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The Centre’s plan to restart vaccine shipments next month will help the world fight covid, but we mustn’t run short of doses to vaccinate under-18s and give older Indians booster shots

About five months after India stopped vaccine exports to deploy its entire output against a ferocious second wave of covid, the country is ready to resume outbound supplies. On Monday, Mansukh Mandaviya, who replaced Harsh Vardhan as health minister in a cabinet rejig after our summer infections ebbed and began to plateau in July, declared an intent to rebegin this October, when the ministry expects a surplus to be available.

This should come as a big relief for global vaccination efforts, particularly in countries that found themselves short of doses once we suffered a vax-inadequacy jolt at home and halted shipments.

US President Joe Biden will hold bilateral talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the margins of the Quad meeting in Washington on Friday, the White House revealed on Monday. Biden will also meet separately with Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, it said.

The two bilaterals are expected provide clarity, among other things, on the new AUKUS alliance involving Australia, UK, and US, aimed ostensibly at countering China's growing influence in the Indo-Pacific region. Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison is the fourth leader in the first ever in-person Quad meeting that will take place later the same day.

While AUKUS is largely a military alliance involving transfer of top-tier military technology including nuclear propulsion systems, the Quad, which is also aimed at countering China, has a largely economic orientation given Japan's non-nuclear, non-militaristic commitments and Washington's residual unease with New Delhi's defense tie-ups with Russia and France. India has often perceived the US as an unreliable and sometimes reluctant military partner whose technology transfer is constrained by legislative hurdles.

Bringing a halt to all speculations, Charanjit Singh Channi was declared as the leader of Punjab Congress Legislative Party (CLP) on Sunday (September 19).

Channi, the successor of  Captian Amarinder Singh, will be the first Dalit Chief Minister of Punjab. 

Channi was the Technical Educational and Industrial Training Minister in the outgoing Amarinder Singh Cabinet. He is a three-time MLA from Chamkaur Sahib constituency. 

The Congress MLA was also a hard critic of  Singh for some time, IANS reported. Channi served as the Leader of Opposition in the Punjab Assembly during the Parkash Singh Badal-led Akali-BJP government from 2015 to 2016. 

New Delhi: Congress veteran Amarinder Singh on Saturday resigned as the chief minister of Punjab, capping months of a power tussle that had polarised the ruling party in the state headed for elections in just about four months. "I feel humiliated," Singh told reporters outside the Punjab Raj Bhawan after submitting his resignation to Governor Banwarilal Purohit.

"I have resigned, let them make anyone (next CM)," he further said. He submitted his resignation along with that of his council of ministers, his media adviser said. Singh's resignation came just ahead of a crucial meeting of the Congress Legislature Party on Saturday evening.

"I spoke to the Congress president in the morning and I told her that I am resigning today," Amarinder told reporters. "They called the MLAs to Delhi twice and now convened a CLP here in Chandigarh today," he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday expressed gratitude to everyone who wished him on his birthday, saying he was “humbled and overwhelmed beyond words.” PM Modi also thanked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers who had pushed for record vaccination as a part of the ‘Seva and Samarpan’ campaign.

In a series of tweets, the prime minister said that he cherishes every wish and it gives him the strength to work harder for the nation.

“I am humbled and overwhelmed beyond words. To each and every person who has wished me today - I would like to express gratitude from the bottom of my heart,” he tweeted.