Man killed in firing during violent protest in Rajasthan's Dungarpur
Jaipur: A man was killed in firing during the violent protest in Rajasthan's Dungarpur where tensions escalated further on Saturday evening forcing the state government to rush three senior police officers to the district to control the situation.
Earlier in the day, candidates of a teacher recruitment exam confronted police and indulged in arson while a delegation of theirs met Tribal Area Development Minister Arjun Singh Bamniya in Udaipur.
While the meeting was going on, the protesters confronted the police again in the evening following which police opened fire to control the situation.
However, police said it was not confirmed whether the man was killed in police firing or was hit by one of the bullets fired by the agitators.
Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot chaired a high-level review meeting in the evening and held discussions with education minister Govind Singh Dotasra and senior police officers.
To restore the law and order situation, DG (crime) M L Lather, ADG ACB Dinesh M N, Jaipur police commissioner Anand Srivastava and other senior officers have been sent to Dungarpur by helicopter at night, an official release said.
The chief minister once again appealed to the agitators to end the violence and said the government is ready to meet all the legitimate demands of any section of the society, the release said.
Governor Kalraj Mishra spoke to Gehlot on phone in Jaipur and called principal secretary (home) Abhay Kumar and ADG (law and order) Saurabh Srivastava at Raj Bhawan and directed them to control the situation, it said.
Meanwhile, the agitators pelted stones at police, torched a few other vehicles and continued to hold control over nearly 25 km stretch of the highway.
On direction of the chief minister, Bamniya, former Udaipur MP Raghuveer Meena and other public representatives of Dungarpur district met a delegation of agitating candidates to resolve the matter.
The meeting lasted for nearly three hours at the residence of Meena in Parsad, Udaipur, which is nearly 60 km from the violence hit area.
We have appealed to the agitators to end the violence while assuring them that the government will do what is legitimate to meet their demand. The meeting was held in a positive manner, Meena told PTI.
Bamniya, Bhartiya Tribal Party (BTP) MLAs Rajkumar Roat and Ramprasad, Congress MLA Ganesh Ghogra, former MP Tarachand Bhagora, some advocates and members of the delegation of the agitating candidates were present in the meeting.
The protest was initially held by the candidates but we have reports that police and administration officials targeted local villagers and arrested them which intensified the violence and now it has become villagers versus police and administration there, Roat said.
He said that the government's priority is to control the situation first.
After the meeting, Roat and Meena left for Kherwara in Dungarpur to convince the agitators.
Meanwhile, fresh incidents of stone pelting and arson occurred on the highway while few more vehicles were torched on Saturday, police control room said.
Violence erupted on Thursday when the candidates of teachers recruitment examination-2018 blocked the Udaipur-Ahmedabad highway, pelted stones at police, damaged several properties and torched vehicles demanding filling of 1,167 general vacant posts with ST candidates.
The violence continued on Friday and incidents occurred on Saturday as well.
IG Udaipur range Binita Thakur said that additional police forces have been deployed in the area and efforts are being made to restore the situation.
Another police officer said that nearly 25 km of the highway is blocked.
The highway is blocked from Ratanpur to Khariwara. Once the situation is under complete control, traffic will be resumed on the highway, he said.
The candidates have torched nearly 25 vehicles including buses, vandalised a petrol pump, hotel and other properties since Thursday. The vehicle of SP Dungarpur was also torched on Thursday.
Thirty-five policemen including additional SP and deputy SP were injured in the stone pelting incident on Thursday.
The police have so far arrested 30 people in connection with the violence while mobile internet services have been suspended in the affected area in view of the tension.
Gehlot had on Friday appealed to the agitators to stop the violence and also held discussion with public representatives of Dungarpur with regard to the situation.
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Trump administration says its war in Iran has been 'terminated' before 60-day deadline
Washington (AP): The Trump administration is arguing that the war in Iran has already ended because of the ceasefire that began in early April, an interpretation that would allow the White House to avoid the need to seek congressional approval.
The statement furthers an argument laid out by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during testimony in the Senate earlier Thursday, when he said the ceasefire effectively paused the war. Under that rationale, the administration has not yet met the requirement mandated by a 1973 law to seek formal approval from Congress for military action that extends beyond 60 days.
A senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the administration's position, said for purposes of that law, “the hostilities that began on Saturday, Feb 28 have terminated.” The official said the US military and Iran have not exchanged fire since the two-week ceasefire that began April 7.
While the ceasefire has since been extended, Iran maintains its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, and the US Navy is maintaining a blockade to prevent Iran's oil tankers from getting out to sea.
Under the War Powers Resolution, the law that sought to constrain a president's military powers, President Donald Trump had until Friday to seek congressional authorisation or cease fighting. The law also allows an administration to extend that deadline by 30 days.
Democrats have pushed the administration for formal approval of the Iran war, and the 60-day mark would likely have been a turning point for a swath of Republican lawmakers who backed temporary action against Tehran but insisted on congressional input for something longer.
“That deadline is not a suggestion; it is a requirement,” said Sen Susan Collins, R-Maine, who voted Thursday in favour of a measure that would end military action in Iran since Congress hadn't given its approval. She added that “further military action against Iran must have a clear mission, achievable goals, and a defined strategy for bringing the conflict to a close."
Richard Goldberg, who served as director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction for the National Security Council during Trump's first term, said he has recommended to administration officials to simply transition to a new operation, which he suggested could be called “Epic Passage,” a sequel to Operation Epic Fury.
That new mission, he said, “would inherently be a mission of self-defence focused on reopening the strait while reserving the right to offensive action in support of restoring freedom of navigation.”
“That to me solves it all,” added Goldberg, who is now a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think tank.
During testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Hegseth said it was the administration's “understanding” that the 60-day clock was on pause while the two countries were in a ceasefire.
Katherine Yon Ebright, counsel at the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program and an expert on war powers, said that interpretation would be a “sizeable extension of previous legal gamesmanship” related to the 1973 law.
“To be very, very clear and unambiguous, nothing in the text or design of the War Powers Resolution suggests that the 60-day clock can be paused or terminated,” she said.
Other presidents have argued that the military action they've taken was not intense enough or was too intermittent to qualify under the War Powers Resolution. But Trump's war in Iran would certainly not be such a case, Ebright said, adding that lawmakers need to push back against the administration on that kind of argument.
