FREE PRESS Regd. No. Indore MP/ICD 216/2021-2023 RNI No. 38281/83 INDORE PUNE BHOPAL UJJAIN MUMBAI `3 - VOL. XXXVII NO. 243 | INDORE | WEDNESDAY | FEBRUARY 10, 2021 | PAGES 14 Quality at Value WEATHER 30.20c. 11.20c Sunrise : 07.02 Sunset : 06.19 THOUGHT FOR THE DAY www.freepressjournal.in Positive emotions and thoughts such as happiness, kindness, joy, enthusiasm and others tend to have beneficial effects psychologically, etherically and physically. Master Choa Kok Sui R-DAY ACTOR-INSTIGATOR HELD PROUD TO BE A HINDUSTANI MUSLIM: AZAD Pg-7 PM UPS THE ANTE, NO GOING BACK ON FARM REFORMS Pg- 6 FP NEWS SERVICE NEW DELHI Actor-activist Deep Sidhu, who was allegedly a key player in the acts of vandalism at the Red Fort on Republic Day, has been arrested by the Delhi Police from Karnal in Haryana. The arrest came a day after PM Modi lamented the mushrooming of a tribe of professional pro(Andolan-jeevi) testers who are undermining the national agenda. Sidhu had melted into EDIT the crowd after the chaos at Red Fort and could not be traced. But now it is learnt that he spent the night at a five-star hotel where he met many people. He fled to Punjab the next day where, according to sources, he kept moving from one location to another to evade arrest. Since he did not use a mobile phone, the Delhi Police was unable to track him down, it is claimed. He wore the same clothes for five days and did not communicate with his friends, lest his location Community groups concerned at thrust on large Himalaya dams DEHRADUN/JOSHIMATH The death toll from the Uttarakhand glacier disaster rose to 31 with five more bodies being recovered, officials said on Tuesday as multiple agencies raced against time to reach about 30 workers trapped inside a tunnel in a power project site and 175 people remained missing. Two of the bodies were recovered from the debris in Raini village, National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) officials said, two days after a portion of the Nanda Devi glacier possibly burst its banks and triggered an avalanche 39 new cases take Twitter reaches out corona tally to to IT minister for 57,809 formal dialogue Out of 1,748 samples put to test, 39 returned positive for corona on Tuesday. Rate of positive cases was recorded at 2.23% and number of positive patients reached 57,809. Toll remained at 924 as new death was reported. According to CMHO bulletin, 8,00,130 samples had been tested till Tuesday night. Department has taken 1,805 more samples for testing, including 1,138 RTPCR and 667 Rapid Antigen Tests. As many as 316 patients are under treatment in various hospitals of the city. Total 56,569 patients have been discharged so far. News Brief Actor-director Rajiv Kapoor dies at 58 MUMBAI: Actor-director Rajiv Kapoor, son of celebrated filmmakeractor Raj Kapoor, passed away on Tuesday. He was 58. Neetu Kapoor, wife of late actor Rishi Kapoor, was the first to confirm the news on Instagram. She wrote "RIP" alongside a picture of her brother-in-law. The cause of death was not known immediately. be revealed. From these hush-hush locations, Deep was posting videos explaining his position, much to the embarrassment of the authorities. Now, it is learnt Sidhu "was in contact with a woman friend who lives in California. He would make the videos and send them to her, and she would upload them on his Facebook account," a police source said. audacity with The which he was uploading the videos and the ineptitude of the authorities, U’khand disaster: Toll rises to 31 RACE AGAINST time to rescue those trapped in tunnel OUR STAFF REPORTER Indore ADAH SHARMA’S NEW FILM PUTS SPOTLIGHT ON MENTAL HEALTH Pg-12 NEW DELHI Twitter has reached out to Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad for a formal dialogue to resolve the deadlock over the removal of bad accounts amid the ongoing farmer protests. The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) has sent three notices to Twitter, the latest one asking the company to block 1,178 accounts believed to be linked to Khalistan sympathisers and those backed by Pakistan. "Safety of our employees is a top priority for us at Twitter. We continue to be engaged with the Government of India from a position of respect and have reached out to the Honourable Minister, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology for a formal dialogue," a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. The company said that an acknowledgement to the receipt of the non-compliance notice has also been formally communicated. "We review every report we receive from the government as expeditiously as possible and take appropriate action regarding such reports while making sure we hold firm to our fundamental values and commitment to protecting the public conversation," the Twitter spokesperson said. Search and rescue operation underway at Tapovan tunnel in Chamoli on Tuesday LANDSLIDE TRIGGERED SNOW AVALANCHE: AMIT SHAH Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday said a landslide triggered the snow avalanche leading to the tragic incident in the state. The Minister said the landslide triggered snow avalanche covering approximately 14 square km area and caused a flash flood in the Rishiganga river downstream in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district. He further said that the incident was observed from the satellite data (Planet Lab) of February 7, 2021 (Sunday) in catchment of Rishi Ganga river at the terminus of the glacier at an altitude of 5,600 metres. Community organisations, which are facing humaninduced climate change impacts in Himachal Pradesh, claimed on Tuesday that the government of India's policy of promoting mega hydropower projects in the Himalayas is at manifold risk of earthquake-triggered landslides."We express collective rage at inaction by government’s repeated thrust on large dams in the Himalayas," they said. and floods in the Alaknanda river system. The State Emergency Operation Centre said five bodies were found in the morning, taking the death toll to 31, and estimated that 175 people are still missing. Six more sacked for dumping destitutes on city outskirts First time in state: Father is chief secy, son collector EIGHT TERMINATED, one suspended so far It has happened for the first time in the state that father is the chief secretary and son is a collector. A 2013-batch IAS officer, Amanveer Bains, was posted as collector of Betul on Tuesday . Along with Amanveer, Mayank Agarwal was posted as collector of Neemuch. OUR STAFF REPORTER Indore Six more contractual IMC employees were terminated on Tuesday for dumping elderly people outside municipal limits recently . With this, eight contractual employees have been terminated and one deputy commissioner suspended. The IMC's action had led to a furore in the state with Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan ordering immediate action. IMC commissioner Pratibha Pal said that a committee of three members headed by additional commissioner S Krishna Chaitanya probed the incident in which elderly destitutes were abandoned at Kshipra by anti-encroachment squad of IMC. “In the reports submitted by additional commissioner Chaitanya, six contractual employees were found negligent and involved in the incident and they were terminated”, she added. According to the report, the IMC team was ordered to take destitute homeless people to Raen Basera of IMC but a few of the elder- OUR STAFF REPORTER BHOPAL BAINS’S SON AMANVEER IS COLLECTOR OF BETUL ly people on board the IMC truck requested the team members to drop them at Kshipra. The team agreed to their request and without informing senior officials took the elderly persons to Kshipra. However, the report also found that the team had misbehaved with the people in the truck. In the report, deputy commissioner Pratap Solanki was also found negligent, so he was suspended. The six contractual employees terminated on Tuesday are Jitendra Tiwari, Aniket Karone, Raj Parmar, Gajanand Maheshwari, Rajesh Chouhan and Sunir Surage. Amanveer (left) and Iqbal Singh Bains After a video conferencing with commissioners and collectors on Monday, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh removed collector of Betul Rakesh Singh and that of Neemuch Jitendra Raje. Posting of 2013-batch IAS officers began with the collector of Katni, Priyank Mishra. Mishra was posted after Chouhan’s first video conference with collectors and commissioners. CONTD. ON P8 DAVV to teach Vikram Univ how to make money ATUL GAUTAM Indore Mentoring a new educational institution by an older established institution is a popular practice in the country . But, in a first, an old institution will be hand-holding an already established institution. Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya (DAVV), the leading and wealthiest traditional university of Madhya Pradesh, is going to bail out financially- SELF-FINANCE COURSES ARE BACKBONE OF DAVV In the 80s the financial condition of DAVV was also not very sound when the then vice-chancellor Prof MS Sodha launched self-finance courses which changed the fortunes of DAVV. Today, IMS, IIPS, IET, School of Economics, School of Commerce, School of Law are among some departments which have filled DAVV’s exchequer and made it the wealthiest traditional university of the state. crunched Vikram University which is located in an, cient town of Ujjain. The Indore university , whose annual budget is around Rs 300 crore and has about Rs 400 crore in its coffers, will guide Ujjain university in making money The Indore university . has suggested Ujjain university to start self-finance courses which will help in filling the latter’s exchequer. Vikram University , which was established in 1957, has been facing finan- cial crunch for the past two decades which only grew with every passing year. About a decade ago, the university even thought of selling a piece of its land for meeting its expenses. However, that idea was dropped following a stiff protest by university teachers. When Ujjain resident Mohan Yadav became higher education minister he suggested Vikram University take help from DAVV for improving its financial condition. CONTD. ON P8 who were not able to apprehend him, had reinforced the suspicion in certain quarters that he was being provided ‘protection’ and was in cahoots with the powers that be. His arrest, to that extent, will serve to dispel these misgivings. Sidhu has been sent to seven-day police custody by Metropolitan Magistrate Prigya Gupta. However, the actor’s counsel claimed that he had nothing to do with the violence and was at the wrong place at the wrong time. WHO says virus unlikely to have leaked from China lab WUHAN A World Health Organisation expert said on Tuesday the coronavirus is unlikely to have leaked from a Chinese lab and most probably jumped to humans via an intermediary species. ‘‘It was very unlikely that anything could escape from the laboratory a WHO official said, ,” citing safety protocols. WHO food safety and animal diseases expert Peter Ben Embarek gave the assessment while summing up the team's investigation into the possible origins of the coronavirus in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the first cases were discovered in December 2019. “All the work that has been done on the virus and trying to identify its origin continue to point toward a natural reservoir,” said Dr Embarek while speaking at a news conference in Wuhan. There have been unproven allegations that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was collecting virus samples, may have caused the original outbreak by leaking the virus into the surrounding community . China has strongly denied that possibility and countered by suggesting that the virus may have originated elsewhere. The WHO team, which included experts from 10 nations, visited hospitals, research institutes and a traditional animal market in Wuhan; the latter is also blamed for the outbreak. The WHO visit took months to negotiate after China agreed to it amid massive international pressure. Discoms ask regulatory panel to recover `36,812 cr from power consumers EVERY CONSUMER must shell out Rs 25k to make Discoms Aatmanirbhar OUR STAFF REPORTER BHOPAL If electricity consumers of Madhya Pradesh want the power distribution companies to become ‘ atma A Nirbhar’ then they would have to shell out Rs 25,000 each. The power distribution companies (Discom) have filed a True Up petition with the MP State Electricity Regulatory Commission demanding recovery of Rs 4752.48 crores from consumers for the year 2019-20. More worrying is the fact that True Up petition of past five years of power discoms are pending as well with the regulatory commission. Total sum of all these years amounts to Rs 36,812 crores. In Madhya Pradesh there are around 1.5 crore electricity consumers including commercial and agricultural connections. Going by the total loss of Rs 36,812 crore to power companies, each consumer needs to pay Rs 25,000 to bring the companies out of loss. Final decision lies with the regulatory commission on how much amount does it allow to be recovered from the consumer. The electricity tariff is decided on an estimated expenditure submitted by power companies at the beginning of the year. These DRI busts drug network, 3 held OUR STAFF REPORTER Indore Indore Zonal Unit (IZU) of Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) busted a drug network and arrested three persons. In all, 78,000 (8.58 kgs) tablets of alprazolam and 528 bottles (68.64 kgs) of codeine phosphate cough syrup were seized. "In a week-long operation conducted by DRI in Indore, Shivpuri and Gwalior of Madhya Pradesh and Jhansi of Uttar Pradesh, DRI successfully busted an entire network involved in illegal diversion and supply of neuro-psychotropic drugs i.e. alprazolam tablets and codeine phosphate syrups, which were being diverted for illicit sale for drug abuse," DRI official statement said. The operation started after receiving specific intelligence input about the delivery of these prescription drugs in commercial quantity in the city from Shivpuri and Jhansi. The first consignment was recovered on February 5 in the city Thereafter, a Pichhore . 78,000 tablets of alprazolam and 528 bottles of codeine phosphate cough syrup have been seized (Shivpuri) based supplier was also apprehended with contraband. He revealed the details of a pharmacist based in Jhansi, who was their main source of supplying these prescription drugs to the grey market. A trap was laid, and he was also nabbed by DRI with the drug. As per NDPS provisions, alprazolam commercial quantity is 100 grams and codeine phosphate commercial quantity is 1000 grams. "The offence of illegal diversion and supply of neuropsychotropic drugs under NDPS Act is punishable under sections 8(c), 21(c), 27(a) and 29 of the NDPS Act, with minimum 10 years of imprisonment with fine," the official statement said. Further investigation is in progress. LOSSES IN 2019-20 EASTERN REGION JABALPUR Rs 2458.33 cr CENTRAL REGION BHOPAL Rs 1990.16 cr WESTERN REGION INDORE Rs 303.99 cr TOTAL LOSS Rs 4752.48cr Loss statement of last 5 years of power companies (combined) YEAR 2014-15 LOSS `5156.88cr 2015-16 `7156.94cr 2017-18 `5327.54cr `7170.98cr 2016-17 2018-19 `7247.55cr companies present the actual expenditure at the end of financial year before regulatory commission. The difference between the estimated and actual expenditure is presented before the commission and companies then take permission to realize the difference from consumers. This is done through a hike in electricity tariff. Expert in electricity issues, Rajendra Agarwal has written a letter to Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan asking him to conduct enquiry as to what is the reason behind loss to power companies despite highest tariff rates in Madhya Pradesh. Modi breaks down: Rhetoric on Monday, tears on Tuesday FP NEWS SERVICE New Delhi PM Modi broke down several times in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday while recalling his close association with Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, whose term is coming to an end next week. Modi’s detractors may see in the tears sign of stress – possibly over the long-drawn farmers protest – but his legion of supports see in them a ‘sensitive persona’ that often gets blindsided by the political demeanour. Of course, this is not the first time the PM has shed tears – he has done so both inside Parliament and outside. CONTD. ON P8