NEWS

The Army on Sunday said the security situation in the Kashmir valley is under control and there is nothing to worry about the fallout of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. The General Officer Commanding of the Army’s 15 Corps, also known as the Chinar Corps, Lieutenant General D P Pandey, said this to reporters on the sidelines of an event here.

“This is a playground and I do not want to comment about the outsiders. But remember, the security situation here is in our control and there is nothing to worry about it,” he said, replying to a question on the challenges for the security establishment in Kashmir in the wake of Afghanistan’s takeover by the Taliban. The GOC was the chief guest at the final match of the Kashmir Premier League cricket tournament, which was played at the Sher-e-Kashmir stadium.

With recent projections that the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic could hit anytime between September and October, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) projects that it could be less severe than the recent second wave. Dr Samiran Panda, head of ICMR’s Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases (ECD) division, said that nobody can predict the third wave for the whole country. “It will now make sense only if district or state-specific data are used for specific projections. The wave may rear its head only if states remove restrictions prematurely and there is a new transmission-efficient variant that could in turn cause a huge increase in caseload, or there is clear violation of Covid protocols at the population level,” Dr Panda said.

Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s August 15 announcement, the Railways has floated a tender for 58 Vande Bharat train sets in order to roll out 75 such trains during the 75 weeks of “Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav”. At present, only two such trains are in operation—both from Delhi. One goes to Katra and the other to Varanasi.

According to the tender, 102 such trains will be delivered to the Railways by March 2024, an official said, adding 75 of them will be available by August 15 next year.

New Delhi:  Around 10 people were injured on Saturday as police allegedly lathicharged a group of farmers disrupting traffic movement on a highway while heading towards Karnal to protest against a BJP meeting. Besides Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, state BJP president Om Prakash Dhankar and other senior leaders of the party were present at the meeting.

The state police drew severe criticism for the action against the farmers, and several roads and highways, including toll plazas, were blockaded at different places in protest. The affected routes included the Fatehabad-Chandigarh, Gohana-Panipat, Jind-Patiala highways, Ambala-Kurukshetra, the Delhi highway near Karnal, Hisar-Chandigarh and Kalka-Zirakpur national highways.Several commuters were left stranded at highways for hours.