Prime Minister Modi donated Rs 2.25 lakh from his personal savings as initial corpus to the PM-CARES fund.
Receipts and Payment account of PM-CARES Fund
As per the receipts and payment account of the fund as of March 31, 2020, the initial corpus was Rs 2,25,000. The fund received Rs 30,75,85,32,035 as voluntary contribution. Foreign contribution amounted to Rs 39,67,748. Interest income on regular account as well as foreign contribution amounted to Rs 35,32,728 and Rs 575 respectively. Rs 2,049 was paid as service tax on foreign conversion from the total fund.
The closing balance of the fund as of March 31, 2020 was Rs 30,76,62,56,047.
PM-CARES Fund
PM-CARES (Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations) Fund was launched by Prime Minister Modi on 28th March 2020 in wake of the Chinese coronavirus.
The public charitable trust with the name ‘Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund’ (PM CARES Fund)’ will be a dedicated national fund with the objective of dealing with any kind of emergency or distress situation, like the current Covid-19 pandemic. Prime Minister is the Chairman of this trust, and its members include Defence Minister, Home Minister and Finance Minister.
Citizens who want to make donations can go to the pmindia.gov.in and donate to the PM CARES fund. The details for making the donation are:
Name of the Account ——— PM CARES Account Number ————– 2121PM20202 IFSC Code ———————— SBIN0000691 SWIFT Code ——————— SBININBB104 Name of Bank & Branch —– State Bank of India, New Delhi Main Branch
Aiman Rizwi, one of the most prominent faces of anti-CAA protests at Shaheen Bagh, has uploaded another video on her YouTube channel. In the video, she rants about the “atrocities” Markaz Nizammudin members had to face in the initial days of lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. She starts her rant by mentioning the orders passed by the Bombay High Court quashing the FIRs against foreign Tablighi Jamaatis.
She claims that the government of India tried to blame the spread of coronavirus in India on the markaz members to divert the attention of the Indians from alleged mismanagement. She claimed that the Indian government did not take any action to prepare for the pandemic as long as it was Chinese. She alleged that because PM Modi and industrialists like Ambani and Adani have good relations with China, the Indian government remained mute and allowed the Chinese virus to spread.
Rizwi alleged that the government used Covid-19 to instigate hatred between Hindu and Muslim communities in India. The government took coronavirus in the Markaz and made it a problem started by Muslims. She said, “zabardasti yeh usko markaz leke jaate hain, use Islam kubool karwa dete hain aur wahin se shuru hoti hai desh mein nafrat ki rajniti.” (They [government of India] took the coronavirus to markaz and converted it to Muslim, and from there the politics of hate started.)
She claimed that after markaz was blamed for spreading coronavirus, Muslims in India were beaten and lynched by mobs. She claimed that as there is a police station just 30 meters away from the markaz premises, it is not possible that anyone can plan or get involved in anti-India activities. Rizwi further added that Maulana Saad said that they had sent 1800+ Jamaatis already and trying to send the rest, but the lockdown happened before they could do so.
Rizwi blamed Kejriwal as well in her rant as he took away the passports of the international Jamaatis. She said that Markaz Nizammudin is still locked because of the drama that happened in March. She asked her followers to start a campaign against the media houses that blamed Jamaatis for spreading coronavirus.
Allegations on Sambit Patra fir ‘killing’ Rajiv Tyagi
She made atrocious claims that BJP leader Sambit Patra is behind the late Congress leader Rajiv Tyagi’s death. She alleged that Tyagi died because of the stress caused by allegations made by Sambit Patra in the news channel debate they both attended few hours before his death. She further claimed that the last words of Rajiv Tyagi were “in media walon ne meri jaan le li. Sambit Patra ne meri jaan le li.” (Media houses are behind my death, Sambit Patra is behind my death.)
Allegations on media
Rizwi claimed that the media is biased against everyone who speaks in favour of Muslims. They mute the mic of the speakers in debates no matter which party or ideology they belong to. They only allow speakers from BJP to talk during the news channel debates.
Who is Aiman Rizwi?
Aiman Rizwi was one of the regular faces of anti-CAA protests in Shaheen Bagh. In one of her now-deleted YouTube videos, she urged her followers to pray for Home Minister Amit Shah’s death when he was admitted to hospital due to Covid-19 infection.
Imagine for a moment that on May 23, 2019, instead of winning 303 Lok Sabha seats, the BJP had won 271 seats, one less than the majority mark. To save both democracy and secularism, all other parties would have come together to form a government. Rahul Gandhi or a member of his family would have become Prime Minister. Or maybe the Congress would have won so few seats that the PM post would go to a third party with a 2-3% share of the national vote. Like I said, it is all about saving democracy. Narendra Modi would have become Leader of the Opposition.
(Who would be health minister? It is impossible to say exactly, but my guess would be Lalu Yadav’s daughter “Dr.” Misa Bharti. Did you know that she topped the MBBS exam at Patna Medical College hospital when her parents were ruling Bihar? For some reason, this distinguished medical scholar does not appear to be practicing medicine.)
Anyway. In that scenario, how do you think the media would be covering the pandemic right now? Let’s see: right now, you can go to mainstream or social media and find any number of taunts, jokes, jibes at PM Modi for the rising number of coronavirus cases in India.
Would it have been the same if someone else had won the 2019 election? Perhaps. But consider this: along with what you see, take into account what you don’t see. Maharashtra is India’s number one state in terms of coronavirus case load. It has been so practically since the beginning. Other states have seen ups and downs, but in case of Maharashtra, there has no been no lull at any point. Just a constant surge. No let up in test positive rate either. It was over 22% yesterday.
I challenge you to go to mainstream media right now and find one line of criticism against the way the Govt of Maharashtra has conducted itself in this pandemic. In fact, Shiv Sena MPs right now on Twitter are taking potshots at PM Modi over India reporting the highest number of virus cases in the world. No sense of irony about which state is reporting the highest number of virus cases in India. That is how comprehensive the clean chit given by the media to the MVA government. Imagine if such a formation was ruling India.
Ok, but this is a pandemic. How can you blame individual state governments? But isn’t healthcare a state subject? It certainly is. And the media certainly brought this up, just in a different tone.
In March, media had already congratulated Maharashtra
Congratulations to the Maharashtra Chief Minister for making the war with Covid-19 look easy. You might notice that all seven Chief Ministers mentioned in the article just happen to be non-BJP Chief Ministers.
Some people were so excited about the suddenly high profile role of state governments that they thought 2020 would be the year of the chief minister!
Sagarika Ghose congratulating all non-BJP chief ministers, including Uddhav Thackeray.
Star Chief Ministers… Again, all of them non-BJP. Was there any state government which was vilified? Of course.
Gujarat was criticised even though it was and has been in far better place than Maharashtra
At the time Rajdeep Sardesai wrote this article, Gujarat was number two in coronavirus cases in the country. Who was number 1? Never mind.
So it’s not like they didn’t see the role of state governments. They just cheered non-BJP state governments early on. And savagely criticized the BJP ruled states. But as the pandemic progressed and it became clear the virus wasn’t going away any time soon, the media just fell silent. And pointed all its fingers at the Center. What began as the year for giving credit to Chief Ministers became a year where all the blame was put on the Prime Minister.
For Uddhavsaheb, who went on to earn the tag of “best CM,” this turnaround in media perception must be particularly pleasing. Not long ago, the only party that was vilified in media more than BJP was perhaps the Shiv Sena. But he only had to sign the magical dotted line that made him an ally of 10 Janpath. And with that, all accusations against his politics went away. All questions about his governance style and performance disappeared into the void of Indian secularism. Our media is very forgiving.
Then, the lockdown began and the migrant worker crisis gradually entered public consciousness. It started with thousands of workers in Delhi gathering on the UP border, unable to make a living in the capital any more. Interestingly, the media explained to us that the onus was not on the state they were fleeing from, i.e., Delhi. The onus was on the state they were fleeing to, i.e., Uttar Pradesh.
This narrative was soon repeated nationwide. Migrant workers hungry in Maharashtra: why won’t Uttar Pradesh or Bihar take care of them? Then, the Central government began running special trains to take migrant workers back home. That’s when they blamed the Central government for running “Corona express” as part of a conspiracy to spread the virus in West Bengal. Oh, I’m sorry. Mamata didi never said “Corona express,” she said that the “people” called it that. Shame on “people.”
Things have changed a lot since the early days of April and May. From number 2 at one point, Gujarat has steadily worked its way out of the swamp. As of now, it is not even in the top 10. The test positive rate has also dipped well below 2%. Since the beginning, Gujarat has seen 99,000 cases total, of which some 16000 remain active. For comparison, Kerala has seen 78,000 cases, of which some 22,000 remain active. Did you know that Gujarat has twice the population of Kerala?
But Kerala is reducing testing aggressively. The other day, it only tested 11,000 people, finding about 1100 positive cases. A rate of 10% compared to under 2% for Gujarat. At this rate, if Kerala reduces testing to zero, it will certainly stay far behind Gujarat in number of total cases.
Did I say Kerala? Did I say zero? It reminded me of this.
Kerala hailed for containing coronavirus now has over 22,000 active cases
That Hindu article dated May 5, 2020 is actually a little late in giving credit to Kerala for winning the war on Covid. This article in Quartz congratulated the Kerala government for winning the war on Feb 14 itself.
Since then, Kerala’s legendary Health Minister Shailaja “Teacher” has been giving regular coaching classes to the world on how to stop the pandemic. In the process, she has collected so many awards and accolades that it would take too long to list them all. It is like being asked to make a list of all the great innings of Sachin Tendulkar.
But as cases in Kerala kept surging, the media adulation slowly turned into silence. There was no follow up, no questioning about what Kerala did wrong. It seems Ravish Kumar gave up on his dream of a debate between Gujarat model and Kerala model. Earlier, he had asked if Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan should be made “captain” of India’s covid response.
But for the most part, silence from the media on Kerala. Silence on Maharashtra and “best CM.” When things go wrong, the really fearless media chooses silence over dissent against ‘secular’ governments.
In fact, silence has played a key role in India’s media history. Just before the 2014 election, the Congress ruled India for 10 straight years. This was the latest chunk in its near uninterrupted ~60 year rule out of 67 years of independence at that point. Can you imagine one of our fearless journalists sitting across from Sonia Gandhi and asking her these two questions:
(1) Why is it that India’s per capita GDP crossed Pakistan’s per capita GDP only in 2007? Why did it take 60 years for the average Indian to catch up to the average Pakistani?
(2) Why is it that less than 40% of Indian households in 2014 had access to toilets? Why were 3 crore households without electricity connections? Why did 15 crore households have no tap water?
If Sonia Gandhi wouldn’t grant them an audience, they could have just put their questions out there. In their editorial columns, on their Facebook pages or Twitter timelines. They didn’t. They chose silence.
Silence was the media’s favorite weapon for 67 years. They were silent during Lalu Yadav’s jungle raj in Bihar. They were silent when Mulayam Singh Yadav’s government allowed cheating in board exams in Uttar Pradesh. They were silent when Jyoti Basu’s government drove out all industry from Bengal and carried out massacres of political dissidents.
They have questions only for Modi.
So deafening is this silence that Rahul Gandhi can face the camera and boldly deny all responsibility for the actions of the Govt of Maharashtra, even though he has 10 Cabinet ministers in it.
If Congress had won the 2019 election, suffice to say that we would have complete media silence on the pandemic right now. For 67 years, they could not ask why Indians don’t have toilets, gas, electricity or running water. They have broken their silence now. They are asking why India is unable to stop the pandemic. After all, France did it. The South Koreans did it a long time ago. The USA is slowly getting closer to doing it. How can India be behind countries like France, South Korea and the USA?
The Donald Trump administration on Wednesday imposed fresh restrictions on the Chinese diplomats and asked them to get prior approvals from the State Department before visiting any US university campuses or holding cultural events with more than 50 people outside mission grounds.
The move from Washington comes as a response to the recent restrictions imposed by the Chinese government on American diplomats in China. The Trump administration intends to limit the alleged Chinese influence operations and espionage in the United States.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday said that the US diplomats faced constant barriers to their work in China and hence the Trump administration was responding by imposing new guidelines on senior PRC diplomats in the US
American diplomats in China face constant barriers to their work. Today, the @StateDept imposed new requirements on senior PRC diplomats conducting meetings and events in the U.S. We will always advocate for fair treatment of our diplomats abroad.
Speaking to the media, Secretary Pompeo said that the US administration simply demanded reciprocity. He added, “Access for our diplomats in China should be reflective of the access that Chinese diplomats in the United States have, and today’s steps will move us substantially in that direction.”
The State Department said it would also take action to help ensure all Chinese embassy and consular social media accounts were “properly identified”.
US universities have cautioned about threats by CCP: Secretary Pompeo
Pompeo added that the State Department had recently written to the governing boards of US universities cautioning them about the threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party. He had added that universities have been advised to have clean investments and endowment funds by disclosing Chinese firms in such funds and dropping those connected to human rights abuses.
“These threats can come in the form of illicit funding for research, intellectual property theft, intimidation of foreign students and opaque talent recruitment efforts,” Pompeo said.
On Tuesday, Pompeo said he was hopeful that dozens of Chinese-government funded Confucius Institute cultural centres on US campuses will be shut down by year-end. The institutes are accused of working to recruit “spies and collaborators”.
US calls for ban on Chinese apps
A day after the Indian government banned 118 Chinese mobile apps including PUBG, US Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Keith Krach has called on other nations to join the “clean network”.
“India has already banned 100 plus Chinese apps. We call on all freedom-loving nations & companies to join The Clean Network,” said Keith Krach, US Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment.
“The CCP is trying to leverage 5G-enabled technology to create and export George Orwell’s version of “1984” into the 21st century. India has already banned 100+ Chinese apps. We call on all freedom-loving nations and companies to join The Clean Network.,” he added.
Earlier, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had asserted that even US government is expanding its Clean Network program to include Chinese-made mobile apps and cloud computing services citing national security concerns. He had added that it intends to ban “untrusted” Chinese apps from the app stores of US mobile carriers and phone makers.
The “Clean Network” program is a comprehensive approach of the Trump administration to guarding US citizens’ privacy and protecting most sensitive information from aggressive intrusions by malign actors, such as the Chinese Communist Party.
In yet another embarrassment for Pakistan, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Wednesday rejected its application to get two Indians listed as international terrorists under the UNSC 1267 resolution. UN Tirumurti, Permanent Representative of India to the UN took to Twitter to share the information.
Pakistan’s blatant attempt to politicize 1267 special procedure on terrorism by giving it a religious colour, has been thwarted by UN Security Council. We thank all those Council members who have blocked Pakistan’s designs. @MEAIndia@DrSJaishankar@PMOIndia@harshvshringla
The China-backed move of Pakistan was blocked by five UNSC members, USA, UK, France, Germany and Belgium. Pakistan had proposed the designation of four Indian nationals in 2019 under the UN 1267 Sanctions List. Of these, two were rejected by UNSC earlier and the proposal of two other names, Angara Appaji and Gobinda Pattnaik Duggivalasa, was blocked on Wednesday. As per reports, no evidence was found to back Pakistan’s claim.
Earlier, France, along with other UNSC members gave Pakistan time to come up with evidence to back its claims. However, in absence of the same, the move was thwarted. Many see Pakistan’s move to get Indian names in the list as a revenge of sort after India got terror organisation Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar designated as global terrorist on May 1 last year.
The embarrassment for Pakistan comes a week after Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to UN Munir Akram faked a speech at UNSC meeting where he was not even present.
At 3:09 AM on 3rd September 2020, a series of tweets were posted from the Twitter account (@/narendranodi_in) of narendramodi.in that is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s personal website. The tweets were removed an hour later at around 4:05 AM. The compromised account has 2.5 million followers.
In the first tweet, the hacker appealed to the followers of the Twitter account to donate generously to the PM National Relief Fund for Covid-19 and claimed that the Indian government is accepting donations via Bitcoin.
First tweet after the account got hacked
In the last tweet posted at around 3:16 AM, the hacker group ‘John Wick’ took the responsibility of hacking the account.
Four tweets posted after account got hacked
In a statement, Twitter has confirmed that the account was compromised and is currently ‘actively investigating’ the case.
The hacking of PM Modi’s account comes just weeks after other high profile Twitter accounts were hacked in similar fashion, requesting crypto currency. In July, several high profile twitter accounts were hacked. At that time Twitter issued a statement and said employees with high access were targeted to hack accounts of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos and several others.
On 30th August, risk intelligent platform Cyble reported that the same hacker group John Wick hacked PayTM Mall’s servers and the company suffered massive data breach. However, in current series of tweets, ‘John Wick’ has claimed they did not hack PayTM Mall.
Apparently delighted by the news of the controversial doctor Kafeel Khan’s release on bail from Mathura jail, group editor of Congress mouthpiece National Herald, Mrinal Pande, went on to compare Dr Kafeel with Lord Krishna. Pande’s reaction was not surprising at all as her hatred for Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and PM Modi is an open secret.
Comparing Dr Kafeel’s release from Mathura jail to Lord Krishna’s escape from the jail where he was born, Pande insinuated that Dr Kafeel too will bring the end of CM Yogi just like Lord Krishna had eliminated Kans. Dr Kafeel is an accused in the Gorakhpur children’s death case in relation to which an inquiry is going on. An inquiry was also initiated against him for spreading fake news of being absolved in the children’s death case and also for forcibly entering the hospital and trying to treat patients during his suspension.
He was arrested in January this year in Mumbai for allegedly making provocative comments on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) during his speech at the Aligarh Muslim University in December last year. Later on, provisions of the National Security Act (NSA) were slapped on him by the UP police for the same. However, yesterday Allahabad High Court set aside his detention under the NSA and ordered his release from the jail. The court order was hailed by Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra who demanded his swift release from the jail.
India has made it to the list of top 50 countries in the list of Global Innovation Index (GII) 2020. Despite going through the tough patches due to the Covid-19 crisis, India was able to jump up four positions and stand at 48th position in the GII.
#Breaking | India jumps up 4 places to come to 48th position on the Global Innovation Index 2020 released by WIPO. India has made it to the top 50 for the first time.
India topped the list of best innovative economies in the Central and South Asia region followed by Iran and Kazakhstan.
In the ranking done in various income groups, India was ranked third in the Lower middle-income economies, after Vietnam and Ukraine. Countries were categorised in four groups for this ranking, high income, upper middle income, lower middle income and low-income economies.
In the last year’s annual report of the GII, India was ranked 52nd after jumping five positions from the ranking of the previous year (2018). The GII is an annual report of the world economies prepared in relation to their capacity for and success in innovation published by Cornell University, INSEAD and World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in partnership with other institutions. The report also provides an analysis of data derived from several sources that include the International Telecommunication Union, the World Bank and the World Economic Forum.
Switzerland topped the list of the most innovative economies followed by Sweden. The US, the UK and Netherlands ranked at third, fourth and fifth positions respectively. India made to the third position in the 10 best-ranked economies in the category of Lower-Middle Income Economies.
After the video of an Unacademy tutor who was calling for picking up an AK-47 went viral on social media, now another such video of another Unacademy tutor is doing rounds. In a video that is being circulated by the netizens, an Unacademy teacher can be seen exposing his anti-Brahmin bias by making derogatory remarks for the Brahmins.
The online coaching firm @unacademy is targeting the Brahmin community and they are completely supporting the violence in Jammu Kashmir. Please take strict action against their company and concent faculty pic.twitter.com/7DbPMVbrQm
The tutor is apparently teaching about Varna system in the video wherein he remarks, “Sabse Kamchor jo hai Brahmins hote hain (Brahmins are the idlest community)”. He doesn’t stop at that and goes on to claim that the Vedas were written by the Brahmins who lied to the people that they were not written by any human being and in fact were written by God himself in order to secure people’s belief in Vedas.
He then explains another imaginary concept and says that the Brahmins put themselves between humans and God and thus became the mediator. According to his imaginary concept, Brahmins told people that they could not connect to God directly and therefore needed the assistance of the Brahmins to reach God. The tutor then presents some made-up facts and says that all the Hindu temples have Brahmins as priests and people from other castes cannot become priests in Hindu temples. He laments that only Brahmins perform all religious rituals on all the special occasions be it marriage or grih pravesh. He then claimed that Jainism and Buddhism originated from the Kshatriya class due to conflict with the Brahmins.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Wednesday filed a charge sheet against five individuals for their alleged association with the banned Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), an affiliate of the ISIS. They have been charged for conspiring to generate disaffection against the government, promoting enmity among different religious communities and for carrying out subversive activities.
NIA files chargesheet against 5 accused in Islamic State Khorasan Province case, for their affiliation with the proscribed outfit conspiring to create disaffection against Govt. of India, promoting enmity among different religious communities and committing subversive activities.
The charge sheet includes 36-year-old Jahanzaib Sami, having multiple names such as Dawood Ibrahim, Xaib, Abu Muhammed Al-Hind, Abu Abdulla and belonging from Srinagar. The other charge-sheeted persons include Hina Bashir, a native of Kashmir; Abdullah Basith, a resident of Hyderabad; and Sadiya Anwar Shaikh and Nabeel Siddick Khatri, both from Pune.
As per the reports, Jahanzaib, Hina, Abdullah Basith and Sadiya were in continuous touch with the ISIS terrorists based in Khorasan Province and Syria. Heeding to the instructions issued by ISKP head Abu Usman-Al-Kashmiri, Jahanzaib and Basith had prepared a magazine titled ‘Voice of Hind” to incite Muslims.
It has also been found that Jahanzaib, Hina, Abdullah Basith and Sadiya were plotting to leverage anti-CAA protests to stoke Muslims against the Indian Government by devising new seditious slogans and making graffiti at public places. They had planned to highlight the same on social and international media.
The probe into the matter revealed that accused Jahanzaib, Hina, Abdullah Basith and Nabeel Siddick attempted to create an improvised IED and were scheming to carry out widespread killings in crowded places to propagate the activities and ideology of ISIS/ISKP in India.
Arrested members of Islamic State’s Khorasan wing wanted to replicate Colombo Terror Attack in Delhi
Earlier in March, the Intelligence Bureau and Delhi Police had uncovered a massive plot to replicate the Colombo-style Jihadist attacks in Delhi by a module of Islamic-State Khorasan Province (ISKP) after two members of the group were arrested. The arrested members, Hina Bashir Beigh and Jahanzaib Sami were planning to procure a potent chemical Triacetone triperoxide (TATP) for the purpose. The chemical is called the ‘Mother of Death’ by the Islamic State terrorists.
Two other members of the terror module–Sadiya and Nabeel Siddick Khatri–were arrested a couple of months later, in July. According to the NIA, Sadiya was in constant touch with a Kashmiri couple–Jahanzaib Sami & Hina Bashir Beigh, who were arrested earlier, and a Tihar jail inmate Abdullah Basith on secure messaging applications to discuss ways to promote the ideology and activities of ISIS on how to propagate the ideology of ISIS & further its activities in India.
The premier investigation agency had also said that Nabeel Khatri was an active co-conspirator with Jahanzeb Sami and Abdullah Basith in carrying out violent terror attacks in India by providing logistical support such as procurement of weapons, fake SIM cards, assembling of Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) etc. to propagate ISIS activities in the country.
