News18 Daybreak | Assam NRC, Karunanidhi Health and and Other Stories You May Have Missed
In case you missed it
NRC upheaval: Ilim Uddin, a middle age successful businessman, and politician, who fought for an assembly seat in 2011, alleged that his wife Mamataz Dewan was harassed in the name of being an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh. A case under Foreigners Act was referred by the border police to foreigner’s tribunal in 1997 and the tribunal upheld her Indian citizenship in 2016 after a decade-long legal battle. The persons, who have been declared as Indian national by foreigner’s tribunal since 2015, will have to wait till the complete draft is published.
The final draft of Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) is set for release on Monday amid tight security. Six months after 3.29 crore people applied for inclusion of their names in the National Register of Citizens (NRC) of Assam and 1.90 crore were included in the first draft which was published on December 31, a few more crores of people in Assam will be eagerly looking forward to the publication of the second part of the draft NRC. Track the live updates here.
Karunanidhi's Health Check: Ninety-four-year-old DMK chief M Karunanidhi who is being treated for fever due to urinary tract infection gave everyone a scare after his condition went back to being critical. However, the latest medical bulletin says his condition went through a "transient setback" and is now stable. Karunanidhi was shifted to a private hospital from his residence on Saturday due to a sudden dip in blood pressure. He has been admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of Kauvery Hospital in Chennai. Meanwhile, several politicians including Vice President Venkaiah Naidu landed in Chennai to pay a visit to the ailing DMK patriarch. According to reports, he was responding well to treatment.
Useful friendships: Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a frontal attack on the opposition for criticizing him over his proximity with industrialists while ignoring the poor farmers of the country. The Prime Minister on Sunday said that there is nothing wrong in associating with industrialists, even Mahatma Gandhi had done the same with the Birla family. Speaking at the launch of 81 investment projects in Lucknow along with several industrialists, the PM attacked the opposition and said that he did not hesitate in standing with them as his "intentions" are clear.
Horrid act: A pregnant goat was allegedly sodomized by eight men in Haryana’s Mewat after which the animal died. Police is now waiting for the reports of a medical examination to confirm the assault.
Another lynched: One person died on the spot and another was grievously injured when a mob beat up two suspected robbers at a village in the tribal-dominated Dahod district of Gujarat late on Saturday night. Police have registered a case of murder against the mob. Even as one person was lynched and another seriously injured, villagers of Kali Mahudi village, where the incident took place, claimed that a band of about 20 persons attacked their village with the intention of robbery.
Swimming hospitals: In another instance of the country’s crumbling health infrastructure, a government hospital in Patna was flooded after incessant rains in the state, forcing doctors to tend to patients in knee-deep water. Visuals showed fish swimming inside the waterlogged ICU of Nalanda Medical College and Hospital, the second-largest government hospital in the state capital which is spread over 100 acres and has around 750 beds.
Death of memory: In India, more than 4 million people are estimated to be suffering from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, giving the country the third highest caseload in the world, after China and the US. India’s dementia and Alzheimer’s burden is forecast to reach almost 7.5 million by the end of 2030. Yet, Alzheimer’s in India is a hidden problem. Only a tiny fraction of patients are formally diagnosed or treated. Here's what it's like to live with Alzheimer’s in India.
Feeling blessed: Photographs of a senior official of Uttar Pradesh Police kneeling before chief minister Yogi Adityanath have gone viral, stoking a new controversy. The police officer, identified as Praveen Kumar Singh, shared the photographs on his Facebook profile with the caption “feeling blessed”.
Shelter home horror: A senior bureaucrat in Bihar was baffled on meeting an elderly man, who wanted to get out of an old age shelter home but couldn’t. It is then that the bureaucrat along with TISS's Mohammad Tarique decided to audit shelter homes in Bihar. What he found was horrific – rape, beating, even murder. Read the News18 report to find out how shelter homes have become a safe haven for sexual abuse.
Tohana temple of abuse: It was around 1984 that Billu moved to Tohana in Haryana’s Fatehabad district and set up his roadside stall selling samosas and jalebis. Billu was doing well. Cut to July 2018, self-styled Baba Amarpuri aka Billu was arrested last week for allegedly raping and blackmailing over 120 women. He is said to have filmed the various times he committed the crime and the videos went viral, leading to his arrest last week.
Jharkhand starvation deaths: Stories of deaths due to hunger and starvation may seem unreal in the 21st century. Not in Jharkhand, where people even resort to eating rats to make sure they don’t sleep with an empty stomach. Twelve deaths allegedly due to hunger over the last one year have led to panic among the surviving villagers and denial by the government. Read New18’s four-part special on Jharkhand starvation deaths.
Agree or disagree?
The Congress has indicated that it would play an enabler in weaving a broad anti-BJP coalition, but it won’t be a cakewalk either. The BJP has built an apparatus that is not easy to defeat in many states. To beat Modi magic, Rahul Gandhi plans to focus on three main things - find the people in individual constituencies who did not vote for the Congress, develop a strategy and win back their trust. But Nagpur-based journalist Jaideep Hardikar writes that the ‘biggest task’ as Gandhi puts it of winning back his voters, should have been his first priority.
At midnight of 14 August, 1985, the people of Assam believed that it was their tryst with destiny. A five-year-old agitation against illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh had come to an end with the signing of a tripartite treaty between the All Assam Students Union, the Assam Government and the Rajiv Gandhi-led government at the centre. However, it was a tryst that was not to be. The updated National Register of Citizens will be published at midnight of 31st July, a move that could be a potential disruptor in many ways. Born and brought up in Assam, Rituparna Bhuyan writes how the ongoing NRC exercise is in response to a long-neglected problem.