CM Bommai shifted to hospital; son, daughter-in-law also test covid positive

Patna, June 10: Trinamool Congress MP Shatrughan Sinha said that a united Opposition could work a "miracle" in next year's Lok Sabha polls.

Sinha, who is on a trip to his home town Patna, told journalists on Friday that he was sanguine about the opposition parties' meet scheduled here on June 23.

Lauding Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for the "initiative", he also expressed delight that his party chief Mamata Banerjee has agreed to attend the meeting.

"I have always held that Mamata Banerjee is a game changer. It is great that she will be there with people like national icon Rahul Gandhi, who has acquired heroic stature after Bharat Jodo Yatra," said Sinha, who was briefly with Congress before joining TMC.

The Asansol MP hoped that the meeting will help build a common minimum programme for "the new government which replaces the current regime".

Sinha, who had represented Patna Sahib twice as a BJP MP before losing the seat to Ravi Shankar Prasad in 2019 while contesting on a Congress ticket, was asked that given his optimism, how many seats he expected the united Opposition to win in 2024.

He replied, "I am not an astrologer but it can be safely said that there would be a miracle. We have seen glimpses of what can be achieved in the assembly polls of Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka where the BJP got defeated by the Congress."

Bengaluru, June 8: Karnataka Primary and Secondary Education Minister Madhu Bangarappa on Thursday said revision of school textbooks will be done this year itself in the interest of the students.

He said the matter will be soon placed before the Cabinet to seek its consent.

The Congress in its poll manifesto had promised to undo the changes made to school textbooks when the BJP was in power, and had also promised to scrap National Education Policy (NEP).

"The Chief Minister is personally interested in this, it was also clearly mentioned in our manifesto -- of which I was the vice president -- that we will revise the textbook in the interest of the students. Same thing will stand. As we are implementing the guarantees, in the same way in my department we will fulfill what he had said," Bangarappa said.

Speaking to reporters here, he said, "There are reports in the media that we may not revise this year as the textbooks have already reached the students. No we will do it this year itself by introducing whatever necessary as a supplementary. There is such a system and it has been done several times in the past. We have already begun the work in this regard."

It is also being ensured that there is no burden on the students because of this, he said adding that as "It is still the initial days of the academic year, and as students wouldn't have entered the textbook curriculum yet, this is the time we have to do whatever we have to, of course those chapters (to be omitted) will be there in the textbooks, but teachers will be directed what to teach and what not to."

Noting that based on the experts advice what is necessary for the students will be kept and the unnecessary would be omitted, the Minister without revealing much said, as we are talking, the discussions and meetings are going on in this regard.

"After all these processes are completed, with the guidance of the Chief Minister it will be placed before the Cabinet and once it is passed there, it will be sent to students, keeping their interest in mind," he said.

Bangarappa indicated that the proposal on the textbook revision will be placed before the Cabinet probably when it meets next.

He however did not wish to go into details, when asked about reports stating that plans are on to remove some lessons from textbooks introduced by the previous BJP government, including one on RSS founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar.

There was a textbook controversy during the previous BJP regime, with demands by opposition Congress and some writers for sacking the then textbook review committee chief Rohith Chakratirtha for allegedly “saffronising” school textbooks by including the speech of RSS founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar as a chapter, and omitting chapters on key figures like freedom fighters, social reformers, and the writings of noted literary figures.

There were also allegations of erroneous content on 12th century social reformer Basavanna and certain factual errors in the textbooks, including accusations of disrespecting ‘Raashtra Kavi’ (national poet) Kuvempu and distortion of the state anthem penned by him. Initially, the allegations were refuted but subsequently rectifications were made in some cases. 

A devastating crash involving three trains in the eastern Indian state of Odisha has killed nearly 300 people and left hundreds injured, many of them seriously. Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who has been at the site of the accident, has said "a high-level committee" will be set up to investigate the accident.

Mr Vaishnaw's cabinet colleague Dharmendra Pradhan blamed "technical reasons" for the crash, describing it as "an unfortunate incident... it shouldn't have happened".

An official said the inquiry would be helmed by the commissioner of railway safety for the south-eastern circle - which includes Balasore district where the accident occurred.

Full details of how it happened are still not available, but the railway ministry said the crash took place around 18:55 (13:25 GMT) on Friday near the Bahanaga Bazar station, about 270km south of Kolkata and 170km north of Bhubaneswar, Odisha's capital.

The accident involved three trains:
•    Coromandel Express which had started just hours before from Shalimar railway station in the state of West Bengal and was headed to the southern city of Chennai
•    Howrah Superfast Express which had started from Yesvantpur station in Bengaluru was due to reach Howrah
•    A stationary goods train which was standing at the Bahanaga Bazar station

The cause of the crash, which is being described as India's worst this century, is not yet clear.

There are varying accounts of which train derailed first and how the collision happened. But Railway spokesperson Amitabh Sharma said it was the Coromandel Express that derailed first.

"About 10 to 12 of its coaches derailed and ended up on the opposite track. A few minutes later, the Howrah Superfast Express hit the overturned carriages and three-four of its coaches also derailed," he added.

Mr Sharma did not mention the third train, but the Odisha government press release called it a "three-way accident" which involved a stationary goods train. It said 17 coaches of the two passenger trains were derailed and severely damaged.

Villagers from the nearby area and eyewitnesses to the crash also spoke of three trains being involved in the crash.

Girija Shankar Rath, who lives near the station and was among the first people to reach the accident site, told BBC Hindi that the Coromandel Express derailed and hit the goods train parked on a nearby track from behind.

"There was total chaos and the whole area was engulfed in smoke. And then we saw Shalimar Express which came hurtling down and hit some of the Coromandel wreckage and two of its coaches also derailed," he said.

Another eyewitness Tutu Biswas said he came to the accident spot when he heard a loud noise.

"Some of the coaches of the Coromandel express had gone over the goods train," Mr Biswas said. "There were lots of injured people and bodies here. I met a young boy who had lost both his parents. He was crying and then he died too," he added.

Friday's crash is among the five deadliest accidents in the history of Indian railways.

Atul Karwal, chief of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), said the force with which the trains collided had left several coaches crushed and mangled and they had to cut through the wreckage to reach the passengers.

Hundreds of ambulances, doctors, nurses and rescue personnel were sent to the scene and they worked for 18 hours to rescue trapped passengers and pull out bodies.

India has one of the largest train networks in the world - It runs more than 12,000 passenger trains daily and it is used by tens of millions of passengers to travel across the country daily, but a lot of the railway infrastructure needs improving.