Times Top10: Today’s Top News Headlines and Latest News from India & across the World

• The air quality remained in the ‘severe’ zone in Delhi for the second consecutive day on Friday. Thick smog blanketed Delhi as the air quality, primarily due to unfavourable meteorological conditions and raging farm fires in Punjab.
• AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal, who had earlier blamed the Punjab and Haryana governments for Delhi’s air pollution, addressed the press with AAP’s Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann over the issue. He said air pollution is an all-India crisis, with many parts of North India recording severe air pollution.
• Ownership: Kejriwal said “we take full responsibility for increasing farm fires in Punjab” before adding that his AAP formed the government in Punjab only six months ago.
• Action: The Kejriwal government announced closure of schools from Saturday and also 50% staffing in offices due to worsening pollution situation in Delhi.
• Politics: Both BJP and Congress demanded resignation of Kejriwal as Delhi CM, with Congress president Mallikarjun Karge saying, “Past 8 yrs, Delhi Govt couldn’t determine the cause of pollution nor could they make a policy to prevent it? While Delhi gasps for air, the CM & PM are breathing elections.”
• Pollution sources: According to the decision support system (DSS) of Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, 70% of Delhi’s pollution comes from the NCR towns and beyond. Still, 30% of the pollution originates locally, for which the Kejriwal government is facing flak. More here

The Supreme Court on Friday sought the Centre’s response in six weeks to a PIL, which sought re-introduction of the lapsed Women’s Reservation Bill to provide 33% quota for women in Lok Sabha and state assemblies.

The PIL

• The National Federation of Indian Women, a 70-year-old NGO led by Aruna Roy and Annie Raja, sought a writ of mandamus (court order) to the NDA government for re-introduction of the Bill, which was passed by Rajya Sabha in 2010 but lapsed with the dissolution of Lok Sabha in 2014 as the Congress-led UPA government did not place it before lower house.
• When the court agreed to entertain the PIL, government counsel Kanu Agrawal argued that there are serious problems about maintainability of the petition.

SC says…

• “We are aware of the maintainability problem. But, it has raised an issue of considerable importance,” the bench said. It asked the government to file its response in six weeks, granted three weeks to the petitioner NGO to file its rejoinder and scheduled a detailed hearing for March next year.

Court’s jurisdiction

• Keeping in view the 1997 Vishaka judgment, the SC has consistently ruled that the apex court can lay down guidelines to fill a legislative vacuum but cannot legislate or direct the government to enact a particular kind of legislation.
• The NGO said it was aware that “a writ of mandamus cannot be issued to Parliament. However, the SC can issue a writ of mandamus to the Government to introduce the Bill in Parliament for discussion.”
• It argued the NDA government should find no difficulty in re-introducing the women quota Bill as all mainstream political parties – BJP, Congress, AIADMK, DMK, SAD, CPM, BJD, SP and NCP have promised support to the Bill in their manifestos.

• Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal on Friday announced that party leader Isudan Gadhvi would be its CM candidate in Gujarat, which goes to polls in the first week of December.
• On October 29, Kejriwal had urged people to send in their recommendations about who they wanted to see as the party’s CM candidate for Gujarat. The window for suggestions was open till November 3.
• The top two candidates in the race were Gadhvi, who is a national general secretary of the party, and Gopal Italia, who is the party’s Gujarat unit president, party sources said

Journalist-turned-politician

• Forty-year-old Gadhvi is a former TV journalist. He has worked with ETV and later joined VTV Gujarati, as editor-in-chief, where he used to anchor a popular primetime show titled ‘Mahamanthan’.
• He also got into social work during the lockdowns imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
• He joined the AAP in June 2021, leaving journalism, and was soon given a place in its 40-member national executive committee – the party’s second-highest decision-making body.
• In the last 14 months, AAP insiders said, Gadhvi has travelled across Gujarat, covering a total distance of more than 1 lakh Km, campaigning for the party.

• A Chinese research and space-tracking vessel is now prowling in the Indian Ocean Region at a time when India is testing missiles in the Bay of Bengal. The docking of a similar Chinese spy ship at Sri Lanka’s Hambantota in August had led to a major diplomatic wrangle between New Delhi and Colombo.
• The spy ship: The over 22,000-tonne Yuan Wang-6, which is equipped with large antennae, advanced surveillance equipment and sensors capable of electronic snooping, monitoring satellite launches and tracking trajectories of long-range ballistic missiles, was sailing off the Bali coast in Indonesia early Friday morning.
• The Indian Navy has been “closely monitoring” Yuan Wang-6, which is under the command of the Strategic Support Force of the People’s Liberation Army with a crew of around 400, ever since she entered the IOR through the Sunda Strait of Indonesia some days ago, defence establishment sources told TOI.
• Missile test: India had earlier issued a NOTAM (notice to airmen) with an expanded ‘no-fly’ zone over the Bay of Bengal for the test of a long-range ballistic missile on November 10-11. A new AD-1 interceptor missile for Phase-II of the indigenous two-tier ballistic missile defence (BMD) system was also tested from the Abdul Kalam Island off the Odisha coast just two days ago.
• Test-launch deferred? But the user-trial of the ballistic missile of the Agni series by the Strategic Forces Command next week is now likely to be deferred.
• India’s concern: In early August, India had conveyed serious concerns to Sri Lanka about the docking of Yuan Wang-5 at its southern port of Hambantota. This had initially led Colombo to defer the docking but then in a U-turn had allowed it from August 16 to 22. The US too had red-flagged the presence of the Chinese vessel at Hambantota.

• Polling for the municipal election in Delhi will be held on December 4, while the votes will be counted on December 7, Delhi’s chief election officer Vijay Dev announced on Friday.
• It will be a tri-corner contest with the BJP, which had won all three civic bodies in the last two polls, the AAP, which is in charge of the Delhi government but has not been able to win a municipal election yet, and the Congress.
• In the 2017 municipal polls, out of 275 overall wards, the BJP had won 181, AAP 49 and Congress 31.
• Friday’s announcement of the municipal corporation of Delhi (MCD) election dates came after months of political drama.

Political drama

• The dates were supposed to be announced on March 9. But the state election office, despite calling a press conference, changed the plans last minute after receiving a message from Delhi’s former lieutenant governor Anil Baijal, who flagged that the Union government had plans to bring in a law to unify the city’s three municipal bodies into one.
• While the BJP attributed the indefinite postponing of the MCD elections to the proposed law and said that it was aimed at bringing more efficiency in the functioning of the cash-stripped civic bodies, the AAP alleged that it was a tactic used by BJP because they feared losing to AAP.
• In April, a law to unify the three MCDs was passed in the Parliament. It also reduced total number of wards in the city from 272 to 250 – for which a delimitation exercise was taken up and completed last month. While the tenure of the previous House in the corporations ended in May, the municipal corporation continued to function with bureaucrats heading it.

In broad daylight

• A right wing Hindutva leader Sudhir Suri, the Shiv Sena Taksali president, was shot dead on a busy Amritsar street Friday afternoon. The murder was caught on camera in presence of over a dozen cops around.
• Suri, who had police protection in Punjab, was protesting outside a temple alleging sacrilege and insult to Hindu idols. At least two of the five shots fired hit him, leaving him dead.
• This is the second big sensational murder, after singer-Congress leader Sidhu Moosewala, since the AAP government under Bhagwant Mann came to power in March. The AAP won the Punjab election on the promise of fighting crime among other things in Punjab.

This happened when

• The AAP declared its CM candidate for Gujarat on Friday — former journalist Isudan Gadhvi, who promised to “send big shots to jail” for the Morbi bridge collapse that killed 135 people on October 30.
• AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal has been trying to win over the Hindutva voters, with his recent proposal of having images of Lakshmi and Ganesh on the Rupee.

Sudhir Suri

• Known for his fiery speeches, Suri had five hate speech cases lodged against him.
• Before he was murdered, Suri was live on Facebook, showing some idols “dumped in garbage”, and warning, “We will not tolerate such sacrilege, even if by fellow Hindus.”
• Suri had got into an argument with Gopal Mandir management officials earlier in the day over alleged sacrilege of idols.

A trend

• In 2017, Christian pastor Sultan Masih and Ludhiana RSS leader Ravinder Gosain were shot dead.
• In May this year, Moosewala was shot dead, triggering a big debate.

Reactions

• Punjab BJP chief Ashwani Sharma said, “The law and order situation has completely broken down in the state.”
• Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh ‘Raja’ Warring said, “Law and order is deteriorating and going from bad to worse.” More here

South Korea on Friday scrambled dozens of military aircraft, including advanced F-35 stealth fighter jets, after spotting 180 North Korean warplanes flying in North Korean territory in what appeared to be a defiant show of strength.

North flexes muscles

• North Korea’s aerial exercises on Friday came after Pyongyang test-fired around 30 ballistic missiles in the past two days, including an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Thursday that triggered evacuation warnings in Japan, in an angry response to US-South Korea joint air force drills involving hundreds of their warplanes.
• However, none of those planes breached the South Korean military’s virtual “tactical action” line, which is designated 20 to 50 kilometres north of the Koreas’ land and sea boundaries for monitoring purposes to give the South enough time to respond to provocations or attacks.

Seoul’s response

• The South still scrambled 80 of its own warplanes, including an unspecified number of US-made F-35 fighters, but there weren’t any immediate reports of clashes.
• US and South Korean forces were also separately conducting their “Vigilant Storm” combined aerial exercise, which involved some 240 warplanes, including F-35s. The training had been scheduled through Friday, but the allies extended it to Saturday in response to North Korea’s intensified testing activity this week.

Ballistic missiles

• The extension of the drills was announced on Thursday after the North test-fired an ICBM, which triggered evacuation alerts in northern Japan, and followed the event with two short-range ballistic missile launches into sea.
• Experts say North Korea is escalating brinkmanship aimed at forcing the United States to accept it as a nuclear power and at negotiating economic and security concessions from a position of strength.

• Mass layoffs: Pushed by new owner Elon Musk, Twitter announced mass layoffs in many countries including India on Friday. Reports said the entire marketing and communications department was laid off in India.
• That email: “In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” said an email by Twitter, reported Reuters.
• A class action lawsuit has been filed against Twitter by its employees, who argued the company was conducting mass layoffs without providing the required 60-day advance notice, in violation of federal and California law.
• The lawsuit seeks court’s direction, restricting Twitter from soliciting employees being laid off to sign documents without informing them of the pendency of the case.
• What Musk wants: He has directed Twitter management to find ways to reduce annual infrastructure cost up to $1 billion, Reuters reported, quoting two sources and an internal Slack message.
• Big sackings: Musk has already sacked several from the company’s senior ranks, including its chief executive and top finance and legal executives. Others from advertising, marketing and human resources divisions were also asked to leave throughout the past week.
• Meanwhile, Musk who got control of Twitter in a highly dramatic fashion, changed his Twitter bio to ‘Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator’ against the backdrop of a series of complaints over layoff plans. Previously, Musk had changed his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit”, signalling the sole directorship of Twitter. More here

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