NEWS

New Delhi: The Maharashtra police’s special force killed 16 Maoists during a fierce gunfight on Sunday in the thick forests of Kaswapur in south Gadchiroli district. This is the only Maoists infested district on the state.

Sunday’s deaths dealt one of the biggest blows to the extremist rebels in recent years, and police said the casualties included two senior activists and three women. At least 10 other rebels were hurt in the encounter that raged over three hours, police said, adding the injured managed to escape.

“We had information about the movement of Perimili dalam of the CPI (Maoist) near Tadgaon. So, we launched an operation on Saturday evening. On Sunday, around 9.30am, an encounter ensued that continued for hours. This is the first time that two divisional committee members of the CPI (Maoist) have been killed in one operation,” said DIG (Gadchiroli range) Ankush Shinde.

New Delhi: Efforts made by JamiatUlama e Hind leader MehmoodMadani has given him some hope with a series of successful Dalit-Muslim conferences over the past couple of months in states such as Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Telangana. Muslims leaders and Dalit leaders are trying to forge a joint “social justice” movement in the run-up to the 2019 general election.
The MahmoodMadani-led faction of the JamiatUlama-e-Hind, a prominent Muslim organisation, which led these conferences, said the purpose was to forge “long-term social alliances”. The All India Majlis-e-Mushawarat (AIMMM), whose members include those from the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), have also attended these conferences.
Four major Dalit-Muslim conferences have been held so far on the theme “Mulk Do Rahe Par” (the country is on divergent paths): in Delhi on February 22, in Lucknow on March 10, in Bengaluru on March 8 and in Hyderabad on March 21.

New Delhi: The Gujarat High Court on Friday refused to dismiss the petition filed against election of Ahmed Patel to RajyaSabha in 2017. Justice BelaTrivedi is hearing BJP leader Balwantsinh Rajput’s petition challenging Patel’s election.

Ahmed Patel’s lawyer P S Champaneri sought dismissal of Rajput’s petition at the “threshold level”, for not serving on respondents an attested copy of the petition as required under the law.
Rajput’s lawyer NirupamNanavati had argued that this was a minor flaw, which could be corrected easily.
The court had earlier also ordered Rajput to remove the Election Commission as a respondent. It had disallowed Rajput from challenging the EC’s order invalidating the votes of rebel Congress MLAs Raghavjee Patel and BholabhaiGohel for showing ballot papers to the BJP’s polling agent.
Senior advocate KapilSibal, arguing for Ahmed Patel, had contended at an earlier hearing that MLAs are supposed to vote for their party candidates, according to a Supreme Court judgement.

New Delhi: With former minister in the Gujarat government Maya Kodnani, 63, being given benefit of the doubt by the high court that said the testimonies of witnesses were inconsistent, victims of the communal massacre in Ahmedabad’s NarodaPatiya in 2002 have been planning to appeal against the acquittal of former state minister of charges that she incited the rioters, calling the Gujarat high court’s decision “disappointing”.
The former women and child development minister was among 32 people convicted by a lower court for leading mobs into the predominantly Muslim neighbourhood on February 28, 2002, part of statewide attacks on Muslims in the aftermath of the deaths of Hindu pilgrims aboard the Sabarmati Express in Godhra the night before.