Virat Kohli retains top spot in ICC rankings
Dubai, Sep 3 : The Indian skipper Virat Kohli retained his number one spot in the latest International Cricket Council (ICC) Test batsmen rankings with a career-high 937 rating points, despite the defeat in the fourth Test against England.
Although India lost the fourth Test by 60 runs and conceded an unassailable 3-1 lead to England in the five match Test series, Kohli's 46 and 58 in the two innings helped him retain the top spot.
Kohli, who has scored 544 runs in his eight innings this series, is 11th on the list of best ever in terms of rating points, just one adrift of a group of four -- Gary Sobers, Clyde Walcott, Vivian Richards and Kumar Sangakkara, an ICC statement said on Monday.
Similarly, Cheteshwar Pujara stayed at the sixth position but his unbeaten 132, which helped India take the first innings lead, has lifted him from 763 to 798 points.
India fast bowler Mohammad Shami progressed back to the top 20 as his six-wicket match haul has lifted him three places to 19th position among bowlers, while his fellow fast bowler Ishant Sharma's four wickets saw him move up one place to the 25th position.
Jasprit Bumrah continued the strong start to his Test career, moving to a career-best 487 points while retaining the 37th position after his fifth Test.
Among others, England all-rounder Sam Curran made quick gains in the ICC Test Player Rankings while spinner Moeen Ali also moved up after the Southampton Test.
The 20-year-old Curran moved up 29 places to the 43rd position among batsmen after producing crucial knocks of 78 and 46 in his fourth Test match.
The left-hander, son of former Zimbabwe cricketer Kevin Curran and younger brother of England player Tom Curran, also gained 11 places to reach the 55th place in the bowlers' list and 15th position among all-rounders after gaining 27 slots.
Player of the match Ali's haul of nine wickets helped him move up three places to the 33rd position with a huge gain in rating points.
The off-spinner, who grabbed five for 63 and four for 71 in the two innings, gained 66 points to reach 543 points in bowling, while also gaining one slot to reach seventh place among all-rounders.
Buttler gained 15 slots to reach a career-best 32nd position on the batsmen's list and 584 rating points, just five behind England all-rounder Ben Stokes, who has also gained three places to reach 29th position. Opener Keaton Jennings is another one to gain, moving up four places to 86th position on the list for batsmen.
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PM paying 'lip service' to Adivasis' cause, govt denying them justice: Congress
New Delhi (PTI): The Congress on Friday accused the Centre of going "full throttle" on attempts to deny Adivasis justice and said the Dharti Aaba Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan (DAJGUA) was a "full mockery" of the Forest Rights Act, illustrating the government's hypocrisy.
The Opposition party also claimed that DAJGUA, in "typical Manuvadi fashion", only sees these communities as forest-dwelling 'vanvasis' who are 'labhaartis' (beneficiaries), rather than political and economic actors in their own right.
Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said today is the 150th birth anniversary of 'Dharti Aaba Bhagwan Birsa Munda', one of the greatest sons of India and a fierce advocate of self-governance and social justice.
"The non-biological PM is in Jamui, Bihar paying lip service to the cause of the Adivasis on this occasion, even as his Government goes full throttle on attempts to deny Adivasis justice," Ramesh alleged in a statement.
"The Dharti Aaba Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan (DAJGUA) - named after Bhagwan Birsa Munda, but a full mockery of the Forest Rights Act- illustrates this hypocrisy," he said.
Ramesh said the Forest Rights Act ( FRA 2006) passed by the Manmohan Singh's government was a revolutionary law and it transferred power and authority over forests from the forest department to the gram sabha.
In another departure from precedent, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs was empowered as the nodal authority to implement the law, he pointed out.
The FRA empowered the Adivasi community and gram sabhas to govern and manage forests as a major reform to ensure democratic governance of forests, Ramesh said.
"After the revolution, however, came Narendra Modi's counter-revolution.
DAJGUA fundamentally undoes this historic law and the democratic reform in forest governance," he claimed.
Ramesh said it dilutes the authority of Ministry of Tribal Affairs by giving authority to the Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change in the implementation of FRA.
Rather than empower the FRA's statutory bodies - namely the gram sabha, the sub-divisional committee, the district level committee, and the state level monitoring committee - DAJGUA has created a vast parallel institutional mechanism of FRA cells at the district and sub-divisional levels and arming them with large funds and contractual staff, he pointed out.
They are directly under the centralised bureaucratic control of Ministry of Tribal Affairs and State Tribal Welfare Departments, and lack accountability to the FRA's statutory bodies.
DAJGUA empanels and engages technical agencies/domain experts /corporate NGOs for the FRA implementation and CFR management activities of the gram sabhas by the State Tribal Welfare Departments, he said.
Ramesh argued that these FRA cells are to take over what the FRA statutory bodies are required to do by law, leaving these statutory bodies to be appendages to these FRA Cells, nominal bodies reduced to carrying out the biddings of these FRA cells, he said.
"This has been done without attention to the economic and social sensitivities involved, even as a massive budget has been allocated for this (Rs. 1 lakh for the technical agencies for each CFR). For example, in Madhya Pradesh, the BJP government engaged the Maharashtra Knowledge Company Limited (MKCL) to create the VanMiTRA app, which made the transparent process of submitting FRA claims into an obscure, online process that technical operators took charge of," he said.
Three lakh claims were rejected as a result, he added.
Adivasi groups are justifiably worried about the same happening at a large scale due to the engagement of such tech agencies, Ramesh said.
The forest department has now been allowed to be a part of the gram sabha's own committee for management of community forest resources, a direct violation of the FRA, Ramesh said.
"The FRA was enacted for empowering Adivasi and forest-dwelling communities to govern and manage their resources. DAJGUA, in typical Manuvadi fashion, only sees these communities as forest-dwelling vanvasis who are labhaartis, rather than political and economic actors in their own right," he alleged.
As captured in the Adivasi Sankalp unveiled by Rahul Gandhi during the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in Nandurbar, Maharashtra on the 12th of March, 2024, the Congress is committed to the honest and fair implementation of the FRA, Ramesh asserted.
"It is part of our guarantees to the people in both Jharkhand and Maharashtra and will continue to be a priority for upcoming assembly and parliamentary elections," he stressed.
Tagging his statement, Ramesh said on X, "As the non-biological PM pays lip service to the Adivasi cause by celebrating the 150th birth anniversary of Dharti Aaba Bhagwan Birsa Munda today in Jamui, we should not be fooled: his Dharti Aaba Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan (DAJGUA) is nothing but an absolute mockery of the revolutionary Forest Rights Act (2006) and Adivasi self-governance."
