The Indian Express | 1 month ago | 05-07-2022 | 11:40 am
Good morning,The BJP-Shinde Sena coalition won the trust vote with 164 votes, the same number it previously garnered in the Speaker’s election. The last day of the special assembly session was marked by an emotional speech from Shinde, who referred to the death of two of his children in a boat accident in June 2000. He also tried to reassure his political rivals saying: “We don’t subscribe to the politics of vendetta…”🔴 Having comfortably won the floor test, the coalition may not press for disqualification of the 15 MLAs left with Uddhav Thackeray. Highly placed sources in the BJP said the party wanted “truce”, even though Speaker Rahul Narwekar said he would seek their disqualification as they had ignored a whip issued by the Shinde side for the Speaker election.🔴 Meanwhile, the failure of 11 Congress MLAs, including former CM Ashok Chavan, to cast their vote in the floor test led to raised eyebrows within the party with senior leaders raising concern and questioning their “recklessness” and “casual behaviour”. Chavan said: “We were late by two or three minutes. They closed the gates. There is no foul play. We were stuck in traffic.”At least 26 recommendations for appointment of judges to the Bombay High Court, which is currently functioning at almost half its sanctioned strength, are pending with the government at different stages of consideration, The Indian Express has learnt. The Bombay High Court currently has 57 judges against a sanctioned strength of 96 judges. At least five more judges are expected to retire this year.Scientists in India probing the possible causes for the recent rise in Coronavirus cases said BA.2.75, one of the several sub-variants of the parent Omicron variant, was now one of the most commonly detected sub-variant in the country in recent results of genome sequencing. It has been found to have an 18 per cent growth advantage over the other currently circulating Omicron sub-variants. However, there is no evidence as of now to suggest that the BA.2.75 also causes a more severe form of infection.The government has barred hotels and restaurants from adding service charge “automatically or by default” in the food bill. It said that in case of violation, a consumer can ask the hotel/ restaurant to remove the service charge, or seek redressal by filing a complaint.As drama swirled around the Maharashtra government’s survival, one of the characters at the heart of it was a politician from Haryana, Sonia Doohan. The 30-year-old national president of the NCP students’ wing was held along with an aide for allegedly using fake identification documents to check into a hotel in Goa, where Sena rebels were staying. Doohan, who played an “important role in the fall of the three-day BJP government in 2019” according to NCP’s Dheeraj Sharma, has denied the allegations.A day after their capture of two heavily armed LeT militants, the residents of Tukson village in J&K remain firm: they will not give way to terrorists, at any cost. One of the residents involved in the capture, a BA student, told The Indian Express about how he had alerted his brother of two “unknown people posing as traders” at a dhok. This led to a gathering of seven residents, who formed a cordon, and eventually went on to overpower the duo.A year since the Covid-induced oxygen crisis, hospitals in Delhi are struggling to keep the pressure-swing adsorption (PSA) plants going. Most of them switch on the plant once a week or for a couple of hours every day to ensure that the machine remains functional. The reason for this are multiple: High operation and maintenance cost, lower quality of oxygen generated, and fear of antagonising the regular liquid medical oxygen suppliers.Mumbai’s chawl and low-income housing localities have always boasted of a community dance culture. B-Girl Bar-B, born Siddhi Tambe, took her first steps in Breaking at a similar community centre. The 18-year-old has now earned a ticket to New York after emerging India champ at the Red Bull BC One Cypher earlier this month. We take a look at her journey.Delhi Confidential: Union Minister Amit Shah annually visits his village on the occasion of Bhaidooj and the second day of Navratri and participates in the meeting of Primary Agricultural Credit Societies. Shah revealed this while responding to Cabinet colleague Parshottam Rupala, who took a jibe at cooperative leaders and asked them how they contribute to the sector, during an event to mark the 100th International Day of Cooperatives.In today’s episode of the ‘3 things’ podcast, we talk about Maharashtra’s new government clearing the floor test in the Assembly and the protests against its decision to build a metro shed in Aarey forest. We also discuss a fratricide case in BSF and the rising concern of mental health issues among police forces.Until tomorrow,Leela Prasad and Sonal Gupta