newspaper

1. came only two days after it sug-
gested the onset of the monsoon
over Kerala would be delayed --
Satyendar Jain
Congress workers protest against Moosewala’s killing outside
Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal’s residence on Monday. SANCHIT KHANNA/HT
INDIA-PAKISTAN
BACKCHANNEL
TALKS RESUME
vention of Money Laundering
Act after around four hours of
questioning on Monday, during
which he gave evasive replies on
the money trail, people familiar
with the development said on
HT Correspondent
letters@hindustantimes.com
NEW DELHI:Prime Minister Nar-
endra Modi on Monday said that
coming out of the negative
impact of the Covid-19 pan-
demic, India has become one of
the fastest growing economies in
the world.
The PM said that when his
government is completing its
eight years, the confidence of the
country, the confidence of the
countrymen in themselves is
unprecedented. “The country is
getting out of the vicious cycle of
corruption, scams worth thou-
sands of crores, nepotism, ter-
rorist organisations spreading
across the country, and regional
discrimination, in which it was
trapped before 2014,” Modi said.
The National Democratic Alli-
ance led by Modi took oath of
office on May 26, 2014. The PM
was speaking after he released
benefits under the PM CARES
for children scheme via video
conferencing. “This is also an
example for you children that
even the most difficult days too
pass,” he added.
Referring to the welfare poli-
cies like Swachh Bharat Mission,
Jan Dhan Yojana or Har Ghar Jal
Abhiyan, the PM said that the
government is moving with the
spirit of “Sabka Saath Sabka
Vikas, Sabka Vishwas and Sabka
Prayas”.
“The last 8 years have been
devoted to the welfare and ser-
vice of the poor. As a member of
the family, we have tried to
reduce difficulties and improve
the ease of living for the poor of
continuedon→13
8yearshavebeenaboutfulfillingaspirations:PM
Neeraj Chauhan
letters@hindustantimes.com
NEW DELHI: The Enforcement
Directorate on Monday arrested
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader
and Delhi health minister Saty-
endar Jain in connection with a
money laundering probe against
him, his family members and
associates.
His party alleged that he was
being harassed because Jain was
AAP’s chief election strategist for
the upcoming assembly elec-
tions in Himachal Pradesh,
where the ruling Bharatiya Jan-
ata Party was fast losing ground.
Jain was arrested under Pre-
condition of anonymity. He will
be produced before a court on
Tuesday morning, an official
said. The ED probe is based on a
2017 case of the Central Bureau
of Investigation, in which it was
alleged that the AAP leader and
his wife, Poonam Jain, amassed
disproportionate assets worth
₹1.47 crore between February
2015 and May 2017, which was
more than double their known
sources of income.
Deputy CM Manish Sisodia
alleged that ED has arrested Jain
so that he does not go to Hima-
chal Pradesh to prepare for the
election and termed the case
against Jain as “bogus”. →P4
EDarrestsDelhiminister
Jain,AAPcallsitvendetta
Tamil Nadu for the first time. He
will be moving from his current
seat representing Maharashtra,
and was accompanied by minis-
tersoftheTamilNadu’sDMKfor
the nomination. →P11
Neha LM Tripathi
letters@hindustantimes.com
NEW DELHI: Budget carrier Spi-
ceJet has been fined ₹10 lakh by
the aviation regulator for train-
ing pilots to fly its Boeing B737
MAX aircraft on a faulty simula-
tor. The compromised training
could have adversely affected
flight safety, the Directorate
General of Civil Aviation said on
Monday. It nullified the train-
ing. “SpiceJet was issued a show
cause notice and their reply was
not found satisfactory,” the reg-
ulator said in a statement. →P18
SPICEJET FINED
₹10L FOR FAULTY
TRAINING OF MAX
AIRCRAFT PILOTS
NEWDELHI:The Delhi University
on Monday repeated its warning
to St Stephen’s College, saying it
will declare all admissions con-
ducted in violation of the Com-
mon University Examination
Test (CUET)-based policy as null
and void. In a letter, DU told the
college it cannot hold interviews
for admissions to general seats.
The varsity said that CUET was a
standardised procedure, and the
addition of scores based on
interviews will introduce subjec-
tivity into the process and lead to
discrimination. While DU man-
dates only the CUET score for
admissions to 50% unreserved
seats, St Stephen’s insists on giv-
ing 15% weightage to interviews
for all admissions. →P4
ST STEPHEN’S TOLD
BY DU TO FALL IN
LINE ON ITS NEW
ADMISSION NORM NEW DELHI/BHOPAL/LUCKNOW/
CHENNAI/BENGALURUMUMBAI:
Union minister Piyush Goyal,
former ministers P Chidam-
baram, Jairam Ramesh and Pra-
fulPatel,aswellasRashtriyaLok
Dal president Jayant Chaudhary
wereamongthosewhofiledtheir
nominationsfortheRajyaSabha
onMonday,aheadofelectionson
June 10. The last date of filing
nominations is May 31 and the
stakes are high for all 57 seats,
across15states. FromtheMVA’s
side, senior NCP leader Praful
Patel and the Congress’s Imran
Pratapgarhi — who hails from
Uttar Pradesh — also filed their
nominations on Monday. From
theCongress,formerunionmin-
isterChidambaramfiledhisnom-
ination from his home state of
CandidatesofBJP,Cong
fileRSpollnominations
HT Correspondent
letterschd@hindustantimes.com
CHANDIGARH:Punjab chief min-
ister Bhagwant Mann on Mon-
day announced setting up a judi-
cial commission headed by a sit-
ting high court judge to
investigate the killing of Punjabi
singer Sidhu Moosewala, as the
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) govern-
ment in the state sought to con-
tain a political and public outcry
over the murder of the singer-
politician.
The Punjab Police said they
rounded up some people and got
important leads in the murder
case, even as CCTV footage
showing the Punjabi singer’s
vehicle being followed just
before he was shot dead
emerged. The police said they
detained about 10 men in con-
nection with the killing, with an
official saying their roles were
being ascertained.
Moosewala, who contested
the recent assembly elections in
Punjab on a Congress ticket from
Mansa, was shot dead on Sun-
day, a day after the state govern-
continuedon→13
Judicial panel will probe
Moosewalakilling,10held
NEW DELHI:Prison authorities in
Delhi’s Tihar jail on Monday
conducted searches in the cells
of Lawrence Bishnoi and his
accomplice Shahrukh in connec-
tion with the murder of Punjabi
singer and Congress leader
Sidhu Moosewala, and seized
“prohibited items”.
Bishnoi is currently facing a
trial for an offence committed
under the stringent Maharashtra
Control of Organised Crime Act.
Meanwhile, a Delhi court on
Monday refused to entertain a
plea filed by Bishnoi’s lawyer
seeking a direction to jail author-
ities not to give his custody to the
Punjab police.
The petition stated Bishnoi
feared he would be killed in a
fake encounter by Punjab and
Chandigarh police during tran-
sit. Special judge Praveen Singh
said there was no ground for the
accused to file the application
before the court. →P8
POLICE RAID TIHAR
CELL OF GANGSTER
LAWRENCE BISHNOI
CHANDIGARH:Punjab chief min-
ister Bhagwant Mann on Mon-
day ordered an inquiry into the
decision to reduce the security of
Punjabi singer and Congress
leader Sidhu Moosewala, who
was murdered on Sunday. Mann
“categorically” said all the
aspects of the reduction of secu-
rity of the singer are under scru-
tiny and the responsibility of
lapse, if any, will be definitely
fixed, the chief minister’s office
said in a statement. →P8
Punjabgovtordersprobe
into pruning of security
NEWDELHI:The Central Board of
Indirect Taxes and Customs on
Monday transferred IRS Sameer
Wankhede, who arrested actor
Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan
Khan in a drugs case, to Chennai.
The development comes days
after the NCB gave a clean chit to
Aryan, following which the
home ministry recommended
action against Wankhede for a
“shoddy probe” in the drug bust
on the cruise ship Cordelia on
October 2, 2021, in which 20 peo-
ple were arrested, including
those like Aryan who did not
have any drugs on them. →P11
NCB’S EX-ZONAL
CHIEF WANKHEDE
TRANSFERRED
TO CHENNAI
Agencies
letters@hindustantimes.com
POKHARA: Nepalese rescuers
have retrieved the bodies of all
but one of 22 people on board a
plane that crashed into a Hima-
layan mountainside on Sunday,
officials said on Monday, adding
that the Nepal government has
formed a panel to investigate the
incident.
“Twenty-one bodies have
been recovered and teams are
searching for the remaining
one,” Nepal Army spokesman
Narayan Silwal told AFP.
“It is a very difficult area to
work. Several pieces of the air-
craft are scattered all over the
slope,” a police official at the
crash site said.
Air traffic control lost contact
with the plane, owned by private
airline Tara Air, shortly after it
took off from Pokhara in west-
ern Nepal.
Four Indians, two Germans
and 16 Nepalese nationals,
including three crew members,
were on the De Havilland
Canada DHC-6-300 Twin Otter
aircraft which crashed 15 min-
utes after take off.
The civil aviation authority
said the plane “met an accident”
at 14,500 feet in the Sanosware
area of Thasang municipality.
Aerial photos of the crash site
showed aircraft parts scattered
on rocks and moss on the side of
a mountain gorge. →P17
21 bodies recovered from Nepal jet
crash site in treacherous terrain
Jayashree Nandi
letters@hindustantimes.com
NEW DELHI: Has the monsoon
arrived? Or not? Well, the India
Meteorological Department or
IMD says it has. But IMD’s own
criteria for declaring the onset of
the monsoon say it has not.
Monsoon is declared when
eight stations across Kerala, Lak-
shadweep,andKarnataka,receive
a minimum of 2.5mm of rain for
two consecutive days. On the day
IMDannouncedtheonsetofmon-
soon,Sunday,onlyfivedid.
It wasn’t immediately clear
why IMD jumped the gun but its
head insisted its call was right.
“Evenifwedon’tmeettherain-
fall criteria for the second day, it
doesn’t make a huge difference.
The criterion was met on Satur-
day which is why onset was
declared. We cannot expect that
thecriteriawillbemeteveryday,”
said M Mohapatra, director gen-
eral,IMDrespondingtocriticism
by meteorologists on declaring
monsoon onset prematurely.
Experts did not take too
kindly to IMD’s decision, which
this, a few weeks after claiming
the onset would be early.
“The monsoon’s onset over
Kerala is a well-defined event.
The onset criteria are based on
the findings of multiple research
studies spanning over five dec-
ades, which nicely link large-
scale atmospheric conditions of
the monsoon to rainfall occur-
ring over Kerala. Thus, there
should not be any room for sub-
jectivity or assumptions in the
onset declaration,” said inde-
pendent meteorologist Akshay
Deoras. →P14
{ EXPERTS RAISE QUESTIONS }
IMD faces the heat for announcing arrival of
monsoon before its own criteria were met
Rezaul H Laskar
letters@hindustantimes.com
NEW DELHI: India and Pakistan
have resumed backchannel con-
tacts as part of efforts to bridge
differences between the two
sides on a host of issues though
there are no signs of any immi-
nent breakthrough, people
familiar with the matter said on
Monday. The contacts have
largely been overseen by security
officials from both sides since
they began more than two years
ago, with meetings being held in
southeast Asia and Europe. The
talks also contributed to man-
agement of tensions between the
two sides, the people said. →P15
MONSOON IS
DECLARED WHEN
EIGHT STATIONS
ACROSS KERALA,
LAKSHADWEEP,
AND K’TAKA GET A
MINIMUM 2.5MM
RAIN FOR 2 DAYS
NEW DELHI: The BJP on
Monday announced four
more candidates for the
Rajya Sabha elections —
K Laxman and Mithilesh
Kumar were fielded from
Uttar Pradesh, Sumitra
Valmiki from MP and
Lahar Singh Siroya from
Karnataka. →P11
BJPannounces4
moreRSnames
hindustantimes.com NEW DELHI/METRO
Tuesday,May31,2022
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