Bus catches fire in Thane; passengers escape unhurt
Thane (PTI): Sixty five passengers travelling in a bus had a narrow escape after the vehicle caught fire in Maharashtra's Thane city on Tuesday, a civic official said.
The incident took place at around 8 am near Utaleshwar in the city limits, Thane Municipal Corporation's regional disaster management cell (RDMC) chief Avinash Sawant said.
The Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) bus carrying at least 65 passengers was on way to neighbouring Bhiwandi town from Thane, he said.
After noticing the fire, the driver immediately stopped the bus and raised an alarm following which the passengers got down, the official said.
The bus was partly burnt, he said.
Local firemen and a team of the RDMC rushed to the spot after being alerted and doused the blaze in half-an-hour, he said.
A short-circuit is suspected to have caused the fire in the bus, which belonged to the Bhiwandi depot, the official said.
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Govt should take Oppn into confidence, restore India's role as credible voice for peace: Congress
New Delhi (PTI): The Congress urged the BJP-led Centre on Friday to take the opposition into confidence, and urgently recalibrate and adopt a unified national approach to restore India's historic role as a principled, proactive and credible voice for peace.
The opposition party welcomed the ceasefire between the United States and Iran as a vital step towards de-escalation, renewed diplomacy and constructive dialogue and ultimately, lasting peace in West Asia.
In a resolution adopted at a Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting held at the Indira Bhawan here, the party said the targeted assassinations of heads of state, waging war in violation of international law and attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure are unconscionable crimes against both humanity and a rules-based world order.
"Any meaningful resolution must be anchored in the principles of the Geneva Conventions, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Charter -- particularly the prohibition on the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State (Article 2 [4]) and the peaceful settlement of disputes (Article 2 [3])," the Congress said in the resolution.
The document said this pause also provides an opportunity to assess the costs for India.
In the recent past, India's energy security has been undermined, the country's ties across its extended strategic neighbourhood have been strained, its role as a net security provider in the Indian Ocean Region has weakened and its moral leadership within the Global South has eroded, it noted.
"Equally worryingly, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government's myopic, xenophobic and unprincipled internationalism has not only alienated India from its neighbours, but also undermined decades of painstaking efforts by successive Indian governments to diplomatically isolate Pakistan.
"By ceding strategic and diplomatic space, the BJP government has handed Pakistan the room to rehabilitate its global image, and whitewash its track record of fomenting regional instability through support for cross-border terrorism targeting India, Afghanistan and Iran," the resolution read.
The Congress said the government's "incompetence" has allowed Pakistan to claim a pivotal role in the great power competition in Asia, which will also give Islamabad leverage over New Delhi on crucial bilateral issues through third-parties, effectively internationalising India-Pakistan matters.
"Given the unprecedented polycrisis we face, the BJP government must stop subordinating the national interest to electoral and ideological considerations, and disregarding the counsel of India's foreign policy establishment.
"Instead, the BJP government must take the Opposition into confidence, urgently recalibrate and adopt a unified national approach to restore India's historic role as a principled, proactive and credible voice for peace and a just international order," the resolution adopted at the CWC meeting read.
It said successive governments since 1947 have upheld global principles, drawing on a foreign-policy tradition rooted in "Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam" (the world is one family), Mahatma Gandhi's doctrine of "Ahimsa" (non-violence) and former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru's policy of non-alignment.
This commitment is also enshrined in Article 51 of the Constitution, which calls for respect for international law and treaty obligations, it said.
In keeping with this legacy, India has consistently and constructively intervened against apartheid in South Africa, in the Korean War through the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission, in its support for anti-colonial movements across Asia and Africa, as a principled voice of the Non-Aligned Movement and the Global South, reflected in sustained diplomatic efforts to resolve numerous conflicts, such as in Hungary, Egypt, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc., and from its contributions to humanitarian relief and United Nations peacekeeping operations, the resolution said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Israel ahead of the war created the perception of a political endorsement of military escalation and of an incumbent far-right government on the eve of that country's national election, the CWC said.
Both incidents underscored the inherent risks in the conflation of diplomatic engagement with electoral politics and the fundamental principle that relationships are between countries, not between individual leaders or ideologically-aligned political parties, it added.
