He requested the farmers to reciprocate by ensuring that the battle for justice does not cause any problems for the people of the state.

Amid reports of disconnection of power supply to various mobile towers across the state, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Friday appealed to protesting farmers not to inconvenience people with such actions but “to continue to exercise the same restraint as they had been showing over the past several months of their agitation”.

Pointing out that telecom connectivity had become even more critical for people amid the COVID pandemic, the Chief Minister urged the farmers to show the same discipline and sense of responsibility which they had been exercising during their protest on the Delhi border, which has completed one month, and also earlier during their agitation in the state.

Urging the farmers not to take the law in their hands by forcibly shutting down telecom connectivity or manhandling employees or technicians of telecom service providers, the Chief Minister said such actions were not in the interest of Punjab and its future. He said the people of Punjab had been standing with the farmers in their fight against the “black farm laws” and would continue to do so.

He requested the farmers to reciprocate by ensuring that the battle for justice does not cause any problems for the people of the state.

According to an official release, the Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said that forceful disruption of telecom services due to snapping of power supply to mobile towers by farmers in several parts of the state was not only adversely affecting the studies and future prospects of students, who are dependent entirely on online education, but also hampering the daily life of people working from home due to the pandemic.

The disruption of telecom services would also seriously affect the state’s already disturbed economy, he noted, exhorting the farmers to continue with their peaceful protests without causing any inconvenience to the citizens of Punjab.

Captain Amarinder Singh pointed out that the prolonged economic crisis, which would be aggravated as a result of telecom service disruption in the state, would have a trigger-effect on the agriculture sector, as well as the farming community too.

The effects would be detrimental to all sections, he said, adding that such actions would adversely impact his government’s efforts to attract more investment in the telecom sector as part of its recently announced New Telecom Guidelines 2020, which was also aimed at improving telecom connectivity in the state.

In the wake of COVID-19, the urgency of these guidelines was felt seriously as there was dire need to improve connectivity through easing Right of Way permissions for overground and underground telecom infrastructures, the release said, adding that the guidelines were expected to give a quantum jump to the telecom and internet connectivity in the state.

Punjab is one of the states with the highest telecom density, the release said.

Farmers protesting against the three farm laws in Mansa in Punjab have shut the power supply to several Reliance Jio towers in the town, disrupting services in parts of the state.

The Chief Minister’s appeal came in the wake of a request from the Tower and Infrastructure Providers Association (TAIPA), a registered body of telecom infrastructure providers, asking the state government to persuade the farmers not to resort to any unlawful activity in their fight for justice.

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Good Governance Day is celebrated on 25th December every year to enhance the Betterment and Welfare of the Citizens of India

Good governance is a commitment made to the citizens of the country. This allows the citizens to live in harmony with each other and the governing body. Each year, on 25th December, Good Governance Day is celebrated. 

Background

Former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, always worked for good governance. In 2014, National Good Governance Day was established as a tribute to Vajpayee. On 23rd December 2014, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya were announced as the recipient of the Bharat Ratna. Bharat Ratna is the highest civilian award of India. Subsequently, this day was announced by Prime Minister Modi. Since 2014, this day has become official and is observed annually. 

Objectives

The objectives of celebrating this day are:

• The aim is to enhance the growth and development in the country through good governance
• To make people aware about the government commitment of providing transparent and accountable administration
• This day celebrates the standardizing of government working to make it highly efficient
• To complete the mission of Good Governance Day, this day is an opportunity to implement new and effective policies 
• Making the citizens of India active participants in the good governance process is the main objective of this day

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I-T department has launched a campaign for non-responding persons to catch tax evaders to collect due taxes and penalties from them

The Income Tax (I-T) Department has identified a noticeable number of persons who have deliberately chosen to ignore notices calling for enquiry and verification of the tax returns. These persons have ignored the emails, the SMSs (short message service) and even the physical notices in some cases.

However, now it would be difficult for them to avoid outreach of the I-T Department as the technology-driven Faceless Assessment Scheme has been operationalized, said the sources in the Department of Revenue (DoR). The I-T department has launched a nationwide campaign to spot such non-responding persons to catch tax evaders to collect due taxes and penalties from them. In one of such a case, an individual at Rajkot, Gujarat who showed his income less than Rs 5 lakh a year and has bank accounts with cash deposits of nearly Rs 10 crore and cash withdrawal of Rs 7.5 crore, the sources said.

This scamster did not respond to six notices, over 10 SMS alerts and other means to contact him. A survey operation was conducted during which the individual was not traceable and the business premises shown in the income tax return was of someone else. His home was traced from the bank but he appears to have absconded. Now, the process to attach his bank account and other assets have been initiated.

Sources said that these unscrupulous tax evaders have probably mistaken the taxpayer facilitating approach of I-T department to mean laxity in follow up action but the department is quite watchful with non-intrusive means of data analytics and Artificial intelligence (AI) and it will not be possible for a dishonest tax evader and fraudsters to escape from BIFA tool and tech-driven tax system.

A highly placed source in the Ministry of Finance said on the condition of anonymity that the I-T department is committed to honouring the honest taxpayers while penalizing tax evaders/fraudsters.

He cited a case of Mumbai, where an individual suggested his income of less than Rs 5 lakh a year but had made cash deposits worth Rs 12 crores. Later, a pre-survey examination revealed cash deposits were of about Rs 60 crores. During the survey, diaries were impounded as the individual does not maintain books of accounts.

Further enquiries are underway to pinpoint the source of cash, he said.
Similarly, in yet another case wherein an individual from Alwar, Rajasthan had deposited in his bank account cash of Rs 27 crores in FY 2017-18 and Rs 22 crores in FY 2019-20 and had shown his income in the range of Rs 3 to Rs 5 lakhs only.

The individual now under survey is being investigated, said the sources, adding that the Faceless Assessment Scheme along with improved Form 26AS and pre-filled ITRs is robustly tuned to make a distinction between honest taxpayers and deliberate tax evaders/fraudsters and the IT department would not hesitate to take required coercive actions against non-responding persons and tax evaders who have misused the trust reposed on them.

DoR sources in the know of the matter told to have learned that approximately in 6,000 cases the devious tax evaders have tried the route of no-response in an apparent bid to escape from the rigours of the law.
Earlier, in the pre-faceless era, such tactics of being non-responding may have paid dividends for tax evaders. But now, with the Faceless Assessment Scheme, the I-T department collates and matches transactions with the ITRs of taxpayers/entities and selects tax returns for the scrutiny that show wide discrepancies in financial transactions viz-a-viz the income shown in the tax returns.

These discrepancies are unearthed by the application of risk analysis developed through AI as well as from the experiential and domain knowledge of the tax officials.

One must not forget, said the sources, that the Faceless Assessment Scheme is a data-driven model of tax compliance. It presumes voluntary and honest conformity with tax laws by the persons and is based on the aggregation of financial transactions of a taxable entity that are collected by the various regulatory and facilitation agencies like the Sub-registrars of properties or the banks and other Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) and shared with the I-T Department.

“It’s just not possible to dupe the tax administration now fastened with the Faceless Assessment System,” said the source.

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The Indian railway has disqualified the Chinese company and an Indian firm for the manufacturing of 44 Vande Bharat trainsets 

The Indian Railways has disqualified the bid of a consortium of a Chinese company and an Indian firm for the manufacturing of 44 Vande Bharat trainsets costing nearly Rs 1,800 crores.

Now there are only two valid bids of BHEL and Medha Servo Drives. Medha, which had got the contract for the manufacturing for the first two such trains, has quoted the lowest bid, sources said. Only three players had put the bid for the big contract including the CRRC-Pioneer Electric India, a joint venture between Beijing based CRRC Yongji Electric Ltd and India’s Pioneer Fil-Med Ltd, which has its plant in Haryana.

It took almost four weeks for the railways to evaluate the tenders and take the final call. Railway officials had earlier said that the tender committee would take the decision on the validity of bids.

Before applying for the train set procurement tender, the CRRC-Pioneer Electric India had applied for registration here after it was made mandatory for companies with beneficial ownership in countries sharing land borders with India to get registered for participating in public procurement contracts. 

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s interaction with farmers on the birth anniversary of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Friday.

In a reach out over the government’s efforts for the farm sector, several central ministers, MPs, MLAs and BJP office bearers will be present among the electorate to listen to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s interaction with farmers on the birth anniversary of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Friday.

The Prime Minister will release Rs 18,000 crore as next instalment under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme to over 9 crore farmers on December 25. The Prime Minister will enable the transfer of the amount through the push of a button. The Prime Minister will also have a conversation with farmers from six different states during the event.
Sources said several union ministers will be in their constituencies or in other parts of the country.

Union Home minister Amit Shah and Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will listen to PM Modi’s speech in Delhi.
Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari will listen to the PM’s interaction with farmers in Assam’s Silchar, while Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Piyush Goyal will be in Hapur, Uttar Pradesh.

Union Textiles Minister Smriti Irani will be in her constituency Amethi while Union Minister for Petroleum, Natural Gas and Steel Dharmendra Pradhan will be in Jagatsinghpur in Odisha.
Union Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat is expected to be in Jaisalmer whereas Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will listen to the program from Patna. Union Minister General (Retd) V K Singh will be in Ghaziabad, his parliamentary constituency.

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NAEMD – Academy of Event Management & Development cheated many innocent students in Mumbai by offering bachelor’s and master’s degrees in event management

NAEMD – Academy of Event Management & Development and NASM – Academy of Sports Management had been offering bachelor’s and master’s degrees in event management through illegal third party franchise methods and cheated many innocent students in Mumbai to believe they would get University of Mumbai’s degrees. They have an illegal tie-up with GICED and NKES college. The UGC declared them frauds, issued notices and stopped them from issuing such degrees and ordered University of Mumbai and GICED to not collaborate with NAEMD and NASM, UGC also ordered them to mention on their websites that they cannot take admissions in degree courses.

In spite of all these, they have started their racket again through a back-door method of career counselling, the following points will prove that they are doing the same illegal thing.

Have a look at their websites to show they are offering the same illegal degrees by calling themselves career counsellors. A few points to be noted:

Career counsellors offer a wide choice of universities and colleges, in this case, it is compulsory to choose GICED in Mumbai, Vivekanand Global University in Jaipur, Maulana Azad University in Jodhpur. Where is the choice?

As UGC has ordered the University of Mumbai and GICED not to collaborate with event management institute – NAEMD and as NAEMD is not directly affiliated to MU, NAEMD is a private coaching event institute and by collaborating with GICED, they are using the illegal method of third party franchise to fool the students, GICED cannot take admissions on behalf of NAEMD as legally they are illegal as held by UGC in various notices to them. They are projecting that GICED is taking the admissions, but their website and prospectus point out that teaching, training, placements, admission test, infrastructure, library, teachers, workshops, professional training certificates and the full admission procedure including a reply to queries are all handled by NAEMD. Students are also offered to choose NAEMD’s Goregaon or Ghatkopar centres for teaching and training. If all this is handled by them then, what is the role of GICED which is at Kalina. Vivekanand University and Maulana Azad University are private universities and cannot offer degrees outside their campus which is being done at Jaipur and Jodhpur. How can this be career counselling? It is still an illegal third party franchise through back-door in a different garb. Will the degree earned by the students not be illegal and invalid.

A look at Mumbai University’s (MU) website clearly shows that BMS and MMS have not been offered to GICED, so how can GICED offer it? All the courses MU has given GICED has specific UGC permissions. So GICED is offering it without permission only to satisfy NAEMD but in consequence cheating innocent students. MU website clearly mentions that BMS have no specialization, even MU’s MMS does not have events as a specialization. Can NAEMD and GICED without permission offer specialization in events. Are they following MU’s admission guidelines which are being followed by all other legally affiliated colleges?

GICED has been ordered by UGC not to collaborate with NAEMD which means GICED is disobeying UGC.

All diploma and PG courses have to have DTE approval of the concerned state. Event management institute NAEMD has no DTE permission in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Delhi and Jodhpur. In Ahmedabad, they had to discontinue degree courses as Swarnim University refused to affiliate with them after realizing their frauds and as the CM of Gujarat had ordered an inquiry against them.

Since 2009, they have been giving invalid degrees to students of Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Delhi from Coimbatore’s Bharathiar University and still do. This is strictly disallowed as the degrees are offered in a different state as per UGC’s notification of 2009. UGC has again warned NAEMD and Bharathiar about this recently and still, they are selling worthless papers in the form of degrees to innocent students for 4 to 5 lakhs.

Students are admitted by telling them that they will get Mumbai University degrees, but later they are given Bharathiar degrees, a lot of students have not got their mark sheets or degrees but they are frightened to talk as they are warned subtly. If the government or UGC sends a fact-finding committee to various NAEMD centres the truth will come out and innocent students will be warned.

All the above-mentioned points are backed by concrete proofs and soon a very honest media campaign can expose them and stop this racket and give justice to the students. We have done a lot of RTIs and have got a good response from UGC and government authorities, but only press campaigns can expose their fraud.

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Even after Google outage, Google maintains that system reliability is its top priority.

It was for the first time in the history of search engine giant Google that its services became inaccessible on Monday, December 14.

Most of the Google services, from Gmail to YouTube to Google Drive, suffered a mass outage which lasted over an hour.

Users, across the globe, complained of inability to access emails. Some were logged out of ongoing Google Meet sessions.

What Exactly Caused The Massive Google Outage?

According to a statement of Google, the outage of “approximately 45 minutes” was due to “an internal storage quota issue.” The statement confirmed, “Services requiring users to log in experienced high error rates during this period.”

However, the statement reaffirmed ‘All services are now restored”. While apologizing to everyone affected, Google promised a “thorough follow up review to ensure this problem cannot recur in the future.”

There were problems reported with Gmail earlier as well. However, Google had maintained that it resolved those issues. However, hundreds of users continued to post on social media about their inability to access Gmail.

Google, on the other hand, maintains that system reliability is its top priority and they are consistently improving their services.

Were All Google Services And Users Affected?

With a service of the scale and reach of Google – just Gmail and YouTube together have over 3.5 billion global users – it is now increasingly rare to see an outage that affects all services and users.

This is because users, even from a single geographic region, are hosted over multiple servers across the world. And even on these servers, there are backups that activate quickly if something goes wrong.

Reliability of Google Services Questioned:

The outage gains importance given that there has been a surge in users across all online services, and certainly in those offered by Google.

There have already been questions asked on whether the backend infrastructure of tech-giants like Google are strong enough to withstand this spike in load, that too over a large period of time.

The companies that depend on Google for backend services are more worried about the impact of such an outage. This is a serious concern, given the mass adoption of online services amid the pandemic.

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