After Partha expulsion, Abhishek imprint on Bengal Cabinet reshuffle

After Partha expulsion, Abhishek imprint on Bengal Cabinet reshuffle

Of the eight new ministers, Babul Supriyo, Partha Bhowmick, and Snehashish Chakraborty are said to be close to TMC’s de facto number two.

TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee during a rally to observe Martyr’s Day, in Kolkata. (PTI)The Trinamool Congress (TMC) was once entirely a Mamata Banerjee show. In recent years, the West Bengal chief minister’s nephew and Diamond Harbour MP Abhishek Banerjee emerged as the second-most important force after her in the party. But, with Wednesday’s Cabinet reshuffle, Abhishek’s influence, according to party insiders, now extends directly to the government.
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Earlier, TMC ministers used to pay homage to their party chairperson after taking the oath of office, saying they will work under Mamata Banerjee’s guidance. On Wednesday, new ministers such as Partha Bhowmik, now in charge of the Department of Irrigation and Waterways, and Birbaha Hansda, who was already in the council of ministers, said they would look to meet the expectations of the CM as well as Abhishek.

The Cabinet reshuffle has the fingerprints of the Diamond Harbour MP who, according to party insiders, was also the prime mover behind the decision to expel former minister Partha Chatterjee from the party after his arrest in connection with the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) probe into an alleged school recruitment scam. All the eight new ministers have a comparatively clean public image and of the eight Babul Supriyo, Bhowmick, and Snehashish Chakraborty are said to have close links with Abhishek. In addition, existing Cabinet ministers such as Moloy Ghatak and Pulak Roy are also said to be close to TMC’s de facto second-in-command.
“It is clear that Abhishek Banerjee’s influence is spreading in the Cabinet too. He wanted to bring Babul Supriyo and Partha Bhowmick to the forefront and we were expecting this. He has already full control of the party organisation. On Monday, our party leadership changed district presidents and chairpersons. We know the decision was finalised after approval from Abhishek,” said a senior TMC leader.
Another senior TMC functionary said the Diamond Harbour MP may soon play an even bigger role in the state government. “Abhishek is coming up step by step, we were expecting it. Soon, not only his men but he himself will enter the state Cabinet.”
(L-R) Satyajit Burman, Snehasis Chakraborty, Birbaha Hansda, Tajmul Hossain, Partha Bhowmik, Mamata Banerjee, La Ganeshan, Babul Supriya, Pradip Majumdar, Udayan Guha, Biplab Roy Chowdhury after the oath-taking ceremony as ministers at Raj Bhavan , in Kolkata. (Express photo by Partha Paul)
Old guard on back foot
The increasing number of ministers seen as close to Abhishek is bad news for the party’s old guard, which managed to get the CM to rein in her nephew earlier this year. But they have been on the back foot since Chatterjee’s arrest and expulsion.

The way Covid-19 dealt with the Covid-19 crisis earlier this year was distinct from the TMC government’s stance and the touting of his “Diamond Harbour’ model caused the old guard to register their objections with Mamata. Political strategist Prashant Kishor’s company I-PAC, which rubbed many of these old-timers the wrong way with its inputs, was also seen as Abhishek’s import to the TMC. The rift between the two sides widened over the TMC candidates’ list for 108 civic bodies. The tussle came to the fore after two candidate lists were released for the polls. While one was published by senior leaders such as Partha Chatterjee, Firhad Hakim, Aroop Biswas, and Subrata Bakshi, another popped up on the party’s official website and was said to have been the one formulated by I-PAC.

At the time, Mamata Banerjee stepped in to keep the old guard happy and dissolved all national-level positions in the party, including the national general secretary post that Abhishek had been promoted to following the Assembly election victory in 2021. The TMC chief then carried out an organisational reshuffle. She subsequently reinstated her nephew as the TMC national general secretary and expressed her faith in him as the leader of the party’s next generation.

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© The Indian Express (P) Ltd First published on: 03-08-2022 at 09:41:01 pm
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Jabalpur hospital fire: Police arrest manager, say four partners on the run

Jabalpur hospital fire: Police arrest manager, say four partners on the run

Eight people were killed and five others injured in the fire that broke out at New Life Multi-Speciality Hospital Monday afternoon.

Locals gather at the site after a fire broke out at New Life Multi-speciality Hospital, near Damoh Naka in Jabalpur (PTI Photo)The police in Madhya Pradesh’s Jabalpur booked five people, four partners and the manager of New Life Multi-Speciality Hospital, Tuesday, a day after eight people were killed and five others injured in a fire that broke out at the private facility in the city.
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The manager, identified as Ram Soni, has been arrested whereas the four partners — Dr Nishit Gupta, Dr Suresh Patel, Dr Sanjay Patel and Dr Santosh S — are on the run, said the police.
Superintendent of police Siddharth Bahuguna told The Indian Express: “The First Information Report (FIR) has been registered against the four partners and the manager after instances of gross negligence, such as no proper fire equipment and no planning in entry and exits, were found.”
The FIR has been registered under the Indian Penal Code (IPC)’s Section 304 for culpable homicide not amounting to murder and Section 308 for attempt to commit culpable homicide, added Bahuguna.

According to officials, the hospital in the Chandal Bhata area did not have a proper no-objection certificate (NOC) and a notice was issued to the chief medical and health officer (CMHO) who is the licensing authority over the non-compliance of fire safety norms by the hospital.
“Prima facie it seems that the chief medical and health officer, after getting the notice, had issued a subsequent notice to the hospital but it is all being verified. An inquiry ordered by the chief minister is being conducted by the divisional commissioner and all facts will be verified,” a senior official, requesting anonymity, told The Indian Express.

The fire broke out at 2:40 pm on Monday in the generator room of the hospital owing to a fluctuation in voltage, according to officials. It soon engulfed the building, blocking the single entry and exit to the hospital.
Seven people were rescued from the building after they were found in an unconscious state lying in the corridor with massive burn injuries.
Jabalpur collector Dr Ilayaraja T said on Monday an inquiry headed by an additional district magistrate was ordered into the accident. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced a compensation of Rs 5 lakh to the next of kin of the deceased and Rs 50,000 for the injured.

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First published on: 02-08-2022 at 03:32:24 pm
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Explained: Why ExpressVPN has removed its servers from India, and what happens to users now

Explained: Why ExpressVPN has removed its servers from India, and what happens to users now

ExpressVPN has removed its servers from India, becoming the first major virtual private network (VPN) provider to do so in the aftermath of the recent cybersecurity rules introduced by the country’s cybersecurity agency. The rules require VPN providers to store user data for a period of five years. ExpressVPN said it “refuses to participate in the Indian government’s attempts to limit internet freedom”.

Why has ExpressVPN removed its servers in India?
In a blog post, the British Virgin Island-based company said that with the introduction of the new cybersecurity rules by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), it has made a “very straightforward decision to remove our Indian-based VPN servers”. While ExpressVPN is the first to pull its services from India, other VPN providers like NordVPN have also taken a similar stance.
The company’s decision comes after Minister of State for Electronics and Information and Technology Rajeev Chandrashekhar warned VPN companies that if they do not adhere to the norms, they are free to exit the country. Last month, he had said, “If you’re a VPN that wants to hide and be anonymous about those who use VPNs and you don’t want to go by these rules, then if you want to pull out (from the country), frankly, that is the only opportunity you will have. You will have to pull out.”

What are India’s new VPN norms?
The guidelines, released by CERT-In on April 26, asked VPN service providers along with data centres and cloud service providers, to store information such as names, e-mail IDs, contact numbers, and IP addresses (among other things) of their customers for a period of five years. The government said it wants these details to fight cybercrime, but the industry argues that privacy is the main selling points of VPN services, and such a move would be in breach of the privacy cover provided by VPN platforms.
ExpressVPN described the cybersecurity rules as “broad” and “overreaching”.
“The law is also overreaching and so broad as to open up the window for potential abuse. We believe the damage done by potential misuse of this kind of law far outweighs any benefit that lawmakers claim would come from it,” ExpressVPN said.
It added that while CERT-In’s rules are intended to fight cybercrime, they are “incompatible with the purpose of VPNs, which are designed to keep users’ online activity private”.

So, what happens to Indian users of ExpressVPN?
Indian users of ExpressVPN will still be able to use its service via “virtual” India servers located in Singapore and the UK.
“We will never collect logs of user activity, including no logging of browsing history, traffic destination, data content, or DNS queries. We also never store connection logs, meaning no logs of IP addresses, outgoing VPN IP addresses, connection timestamps, or session durations,” the company said.

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DHFL scam: CBI seizes AgustaWestland helicopter from Pune premises of builder Avinash Bhosale

DHFL scam: CBI seizes AgustaWestland helicopter from Pune premises of builder Avinash Bhosale

The CBI has been carrying out searches at various locations for the past few days to locate assets acquired from the proceeds of the scam, officials said.

The federal probe agency had booked Dewan Housing Finance Ltd (DHFL), its former CMD Kapil Wadhawan, Director Deepak Wadhawan and others on June 20 in the bank fraud case. The CBI has seized an AgustaWestland helicopter from the premises of builder Avinash Bhosale in Pune in connection with the Rs 34,615-crore bank fraud case involving DHFL, officials said Saturday.
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The CBI has been carrying out searches at various locations for the past few days to locate assets acquired from the proceeds of the scam, officials said.
The federal probe agency had booked Dewan Housing Finance Ltd (DHFL), its former CMD Kapil Wadhawan, Director Deepak Wadhawan and others on June 20 in the bank fraud case worth Rs 34,615 crore, making it the biggest such case probed by the agency, officials said.
It was alleged that they had cheated a consortium of 17 banks led by Union Bank of India by siphoning off Rs 34,615 crore bank loans by diverting them using falsified account books of DHFL.
They allegedly used shell companies and a parallel accounting system, known as ‘Bandra Books’, to siphon off public funds in DHFL by disbursing money to fictitious entities as retail loans.

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Indigenous aircraft carrier INS Vikrant handed over to Indian Navy

Indigenous aircraft carrier INS Vikrant handed over to Indian Navy

The Cochin Shipyard on Thursday handed over to the Navy the indigenous aircraft carrier Vikrant, which was designed by the Navy’s in-house Directorate of Naval Design and will likely be commissioned on August 15.
It is named after India’s first aircraft carrier, the Indian Naval Ship (INS) Vikrant, which played a significant role in the 1971 war. The 262-metre-long carrier has a full displacement of close to 45,000 tonnes, much larger and advanced than her predecessor. The aircraft carrier is powered by four gas turbines totalling 88 MW power and has a maximum speed of 28 knots. Built at an overall cost of close to Rs 20,000 crore under a contract between the defence ministry and the shipyard, the project progressed in three phases ending in May 2007, December 2014 and October 2019 respectively. Its keel was laid in February 2009.
The aircraft carrier will be initially with the western naval command.
With an overall indigenous content of 76 per cent, the aircraft carrier is a perfect example of the quest for Aatma Nirbhar Bharat and provides a thrust to the government’s Make in India initiative, the Navy said. With the delivery of Vikrant, India has joined a select group of nations having the niche capability to indigenously design and build an aircraft carrier.
Vikrant has been built with a high degree of automation for machinery operation, ship navigation and survivability, and has been designed to accommodate an assortment of fixed-wing and rotary aircraft. The ship would be capable of operating an air wing consisting of 30 aircraft comprising MIG-29K fighter jets, Kamov-31, MH-60R multi-role helicopters, in addition to indigenously manufactured advanced light helicopters and light combat aircraft. Using a novel aircraft-operation mode known as STOBAR (Short Take-Off but Arrested Landing), the aircraft carrier is equipped with a ski-jump for launching aircraft, and a set of “arrester wires” for their recovery onboard.

The aircraft carrier has a large number of indigenous equipment and machinery from major industrial houses in the country such as BEL, BHEL, GRSE, Keltron, Kirloskar, Larsen & Toubro, Wartsila India etc as well as over 100 micro, small and medium enterprises. The indigenisation efforts has also led to the development of ancillary industries besides the generation of employment opportunities and bolstering of plough-back effect on the economy, both locally and nationally.
A major spin-off of this is the production of indigenous warship-grade steel through a partnership between the Navy, DRDO and the Steel Authority of India (SAIL), which has enabled the country to become self-sufficient with respect to warship steel. Today all the warships being built in the country are being manufactured using indigenous steel, defence officials said.
The delivery of Vikrant was marked by the signing of acceptance documents on behalf of the Navy by the commanding officer-designate of Vikrant, representatives of the naval headquarters and the warship overseeing team (Kochi) and the chairman and managing director on behalf of the Cochin Shipyard.
The aircraft carrier was delivered to the Navy following extensive user-acceptance trials between August 2021 and July 2022, during which performance of its hull, main propulsion, auxiliary equipment, aviation facilities, weapon and sensors as well as its sea-keeping and manoeuvring capabilities were proved to be satisfactory. The delivery is the culmination of a long design, build and trials phase, during which both the Navy and the shipyard had to overcome a multitude of unprecedented technical and logistic challenges, including the Covid pandemic and the changed geopolitical scenario.
The indigenous aircraft carrier will soon be commissioned into the Navy as the INS Vikrant, which will bolster the country’s position in the Indian ocean region and its quest for a blue-water Navy.
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