NEW DELHI, Oct 14: KVijay Kumar, Senior Security Advisor (SSA) to the Ministry of Home Affairs, has expressed his unwillingness to continue in the post due to personal reasons.
Confirming the development, Kumar said that he had left for Chennai and officially communicated his decision to the Home Ministry. Sources also confirmed that the hunt for a new advisor has begun.
A top-level official said Kumar vacated his Delhi accommodation a few weeks ago and is not holding any office now. Almost four weeks ago, he had given a lecture at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration and later put in his papers.
Sources claimed he stepped down and then went back to Chennai due to personal reasons. The officer, who had been handling and advising the government on issues of Left Wing Extremism (LWE), had been missing from some key meetings held at the top level in the past few weeks.
He also told the offices concerned to directly contact him for coordination since he had no office staff, sources said.
It is expected that the government will appoint a new advisor, given that the fight against Naxalism has reached its final phase. However, no names have been cleared for the post by the ministry yet.
Kumar, a retired 70-year-old IPS officer, was appointed as Senior Security Advisor to the Union Home Ministry in 2019 and was continuing in the post.
The official communication when Kumar was appointed had said that the 1975 batch officer was appointed to advise the ministry on security-related matters of Jammu and Kashmir and Left Wing Extremism-affected states. He had visited various key areas affected by LWE and was involved in strategising operations against Naxals.
The officer had served in various key positions, including Advisor to Jammu and Kashmir Governor, STF Tamil Nadu chief, DG CRPF, and Commissioner Chennai.
He hit the headlines after successfully conducting Operation Cocoon in which Veerappan was eliminated by the STF, which was then headed by him. He was given charge of CRPF after Naxals killed 76 personnel in Dantewada in 2010. The officer had over a decade-long experience in dealing with LWE.
The government of India has said that the steadfast implementation of the National Policy and Action Plan to Address Left Wing Extremism (LWE)-2015 has resulted in a consistent decline in LWE violence. The incidents of LWE violence have reduced by 77 per cent from an all-time high of 2,258 in 2009 to 509 in 2021, it said.
Similarly, the resultant deaths of civilians and security personnel have reduced by 85 per cent from an all-time high of 1,005 in 2010 to 147 in 2021, the ministry added.
“The geographical spread of the violence has also reduced as only 46 districts reported LWE-related violence in 2021 as compared to 96 districts in 2010. Decline in geographical spread is also reflected in reduced number of districts covered under the Security Related Expenditure (SRE) Scheme. The number of SRE districts was also reduced from 126 to 90 in April 2018 and further to 70 in July 2021,” the MHA said in a reply in the Rajya Sabha.

New Delhi, Oct 14: The wholesale price-based inflation declined for the fourth consecutive month to 10.7 per cent in September on softening in prices of food, fuel and manufactured items.
The Wholesale Price Index-based inflation was 12.41 per cent in August and 11.80 per cent in September last year. This year, the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) touched a record high of 15.88 per cent in May.
September is the 18th consecutive month of double-digit WPI inflation.
Inflation in September, 2022 is primarily contributed by rise in prices of mineral oils, food articles, crude petroleum & natural gas, chemicals & chemical products, basic metals, electricity, textiles etc. as compared to the corresponding month of the previous year,” an official statement said.
Inflation in food articles in September eased to 11.03 per cent, against 12.37 per cent in August.
However, inflation in vegetables rose to 39.66 per cent during the month, as against 22.29 per cent in August.
In the fuel and power basket, inflation came in lower at 32.61 per cent in September, against 33.67 per cent in August.
In manufactured products and oil seeds it was 6.34 per cent and (-) 16.55 per cent, respectively.
The RBI mainly looks at retail inflation to frame monetary policy.
Retail inflation remained above the Reserve Bank’s upper tolerance threshold of 6 per cent for the ninth month in a row and was at a 5-month high of 7.41 per cent in September, as per data released earlier this week.
To tame stubbornly high inflation, the RBI has hiked the key interest rate four times this year to 5.90 per cent — the highest since April 2019. (Agencies

NEW DELHI, Oct 14: Congress leader Manish Tewari has said that Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir was not imposed by Congress but by the Constituent Assembly of India of which Syama Prasad Mukherjee was also a member. “Jammu and Kashmir has always been and will always be an integral part of India… Article 370 was not implemented by Congress in J-K. India’s constituent assembly, which included Syama Prasad Mukherjee, implemented Article 370 there,” he said on Thursday.
While speaking on the issue of Article 370 which was scrapped on August 5, 2019, by the Centre, Tewari said that the matter is subjudice in front of the Supreme Court and the matter will be taken up on October 31 for a hearing. Syama Prasad Mukherjee served as the minister in Jawaharlal Nehru’s cabinet.
“Whatever happened in Rajya Sabha & then Lok Sabha on 5-6 August 2019 (of passing the bill) is still under the Supreme Court’s cognizance. The case will be taken up on October 31. Saying that the whole case has been done with before the SC verdict is irresponsible,” he added. With the Congress presidential polls just around the corner, Tewari said that the party needs a “safe pair of hands” and a “composed personality” in the form of Mallikarjun Kharge who can provide “stability” to the party as the president.
Tewari, who is a part of the G-23 group (seeking reforms within Congress), extended support to Kharge’s candidature for the top post in the party as against his group member Shashi Tharoor who is also in the race. The elections for the Congress president will take place on October 17 and the results will be declared on October 19. Tewari said, “If all the facts are considered and an impartial assessment is done, then Mallikarjun Kharge who has dedicated over 50 years of his life to the service of Congress, in that case, I believe that in this situation, the Congress party needs a safe pair of hands in the form of Kharge. He is a composed personality. Kharge has spent several years and has grown from the lowest posts in the party. Congress needs stability which I feel Kharge can provide.”
Notably, Tewari was one of the proposers for Kharge on September 30 when the latter filed his nomination for the party president election in the national capital. Anand Sharma, another G23 leader, was also a proposer. Other party leaders who backed Kharge’s nomination include AK Antony, Ashok Gehlot, Ambika Soni, Mukul Wasnik, Abhishek Singhvi, Ajay Maken, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Digvijaya Singh, Tariq Anwar, Salman Khurshid, Akhilesh Prasad Singh, Deepender Singh Hooda, V Narayanasamy, V Vaithilingam, Pramod Tiwari, PL Punia, Avinash Pandey, Rajeev Shukla, Syed Naseer Hussain, Raghuvir Singh Meena, Dhiraj Prasad Sahu, Tarsem Chand Bagri, Prithviraj Chavan, Kamleshwar Patel, Moolchand Meena, Dilip Gajjar, Sanjay Kapoor and Vinit Punia.
Tewari further said that Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi will always have a role to play in the party. “Sonia Gandhi has always discharged her duties with impartiality. Her role in the party will always be there. I want to ask the BJP when was the last time when a democratic election was held in the party,” he said. (Agencies)

POONCH, Oct 14: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday detained a person for questioning during a raid in the border district ​​Poonch in Jammu and Kashmir, officials said.
As per a police officer, the raid was conducted in Sujian Danna border area today morning during which a resident was detained for questioning. More details are awaited…

Gurdaspur (Punjab), Oct 14: Border Security Force (BSF) troops shot down a drone that entered India in Punjab’s Gurdaspur sector from the Pakistan side on the International Border in the early hours of Friday.
A senior BSF officer said that the drone was spotted at 4.35 am by BSF troops on patrolling duty. They immediately opened fire and it was shot down.
According to the BSF official, a massive search operation has been launched in the area to determine whether the drone has dropped any consignment in the area.
A search operation is underway under the supervision of BSF DIG. It is suspected that the drone was carrying a consignment from Pakistan.
“Brave jawans of BSF spotted a drone coming from Pakistan side. As soon as it entered India, jawans fired 17 rounds of bullets at it. One of the blades of the drone was damaged. The entire area is being searched. The drone will be analysed,” said BSF DIG, Gurdaspur, Prabhakar Joshi.
Pertinent to mention, in the past nine months, security forces have observed the illegal entry of 191 drones into Indian territory from neighbouring Pakistan, raising major concerns in terms of internal security in the country.
The central government recently shared the input from the security forces deployed at the India-Pakistan border to maintain such illegal attempts from the Pakistan side.
Of the 191 drones observed, 171 entered into Indian territory through the India-Pakistan border along the Punjab sector while 20 were seen in the Jammu sector.
As per the document, the “UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) observation in Indo-Pak border was seen in Punjab and Jammu frontier with effect from January 1, 2022, to September 30, 2022”.
The documents further reveal that most of these drones or UAVs managed to flee while a total of seven have been shot down by the Border Security Force (BSF) personnel, who are deployed along the India-Pakistan border to keep a tab on such illegal activities being orchestrated by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence.
Among seven drones shot down this year between January 1 to September 15 were observed in Punjab’s Amritsar, Ferozpur and Abohar regions.
Officials in the BSF said that drones are being used by Pakistan’s side to transport weapons, explosives and narcotics across the international border in Jammu and Punjab from Pakistan.
The increased drone activity across the border was brought to the notice of Home Minister Amit Shah in the security review meeting in Srinagar recently with top security and intelligence chiefs in attendance. While BSF, which mans the international border with Pakistan in the Jammu sector, believes that it has been able to repel drones carrying arms, ammunition and explosives from Pakistan, the state police and the intelligence agencies differ with this assessment.
The security forces have seized various AK series assault rifles, pistols, MP4 carbines, carbine magazines, high explosive grenades as well as narcotics which were transported into Indian territory from Pakistan from the drones shot down so far.
As per security agencies, BSF intelligence inputs and Jammu and Kashmir Police officials, the drones are also used to drop packets of Afghan heroin for financing terror operations in the Valley and Punjab.
It is learnt that the group behind the transportation of weapons, explosives and drugs is Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba and other terror outfits which have camps across the International Boundary and are backed by ISI.
The Home Ministry is learnt to have directed the concerned agencies to find out a solution to stop drone activities and meanwhile security agencies and law enforcement forces are asked to keep a special watch on such movements. (Agencies)

New Delhi, Oct 14: India has recorded a single-day rise of 2,678 new COVID-19 cases, pushing its tally of the infections to 4,46,23,997, while the count of active cases has increased to 26,583, according to Union Health Ministry data updated on Friday.
The death toll due to the disease has gone up to 5,28,857 with 10 fatalities being recorded, including three reconciled by Kerala, the data updated at 8 am showed.
The count of active cases now comprises 0.06 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate has increased to 98.76 per cent, the health ministry said.
An increase of 74 cases has been recorded in the active COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours, the data showed.
The daily positivity rate was recorded at 1.13 per cent and the weekly positivity rate at 1.07 per cent, according to the ministry.
The number of people who have recuperated from the disease has surged to 4,40,68,557, while the case fatality rate was recorded at 1.19 per cent, as per the data.
According to the ministry, 219.21 crore doses of vaccines have been administered in the country so far under the nationwide COVID-19 vaccination drive.
India’s COVID-19 infection tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 2020, 30 lakh on August 23, 40 lakh on September 5, 50 lakh on September 16, 60 lakh on September 28, 70 lakh on October 11, 80 lakh on October 29, 90 lakh on November 20 and the one-crore mark on December 19.
The country crossed the grim milestones of two crore COVID-19 cases on May 4, three crore on June 23 last year and four crore on January 25 this year.
The seven new fatalities include three from Karnataka and one each from Goa, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal. (Agencies)