India sends medical assistance, winter clothings to Afghanistan

In Tamil Nadu, the polling for the urban civic bodies has been held peacefully. The polling for the ward councilors for all the 21 municipal corporations, 138 municipalities and 489 town panchayats began at 7 am and got over by 6 pm. The last one hour has been allocated for the Covid-positive patients to come and exercise their franchise. The counting of votes will be held on coming Tuesday. The elected ward councilors will in turn select the chairpersons and the deputy chairpersons in an indirect election on the 4th of next month. After the incident-free polling barring very few exceptions, the attention of the poll officials have now turned to shifting the electronic voting machines deployed for today's election to the counting centres. There are 268 counting centres across the state where multi-tier security arrangements have been made to safeguard the EVMs. 

-Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday met members of the Sikh-Hindu Delegation from Afghanistan at his residence in New Delhi. They thanked the Prime Minister for bringing Sikhs and Hindus safely to India from Afghanistan. Modi told them that India is their home. He talked about the difficulties faced by them in Afghanistan and the help provided by the government to bring them to India safely. He also talked about the significance of the Citizenship Amendment Act and its benefits for the community. Mr Modi assured them of continuous support in future as well to resolve all issues and difficulties faced by them. Prime Minister also spoke about the significance of the tradition of honouring Guru Granth Sahib, in light of which special arrangements were made to bring back Swaroop of Guru Granth Sahib from Afghanistan. He talked about the immense love that he has received from Afghans over the years and fondly recalled his visit to Kabul. BJP leader Manjinder Singh Sirsa thanked the Prime Minister for sending help from India to bring back the community safely. He said that when no one stood with them, the Prime Minister ensured constant support and timely help. Other members of the delegation also thanked the Prime Minister for standing up for them in times of distress. They said that they had tears in their eyes when they heard him talking about making special arrangements to bring back Swaroop of Guru Granth Sahib from Afghanistan to India with proper reverence.

-The Gujarat government has decided to appoint 10,000 visiting teachers in government as well as granted primary schools to overcome the shortage of teachers post Covid pandemic. The decision has been taken ahead of resumption of offline education in schools from Monday and also to ensure that offline education does not affect due to non availability of staff in primary schools post Covid. The government has allocated Rs. 10.50 crore to fill the vacant posts. The visiting teachers’ scheme was introduced in the state through a Government Resolution in the academic session 2015-16 to ensure that vacant teaching posts and long leaves taken by teachers do not affect the teaching in these schools.

-In Leh, 14 core of Fire and Fury Corps of Indian Army has distributed Computers, school uniforms, shoes and other educational stationery under Operation Sadbhavana. At a function at Sherab Skitsal-Ling Library in Thiksey Monastery, ASC Brigadier Nikhil Tiwari presented the articles to the students, lama students of Lamdon and Lama Gonpa Schools.  Thanking the donations by the Indian Army, President of Aura of Wisdom Lama Nawang Kunphel said such programmes help the students from deprived families of the region. Students from remote areas and border areas of Ladakh are among the students received Army help under Sadbhavana programme.

-Continuing the special partnership with the Afghan people, India today delivered the fifth shipment of 2.5 tons of medical assistance and winter clothings to Afghanistan on Saturday.Prior to this, India had supplied four shipments of medical assistance, consisting of vaccines and essential life-saving medicines to Afghanistan.