7 terrorists killed in 24-hr period in J&K
Seven terrorists, including three Pakistani nationals, were killed in separate encounters across three districts of Jammu and Kashmir since Sunday, police said on Monday. According to police, while three terrorists were killed in two separate encounters in Kupwara and Pulwama districts on Monday, four others were killed on Sunday — two each in Kupwara and Kulgam districts. Of the seven terrorists, six were from Lashkar-e-taiba and one was from Jaish-e-mohammad, said a senior J&K police officer. Kashmir inspector general of police Vijay Kumar said the “elimination of 7 terrorists in less than 24hrs as a big success taking the toll of total killed terrorists to 114 including 32 foreigners so far in this year”. He said operations against militancy will continue.
The angry protests engulfing north India after the announcement of the Agnipath scheme are a severe indictment of the socio-political moment India finds itself in, writes Yamini Aiyar, president and chief executive, CPR. To understand why thousands have resorted to violence, we need to look beyond the specificities of the flawed scheme towards our politics, economy and society, and ask why secure government jobs and their fiscally burdensome pensions matter so much to the aspirations of youth. The government has actively repackaged Agnipath as an employment generation and skill development scheme that will enable the new recruits to access jobs in the private sector (and government paramilitary, defence and ministry positions) once they are decommissioned. But the protesters understand that the true objective of Agnipath is not job creation, but reducing the government’s bloated defence pension and wage bill.
The CBI on Monday apprehended Joint Drugs Controller S Eswara Reddy for allegedly receiving a ₹4 lakh bribe to waive the phase-three clinical trial of Insulin Aspart injection, an underdevelopment product of Biocon Biologics, officials said. The CBI, which had been working on the input for over a month, carried out a raid and Reddy receiving the bribe from Dinesh Dua, director at Synergy Network India on behalf of Biocon Biologics, a subsidiary of Kiran Majumder Shaw-led Biocon. Biocon Biologics denied the allegations saying, “All our product approvals are legitimate and backed by science and clinical data. Our baspart is approved in Europe and many other countries. We follow due regulatory process for all our product approvals by DCGI...WE are co-operating with the investigation agency.”
The entire genome sequencing portal of the Indian SARS-COV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) will soon be opened to the general public, people familiar with the matter said — a move that will help analysts, journalists, and scientists track the variants causing Covid-19 cases. “The portal will have results of genome sequencing updated on a real-time basis for everyone to see and use as they deem fit,” a person from one of the INSACOG members said. “The aim behind opening the portal for the general public is not just to maintain transparency about variants in circulation, but also to prevent... misinformation being spread about disease transmission.” Currently, the consortium periodically releases bulletins on Covid variants in circulation across India based on the latest results from its laboratories. INSACOG is a group of 58 laboratories monitoring the genomic variations of Sars-cov-2 that causes Covid-19.