Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa declares state of emergency
Colombo, May 6: Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa declared a state of emergency with effect from Friday midnight, according to the presidential media division.
The state of emergency gives the police and the security forces power to arbitrarily arrest and detain people.
Rajapaksa's decision was to ensure public security and maintain essential services so as to make sure a smooth functioning of the country, the presidential media division said.
The decision came amidst weeks of public protests demanding the resignation of the President and the government.
Sri Lanka is going through its worst economic crisis in its history with the shortage of essentials, and power outages caused by a severe forex crisis.
Rajapaksa had declared emergency on April 1 also after a mass protest opposite his private residence. He had revoked it on April 5.
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LPG shortage in country; 1 crore people to be unemployed: Kejriwal
New Delhi (PTI): AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday slammed the Centre for 'heavy LPG shortage' affecting people across the country and questioned the prime minister's "support" for Israel and the US.
The former Delhi chief minister said, "There is a chance that almost 1 crore people would be unemployed because of the power shortage situation emerging," he said.
"There is a heavy shortage of LPG in the country. The reason behind this is that 90 per cent of the LPG imported in India is from the Strait of Hormuz. Restaurants and hotels are facing shortages. In the next two days, 50 per cent of hotels are on the verge of shutdown, news is coming from Delhi NCR, Bihar," Kejriwal said.
Kejriwal accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of "demolishing" India's non-aligned foreign policy of several decades and making Iran our "enemy".
"PM Modi has made a mistake by demolishing India's non-aligned policy of 75 years. We should not have aligned with anyone. He stood by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a day before the war began. We have made Iran our enemy," Kejriwal said.
Even during the Cold War times, India was following the non-aligned foreign policy, the AAP leader said.
