New Delhi : Andhra Pradesh CM and TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday warned PM Narendra Modi of a public backlash for backtracking on the “special status” promise made to the people of  the state. 
At a press conference here, he said his visit to the Capital was to seek wider political support for special status to the state, as promised by the UPA government in 2014 while legislating the Andhra Pradesh Re-organisation Act. Playing clips of PM Modi’s election speeches in Andhra, he asked: “What happened to these promises?”
He said the Centre had been trying to “damage his credibility” ever since his party began a fight for “special category” status to the state. He demanded a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) to look into the issue.
On BJP’s charge that he had parted ways with the NDA for “vested political interests”, he said he had waited for four years and made 29 visits to Delhi. “The  total neglect of Andhra Pradesh in the 2018-19 Budget was the last straw,” he said. He circulated a dossier  detailing the circumstances under which the state was split “against  the wishes of  the people”, and the status of projects and pending funds.
The CM said Union Finance Minster Arun Jaitley, citing  the Finance Commission’s recommendations against special status, had said it would be provided help through “special assistance measure” that would include all ingredients of special status. “Even this has not materialised with the Centre imposing new conditions.”  Earlier in the day, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal called on Naidu.

Mathura : A local fast track court has sentenced an occultist to 25 years imprisonment for criminally assaulting and raping a married lady in his Vrindavan-based ashram.

“The learned Additional Distt judge, fast track court one, Vivekanand Sharan Tripathi, has also imposed a fine of Rs 25,000; and on its non-payment the accused would have to undergo further imprisonment of 27 months," Additional district counsel Praveen Kumar Singh said.

The case was transferred from the District Judge's court to this court and was decided in a duration of four months, the official said.

To get rid of her persistent stomach pain, a lady from Hathras had reached the accused's ashram in Vrindavan with her husband and four-year-old daughter in July last year.

She was told by a disciple of the accused tantrik (occultist) to stay in a room on the second floor as the treatment of evil forces would start at 10 PM, Singh said narrating the victim's complaint.

At 10 pm, the woman's husband was given a kindled earthen lamp with the instruction that he would take it down stairs and return only after the lamp was extinguished.

The accused, Baba Dwarkadas, molested the victim and despite her protestations, raped her, according to the complaint. The victim was told it was part of an exercise to eliminate the impact of evil forces, Singh said.

Next morning, she was again raped in the name of 'Nibu excercise' when her husband was asleep. The accused warned her to keep quiet or else her family would be eliminated, Singh said.

The couple left for Hathras, the following day, where the victim summoned courage and disclosed her ordeal to her husband, Singh said.

The couple came to Vrindavan and lodged an FIR against Baba Dwarkadas on July 22 last year, he said.

During the trial, the victim at the final stage said the rape was committed by some other person, Singh added.

However, on the basis of evidence produced by police, statement of doctor and her earlier statement, the  Tantrik was awarded 20 year rigorous imprisonment under Section 376 (pertaining to rape) of the IPC, a Rs 20,000 fine and 18 months further imprisonment on failure to pay fine.

In addition, he was also awarded four year rigorous imprisonment under Section 506 (intimidation) of the IPC, Rs four thousand fine and six month further imprisonment on default of payment of fine.

The occultist was sentenced to rigorous imprisonment of one year under section 417 (cheating) of the IPC  with Rs one thousand fine and three months further imprisonment  on non-payment of fine, Singh said adding the sentences would run one after the other.

Lucknow : After its new found bonhomie with the BSP won it two Lok sabha seats in recent bypolls in Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party is set to celebrate Dr Ambedkar Jayanti on April 14 in a big way.

The party which had stayed content with celebrating anniversaries of socialist idealogues like Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia and Janeshwar Misra so far has asked all its district units to celebrate Ambedkar Jayanti at the district party headquarters or any public place to mark the day.

Though the Samajwadi Party's move has not gone down well with the BJP, which has termed it a big drama, political analyst Ramesh Dixit said it is aimed at further consolidating the relations.

"All the forces of social justice are coming together on one platform... this move is aimed at consolidating the friendship for the cause of defeating rivals," Dixit said, who retired as head of the political science department of Lucknow University.
“It is also a move to claim the legacy of social justice espoused by these parties which was being grabbed by the BJP which has had no connection with them," he said.

Samajwadi Party which had been holding customary functions on Ambedkar Jayanti has this time asked its partymen to recall the services of Babasaheb as also his resolve taken while framing the Constitution.
SP's state unit president Party Naresh Uttam said that on 127th anniversary of Babasaheb this April 14, all district and city unit heads have been asked to pay homage and recall his immense contribution to the country and emancipation of the downtrodden.

This will be perhaps the first time that a conscious effort is being made by the SP to ensure celebrations on Dr Ambedkar Jayanti on a big scale.
The BSP had been organising Ambedkar Jayanti annually on a big scale with its president Mayawati leading partymen in paying homage to the Dalit icon.
There are, however, no plans yet to hold any joint SP-BSP programmes on the day.
“It is wrong to say that we will be celebrating Ambedkar Jayanti for the first time. The party has always paid tributes to Dr Ambedkar on his birth and death anniversary and we hold him in high esteem," SP spokesman Rajendra Chaudhary said.
A senior SP leader on condition of anonymity said that party will try to remove doubts in the minds, if any, that its ideology was at variance with that of BSP and reach out to all sections of society.

Before the coming Lok Sabha elections early next year, the Ambedkar Jayanti will give a chance to increase the interaction and coordination between the cadres of both the parties in order to develop better understanding, he said.
It is a fact that the success of any alliance of these two major players in the state depend on how Dalits and OBCs, especially Yadavs, come to terms with each other, he said.

BJP spokesman Rakesh Tripathi however said, "It is a big drama… ever since the SP has made 'elephant' (BSP's election symbol) its friend, it is worried for the Dalits but the people of Uttar Pradesh have not forgotten how Dalits were at the receiving end on the very day when Akhilesh Yadav had become the chief minister in 2012 and how their houses and hamlets were set ablaze."

The “understanding” between the SP and the BSP in the Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha bye-elections stopped the victory march of the BJP, which along with its allies had bagged 73 of the 80 parliamentary seats in the state.

While Gorakhpur is the home turf of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Phulpur was represented by his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya and defeats in both the places at the hands of the SP caused considerable embarrassment to the saffron party ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, though the BJP took a sweet revenge soon afterwards by defeating the BSP candidate in the recent Rajya Sabha biennial elections in the state.

Rampur (Uttar Pradesh) : In a shocking incident a three-year-old girl was allegedly raped and then locked inside a box by an 18-year-old male neighbour in Uttar Pradesh's Rampur's Tanda town.
The incident took place on April 2, when the child was alone at home and her parents were away.
"On seeing the parents away, the accused lured the child with a chocolate and took her to his house. As the child started screaming and crying in pain the accused in fear left her and fled. The locals rushed and rescued the child," police said.
The accused has been arrested and case has also been registered against him under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO Act) 2012.

Agra : After an aborted attempt in February, the government has finally managed to successfully roll out the e-way bill system for tracking the movement of goods under the Goods and Services Tax net from April 1. No major execution challenges have been reported by businesses so far, and the IT backbone that generates the e-way bills — that are now required even before goods are loaded for transport — has so far held up without glitches. On the first two days of the e-way system, which included a Sunday, 5.5 lakh e-way bills were generated, and the GST Network has said that the system is now geared to cope with a much higher capacity. Equally heartening is the revival in GST collections, that had dipped to ?83,716 crore in November 2017, after a fairly robust ?90,000 crore-plus inflow for the first three months of the new indirect tax system. As per final data released by the Centre on Monday, collections for the three months since then are far healthier than initial indications suggested, with February recording ?89,264 crore, the highest since September 2017. Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia expects collections to pick up further as the authorities get a better sense of who is regularly filing returns and paying taxes. His confidence reflects the government’s belief that analytics deployed on GST data compiled for nine months would deliver a bigger bounty, even as e-way bills make it tougher to avoid tax dues.

 The government on Monday said the re-introduction of the e-way bill system for GST has been smooth with no technical glitches.
E-way bill rollout successful; no glitch so far, says government
 
Everyone’s fingers are crossed that the e-way bill portal, which now has over 20,000 registered transporters and 11 lakh taxpayers, will hold up, going forward. It is important to note that since the system for tracking inter-State movement of goods was launched at the beginning of a financial year, the actual load that the portal will have to bear on a normal business day may be much higher than the initial trends. This is because many businesses had already moved and stocked up goods by March 31, ahead of the system kicking in, and are still completing usual year-end processes such as recording closing stock. A staggered schedule for rolling out e-way bills for intra-State trade in a few States at a time is expected soon. Given that India’s transport sector is still largely unorganised and many vehicle drivers are not fully conversant with the technical nuances, it is important that anti-evasion squads deployed to check e-way bills operate with a light touch to start with, and limit the frequency of inspections for goods moving across States. Else, the system could end up creating a bottleneck for transporting goods in a country where goods movement already takes inordinately long due to infrastructure deficiencies. A similar approach would be ideal for other anti-evasion measures in the pipeline, including the matching of invoices from buyers and sellers, and the reverse-charge mechanism (expected by June-end) under which large businesses would need to pay tax on behalf of unregistered small suppliers.