QUICK NEWS

Former chief election commissioner Manohar Singh Gill died at a south Delhi hospital on Sunday after a brief illness, according to people close to him. He was 86. Gill will be cremated here on Monday, they said. A former bureaucrat, Gill served under Parkash Singh Badal as a young officer when the Shiromani Akali Dal patriarch was the Punjab chief minister.

He served as the chief election commissioner (CEC) between December 1996 and June 2001. Gill and GVG Krishnamurty were made members of the Election Commission when TN Seshan was heading the poll panel. It was then that the poll panel became a multi-member body, a former government functionary said.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sunday extended wishes for Navratri amid a diplomatic standoff with India. 

"Over the next nine nights and 10 days, members of the Hindu community in Canada and around the world will gather to celebrate Navratri," said Trudeau in a statement. 

Several government agencies in Canada have said they have been under relentless cyberattacks from a hacker group they have been unable to identify.

In one such attack, the website of the Canadian Armed Forces was rendered “unavailable” for a few hours. Various pages on the House of Commons website have slowed down or remained inaccessible as part of a larger attack to target government websites. Elections Canada also experienced a similar situation.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday unveiled the Aam Aadmi Party-led government’s “Winter Action Plan” to curb pollution in the national capital. The Chief Minister said his government’s efforts in the last eight years have borne fruit due to which the number of days witnessing severe pollution levels have declined.

“The number of days witnessing severe pollution levels declined in the last eight years due to several initiatives of the government, such as the introduction of electric buses and the EV Policy, among others,” he said at a press conference.

The Home Ministry has sent back a top police officer, Rakesh Balwal, to his original job in Manipur. He had been working with the NIA and was part of the team that solved the Pulwama terror attack case. He also did a good job handling law and order in Kashmir as Srinagar SSP.

A government notification says that the Cabinet’s appointment committee has agreed to this move. Rakesh Balwal joined the IPS in 2012. His last job in Manipur was as SP of Churachandpur district in 2017 before he went to work with the NIA. He spent three and a half years with the NIA, where he helped investigate the Pulwama attack in 2019. After that, he was sent to work in Srinagar in 2021.