Restrictions in Srinagar to prevent protests
Srinagar, May 7: Authorities imposed restrictions in parts of Srinagar and some other places in the valley on Monday to prevent separatist-called protests and a sit-in outside the Civil Secretariat here.
The protest shutdown and sit-in was called by the Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL), a separatist conglomerate headed by Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik, against the killing of 10 people on Sunday including five civilians on Sunday.
The Civil Secretariat that houses the offices of the Chief Minister, her colleagues and senior bureaucrats is opening on Monday after a six-month sojourn in Jammu.
Security forces on Sunday killed five militants, including an assistant professor of the Kashmir University who had joined their ranks, leading to major street protests that claimed the lives of five civilians.
Authorities have placed Geelani and the Mirwaiz under house arrest while Malik has been taken into preventive detection.
All educational institutions have been shut in the valley. Exams scheduled for Monday were postponed.
Rail services were also suspended as a precautionary measure.
Mobile internet services remained suspended in all south Kashmir districts since Sunday i n addition to Srinagar and Ganderbal districts in the north of the valley.
Security have been deployed in the areas where restrictions and also at other law and order vulnerable places.
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I'm not anti-business, I'm anti-monopoly: Rahul Gandhi
New Delhi (PTI): Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Thursday asserted that he was not "anti-business" as being projected by the BJP but was "anti-monopoly" and "anti-creating oligopolies".
His remarks came a day after he penned an opinion piece in The Indian Express in which he said the original East India Company wound up over 150 years ago but the raw fear it then generated is back with a new breed of monopolists having taken its place.
Gandhi, however, had asserted that a "new deal for progressive Indian business is an idea whose time has come".
In a video posted on X on Thursday, Gandhi said, "I want to make something absolutely clear, I have been projected by my opponents in the BJP to be anti-business. I am not anti-business in the least, I am anti-monopoly, I am anti-creating oligopolies, I am anti-domination of business by one or 2 or 5 people."
"I started my career as a management consultant and I understand the type of things that are required for a business to succeed. So I just want to repeat, I am not anti-business, I am anti-monopoly," the former Congress chief said.
In his post accompanying the video, Gandhi said, "I am pro-Jobs, pro-Business, pro-Innovation, pro-Competition. I am anti-Monopoly."
"Our economy will thrive when there is free and fair space for all businesses," Gandhi asserted.
In his article, Gandhi had said India was silenced by the East India Company and it was silenced not by its business prowess, but by its chokehold.
The Company choked India by partnering with, bribing, and threatening more pliant maharajas and nawabs, he pointed out.
"It controlled our banking, bureaucratic, and information networks. We didn't lose our freedom to another nation; we lost it to a monopolistic corporation that ran a coercive apparatus," he said.
The original East India Company wound up over 150 years ago, but the raw fear it then generated is back, he claimed.
A new breed of monopolists has taken its place, amassing colossal wealth, even as India has become far more unequal and unfair for everybody else, Gandhi had said.
The BJP had slammed Gandhi for making "baseless accusations" against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and asked him to examine facts before jumping to conclusions.
Hitting back at the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, the BJP wrote on X: "Another baseless accusation against the Modi government through the so-called 'match-fixing monopoly groups versus fair-play businesses' is simply misleading."
"Dear Baalak Buddhi, do not jump to conclusions without examining facts," the saffron party said in a veiled reference to Gandhi.
