It cannot get weirder than this. A BSP supporter chopped his finger just because he pressed the wrong button due to which he voted for BJP. He even posted a video of his “atonement” online. All this happened in Bulandshahr Constituency, Uttar Pradesh.

Pawan Kumar, while casting his vote wanted to hit the button for BSP but instead hit the button for BJP on the EVM. The error left the 25-year-old dalit youth frustrated and could not control his emotions and cut off his finger in frenzy. The man later released a video to regret his mistake and since then it is going viral on social media.

Pawan Kumar hails from Abdullapur Hulaspur village, Shantipur police station area in Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh.

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Another phase of elections completed. This phase sealed the fates of candidates fighting for 95 seats across 11 states. A former prime minister and four union ministers are in the fray in this phase of Lok Sabha polls. The high turnout of 66% was quite strange as this phase, just like the first phase, was marred with violence, and inaccuracies in voting mechanism.

Voting was also held in 35 Assembly constituencies in Odisha and in 18 Assembly bypolls in Tamil Nadu. In TN, polling was held in 38 of the 39 Lok Sabha seats. The election in Vellore seat was cancelled on Tuesday by the EC following recovery of cash allegedly from an associate of a DMK leader recently. Besides Tamil Nadu, polling was held in 14 seats in Karnataka, 10 in Maharashtra, eight in UP, five each in Assam, Bihar and Odisha, three each in Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, two in Jammu and Kashmir and one seat each in Manipur and Puducherry.

Polling in Chhattisgarh witnessed violence with an ITBP jawan suffering minor injuries after Naxals triggered an IED blast in Rajnandgaon district.
Sporadic incidents of violence were reported in some areas of Bengal.

Voters in Uttar Dinajpur district’s Chopra under the Raiganj constituency reportedly put up a road blockade, complaining about the absence of central forces at the polling stations, the sources said. Police fired in the air and lobbed tear gas shells to control a mob, after stones were pelted at them and bombs were hurled by unknown persons in Chopra, a senior EC official in the district said. At least three persons were detained by police in this connection, he said.

Meanwhile, CPI(M) candidate from Raiganj Md Salim claimed that his car was attacked by unknown persons when he went to a polling booth at Islampur in Uttar Dinajpur.

Bihar recorded 25.6 per cent voting in five Lok Sabha seats till noon amid reports of EVM malfunctioning and poll boycott delaying start of polling in some booths. Voting was delayed due to EVM malfunctioning at a polling station at Masuria in Banka town, two polling booths under Kahalgaon assembly segment in Bhagalpur, and another two booths in Purnea.

Lok Sabha polls are being held in seven-phases for 543 seats on April 11, April 18, April 23, April 29, May 6, May 12 and May 19, and counting will be on May 23.

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The violence in the valley doesn’t seem to stop. Militants fired a grenade at the camp, injuring a personnel of the force who was guarding the camp, officials said, adding that an under-barrel grenade launcher bullet was fired at the Tral-based camp of the 180th battalion of the Central Reserve Police Force.

The recent times has seen an increase in the violence incidences in Pulwama. Earlier this month, four Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists were killed in an encounter between militants and security forces in the Jammu and Kashmir district. Three security personnel were injured in the incident. In March, one of the three militants killed in an encounter in Kulgam district also had plans to carry out a suicide attack similar to the February 14 Pulwama terror strike. Luckily, their plan failed.

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Criminals and Politics, a better love story than Twilight. This is not just a meme statement but is the reality of our political system. Clean Politics is a myth. Sadhvi Pragya Singh was accused of Malegaon Blast incident in 2008. She is on bail.

Sadhvi will contest from Bhopal Lok Sabha seat after former Madhya Pradesh chief ministers Chouhan and Uma Bharti declined to contest from the constituency. She would take on Congress candidate Digvijaya Singh.

On December 27, 2017, a special NIA court had dropped stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act charges against Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit, Sadhvi Pragya, Sameer Kulkarni and other accused in the blast case. Six persons were killed and 101 were injured when an improvised explosive device strapped on a motorcycle went off at Malegaon on September 29, 2008.

Criminals are participating in elections though it is not new. It is quite prevalent and according to survey conducted by Association for Democratic Reforms, chances for a criminal to win the elections are higher than that of a clean and honest politician. The definition of Ache din has changed and it is not good at all.

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Election Commission has been rejuvenated. Yesterday, they put a temporary ban on Yogi Adityanath and Mayawati. Today, they are planning to cancel polls in Vellore, Tamil Nadu. The reason is simple – abuse of money power. Seizures of cash from DMK leaders over the last two weeks inspired them to recommend this extreme solution to the President of India.

Vellore is scheduled to go to polls with the rest of Tamil Nadu on April 18. It is unclear whether the two Assembly seats, Ambur and Gudiyattam, under the Vellore LS seat, facing bypolls will also be countermanded or go as planned on Thursday. Once notified by the President. If it happens, Vellore would be the first Lok Sabha seat to have had its elections countermanded over abuse of money power.

Tamil Nadu is quite notorious for the money power-play. In 2017, EC had countermanded elections to the Dr. Radhakrishnan Nagar Assembly seat in Tamil Nadu twice. In April 2016, during the TN Assembly elections, the EC postponed polls in Aravakurichi and Thanjavur, after cash running into crores was recovered from sites belonging to persons close to the AIADMK.

The EC’s recommendation was sent in wake of cash seizures from the premises of DMK veteran leader and party treasurer Duraimurugan’s son Kathir Anand’s house in Vellore on March 29. Subsequently, on April 1, based on information that illegal cash was being moved from a college owned by the Duraimurugan family to a cement warehouse in Vellore, a second I-T search was launched and Rs 11.53 crore was seized.

Parties are raining the cash in election despite the Election Commission’s guidelines on expenditure on a constituency. If such things persist, then the elections would again become the power play of money. Election Commission was dormant in the past but now active and ferocious like a tiger. Let’s see if the elections in India improve and become fair.

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Cease-fire violation by Pakistan is not a new thing. They are quite habitual but this is quite extreme. They violated it 513 times since IAF struck terrorists launch pads in Pakistan. The Pakistan army has also used heavy weaponry like Mortars and Artillery Guns in over 100 of their missions.

“513 ceasefire violations by Pakistan have taken place along the Line of Control, in the last one and a half month. Pakistan used heavy weaponry over 100 times during these violations,” GOC16 Corps, Lieutenant General Paramjit Singh told reporters.

“Whenever Pakistan carries out such violations, we also retaliate effectively. As per our sources, Pakistan Army has suffered five to six times more casualties than the casualties on the Indian side,” Singh added.

India retaliated the 14 February Pulwama terror attack, in which 40 CRPF personnel lost their lives through Air Strike by IAF on 26 February. IAF fighter jets targetted terrorist organisation Jaish-e-Mohammad’s advance training camp in Pakistan’s Balakot. Islamabad retaliated by attempting to target Indian military installations the next day. However, the IAF thwarted its attempted.

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Politics is the only field where fake degrees can lead you to the post of Human Resource Development minister, ironically. In other fields, fake degree can lead to banishment and jail-time as well.

Former HRD minister Smriti Irani revealed in her poll affidavit that she was not a graduate. However, in her affidavit for 2014 polls, Irani had reportedly said that she had graduated from Delhi University’s School of Open Learning with a Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1994. Opposition found a weak spot and they kept attacking BJP over her fake degree.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley came to her defence and said the academic credentials of Congress president Rahul Gandhi, too, were the subject of debate. He said that Rahul Gandhi completed his MPhil without completing his post-graduation.

“One day the focus (of Congress campaign) would be on the BJP candidate’s educational qualification, fully forgetting that a public audit of Rahul Gandhi’s academic credentials may leave a lot to be answered. After all, he got an MPhil without a Master’s degree,” Jaitley said in a Facebook blog titled ‘India’s Opposition is on a Rent a Cause Campaign’.

In 2009, amid a row over Gandhi’s foreign degrees, the University of Cambridge had said the Congress leader was a student of Trinity College and was awarded an M.Phil in Development Studies in 1995.

Fake degree for politicians controversy is not new. Smriti Irani and Rahul Gandhi are not the only high profile politicians surrounded by this controversy. Our own PM Modi was allegedly having a fake degree in ‘Entire Political Science’ from Delhi University. There are numerous discrepancies in the records.

The point is that the politicians are setting a very notorious image in the youth of our nation. This fake degree scandal would definitely bring international shame to our country. What can one expect in that country where the law-makers are not following their own laws? Think about it.

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The dance of democracy begins. The first phase of poll is over. It covered total 91 constituencies across 20 states and Union Territories. Apart from that, voting is underway in 175 Assembly seats in Andhra Pradesh, 32 in Sikkim and 28 seats in Odisha. North East states like Nagaland and Meghalaya recorded turn-out more than 70% till 5PM. Let’s see what happened today.

Elections in Andhra Pradesh were, however, marred with violence with the cadres of TDP and YSRCP in different parts of the state. Reports said that there were at least 15 different incidents of clashes between the workers of these parties.

One worker from the ruling Telugu Desam Party and one from the YSR Congress were killed in a clash in a village in Tadipatri Assembly constituency in Anantapuram district.Besides clashes between the rival parties, the elections in Andhra Pradesh were also hampered by multiple reports of EVM malfunctions. Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu alleged that 30 percent EVMs malfunctioned and sought re-polling at all the locations that reported glitches in the voting machines. State’s Chief Electoral Officer, however, denied that 30 percent of the EVMs had malfuncted. Naidu even shot off a letter to the Election Commission.

In Maharashtra, Naxalites attacked a police team returning after the close of polling in Atapalli in Gadchiroli. Three commandos of the police were injured in this attack. The injured were taken to Nagpur by air life. The Naxalites also fired on helicopters carrying the injured.

There was an incident in which a 91- year old Khajan Singh Saini was unable vote as his name was not in the voters’ list in Shahpur town, Muzaffarpur. Villagers in that village tell that there are more than 400 such people who are not in the voters’ list across 3 wards of Shahpur town only.

In Uttar Pradesh, voter turnout till 5:00 PM in Kairana was 60.3 percent, Meerut 60.5 percent and Bijnor 61.5 percent. In Meghalaya, 75% people came for voting whereas in Nagaland, that figure was 73% till 4 PM.

Phase 2 will be conducted on April 18. This phase will cover a total of 97 constituencies spread across 13 states.

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Finally, election commission gave indication of its presence. Election Commission banned the biopic on Narendra Modi just before it’s scheduled release on 11th April. Election Commission also banned NaMo TV as it found (finally!) that it ‘subserves the purpose of a political party’. Thus, it cannot be displayed on electronic media.

The first phase of Lok Sabha elections starts Thursday, 11 April.

The Vivek Oberoi-starrer biopic, which was scheduled to be released on 11 April. It had received a ‘Universal’ certificate by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) merely hours before the EC ban.

Earlier, the Supreme Court on Tuesday, 9 April, had dismissed a petition filed by a Congress activist. It aimed at seeking stay on the release of the biopic, and said the Election Commission would be an “appropriate” place to seek the redressal.

The film, titled “PM Narendra Modi” and directed by Omung Kumar, had been facing criticism from the Opposition parties, who claimed that the biopic could give undue advantage to the BJP in the polls.

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Concorde, the flag-bearer of supersonic aircraft, retired more than a decade ago. Some thought that the era of supersonic traveling will end in grave. But, some scientists didn’t lose the motivation and are still working on bringing the concept of supersonic air travel back to reality.

U.K.-based Reaction Engines is developing technology for Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engines (SABRE), which could one day allow aircraft to fly up to five times faster than the speed of sound — that’s Mach 5 or 3,836 miles per hour. At that speed, hypersonic flights between London and Australia could be over in just four-and-a-half hours.

After the retirement of the Concorde in 2003, supersonic commercial air travel came to an end. With an average speed just above Mach 2 (1,354 mph), the Concorde’s fastest Transatlantic trip between New York and London occurred in 1996, lasting just 2 hours 52 minutes and 59 seconds.

Its retirement was seen by many as a real loss even as there were serious problems with commercial supersonic air travel, primarily the noise. It was prohibited from flying at supersonic speeds over land to spare those down below from the loud sonic boom as it flew. Though a sonic boom seems like a single event, the boom itself is relative to the observer, the boom itself simply being the moment the compressed sound waves of the aircraft finally reaching the observer. Traveling over land, a supersonic aircraft is essentially raking the ground below with its sonic boom.
Boeing has gone further than many of its competitors by unveiling a design for a hypersonic aircraft that could potentially travel five times quicker.

But for those speeds to be possible, the futuristic engines need to process air flows with extremely high temperatures. Now Reaction Engines has revealed that its precooler component – designed to manage extreme heat – has successfully handled temperatures of 420 degrees Celsius, matching the conditions it would face when reaching Mach 3.3 speeds. At that speed, an aircraft would be traveling three times faster than the speed of sound and 50 percent faster than Concorde.

The test took place at Reaction Engines’ facility at the United States’ Colorado Air and Space Port. They were the first phase of an extensive trial program, which will eventually see the precooler exposed to temperatures hotter than 1,000 degrees Celsius – the conditions expected during Mach 5 hypersonic flight.

In space rocket mode, the engines are being designed to speed a craft up to Mach 25.

Over the last four years, Reaction Engines has secured more than £100 million ($130 million) in investment from backers including BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, and Boeing’s venture capital arm. The firm has also received a £60 million ($78 million) funding commitment from the U.K. Government.

The commercial feasibility and the impact of supersonic traveling on human bodies is yet to be tested. The technology is on the right path and with each successful tests, the day of supersonic traveling would come nearer.

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