Hindu man killed for marrying Muslim woman, 2 held: Police
comprises Kashmiri Pandits who were displaced at the peak of militancy in the region in the 1990s. “It was ensured by the commission that every assembly constituency shall be contained entirely in one district and the lowest administrative units i.e. patwar circles (and wards in Jammu Municipal Corporation) were not broken and were kept in a single assembly constituency,” said the panel in a statement. The panel’s order, which came after 26 months of deliberation and was notified by the Union government on Thursday, was opposed by several political parties in Kashmir who said that the BJP and its proxies will be punished by voters whenever elections are held. In a tweet, the National Conference (NC) said it was studying the impact of the commission report on individual assembly segments in the UT but “no amount of gerrymandering will change the ground reality”.
“We are studying the implications of these recommendations for individual assembly constituencies,” NC tweeted. “No amount of gerrymandering will change the ground reality which is that whenever elections are held the voter will punish the BJP & its proxies for what they have done to J&K over the last 4 years,” it added.
The delimitation commission, which comprises former Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai, chief election commissioner Sushil Chandra and chief electoral officer of J&K KK Sharma, was set up in March 2020 with five parliament members from the UT as associate members. The delimitation process is important because it is the first step towards holding fresh elections in the region that has been under central rule since 2019.
J&K lost its special status and statehood on August 5, 2019, when the Centre moved to void Article 370 of the Constitution. At a landmark all-party meeting in June last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told leaders of political parties that statehood will be restored after fresh elections are held in the region, on the basis of the delimitation process.
But parties from the region, which remains bitterly opposed to the scrapping of its special status, want statehood to be restored before delimitation and elections – a demand rejected by the Centre.
The panel held deliberations with 242 delegations, received hundreds of representations and met approximately 1,600 stakeholders over a period of more than two years. “Virtually every constituency has been affected as the commission undertook a comprehensive review to ensure that the people get adequate and fair representation,” said a person familiar with the matter, requesting anonymity.
Assembly seats in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir were last redrawn in 1995, based on the 1981 Census.
The commission put districts into three categories based on whether the terrain was plain, hilly or a mix of both. The average population per seat was worked out to be around 136,000, and districts were given a margin of plus or minus 10% while proposing the allocation.
The stage will now shift to the Election Commission, which will have to begin rationalisation of polling stations and a summary revision of the electoral rolls to prepare for possible polls in the UT. The commission used the patwar circle, which is the smallest administrative unit and/or wards in the Jammu Municipal Corporation, for redrawing constituencies. It reserved nine seats for STS – six in Jammu and three in Kashmir – and seven seats for Scheduled Castes (SC), all in Jammu . It recommended to the government that at least two members, one of which should be a woman, should be nominated to the assembly from Kashmiri migrant communities, and such members may be given powers at par with nominated members of the Puducherry assembly. It also suggested that the government give nominations to displaced people from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
Many constituencies were renamed as well, and the commission said the decision was based on demands from the public and local representatives. “These name changes included naming Tangmarg-ac as Gulmarg-ac, Zoonimar-ac as Zaidibal-ac, Sonwar-ac as Lal
Chowk-ac, Padder-ac as Padder-nagseni-ac, Kathua North-ac as Jasrota-ac, Kathua South-ac as Kathua-ac, Khour-ac as Chhamb-ac, Mahore-ac as Gulabhgarh-ac, Darhal-ac as Budhal-ac,” the press statement said. The commission took into account “geographical features, means of communication, public convenience, contiguity of areas”.
Delimitation has been a contentious process in J&K, and the panel’s proposals met stiff resistance from members of the opposition parties. The former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti-led People’s Democratic Party boycotted the process from the start, with the National Conference (NC) coming to the table last year but rejecting the Commission’s recommendations in its present state. NC members argued that the very constitutionality of the Commission comes under scrutiny as a case is already pending before the apex court. It has also stated that the process of seat sharing has been in a biased and unfair manner, adding that it will not be a signatory to the report. People’s Democratic Party (PDP) leader and former member of legislative council Firdous Tak alleged that the panel acted as a “frontal organisation of the BJP rather than a constitutional body”.
“The commission acted as a frontal organisation of the BJP rather than a constitutional body. But we are sure that irrespective of the sinister designs the right wing organisation has for Jammu & Kashmir, it will face public anger and defeat whenever it goes to seek a mandate,” Tak added.
BJP leader and former deputy chief minister Kavinder Gupta welcomed the final draft.
“People in J&K waited for it since long with a hope that discrimination with them shall end forever. The panel has taken into consideration aspects such as area, topography, accessibility and population before preparing this report,” he said.
“The opposition time and again has raised questions against the report. May I ask them that when delimitation was conducted in 1996, why did the government decide to freeze it till 2026?”. The opposition has always discriminated and misled people, he said.
“We will continue to have consultations and address the concerns India has. And hopefully we can find a mutually acceptable solution,” said Samira Asma, the assistant director-general for Data, Analytics and Delivery for Impact at WHO, during the release of the report on Thursday.
In a statement issued simultaneously, the Indian government outlined four grounds on which it objected to WHO’S assessment: First, mathematical projections are unnecessary since India has a robust death registration system (the data for 2020 from this was released earlier this week); second, some of the source data was obtained from media reports; third, a base used for calculations was itself an estimation and “ignored actual data”; and fourth, there were flaws in WHO’S assumptions about how the disease spread across various parts of the country.
“…WHO has released the excess mortality estimates without adequately addressing India’s concerns,” the statement said. On May 3, the Union home ministry published the official birth and death registration numbers for 2020, showing a 6.2% increase in the number of deaths recorded in the year compared to 2019 – or 474,806 in absolute terms.
According to WHO’S data, the number of excess deaths in the country in the same period was 832,531. To be sure, the worst of the Covid-19’s impact in India was felt the following year in 2021 when the Delta variant tore through the country, inundating hospitals with more patients than they could handle and triggering an oxygen supply crisis.
Many deaths were estimated to have taken place outside of hospitals, potentially leaving them out of the official statistics – a phenomenon seen in most countries. In order to estimate this, epidemiologists and WHO used a measure known as all-cause excess mortality. The premise for this is that by determining deaths that take place on average, and comparing it with the number of deaths that took place during the pandemic years, can yield excess mortality that can be attributed to Covid-19, whether or not they were recorded officially.
The WHO estimate showed that till August 2020, a period when
India spent most of its pandemic days under a hard lockdown that began in late March, there were approximately 62,000 fewer deaths than previous years.
Deaths began to rise from September, 2020, coinciding with the first waves in many states. More than half of the excess deaths, at 2.7 million, took place during the peak of the second nationwide wave in the months of April, May and June in 2021.
The report said most of the excess deaths (84%) are estimated to be concentrated in South-east Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Some 68% of excess deaths are concentrated in just 10 countries globally, it added.
Experts said WHO’S estimates mean that India alone accounts for nearly half of the unreported Covid-19 deaths. “India’s missing deaths of about 4.2 million (that is, 4.7million excess deaths of which 0.5 million were reported) accounts for about half of the global missing deaths at 9 million 15 million is estimated to be the true toll while 6 million are recorded),” said Prabhat Jha, epidemiologist and founding director of the Canada-based Centre for Global Health Research. Jha said even the data released by the government earlier this week appears to support the new estimates, if excess deaths are calculated by taking an average of deaths recorded in past years. “The 2020 deaths should be compared against an average of previous years, not just 2019. So, compared to 2018-19, there were 0.82mn excess deaths [in 2020]. ”
HYDERABAD: A 25-year-old Hindu man who married a Muslim woman was killed by his wife’s brother in a suspected hate crime in Hyderabad late on Wednesday, police said, adding that two people were arrested in connection with the case.
The woman, too, was injured in the attack, police added.
The victim was identified as Billipuram Nagaraju, from Marpally village in Vikarabad district. He was working as a salesman in an automobile showroom in Hyderabad.
“We have arrested the two killers – Syed Mobind Ahmed (30) who is the brother of the deceased’s wife and his friend Mohammad Masood Ahmed (29). We are producing the accused before the local court for judicial custody,” deputy commissioner of police Sunpreet Singh said.
The DCP said a case was registered at Saroornagar police station against the accused under Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code, besides Section 3 (2)(V) of SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 2015, as the victim belonged to the Mala community – listed as a
J&K DELIMITATION
WHO COVID TOLL
scheduled caste.
According to Singh, Nagaraju was in a relationship with 23-yearold Syed Ashrin Sultana for more than five years. “Mobin Ahmed had warned his sister several times against moving around with Nagaraju..,” the DCP said.
On January 30 this year, the couple eloped. The following day, they got married at an Arya Samaj Mandir, the DCP said. Sultana converted to Hinduism and changed her name to Pallavi, said the senior police officer.
“On February 1, Sultana’s family members filed a missing person case in Balanagar police station and started searching for her,” Singh said.
According to the DCP, the couple fled to Visakhapatnam, where they stayed at a friend’s place for two months. They moved back to Hyderabad and were staying in a rented house in Saroor Nagar. The officer said accused Mobin Ahmed tracked down Nagaraju to a showroom in Malakpet. On Wednesday night, Mobin and Masood followed the couple when they were returning home, he added.
As they approached Panjala Anil Kumar Colony, the accused waylaid the two. “Mobin pushed the couple down from the motor bike and started beating Nagaraju with an iron rod indiscriminately on his head. Masood took out a knife and stabbed him indiscriminately. After confirming that Nagaraju died, the accused fled the spot...”
Sultana, who tried to stop her brother, was also assaulted and pushed away, he added.
Based on CCTV footage, the police tracked the accused and arrested them within hours, the DCP added.
“Among the people involved in the killing, I only recognise my brother. My husband Nagaraju was beaten at the signal in front of everyone. I begged the onlookers for help but to no avail,” Sultana was quoted as saying by ANI.