Congress losing support in urban areas: AAP

NEWDELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party said on Thursday the Congress’ performance in the local body elections in Maharashtra indicated that the grand old party had lost support in urban areas and it would meet similar fate in the coming Delhi MCD polls.

“The real story of the BMC polls is the decimation of the Congress. Since 2010, urban India continues to hate the Congress and its leadership,” said AAP leader Ashish Talwar, who is also incharge of Delhi.

Talwar said the Congress would repeat its performance of the 2015 assembly elections.

HTC Anantnag was among the worst affected areas during the 2016 summer unrest with at least 25 deaths in four months.

The soldiers have been identified as Lance Naik Gh Mohi ud din from Marhama area in Bijbehara, Sapper Sreejith MJ from Paruthipully village of Palakkad in Kerala and Sepoy Vikas Singh Gurjar of Andhyakhara Nodoti village in Karouli district of Rajasthan .

Militants fired at the 44 Rashtriya Rifles patrol team in the Mulu Chitragam area of Shopian on Thursday morning. The men came under fire at around 2am as they were returning after a search operation in Kungnoo.

There are indications that now both parties will try to stake their claim over the mayor’s post in a bid to drive a hard bargain. Going by their seat tallies, however, there may be little alternative to a postpoll alliance on the lines of the one in the state government.

CM Devendra Fadnavis said it was an “unprecedented victory for the BJP”, a vote in favour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s agenda for transparency and development.

In an indication that a tug of war over the mayor’s seat was on the cards, the BJP’s city chief Ashish Shelar said it had an understanding with four independents with whose help the party’s tally would inch ahead of the Sena’s.

Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray pointed out that the city had backed Sena for a fifth term in a row and it would install its own mayor.

“I am not a political commentator and I will not give any commentary. I only do what I know best, and I will do it… what is the need to hurry (about talks of an alliance)?” Thackeray said. while interacting with the media after the results.

“Even in the future, if anyone does any such thing, we will raise the issue and protest,” said Satendra Awana of ABVP .

The right-wing student group alleged that it has videos of students and teachers shouting anti-India slogans.

They found support from Union junior home minister Kiren Rijiju, who said freedom of expression in the country does not give the right to make college campuses a base for anti-national activity.

Miffed at the ABVP’s alleged highhandedness, members of Left-wing student outfits and Ramjas students and teachers organized a protest march on Wednesday . But students owing allegiance to the ABVP swooped down on the marchers.

Several students, teachers and journalists were assaulted in the scuffle that continued for hours. A posse of policemen made a feeble attempt to control the situation and detained some protesters, but some of the cops took sides. It became evident when three of them were found guilty of abating the violence and suspended on Thursday.

Also, cops have been accused of confiscating and destroying mobile phones of journalists and students making videos or taking pictures of the punch-up.

“The incident could have been handled in a better way. There was no need to snatch mobile phones. We told our officers that if people make videos, let them,” said Delhi Police spokesperson Dependra Pathak.

Police had registered a case of rioting against unknown people, which gives an escape route to those involved in the clashes that sent several students to hospital with injuries.

Almost 300 students from Delhi University and JNU demonstrated outside the Delhi Police heardquarters , demanding they be allowed to file FIRs against ABVP members.

Special commissioner (law and order) SBK Singh said they will publish a notice after which students can submit their complaints. The complaints and evidence will be put together to form a single FIR.

Human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar sought a report from the university over Wednesday’s violence, though in the morning he said “the government will not intervene, as DU is an autonomous institution”.

The campus was turned into a fortress with heavy police deployment. No classes were held at Ramjas College. The official reason for suspended classes was a flower show at the university.

The boards will be hard to miss since they come in two sizes — 5mx2m and 3mx1.5m.

Text messages in red will alert commuters about congestions; those in green will suggest a jam-free detour that the motorists can take.

The boards are installed in spots where congestions are least likely to happen even if a motorist slows down to read the overhead message. In case of normal traffic, the boards will say so. “We have been putting traffic alerts for long on Twitter and Facebook. We are taking a step further to forewarn motorists,” Bhatnagar said.

A team at the traffic police headquarters in Todapur will feed updates to the displays through a 3G communication network.

The DMRC and the public works department have been asked to let the traffic police know about their constructions and repairs, or any new pothole that have sprung up on a particularstretch. Atnight,whenthe traffic volume shrinks, the boards will flash messages on road safety.

That’s one more appendage to beat a jam, but not a lasting solution to curb snarls which clog roads and bring traffic to a crawl.

According to Delhi Traffic Police, approximately 200,000 vehicles cross the Ashram intersection near Moolchand flyover during peak hours every day. Experts said unless immediate steps are taken to unclog its streets, Delhi may find itself crawling at 5kmph — the pace of a human walking — in the next 10 years.

A person travelling 40km in a car through rush-hour traffic spends an average 3.43 hours on the road, a 2016 study found.