NEWS

Fresh cases of Covid-19 continued to decline gradually in Kerala, as a result of which new infections recorded in the country dipped below 38,000 on Friday.

India reported 37,868 fresh infections of the virus, down from 39,249 on Thursday. Kerala logged 25,010 cases, a drop from the previous day’s count of 26,200. Daily cases in the state have crossed 30,000 on just one day so far this week (Wednesday), as opposed to three in the previous week.

On Friday, Kerala reported a test positivity rate — the percentage of positive cases out of the total samples tested — of 16.53%, a slight fall from 16.69% on Thursday. The daily TPR in the state had crossed 19% last week.

Farmers putting up their demonstrations outside the Karnal mini-secretariat in Haryana will be meeting the district administration for another round of talks today, following which the impasse is expected to come to an end. The protesting farmers on Friday held the third round of talks – one which they said concluded on a “positive” note – over the August 28 police action which had led to the entire contention. According to a farmer leader, now the fourth round of talks will take place at 9am on Saturday, where all issues are likely to be cleared.

To provide a bit of context, several anti-farm law demonstrators, heading towards Karnal to protest a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) meeting on August 28, were lathi-charged by cops - an incident that left around 10 farmers injured. A video later surfaced and went viral on the internet, in which IAS officer Ayush Sinha was seen allegedly instructing policemen to “break heads” of the cultivators if they breached the security cordon at the BJP meeting.

AIMIM chief and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi has been booked by U.P police over the charges of spoiling communal harmony through alleged provocative speech and violating covid norms during his 3-day poll blitz in the state. Owaisi had raked up the issue of Barabanki mosque demolition, accusing the U.P administration of not following the law and calling the razing of mosque as political demolition. Owaisi had also taken a jibe at PM Modi over triple talaq and made personal remarks against him. 

The AIMIM is planning to contest 100 seats in next year's Uttar Pradesh assembly polls. 

With the dates of the Bhabanipur bypoll, which was necessitated after TMC MLA Sovandeb Chattopadhyay vacated the seat to allow Mamata Banerjee to contest from there to retain her Chief Ministerial post in West Bengal, has stirred a fresh round of electoral slugfest between the Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party in the state.

Banerjee lost to Suvendu Adhikari of the BJP from Nandigram during the assembly election held earlier this year. The TMC supremo has to win this by-poll to retain her chief minister’s post.

Polling for two “deferred adjourned” elections in two other assembly seats Samserganj and Jangirpur of West Bengal will also be held the same day.