NEWS

The Congress on Wednesday levelled money laundering charges against a company linked to Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat's Industrial Adviser K S Panwar, saying the CM's claim of zero tolerance to corruption is no more than a slogan. Moving a notice for the suspension of the scheduled business of the Uttarakhand Assembly on the third day of its winter session to debate the issue, Congress MLA Kaji Nijamuddin claimed the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had written to the state government in June about the firm's involvement in "illegal activities".

It was alleged in the notice that Panwar had quit as the director of Social Mutual Benefit Company Ltd after becoming the chief minister's Industrial advisor and it is now being run by his wife and brother. Levelling money laundering charges of worth over Rs 200 crore against the firm, Nijamudding said the matter is of immediate public importance and deserves to be debated in the House by putting aside the scheduled business of the day.

In her first reaction after Amit Shah's visit to West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee accused the Home Minister of spreading falsehood on the development of the state. Describing the figures given by the Home Minister on the position of Bengal on various parameters as "garbage of lies",  Banerjee said she would give a detailed reply to his accusations on Tuesday.

"I want to tell Amit-ji that you are the home minister and it does not suit you to shell out lies provided by your party workers without cross-checking," Banerjee said.

Responding to Shah's accusations, the TMC supremo said, "I will only speak on two things today. He said we are a zero in industry, we are number one in MSME. He also said, we have not made village roads, we are number one on that count too and this information has been shared by the Government of India."

The Telangana government has announced that it will recruit people for nearly 50,000 vacancies in state government jobs. More vacancies will be notified for jobs in police, education and health departments.

The state government announced that the notifications would be issued soon to fill all the vacant posts in the state including for teachers and police posts.

Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao gave a green signal to fill the vacancies on December 13. The details of government departments, agencies and posts were handed over to the government.

The Telangana CM directed the authorities to issue a notification as early as possible after making the assessment.

The average air quality remained "very poor" in Ghaziabad, Noida and Greater Noida, and "poor" in Gurgaon and Faridabad, according to a 24-hour data issued by a government agency on Monday. Presence of pollutant PM 2.5 and PM 10 also remained high in the five immediate neighbours of Delhi, according to the air quality index (AQI) maintained by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).

According to the index, an AQI between zero and 50 is considered 'good', 51 and 100 'satisfactory', 101 and 200 'moderate', 201 and 300 'poor', 301 and 400 'very poor', and 401 and 500 'severe'. The average 24-hour AQI at 4 pm on Monday was 391 in Ghaziabad, 366 in Greater Noida, 363 in Noida, 289 in Faridabad and 271 in Gurgaon, according to CPCB's Sameer app.