NEWS

The Indian army's urgent requirement for towed artillery guns has taken an interesting turn. Larsen & Toubro Defence has offered to supply 400 towed artillery gun systems, which the army earlier wanted to import from an Israeli firm. The L&T guns, built to a French design, will be made locally with an indigenous content of over 70 per cent. L&T is understood to have made the unsolicited offer to the Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat sometime this month. The firm has said it can deliver the first gun in 15 months. The offer comes even as the army's bid to buy the Israeli guns has hit a dead end. Last month, the defence ministry overruled the army and Department of Military Affairs' (DMA) Rs 4,000 crore case to buy 400 artillery guns from Israeli firm Elbit Systems. The procurement was spurred by fresh border tensions with China in 2020. As the army's own recent experience showed during the 1999 Kargil conflict, medium artillery fire support is crucial for offensive and defensive operations in the mountains.

Despite pressure from allies and some sections within, the BJP-led Central Government had managed to put a lid so far on demands for a caste-based census. But the ruling party was in a spot Tuesday when one of its own MPs from election-bound UP raised the issue in the Lok Sabha.

Listed as the BJP’s first speaker on the Constitutional Amendment Bill that seeks to restore the power of states to draw up their own OBC lists, Badaun MP Sanghmitra Maurya instead praised the Government for “granting the power to the states for caste census”.

“Even cattle have been counted state-wise... how many cattle are in each district and which animals are more in which district. But backward classes have never been counted,” she said while accusing previous Congress governments of not doing justice to OBC communities.

Many people had been hoping for "herd immunity" to kick in and protect the world against the deadly coronavirus pandemic. However, a group of scientists has now warned that achieving herd immunity is "not a possibility" with the current spread of the Delta variant.

Prof Sir Andrew Pollard, the head of the Oxford Vaccine Group, said that the fact that vaccines have been unable to stop the spread of Covid proves that achieving herd immunity is now a "mythical" concept.

"The problem with this virus is [it is] not measles. If 95% of people were vaccinated against measles, the virus cannot transmit in the population," he told the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on coronavirus. "The Delta variant will still infect people who have been vaccinated. And that does mean that anyone who’s still unvaccinated at some point will meet the virus … and we don’t have anything that will [completely] stop that transmission."

The absence of BJP Rajya Sabha MPs during the passage of a crucial bill has not gone well with PM Narendra Modi. Taking strong exception to the absence of some BJP MPs in Rajya Sabha during the passage of the Tribunals Reforms (Rationalisation and Conditions of Service) Ordinance, 2021 bill, PM Modi has asked the Parliamentary Affairs minister to make a list of the MPs who were not present in the house. PM Modi made the remarks during the BJP Parliamentary Party meeting today, reported by media.

The Tribunals Reforms (Rationalisation and Conditions of Service) Bill, 2021, will replace an ordinance. The Bill was one among the three which were passed in Parliament yesterday to abolish several appellate tribunals, to end retrospective tax and create a new Central University in Ladakh.