Congress retains Himachal Lok Sabha seat

June 30, 2013

himacha-bypoll

Shimla, Jun 30: Chief minister Virbhadra Singh's wife Pratibha Singh of Congress has won Mandi parliamentary byelection by 1.37 lakh votes. She defeated BJP candidate and four time MLA Jai Ram Thakur. This is the second time when Pratibha Singh has won from Mandi seat.

Polling for byelection was held in two phases. While in the first phase polling was conducted on June 23, in Kinnaur district where all roads were blocked polling was held on June 27. With landslide victory for Congress, chief minister Virbhadra Singh has once again proved his mass base and grip over state politics.

For the byelection Virbhadra Singh was single handedly campaigning for Congress candidate and for a month he remained out of state capital Shimla to tour all the 17 assembly segments of this constituency. Virbhadra even remained stranded in Kinnaur for around three days after rain and flood cut off the road link to Sangla valley and he was later airlifted.

This time low turnout of voters had led to the speculation that winning margin might remain low but Pratibha Singh managed to get the lead of over a lakh vote this time too. In 2004, Pratibha Singh had won from Mandi but she had not contested the 2009 election instead her husband Virbhadra Singh contested from Mandi and won the election.

While in 16 assembly segments of Mandi parliamentary seat voter's turnout was 53 per cent, in rain ravaged Kinnaur district 54 per cent polling was recorded.

Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh has thanked the Mandi parliamentary constituency voters for landslide victory of congress candidate Pratibha Singh and said that it is victory of ideology and leadership of Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi.

He said that the victory has showed that people have expressed their faith and confidence in the programmes and policies of the state government and said that this victory will further strengthen the resolve of the state government for ensuring the over all growth of the entire state.

Virbhadra has specially thanked the voters of the Kinnaur district who overwhelmingly voted for the congress candidate despite of the natural calamity in the region and assured them that government will reciprocate with same spirit for ensuring the speedy development works and undertaking massive relief ad rehabilitation works in the region to bring normalcy in the area.

Conducting election in Mandi parliamentary seat was a challenge for Election Commission this constituency has some of the toughest polling stations that could be reached only on foot. Mandi parliamentary constituency has world's highest polling station at Hikkim village of Lahaul-Spiti that is situated at a height of 15000 feet. It has also got the unique distinction of having first voter of independent India 96-year-old Shyam Saran Negi who despite his ailing health and cast his ballot in Kalpa polling station on June 27.

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News Network
February 16,2020

New Delhi, Feb 16: Just an hour ahead of the swearing-in ceremony, Arvind Kejriwal invited the people of Delhi again for his oath-taking ceremony at Ramlila Maidan today.

Referring himself as "son of Delhi", the AAP convener today tweeted saying, "Delhiites, your son is going to take oath as Delhi chief minister for the third time. You must come to bless your son".

The AAP national convener will be sworn-in as the Chief Minister of Delhi for the third time in a row.

Arvind Kejriwal is scheduled to take oath along with other ministers at Ramlila Maidan.

On Saturday, Kejriwal, through a tweet, has said that autorickshaw drivers, students, teachers, doctors, labourers, etc will be the "chief guests".

The guest list put out by the AAP includes ''Delhi ke Nirmata''- people who contributed to the development of the city during the last five years.

These include Sumit Nagal, a Delhi government school student and an international Tennis player, Laxman Chaudhry an auto driver, Manu Gulati a teacher and "one of the many architects of Delhi Governance Model", Dalbir Singh a farmer, Ratan Jamshed Batliboi - the architect of the famous Signature Bridge among others.

By winning 62 seats by cashing in on the plank of development, his party nearly repeated its 2015 performance, sweeping the Assembly polls in the face of a high-voltage campaign by the BJP, which had fielded a battery of Union Ministers and Chief Ministers in its electioneering, spearheaded by Home Minister Amit Shah.

The BJP marginally improved its tally, managing just eight seats from its 2015''s tally of three seats. The Congress failed to open its account in the second successive election.

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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
April 28,2020

Kozhikode, Apr 28: The remains of seven people who died in the Gulf countries were airlifted from Dubai by a cargo flight which arrived here Tuesday, ending the uncertainty over bringing back the bodies of those who died following non-Covid-19 reasons.

Airport sources said the flight reached the airport by around noon.

The bodies include natives of Kerala, one each of people from Goa and Sivaganga in Tamil Nadu.

"Karipur in among the few airports where cargo flights are operating in South India.

This is the reason why the bodies of those belonging to Goa and Sivaganga and other parts of Kerala have all been brought here for onward transport to respective destinations by road," an airport official said.

"As per information received from the airport, the bodies are of John Johannan of Kollam, David Shamy of Punnakkal, Kannur, Sathyan of Cheranelloor, Thrissur, O C Mathai and Sijo Joy, both of Pathanamthitta, Sreenivasan of Sivaganga and Henrick D Soza of South Goa," said Thomas, Assistant Sub Inspector, Special Branch CID, Malappuram.

Special passes have been issued to ambulances to transport the bodies to their destinations after the formalities at the airport are over, a senior police officer said.

There had been some confusion on bringing back the bodies from the Gulf region for about a week for want of clearance from the embassy authorities.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week seeking his intervention in ensuring that bodies of Keralites, who die in Gulf countries due to no non COVID-19 reasons, should be broughtto the state without any delay forenabling family members to perform their last rites.

Vijayan also wanted Modi to direct Indian Embassies to issue necessary clearances without seeking individual approvals from the Ministry of Home Affairs and avoid any delay.

The mortal remains are now being broughtin cargo planes as passenger flights are not being operated due to the COVID-19 lockdown.

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