Month: April 2025

[ad_1] NEW DELHI: Former chief election commissioner S Y Quraishi sharply rebuked BJP MP Nishikant Dubey on Monday for his “Muslim commissioner” remark, emphasising that he believed in an India where individuals were judged by their contributions, not religious identities. Quraishi criticised those who used religious labels to promote divisive politics.On April 17, Quraishi had posted on X, “The Waqf Act is a blatantly sinister plan to grab Muslim lands. I’m confident the Supreme Court will call it out. Misinformation by the propaganda machine has done its job well.”In response, Dubey posted, “You were not an election commissioner, you were a Muslim commissioner. The maximum number of Bangladeshi infiltrators were made voters in Santhal Pargana during your tenure.”Quraishi hit back with a cryptic post on micro-blogging site X, quoting George Bernard Shaw, “I learned long ago never to wrestle with […]

[ad_1] NAVI MUMBAI: Dismissed police inspector Abhay Kurundkar (52) was on Monday sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering assistant police inspector Ashwini Bidre-Gore, chopping up her body and disposing of it in 2016. He was convicted two weeks ago. Although Bidre-Gore's body parts were never found, a Panvel sessions court held that their absence was not an "absolute ground to exonerate the offenders". It, however, said the case also did not fall in the rarest of rare category to warrant death penalty, as sought by the prosecution.Additional sessions judge K G Paldewar also came down heavily on Navi Mumbai police for not taking prompt action and said the entire police machinery stood behind Kurundkar. It directed the police chief to initiate action against two officers over probe lapses.Two aides-driver Kundan Bhandari and friend Mahesh Phalnikar -who were convicted for helping […]

[ad_1] NEW DELHI: Dialysis has emerged as the most sought-after treatment under Ayushman Bharat-PM Jan Arogya Yojana. In the past six years since the central health scheme was launched, data shows more than 64 lakh patients have undergone the procedure.Tamil Nadu has carried out 7.3 lakh dialysis cycles, according to latest data uploaded by National Health Authority, implementing agency for AB-PMJAY, on its website. Madhya Pradesh is next at 5.4 lakh, followed by Uttar Pradesh (5L) and Gujarat (3.4L).‘Kidney failure is a chronic problem’ Dialysis is provided free of cost to people under the scheme that offers an annual cover of Rs 5L a family for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation. Senior citizens are eligible for the scheme irrespective of their economic status.Every year, about 2.2 lakh new patients of End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) get added in India resulting in […]

[ad_1] BENGALURU: The mystery surrounding the disappearance of the original socio-economic and education survey report, popularly known as the caste census, prepared by the Kantharaj Commission has triggered a fierce political row, with opposition parties criticising the govt for basing crucial policy decisions on a revised report drawn from sample data.The revised report, submitted in 2023 by Backward Classes Commission led by K Jayaprakash Hegde, was based on select data from copies of the original Kantharaj Commission survey. The move has triggered sharp reactions and cast doubts over the authenticity of the entire exercise.Hegde set off a political storm when he told reporters: "It is true the original data compiled under the Kantharaj Commission could not be located. We had to rely on a sample-based methodology to compile the current report. It was the only viable option given the circumstances."The […]

[ad_1] NEW DELHI: An elderly person in India must commute up to 15 km to avail out-patient services, and almost 44 km for in-patient care requiring hospitalisation, claims a new study published in The Lancet Regional Health– Southeast Asia.Researchers analysed data of nearly 32,000 older adults, aged 60 and above, collected during the first wave of the Longitudinal Ageing Study of India (LASI) in 2017-2018 and found there was a significant urban-rural disparity also with the urban older adults availing out-patient facilities within 10 km of reach, while the distance was nearly 30 km for their rural counterparts.According to the Lancet study, rates of availing both out-patient and in-patient services were found to be high — 73% and 40%, respectively — when a facility was within 10 km of reach. However, with an increase in commute distance, a commensurate decline […]

[ad_1] HYDERABAD: Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday summoned actor Mahesh Babu on April 27 in connection with probes into alleged money laundering by two Hyderabad real estate groups accused of defrauding buyers.Mahesh Babu had allegedly endorsed dubious projects of Sai Surya Developers and Surana Group. According to sources in ED, he had received Rs 5.9 crore for endorsing projects of Sai Surya Developers. Of this, Rs 3.4 crore was paid through cheque and 2.5 crore by cash. ED officials suspect the cash component forms part of laundered money collected through fraudulent practices.ED had launched its money-laundering probe based on FIRs by Telangana police against Narendra Surana, director of Bhagyanagar Properties Ltd., K Sathish Chandra Gupta, proprietor of Sai Surya Developers, and others. The entities allegedly collected crores in advance from unsuspecting buyers by offering plots in unauthorised layouts, making multiple […]

[ad_1] KOLKATA: West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC) missed its Monday 6pm deadline of publishing the lists of “tainted” and “untainted” teachers, triggering chaos outside Acharya Sadan, its headquarters in Salt Lake.Protesters, saying they had run out of patience, clashed with police and tried to breach barricades around the SSC headquarters several times, as news trickled out that SSC has devised a new “cut-off” to separate the “tainted” from the “untainted”: only the first three of the 12 rounds of counselling that took place between 2017 and 2019 would be considered valid, implying that teachers recruited from the fourth round would not feature in the list of “untainted” teachers.This led to a day-long stand-off, with protesters barricading the SSC office with its chairman, Siddhartha Majumder, inside.There were intermittent clashes with police and, at one point in the evening, protesters even […]