NEWS

The West Bengal Assembly election is a contest of narratives: Duare Sarkar versus Double-engine Sarkar. While Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is promising to take government at the doorsteps of Bengali voters and is the one-woman-army in the battle, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the face of the double-engine narrative with Dilip Ghosh as his lieutenant in Bengal.

Lok Sabha MP and Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh has just announced that he would not be contesting the upcoming assembly election. Dilip Ghosh said he will supervise the Bengal election for the BJP.

It comes as a surprise given that Dilip Ghosh is considered a chief ministerial contender and that the BJP has fielded four other Members of Parliament in the Bengal election. Babul Supriyo, Locket Chatterjee, Nitish Pramanik and Swapan Dasgupta have made it to the BJP's list of candidates for the Bengal election.

The Madras high Court has upheld the postal ballot facility extended by Election Commission to absentee voters including persons above 80 years of age, persons with disabilities, essential services staff and Covid-19 patients/suspects, terming it as an ‘inclusive’ measure introduced by the poll panel in exercise of its plenary powers under Article 324 of the Constitution.

In its ruling on the plea challenging legality of the Section 60 (c) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 and the corresponding rules extending postal ballot facility to these absentee voters, the high court said “it must be acknowledged that all that the Election Commission has done here is to be inclusive and allow certain classes of persons who would have been excluded from exercising their franchise the right to use the postal ballot and participate in the celebration of the festival of democracy”.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday (March 18) urged the Centre to open COVID-19 vaccination for all and claimed that if the eligibility criteria is removed, all of Delhi can be vaccinated in three months. 

If the Centre allows vaccination for everyone and we get sufficient supply of vaccine then we can vaccinate everyone in Delhi within 3 months. The system should be decentralised and states should be allowed to vaccinate on war footing, in their own way,” the Delhi CM said. 

Addressing a press conference, Kejriwal also said that everyone except those below the age of 18 should get COVID-19 vaccination. “Appeal to the Centre to relax vaccination eligibility criteria, open it for all except below 18 years,” the Delhi CM said. 

“I appeal to the Centre that their current guideline for vaccination centres is very stringent. We now have 2 months of experience in vaccination. So we're writing to Centre to relax some parameters so that vaccination can be done at more centres. We'll take all precautions,” he added. 

The Gujarat government has closed schools in eight metropolitan cities in the state due to the rising number of Covid-19 cases. Offline or physical classes will not be taking place in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Rajkot, Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, Gandhinagar, and Junagadh.

Online classes will be held for students in these cities. The other cities in Gujarat face no such restriction and parents can choose if they want their kids to study online or offline.

When did Gujarat schools reopen?

The government of Gujarat decided to reopen schools for the students of classes 6 to 8 from today, February 18, after being shut down for 11 months due to the unsafe environment created by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.