BJP ally Tipra Motha announces rally to protest attacks on minorities in Bangladesh
Agartala (PTI): Tipra Motha chief Pradyot Debbarma said his party, an ally of the BJP, will organise a rally on September 26 to protest the attacks on minorities in Bangladesh.
Debbarma made the announcement on Saturday after the party's youth wing YTF gave a deputation to the Assistant High Commissioner of Bangladesh in Agartala, seeking the safety of minorities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
"This is not the first time that minorities, including Bengali Hindus and indigenous people, were attacked after the fall of the Sheikh Hasina-led government in Bangladesh. Minorities were attacked in Noakhali and Comilla districts too. Maharaja Bir Chandra Library was set on fire and books that were 300 years old were gutted," he said.
Urging the Centre to take up the issue, Debbarma said the time has come to raise it at the United Nations.
"We will stage a massive rally to protest the attack on minorities in Bangladesh on September 26. Our youth organisation YTF will also join the rally to raise voice against the atrocities in the neighbouring country," he said.
Debbarma alleged that people of minority communities who have been living in Bangladesh for hundreds of years were being attacked in a systematic way so that their land could be grabbed.
Tipra Motha is a part of the BJP-led government in Tripura, which shares a border with Bangladesh.
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Ex-bureaucrat Raj Kumar Goyal sworn in as CIC; eight new information commissioners take oath
New Delhi (PTI): After a gap of nine years, transparency watchdog Central Information Commission attained its full strength with the appointment of former IAS officer Raj Kumar Goyal and eight other information commissioners, who took the oath of office on Monday.
A three-member panel headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week recommended their names for the appointment.
President Droupadi Murmu administered the oath of office to Goyal as the chief information commissioner (CIC) at a ceremony held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, her office said in a communique.
The event was attended by Vice President C P Radhakrishnan and Union Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh, among others.
Goyal is a 1990-batch (retired) IAS officer of the Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram-Union Territories (AGMUT) cadre. He superannuated as secretary, Department of Justice under the Ministry of Law and Justice, on August 31.
He has also served as secretary (border management) in the Home Ministry and held key posts both at the Centre and in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The post of CIC fell vacant after Heeralal Samariya completed his term on September 13.
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The Commission is headed by a CIC and can have a maximum of 10 information commissioners. With the new appointments, the Commission attained its full strength after a gap of over nine years, according to transparency activists.
In the presence of two incumbent Information Commissioners, Anandi Ramalingam and Vinod Kumar Tiwari, Goyal administered the oath of office to eight new appointees at the swearing-in ceremony.
They included former Railway Board chief Jaya Verma Sinha, former IPS officer Swagat Das -- who held key posts in the Intelligence Bureau, Home Ministry and Cabinet Secretariat, among others -- Central Secretariat Service (CSS) officer Sanjeev Kumar Jindal, former IAS officer Surendra Singh Meena and ex-Indian Forest Service officer Khushwant Singh Sethi.
Senior journalists P R Ramesh and Ashutosh Chaturvedi, and former Indian Legal Service officer Sudha Rani Relangi, have also been sworn in as information commissioners.
Relangi has also worked as the director of prosecution, Central Bureau of Investigation and joint secretary and legislative counsel in the Ministry of Law and Justice.
The names of the CIC and eight information commissioners were cleared during the meeting of the Modi-led committee comprising Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi.
