RIVANCH

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is visiting Assam to celebrate the signing of the Bodo agreement, attributed the signing of the Bodo peace accord to people's support, heralding a new dawn of peace in Assam. Addressing a massive public rally in Kokrajhar on Friday, he celebrated the signing of the accord on 27 January that is expected to bring lasting peace to the troubled state. Modi said the time has now come to work together for peace and development of the North East. "We will not allow violence to return," he asserted. This was Modi's first visit to Assam since the Centre's decision to pass the Citizenship (Amendment) Act that triggered protests across the country, including in Assam. Six people were killed in the state in the violence. Modi welcomed the rally by taking a thinly veiled jibe at Rahul Gandhi's ' danda ' remark, saying: "At times some leaders talk about beating me with sticks, but I'm saved by the blessings of all mothe...

Jatin Kumar, 11, a Class 6 student at Sarvodaya Vidyalaya in South Delhi's Madangir was an introvert who was hesitant to approach the teacher. Now, he is a confident young student who volunteers to take part in school activities. He credits this change to the 'Happiness Curriculum', under which 100,000 students in Delhi schools, from nursery to Class 8, participate, learning through inspirational stories and meditation classes. A Curriculum for Happiness for school children was the brainchild of the Dalai Lama, which he launched on 2 July, 2018. The Aam Aadmi Party was quick to accept and introduce the concept in all schools run by the Delhi government, which has seen about one lakh students spending the first 45 minutes each day without opening a textbook, a concept now being tried out elsewhere — in BJP-ruled Himachal Pradesh and Delhi University, for instance. During these 45 minutes, students are encouraged to talk freely and share ideas with their classmates. The ini...

New Delhi: The Indo-Tibetan Border Police Force (ITBP), country's specialised mountain force which is guarding 3,488 kilometres of Indo-China border has told Central Public Works Department (CPWD) responsible for public sector works to learn from China and Gulf countries where construction is smooth and fast. ITBP is manning border outposts on an altitude ranging from 9,000 to 18,700 feet in the western, middle and eastern sectors of the China border. Of 146 projects of the ITBP amounting Rs 1,679 crore, 87 projects are running behind the schedule and 13 projects are delayed by more than two years. In a meeting to discuss the issue, Director General (DG) of ITBP SS Deswal told the CPWD officials that pace of construction in China is very fast and CPWD must evolve a mechanism to address the delay. Minutes of the meeting reviewed by  Firstpost  quoted DG’s suggestions. “We are a very-very progressive country, if a project delays the country's development gets delayed. ...

by Bhasker Tripathi, Disha Shetty  Ashok Chauhan, 60, runs a jewellery showroom in Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar and represents a demography of people who were born in Delhi and have lived here their entire lives. Even though Delhi’s toxic air led to his two-year-old granddaughter and elderly parents in their 80s relying on nebulisers to breathe as recently as November 2019, air pollution will not be the deciding factor for his vote. Delhi’s lethal air is not even among the top three issues to decide his vote come February 8, 2020, when the union territory and the capital of India goes to the polls. Corruption in the municipal corporation, uneven development in parts of Delhi, the economy as well as the law and order situation are some of the most important issues for Chauhan. Delhi — which faced toxic levels of air pollution this winter, especially in the first half of November 2019 —  topped  the list of most polluted cities in the world that month. Chauhan’s granddaughter an...

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on  Citizen Matters and is being reproduced with permission. Read the original article here .  *** At 80-plus, Raj Rani Bhalla who lives with her working daughter in a four-bedroom apartment in East Delhi, manages every aspect of her household. The matriarch reads all the news relevant to her, and keeps an eye on all the discounts of food essentials in the stores in her neighbourhood. The former government employee has seen plenty of life and politics in the National Capital and never fails to do her duties by democracy as an unfailing voter. So, when the Aam Aadmi Party promised to halve the of residents of the capital territory in the winter of 2013, repeated it in 2014 and is repeating the promise again for the February 2020 Assembly elections in Delhi , she initially took it lightly. But she got a pleasant surprise when she saw her electricity bill of last August. She had to pay only about Rs 1,700, even though the b...

One of the things that keeps anti-CAA protests such as the one in Shaheen Bagh going is a moral legitimacy. It is projected as an ‘organic uprising’ by citizens (especially Muslims) who have been dealt a cruel blow by an ‘authoritarian’ government that has ‘gone against the Constitution and is trying to divide the country on the basis of religion’. This, in a nutshell, is the charge against Narendra Modi government. Regardless of CAA’s reality, of what it may or may not do, in opposing the government and demanding a repeal, therefore, the protestors are defending the Constitution and being the moral guardians of society — or so, at least, goes the justification and the narrative. In two back-to-back speeches in Parliament on Thursday, the prime minister took away the moral justification behind the protests and stripped the ‘movement’ of its elaborate construct to reveal the political project within. Coincidentally, Modi’s intervention in Parliament on the protests came on the day En...

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday said it will hear on 11 February the Centre's plea challenging the Delhi High Court's verdict that had dismissed its petition against the stay on the execution of the four 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder case convicts. A bench headed by Justice R Bhanumathi did not heed to the request of Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who was seeking issuance of notice to the four convicts on the Centre's plea, saying it would further delay the matter. The bench, also comprising justices Ashok Bhushan and AS Bopanna, told Mehta that it would hear him on 11 February and it may consider whether notice was required to be issued to the convicts. At the outset, Mehta told the court that the "nation's patience is being tested" in the matter and bench will have to lay down a law on the issue. from Firstpost India Latest News https://ift.tt/2OAssZD Press Trust of India