Mahindra and Mahindra are going to produce defence vehicles under Mahindra Defence Systems, subsidiary.
The company already manufactures and supplies heavily armoured defence vehicles to the Indian armed forces and exports to other countries.
To help protect Indian soldiers from Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) and mines Mahindra Defense Systems has developed a ‘Mine Resistant Ambush Protected’ vehicle.
The company recently took to Twitter to share some details about this heavy-duty machine.
This speciality vehicle will be used by our soldiers when they are on United Nations Peacekeeping mission.
This is a heavily armoured vehicle, designed to survive blasts and is suitable for conflict zones. The speciality vehicle also gets interrogation arms to lift roadside IEDs (improvised explosive device).
Mahindra Defence revealed that this vehicle has been designed, produced, and exported from India. Needless to say, this feat was due to receive appreciation from Mahindra Group’s chairman, Anand Mahindra. He, in his tweet, called it a ‘Mean Machine’ that it will help keep peacekeepers safe. He also joked about how it would be a perfect vehicle to use in Mumbai traffic if it were legal.
Mahindra Defence Systems developed including the Mahindra Marksman, used by Central Industrial Security Forces (CISF)’s Quick Reaction Team (QRT).
The residents of the remote village of Edamalakkudy in Idukki district of Kerala have been under self-declared lockdown since July 1 to prevent the spread of COVID19.
The first tribal Panchayat in Kerala is considered to be the Edamalakkudy in Idukki. This Panchayat falls under the Munnar Wildlife Division in Kerala. The secretary of the Edamalakkudy Vana Samrakshana Samithi (VSS), Ramesh, informed that the residents announced ‘self-lockdown’ so that the spread of COVID-19 can be prevented. He also added further that the residents have decided not to move outside the Edamalakkudy unless the disease gets under control.
The above decision was taken with respect to the ban on the outsiders entering the tribal village. This ban was applied in June by the director of the Scheduled Tribes Development Department and is strictly followed in the Munnar division to date.
The 2011 Census says that there are a total of 2400 residents in the Edamalakkudy. The reports suggest that as soon as the pandemic rose, all the residents practiced social distancing all over the Edamalakkudy and followed all the rules and regulations regarding keeping themselves clean. Since the start of the pandemic, they have actively participated in keeping themselves and their surroundings clean and safe.
Sachin Pilot told the Indian Express on Wednesday that he is not joining the BJP. Speaking to the press after his rebellion against the Gehlot government cost him his position in the party and the government, he had affirmed that he had worked hard to defeat the BJP and that he had no intentions of joining it.
Pilot was sacked yesterday from the Congress party as well as from the Deputy Chief Minister position, after he missed two meetings in a row with the Congress legislature. Two of his loyalists, Vishwendra Singh, and Ramesh Meena, where are also removed from state cabinet positions. All of his other loyalists also face flak from the Congress party in the form of notices after they took his side over Gehlot.
Soon after the sacking, Pilot tweeted, “Satya ko pareshan kiya ja sakta hai, parajit nahi (Truth can be harassed, not defeated).” In another tweet at night, he said: “My heartfelt thanks and gratitude to all those who have come out in my support today.”
In the light of this, Rajasthan’s BJP unit is reported to convene today to discuss the state of affairs. Former Chief Minister and senior BJP leader Vasundhara Raje is expected to arrive in Jaipur today to attend a crucial strategy session of the party.
Minister for Road Transport, Highways and MSMEs Nitin Gadkari inaugurated various new economic corridor projects and laid foundation stones for worth over Rs 20000 crore in Haryana on Tuesday through video conferencing along with Chief Minister Manohar Lal.
The projects which have been inaugrated, include the 35.45 km 4-lane Rohna/Hasangarh to Jhajjar section of NH 334B costing Rs 1183 crore, the 70 km 4-laning of Punjab-Haryana Border to Jind section of NH 71 costing Rs 857 crore, and the 85.36 km 2-lane with paved shoulders Jind-Karnal Highway on NH 709 costing Rs 200 crore.
The Minister also laid foundation stone for 227 km 6-lane access controlled Greenfield expressway from Ismailpur to Narnaul on NH 152D in 8 packages costing Rs 8650 crore, the 46 km 4-lane Gurugram Pataudi-Rewari section of NH 352W costing Rs 1524 crore, the 14.4 km 4-lane Rewari Byepass costing Rs 928 crore, the 30.45 km 4-lane Rewari-Ateli Mandi section of NH 11 costing Rs 1057 crore, the 40.8 km 6-lane Narnaul Byepass on NH 148B, NH 11 and Narnaul to Ateli Mandi section of NH 11 costing 1380 crore, the 40.6 km 4-lane Jind-Gohana (Pkg 1, Greenfield alignment) of NH 352A costing Rs 1207 crore, the 38.23 km 4-lane Gohana-Sonipat section of NH 352A costing Rs 1502 crore, and the 40.47 km 4-lane UP-Haryana Border to Roha on NH 334B costing Rs 1509 crore.
These projects are set to improve connectivity within Haryana as well as between the states of Punjab, Rajasthan, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. It will cut fuel expenses and travel time and boost in the development of poorer regions.
He said that the building of infrastructure will catapult India to become a $ 5 trillion dollar economy and said that these projects are part of the National Infrastructure Pipeline worth ₹100 lakh crore.
A thrust on infrastructure will help boost economic activity by generating more employment at a time when the economy has been hit by COVID19.
Minister Gadkari said that the government will complete projects worth ₹2 trillion by 2021.
C/2020 F3 NEOWISE , a new comet discovered by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer telescope has been clearly visible to the naked eye from July 14 in parts of northern hemisphere. The comet was discovered on March 27.
Although binoculars or a telescope will provide a better view, the comet can also be seen without them and is said to be best visible half an hour before sunrise and after sunset.
Dr. Subhendu Pattnaik, Deputy Director of Pathani Samanta Planetarium, Odisha had earlier said that the comet will be visible in the north western part of the sky from July 14 after sunset for around 20 minutes for the next 20 days.
In the coming days, it will rapidly climb higher in the sky. Around 30th July it can be seen near Ursha Major (Saptarshi Mandal) for an hour. A pair of binoculars or a small telescope can enhance its visibility. After July it will fade away very fast and will not be visible,” he had said.
The comet is likely to get brighter in the next coming days as it nears the sun. It is called 21st century comet because People often refer to extremely bright comets as “comets of the century”. The last comet that was termed so was Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997.
Comets are cosmic snow balls of frozen gases, rock, and dust that orbit the Sun in a highly elliptical path. In frozen condition, they are the size of a few hundred kilometres may be compared with the size of a small town. As they approach the sun, they heat up and melt to form a tail that stretches away from the Sun for millions of kilometres in the opposite direction. There are likely billions of comets orbiting our Sun in the Kuiper Belt and in the periphery of our solar system – the Oort Cloud.
Madan Ravichandran, the News Head of Channel Vision has come out with his second video as part of his #MadanDiary series.
This video is set to rattle the high echelons of the party and the pillars of Arivalayam as an unidentified man discloses about the DMK indulging in illegal deer hunting and the mafia behind it.
On July 12, Thiruporur DMK MLA Idhayavarman was caught for brandishing a gun in broad day light and firing multiple rounds in the middle of a road in which one of the bullet hit a passer-by. He had fired at the car of a real estate agent Kumar while travelling along the East Coast Road owing to a property dispute.
Many had reported that Kumar had encroached on a temple land to lay a path to reach his plot, to which the members of the village had objected. It was said that Idhayavarman was ‘helping the Hindus’ to get back the temple land. It was also said that it was because Kumar and his men had attacked Idhayavarman with sickles that the latter took the gun and fired. Though the mainstream Tamil news channels conducted a debate on this issue, it was steered in such a way that what Idhayavarman did was justified, Madan said. Madan says that had it been an MLA belonging to any other party these channels with huge financial, technical and human resources would have resorted to their ‘investigative journalism’ to come out with the minute details. This showed their biasedness and inclination towards the DMK, he alleges.
Madan took interest in the case as it involved a DMK MLA and conducted his own investigation which has exposes shocking details.
To add weight to his case, he has interviewed a villager belonging to the Thiruporur region who spells out the back story of the DMK MLA and the guns. The man’s identity has been withheld after his consent. “If these people can go to any extent to bring down me, think of this poor man from a village and what they might do to him for revealing these details”, Madan says. He says that he is willing to submit all documents and let the man testify before a court of law if at all legal proceedings are initiated against him for revealing the details.
Madan in his interview with the villager asks in the beginning if his identity can be revealed. The man requests not to as he says that he is a daily wage labourer and doesn’t have the strength to take such powerful men.
The villager reveals that there exists an illegal deer hunting mafia in which the DMK MLA Idhayavarman is involved. “Idhayavarman using gun on men is only recent news but before this he used them for hunting deer”, the villager says. He adds that many VIPs come for deer hunting in the surrounding regions of his village. “The hunted deer and its meat are given to important party men. MK Stalin’s son Udhayanidhi Stalin loves deer meat. Many in my village also say that” the villager says. He notes that the deer count in the region has reduced due to this illegal deer hunting.
Madan intervenes to ask if whether the information that he is revealing are hearsay or has he seen the DMK MLA Idhayavarman hunting deer for real. The villager notes that he has infact seen it for himself sometime back when he was doing the rounds in his farm. He says he was strolling in his farm one night, when he had seen Idhayavarman shoot a deer which was later taken by the DMK MLA and his men in a car to be taken elsewhere.
Madan asks that the gun that was fired at Kumar was a pistol while for hunting bigger rifles are used. “They hunt with the bigger rifles but it seems that he has smaller pistols too”, the villager says.
Incidentally, the police had seized a small pistol and also a bigger rifle when they arrested Idhayavarman and his father Lakshmipathy.
Guns seized from DMK MLA Idhayavarman
At a later point in the video, Madan asks the man how is Idhayavarman able to hunt deer and give to it to the party leaders like Udhayanidhi Stalin as he claims, given that there are people like forest rangers, journalists or even people in the village who might come to know of it. The man says that the hunting happens in wee hours when everybody is asleep. “Everybody in the region knows that Idhayavarman is the man who hunts. He has been interesting in hunting since he was young. It is his area. If you ask anybody, they will tell you about Idhayavarman.”, the villager notes.
Madan asks about the background of Idhayavarman and how such a person in the party has guns with him and whether he has any affluence. The villager notes that the father of Idhayavarman was a chairman of the village and his grandfather, a munsif.
He also says that Idhayavarman’s father had written and handed over a Vanniyar community’s marriage hall built by members of the community out of their savings. Later the family is said to have used their money and muscle power and demolished the hall using a JCB and sold off the age old timbers and stone pillars used to build the hall for a good price. It is to be noted that Idhayavarman belongs to the Vanniyar community.
Madan interjects to say “It is said that Idhayavarman is a devotee of Lord Murugan and that he had shot at Kumar who had encroached a temple land and that Idhayavarman was ‘helping the Hindus’ to get back the temple land. What do you say of this?” to which the villager replies “Let him be a Hindu and a Murugan devotee. But it is he who has struck several land deals with Kumar earlier. He has even got money from Kumar for election expenses.” The villager says that Kumar is also from the Vanniyar community.
Towards the end of the interview with the villager, Madan double-checks whether if he is revealing all these being conscious given that people might accuse him not being in his senses. The villager ratifies that he is in his full senses and even has supporting evidences to back his claims.
Madan says that both he and the villager are ready to face legal consequences if they are accused of spreading false information.
In what will be a brilliant piece of engineering and a bold move, the Indian government has given in-principal approval to construct a strategic tunnel below the Brahmaputra river, the Hindustan Times reported .
This bridge when finished will be all-weather connectivity between Assam and Arunachal Pradesh,
This four-lane underwater tunnel will connect Gohpur and Numaligarh towns in Assam which is situated near the China border and enable rapid movement of military transport and supplies.
The underground bridge will be designed in such way to allow all transport vehicles to cruise at a speed of 80 Km/h.
The bridge will be 14.85 km long and it will all be underwater. Construction is expected to begin by December of this year and the contract has been given to National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHAIDCL) along with Louis Berger who will be the private player.
The underwater tunnel will be built in three phases and the Indian Army had suggested the construction of a tunnel to be similar to the Channel tunnel between Britan and France.
Being underwater, the bridge will have a natural cover from being targeted by enemy forces.
In the last six years, the Modi government has made a lot of investment in developing the long-ignored infrastructure in our eastern border shared with China. This development comes amid the ongoing tensions between India and China.
Rapid troop deployment is the key to safeguard our borders and roads and bridges built in strategic locations can be the difference between victory and defeat.
The recent clash in the Galwan Valley has necessitated the need for infrastructure to ease troop movement.
The Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs has told families of those who died at the hands of the Indian Army that they must not follow the traditional burial ceremonies and funeral services but should be conducted remotely.
The reason it has given is the threat of Wuhan virus but it seems like Beijing is deliberately trying to downplay and supress reminders of the violent clash.
According to an intelligence assessment by the United States, the Communist Party of China (CPC) is not willing to recognise its dead soldiers who had died fighting the Indian Army in the Galwan Valley in the Ladakh.
Beijing is putting pressure on the families of fallen soldiers and has told them not to conduct burials and in-person funeral ceremonies.
However, The aggrieved families are not being silent and the Chinese government is struggling to silence social media platforms like Weibo.
On June 15, the Chinese troops ambushed the Indian troops and 20 Indian soldiers died fighting the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA). When the dust settled, China had suffered nearly 100 casualties.
In India, the soldiers were given a military funeral and due recognition and being called martyrs and heroes.
Even the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his monthly radio programme Mann ki Baat on June 28, conveyed condolences to the kin of Indian Army personnel who lost their lives in the Galwan valley clash.
He said the sacrifice of these families is “worth worshipping”.
However, nearly after one month of this clash, China, has not given the official figures.
It is a very high probability, almost all the Chinese soldiers who lost there lives in Galwan Valley were the only child to their parents. To compound to this, greaving families are being mistreated by the Chinese government by denying them to skip traditional funeral rights.
The US News reported that according to the US intelligence assessment, China is into a massive coverup of the showdown because Beijing appears to consider this a blunder.
For China, the clash in the Galwan Valley with the Indian army is hard to digest. By many estimates and according to some experts of China, the PLA underestimated the will and aggressive nature of the Indian army.
So far the Chinese government has acknowledged the deaths of only a few officers but the editor-in-chief of Global Times had tweeted earlier that the Chinese side suffered 43 casualties including the dead and seriously injured.
American intelligence believes that atleast 35 Chinese soldiers were killed in Galwan.
China has denied permission to conduct burials of its soldiers who had lost their lives in the Galwan valley face-off. It was reported that the Chinese government is unwilling to acknowledge its soldiers’ sacrifices and forcing their families against conducting in-person funerals. Apparently, the families of these Martyrs have been mistreated by the Chinese Government, and have been refused burial rites. Their families have been told to forego traditional burial ceremonies, and to conduct them remotely.
A source had said that “The reality is they don’t want to create martyr soldiers. So they have banned functions where friends and families can pay their respects for the PLA deceased.”
China has still not disclosed the number of soldiers who had lost their lives in the incident. This has been faced with a lot of backlash, and has been viewed as a weak attempt by Beijing to cover up.
In the monthly radio program Mann ki Baat, Prime Minister Modi as meanwhile conveyed condolences to the families of the Galwan valley martyrs.
The investigation into the Kerala gold smuggling by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has revealed startling details. According to the NIA, proceeds from the Kerala gold smuggling may have been used for funding terrorist activities.
As per details released by the NIA, around 150kg of gold was smuggled into Kerala over the past 10 months.
Key suspects Swapna Suresh and Sandeep Nair have been taken in by the NIA Court on Monday (Jul 13) and remanded in the agency’s custody till July 21.
Since the NIA has suspected terror funding, it has sought the custody of the two for probing “the terrorist angle”.
The agency is likely to invoke provisions of Section 16 and 17 of The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 UAPA, which prescribes punishment for raising funds for terrorist activities, against the accused Swapna Suresh and Sandeep Nair.
Investigators informed the Kochi-based NIA court that Swapna Suresh and Sarith Nair, who were previously employed at the UAE Consulate, and used the loophole in the movement of diplomatic baggage to smuggle gold.
As any transactions using cash/wire transfer can be traced, gold is being sued by terror groups for funding. The NIA told the special court that gold which was smuggled was not meant for jewellery groups.
One of accused Sandeep Nair claimed the gold was meant for UAE diplomat named Rashid Al Sheimeili and asked the court to question his role in the investigation.
Earlier, K T Rameez, a Malappuram-based businessman,was arrested on Sunday by a customs special investigation team. More information will come forth from this end as well and will help the investigation.
Rameez was nabbed from his residence at Vettathoor near Perinthalmanna in the early hours of Sunday (Jul 12). His arrest as per the customs is crucial to the progress of the investigation into the gold smuggling case.
The gold smuggling case has become a serious political problem for Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan because Swapan Sundar, had close ties to the office of the CM office.
The arrest of Rameez and his subsequent interrogation in custody could provide further details of investors in the gold smuggling and key personnel involved in coordinating the smuggling in Kerala.
