one of the hacking forums.

"The leak actually has a lot of personal details of millions of Indians Job seekers from different states," Cyble said in its blog on Friday.

This breach includes sensitive information such as email, phone, home address, qualification and work experience etc from job seekers spanning across states, from New Delhi to Mumbai and Bengaluru. 

Cybercriminals are always on the lookout for such personal information to conduct various nefarious activities such as identity thefts, scams, and corporate espionage.

"It appears to have originated from a resume aggregator service given the sheer volume and detailed information," it added.

Cyble indexed this information at ‘AmIbreached.com; – Cyble's data breach monitoring and notification platform.

Cyble researchers have identified a sensitive data breach on the dark web where an actor has leaked personal details of nearly 29 million Indian job seekers from various states. 

"Cyble's team is still investigating this further and will be updating their article as they bring more facts to the surface,” it said in a statement.

Cyble said it has acquired the leaked data. 

The same cyber security firm earlier exposed that Bengaluru-based edtech firm Unacademy was hacked.

According to Cyble researchers, nearly 22 million Unacademy user accounts were affected and the data was dumped and sold on Dark Web.

'We would like to assure our users that no sensitive information such as financial data or location has been breached," said Hemesh Singh, Co- Founder and CTO, Unacademy, in a statement.

In April, hackers sold personal data of a whopping 267 million Facebook users for just Rs 41,500 (approximately 500 Euros) that includes email addresses, names, Facebook IDs, dates of birth and phone numbers.

No passwords of the 267 million Facebook users were exposed by the hacker, according to Cyble.

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News Network
April 19,2020

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.

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News Network
July 6,2020

New Delhi, Jul 6: India's COVID-19 tally neared the 7 lakh mark with 6,97,413 cases after 24,248 new cases were reported in the last 24 hours, said the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

As per the Health Ministry, there are 2,53,287 active cases in the country while 4,24,432 patients have been cured or discharged. While one patient has migrated.

425 new deaths were reported in the last 24 hours in the country due to COVID-19, taking the number of patients succumbing to the deadly virus to 19,693.

As per the Health Ministry, Maharashtra continues to be the most impacted state from the infection with 2,06,619 cases and 8,822 fatalities due to the virus. Tamil Nadu in second place has a total of 1,11,151 cases and 1,510 fatalities.

The national capital's COVID-19 cases are also nearing the 1-lakh mark with 99,444 coronavirus cases and 3,067 deaths.

The total number of samples tested up to July 5 is 99,69,662 of which 1,80,596 samples were tested yesterday, informed the Indian Council of Medical Research on Monday. 

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