Today’s Top News Headlines and Latest News at 8:30 pm on 20 June 2023

The top news today comes from the corridors of the Supreme Court, which has dismissed the objections raised by Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government and West Bengal State Election Commission (SEC) to the Calcutta High Court order asking the poll panel to requisition central forces for deployment in all districts of the state for the July 8 panchayat elections. A vacation bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and Manoj Misra, dismissing the appeals, said, “The fact remains that the tenor of the order of the high court is ultimately to ensure that free and fair election is conducted in the entire state of West Bengal, since state is conducting election for local bodies on a single day and having regard to the volume of booths which are being set up. We find that the order of the HC does not call for any interference. SLP stands dismissed."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi left for his first State visit to the United States today morning since he assumed the top job in the country back in 2014. He is scheduled to have at least three meetings with President Joe Biden, in three days, including a private engagement and a State dinner, a lunch jointly hosted by Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Modi will also address a joint meeting of the House of Representatives and Senate for a second time — only a few leaders, including Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, and Israel’s Prime Ministers Binyamin Netanyahu and Yitzhak Rabin have been accorded this honour by Washington.

Both the ruling and Opposition parties in Maharashtra are indulging in an acrimonious battle – this time, over the real ‘gaddar’ or traitor in state politics.While the BJP has accused Uddhav Thackeray of betraying them after the 2019 polls, he has hit back, using the term ‘gaddar’ against Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. From the streets to social media, MPs, MLAs and party workers are now accusing the other of betrayal. It all began with Uddhav’s Shiv Sena saying that June 20 should be commemorated as ‘Gaddar Din’ or Traitor Day. Accordingly, party workers of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, Congress and NCP took to the streets on Tuesday to protest the ‘betrayal’.

A total of ten political parties in Manipur, including the Congress, has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his immediate intervention to resolve the ethnic violence that has left over 110 people dead and thousands displaced in the state. In the letter dated June 19, the Opposition parties blamed “the divide and rule politics of the BJP government at the Centre and in the state for having failed to contain the violence in Manipur”. They also termed Manipur Chief Minister as the “architect of present ethnic violence” and said the clashes could have been averted had he taken preventive measures and prompt actions. The letter also criticised the “stoic silence of the Hon’ble prime minister” and stated that despite Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s visit to the state, “peace is hard to come by”.

The Punjab Vidhan Sabha, meanwhile, passed the Sikh Gurdwaras (Amendment) Bill, 2023, making the telecast of Gurbani from the Golden Temple free and ensuring that it is not commercialised in any manner. The Bill was passed with a voice vote after the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and Bahujan Samaj Party members opposed it. Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann said that he himself was a humble Sikh who wanted the Gurbani to be telecast on all channels and not be commercialised. Mann has been at loggerheads with the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee’s (SGPC) move to give the exclusive rights for telecasting Gurbani from the Golden Temple to PTC, a channel owned by the Badal family.

Following the first meeting of the National Capital Civil Services Authority, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal called the newly constituted body ‘futile’ and said that the Delhi government will move the Supreme Court against the Centre’s ordinance. Kejriwal also said that the ordinance places officers above the ministers, the chief minister and the cabinet. “BJP lost four elections badly in Delhi. They have no hope of winning Delhi for the next several years. So they have tried to capture Delhi through this ordinance,” he said.

Meanwhile, in the world of business, India’s government appointed Swaminathan Janakiraman as a deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India for three years from the date of joining. Janakiraman, who is currently the managing director of State Bank of India, will succeed Mahesh Kumar Jain, whose tenure ends on June 22. Jain was appointed as a deputy governor in June 2018 for three years. He was re-appointed in June 2021 for a further two-year period.

In world news, rescuers in a remote area of the Atlantic Ocean raced against time early today to find a missing submersible carrying five people on a mission to document the wreckage of the Titanic, the iconic ocean liner that sank more than a century ago. The submersible named the Titan, part of a mission by OceanGate Expeditions, carried a pilot, a renowned British adventurer, two members of an iconic Pakistani business family and another passenger. Every passing minute, however, puts the Titan’s crew at greater risk. The Canadian research icebreaker Polar Prince, which was supporting the Titan, reportedly lost contact with the vessel about an hour and 45 minutes after it submerged. The Polar Prince will continue to do surface searches throughout the night and Canadian aircraft will resume their surface and subsurface search in the morning, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
 

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