Author: Samikhsya Bureau

In an unprecedented move, Akali Dal leader and Union Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Sunday urged Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan to take action against his Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi for “hurting sentiments of Sikhs” and using the word ‘googly’ vis-a-vis developments related to Kartarpur Corridor.
“….Please walk the talk and take action against Mahmood Qureshi for politicising religious issue to assuage hurt feelings of Sikhs,” Ms Badal tweeted.

Mounting pressure on the Pakistani leadership, Ms Badal, who had visited Kartarpur on November 28, wrote in a series of tweets: “I urge Pak PM Imran Khan to take action against his minister for hurting sentiments of Sikhs and peace efforts by equating attendance at function at Sri Kartarpur Sahib with trapping India by bowling a googly”.  “Nothing can be more disgusting than this,” she said.

The Rupee on Monday slipped by 30 paise to 69.89 against the greenback in early trade on rising demand for US Dollar by bankers and importers, dealers at the Forex Market said. The local unit recorded intra day high and low at 70.09 and 69.85 respectively.
The domestic unit fell due to strong dollar against world currencies, they added.

A day after Congress President Rahul Gandhi sought to question the ‘Hindu credential’ of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as many as three Union Ministers including former BJP chief Rajnath Singh on Sunday – separately – lashed out at the principal opposition party. Mr Singh was supported by senior Minister Sushma Swaraj as well as party’s vocal leader and another Minister in the Modi cabinet – Smriti Irani.
“It is ridiculous that those leaders who were apprehensive and shy of taking the name of Hindu or Hindutva in the past are trying to ask us about Hinduism. I need not define Hindutva again, the Supreme Court had done it much earlier describing it as a way of life,” Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh told reporters at Bansur in Rajasthan.

 Commercial Vehicle Major, Ashok Leyland Ltd has reported a drop of 9 per cent in its total sales for the month of November 2018 at 13121 units, as against 14457 units in November 2017. M&HCV sales was down 18 percent in November 2018 to 8718 units from 10638 units in November 2017. However, LCV sales was up 15 percent in November 2018 to 4403 units from 3819 units in November 2017.
UNI JS SB 1200

 In a novel way of wooing youths of Kashmir into militancy the Pakistanis have initiated a method of ‘honey trapping’ youths of Kashmir. They are later trained by the Pakistan based terror groups as human carriers for arms or links to guide infiltrating militants into Kashmir. A woman was also arrested while acting as a ‘honey trap’.

It did not go well for Priyanka and Nick when after the wedding the sky in Jodhpur got lit up and covered by thick smoke when a massive cracker show started. Priyanka who wore the cap of an anti-pollution campaigner during last Diwali for India got heavily trolled in twitter for polluting the air in her own wedding. Some called it ‘hypocrisy’.

A prolonged treatment in US by Sonali Bendre in US she has few words for her fans and people affected with cancer to fight back. Reaching Mumbai she told the ‘fight is not yet over’ and she added that she desperately needed the break and she is glad to be in her place and just wanted be here. She was detected high grade cancer in last July.

A man who had just married walked into the jail after being caught stealing a mobile phone from a woman during his own wedding party in Delhi. He did it with a friend and snatched the mobile phone from a woman but was not able to get away.On a complaint the police has arrested the man and took to custody.

Bill Gates, the IT giant was in tears on hearing the story of a sex worker whose daughter committed suicide after being harassed and ostracised by friends in school.In a book ‘ Stranger Truth: Lessons in Love, leadership and courage from India’s Sex workers    from Gates Foundation that works on prevention of AIDs , in which he talks about the country’s sex worker, their lives and how India is a success story.

It was from 2008 from when the train tie between the South and North Korea had halted. Now after eleven years almost a train carrying engineers and officials enter South Korea on Friday . The officials and engineers on board shall take stock of the 1,200 North Korean tracks as a start to the country’s future network under modernisation plan for which South Korea received sanction exemption from UN.

For those children convinced there is a monster lurking under the bed, union minister Maneka Gandhi has the perfect answer is: ”you’re so lucky. I want one too.” Seeking to reach out to children petrified of the dark, ghouls, lizards and things that go bump in the night,   Maneka   Gandhi has written a book ”There’s a Monster Under my Bed! and Other Terrible Terrors’” to help them shed their overwhelming fears of these creatures.
Her friendly advice to those still scared of monsters was ”to make them your pets. Give them a name like
Iggly Piggly. If you put a sign ”Please don’t come in” they won’t enter. Monsters, she said, were very polite.
”Ghosts didn’t have the energy to do something horrible. You have to battle with your imagination. So if you are convinced there are ghosts, then make friends with them,” she told the little ones on
how to overcome their paralysing fears.

Taking a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the NDA Government recently releasing new back series data for the GDP which revised down the GDP growth in the UPA rule, Congress president Rahul Gandhi called Mr Modi ‘a master of data manipulation’. Rahul posted on his twitter handle a cartoon showing Mr Modi , standing on a pedestal alongside a tall portrait of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, asking Finance Minister Arun jaitley to lower the size of Dr Singh’s portrait .
‘’Modi-Master of Data Manipulation,’’Rahul said in the tweet.
The comments by the Congress president came two days after the Niti Aayog released the new back series data of the GDP which lowered the growth rate of the country during the UPA rule.

The GDP data released by the Government in August 2018 had put the GDP growth rate in one of the UPA years at 10.3 per cent. However, the back series data released on Wednesday put the GDP down rate for the same year at 8.5 per cent.

The government on Wednesday released the New back series GDP data which revised down the Gross Domestic Product growth rates for the 2006-2012 period, saying it had recalibrated the data to reflect a more accurate picture of the economy.

When the prime minister of India Narendra Modi arrived in Buenos Aires for the G20 summit the on display was a ‘Simpson’ character cartooned with caption as  LLEGO Apu of Indian ethnicity. An Argentina channel aired the display where it was written in the local language ‘ Apu arrives’ . For which the channel has been criticised and asked to apologise.

Young man, Bishnu Bhagat, from Odisha’s Baripada town has a different way of campaigning against harm of plastics. He in a novel mode has designed an outfit completely made of different pieces of polythene and other such articles of not bio- degradable material. His aim is to spread the awareness among the children and now widely known as ‘ chalta phirta dust-bin’. Where ever he goes is followed by many.

Cricketer-turned-Punjab Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu on Saturday made a big U-turn over his decision to visit Kartarpur and said he never went there on the directives of Congress President Rahul Gandhi. “Get your facts right before you distort them. Rahul Gandhi Ji never asked me to go to Pakistan,” Sidhu tweeted.

“The whole world knows I went on Prime Minister Imran Khan’s personal invite,” he said. Sidhu courted a major controversy when he mocked at the Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh. On Friday, the Punjab Minister said at Hyderabad: “It is Rahulji who sends me everywhere”.
“Which Captain are we talking about….He is an army captain (Chief Minister Amarinder Singh). For me Rahulji is captain. Rahul Gandhi is captain for Amarinder Singh also,” he had said on Friday.

To a question why did he go to Kartarpur when the Chief Minister had advised him not to do so, the Punjab Minister said: “In Congress there are 50 other leaders like Harish Rawat, Randeep Singh Surjewala and Shashi Tharoor who had complimented my Pakistan visit”.

‘Sidhu has no moral right to continue under Amrinder Singh’

Meanwhile, Tript Bajwa, Punjab Housing Minister, has said that after having criticised and mocked at the Chief Minister in the manner he did it, “Navjot Singh Sidhu has no moral right to continue as minister under Amarinder Singh”. “Since he does not know who the captain of the ship is, he (Sidhu) may jump from the ship,” he said.

“As an elder brother, my advice to Sidhu Sahab is please focus more on works and actions and less on speaking,” Mr Bajwa said. “If he cannot show respect to the Chief Minister, Mr Sidhu must quit his cabinet and take instructions from Congress President Rahul Gandhi and work accordingly,” Mr Bajwa said.

BJP leaders and union Ministers including Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Prakash Javadekar have also criticised Mr Sidhu for using laudatory remarks about Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan in his Kartarpur speech on November 28.

Enforcement Directorate on Friday summoned Congress President Rahul Gandhi’s brother-in-law Robert Vadra in connection with a case involving land deals in the Kolayat area of Bikaner, senior ED officials said here.
The central probe agency had registered a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in September 2015. It was alleged that the purchase and sale of land had been done at an extremely high premium by the Vadra-owned Skylight Hospitality through a web of illegal transactions.

The probe agency had earlier summoned Vadra in this case but he did not turn up before the agency.Now the ED has summoned him for questioning again and asked him to be present in person in the first week of December, a probe agency official said.

The probing agency is investigating the Kolayat land deal based on FIRs filed by Rajasthan police in 2015 in connection with alleged land grabbing in Bikaner. Several companies, directly or indirectly associated with Vadra, are alleged to have been involved in these fraudulent deals.He was never named in any ED case as an accused and would be questioned for the first time in the case, the sources said.

 The makers of ‘DreAmGirl’ starring Ayushmann Khurrana took to social media announcing the film’s title in a very unique way.

After the humongous success of ‘AndhaDhun’ and ‘Badhaai Ho’, Ayushmann will next be seen in and as ‘DreAmGirl’.

‘DreAmGirl’ marks the first collaboration of Ayushmann and Balaji Motion Pictures.

Sharing the video, Ayushmann tweeted saying, “Of every possible role, this one, I’d be honest, would have never crossed my mind! But here I am, to play a role in and as #DreamGirl @ektaravikapoor @writerraj @NushratBharucha @RuchikaaKapoor”.

The film also stars Nushrat Bharucha in a pivotal role alongside Ayushmann.

Produced by Ekta Kapoor, ‘DreAmGirl’ is helmed by debutant director Raaj Shandilyaa.

New Delhi, Nov 30(UNI) Charging the Narendra Modi government of destroying institutions and making ttempts to change the Constitution, Senior Congress leaders on Friday said a considerable damage had been caused in the last four and a half years to the Democratic system and the economic structure of the country.

Participating in a panel discussion on ‘Is India being redefined, organised by the ll india Professionals conrgess, senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal, Salman Khurshid, manish Tewari, Abhishek mani Singhvi, Shashi tharoor and Sushmita Dev expressed concerns over the present governmet ‘diluting’ secularism in the country and its atempts to destroy institutions that form the foundation of the Democracy.

Speaking during a panel discussion , the Congress leaders alleged that the BJP regime was creating an atmosphere of fear in the country through attempts to dilute the spirit of secularism laid down by the COnstitution.

Charging the BJP and the RSs of attempting to destroy institutions, senior Congress leader and former Law Minister Kapil Sibal said,’the BJP and RSS hv taken over the government. When Congress was in power , there was a difference between the Government and the party. Things changed in 2014 . Now Government is the party. So party decides what will be the policies.