SITHARAMAN, GEN RAWAT TO FLY TO J&K TO MEET NEW GUV
NEWDELHI: Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, along with army chief General Bipin Rawat, will be flying to Srinagar on Monday to call on newly appointed state governor Satyapal Malik to exchange notes on the security situation in the state and the forthcoming panchayat elections.
This will be the first meeting between the defence minister, army chief and the Jammu and Kashmir governor.
South Block officials said the visit of Sitharaman and Rawat comes at a time when indigenous militant group Hizbul Mujahideen has been pushed to the forefront of action by handlers across the Line of Control (LOC) to orchestrate unrest in the Valley by targeting innocent families of Jammu and Kashmir Police (JKP) personnel.
It has been seen in the past two decades that whenever key American leadership is visiting India or the sub-continent, violence is orchestrated in the Valley in the name of the indigenous freedom struggle.
The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is visiting India on September 5 after paying a fivehour trip to Islamabad. LUCKNOW: Union home minister Rajnath Singh said on Saturday that Maoist rebels, who have hitherto operated from rural and remote areas, have entered the cities because of a crackdown by the central government and are now trying to influence public opinion and spread their ideology in urban India.
“From 126 districts earlier, Naxalite activities have now been restricted to just 10-12 districts because of the action taken by us. But now they [the Maoists] are adopting a new strategy. They have come to the cities and are trying to influence people,” Singh said at the Shikhar Samagam event organised in Lucknow by Hindi daily, Hindustan, a sister publication of HT.
“I have received this information through intelligence agencies,” Singh said.
The arrest of prominent rights activists this week — P Varavara Rao in Hyderabad, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira in Mumbai, Sudha Bharadwaj in Faridabad and Gautam Navalakha in Delhi — led to the coinage of the term ‘urban naxals,’ as Maoists are known in India after the Bengal village where a rebellion broke out in the ’60s.
The home minister justified the arrest of the five in connection with the January 1 violence in Bhima Koregaon.
“Such arrests have been made before. The charges are serious, like conspiracy to destabilise the government, ideology to promote violence. But now the matter is before the Supreme Court and it will take a decision ,” Singh said.
When asked about government attempts to control social media, especially when it was the Bharatiya Janata Party that had made maximum use of it to come to power in 2014, Singh said, “We did not win because of social media but because of the work (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi did in Gujarat. We are not against social media, but our responsibility is to stop fake news, pornography, etc. How do we allow children to see such things?”