India

New Delhi, Feb 7 (PTI) The National Green Tribunal has slapped a penalty of Rs 25 crore on Vedanta group firm Hindustan Zinc Ltd for violation of environmental norms in Rajasthan's Bhilwara district.

The green panel said environmental law violations cannot be taken lightly when the violators are entities like the present project proponent (PP) and victims are poor villagers.

Kanpur: The Income Tax Department has reportedly conducted raids at the offices of a Kanpur-based jeweller Rajender Aggarwal and recovered a huge amount of cash.

According to the information, the search operation is going on for the last twenty four hours.

The IT sources claimed that the jeweller has not given any satisfactory answer in this regard.

The IT teams reached Swaroop Nagar and his residential address at the Civil Lines area and began scanning various important papers.

Bijnor (UP), Feb 7 (PTI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi's first physical rally in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh on Monday was cancelled due to inclement weather and he will now virtually address the election meeting, BJP sources said.

Arrangements had been made at the Bardaman college ground here for the prime minister's rally but due to bad weather he could not arrive here, they said.

The prime minister would now address the people virtually.

Agartala, Feb 7 (PTI) BJP MLAs Sudip Roy Barman and Ashish Saha on Monday resigned from the Tripura assembly, and also gave up the membership of their party.

Roy Barman and Saha met Speaker Ratan Chakraborty and handed over their resignation letters.

Roy Barman told reporters that they will travel to New Delhi later in the day and finalise the future course of action amid speculation that they may join the Congress on Tuesday.

New Delhi, Feb 7 (PTI) Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit, who is currently a political science professor at Savitribai Phule University, has been appointed as the VC of Jawaharlal Nehru University, according to Ministry of Education officials.

Pandit will be the first woman Vice Chancellor of JNU.

"Her appointment is for a period of five years," a senior MoE official said.

Kanpur: Two smugglers of turtles were caught during a checking push on Ramadevi flyover here. As many as 1868 turtles were recovered.

They were identified as Javed and Mohammad Farookh, both residents of Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua district.

Kanpur STF received specific information about these smugglers. The checking on the basis of the input was done on the Ramadevi flyover here.

Soon, a truck was seized by the officials conducting the checking. The arrested ones were smuggling these turtles under the pretext of mica.

NEW DELHI, Feb 6 (NNN-PTI) – India has registered 107,474 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, with the tally reaching 42,188,138 today, the health ministry’s data showed.

The ministry also reported 865 deaths since yesterday morning, bringing the death toll to 501,979.

There are 1,225,011 active COVID-19 cases in the country, despite a fall of 106,637 active cases during the past 24 hours. This was the 13th consecutive day with declining active cases in the country.

Hyderabad, Feb 5 (PTI) Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao was conspicuously absent during the reception of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the airport here on Saturday.

The absence of the CM at the airport irked the saffron party, which said Rao failed to follow the protocol and insulted the prime Minister .

Modi is here to dedicate to the nation the 'Statue of Equality' commemorating the 11th century Bhakti saint Sri Ramanujacharya and also to kickstart the 50th anniversary celebrations of ICRISAT.

Bengaluru, Feb 5 (PTI) The 'hijab' row has taken political colour in Karnataka, as the ruling BJP stood strongly in support of uniform related rules followed by educational institutions, calling the headscarf, a religious symbol, while the opposition Congress has come out in support of Muslim girls.

There have been several instances in coastal Karnataka, where Muslim girl students, turning up at colleges in hijab, not being allowed into classes, and Hindu boys responding with saffron shawls as a counter to it.

Mangaluru, Feb 5 (PTI) The hijab' controversy in Udupi district of Karnataka on Saturday spilled into the streets with a group of students of two junior colleges at Kundapur taking out a procession in the town wearing saffron shawls demanding ban on headscarves on the campuses.

Hindu boy students of Kundapur junior college and R N Shetty college who staged the protest, said they will continue to wear the shawls if Muslim girl students are allowed to wear hijabs.