Why India is right in resisting US demand to open up agriculture
Prime Minister Narendra Modi.(PMO)
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India.com
27 minutes ago
- India.com
Indian Railways Achieves Rs 2,56,00,00,00,000 Revenue With Rs 3,260 Crore Profit Milestone- Check How
photoDetails english In 2023-24, Indian Railways earned Rs 2,56,093 crore with a net profit of Rs 3,260 crore, driven by freight growth and operational efficiency. Freight loading rose 29 per cent since 2020-21, aided by private sector investments, infrastructure upgrades, and specialised wagons. Non-fare revenue expanded through innovative initiatives under the NINFRIS policy. Updated:Aug 09, 2025, 06:24 PM IST 2023-24 Earnings 1 / 6 In 2023-24, Indian Railways earned Rs 2,56,093 crore with revenue expenditure of Rs 2,52,834 crore, posting a net profit of Rs 3,260 crore. Profit Strategy 2 / 6 Indian Railway adopted a two-pronged approach including boosting revenue and improving operational efficiency. Freight Growth 3 / 6 According to PIB, Freight loading rose from 1,233 million tonnes in 2020-21 to 1,591 million tonnes in 2023-24. Freight Initiatives 4 / 6 Promoting private sector investment in modern freight terminals under the Gati Shakti Multi-Modal Cargo Terminal (GCT) policy and upgrading railway-owned goods sheds. 5 / 6 Encouraging private investment in specialised wagons for cement, oil, steel, fly-ash, automobiles, etc., along with cargo aggregation schemes like 'Cargo Aggregator Transportation Product' and 'Joint Parcel Product – Rapid Cargo Services.' Non-Fare Revenue Boost 6 / 6 Implemented NINFRIS policy to attract innovative revenue ideas, introducing facilities like nursing pods, luggage wrapping, digital cloakrooms, Khadi kiosks, handicraft kiosks, EV charging stations, and oxygen parlours. (Images: ANI)
Hans India
27 minutes ago
- Hans India
South Korea, Japan coordinating Lee-Ishiba summit late August
Seoul: The offices of South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba have been coordinating to hold a summit in Tokyo later this month, a Japanese report said Saturday. The meeting is most likely to take place around August 23, Japan's Asahi Shimbun reported, citing multiple government sources. When asked about the report, the South Korean presidential spokesperson Kang Yu-jung said the two sides have been coordinating the summit, but the schedule has not yet been confirmed. If realised, it would be Lee's first visit to Japan since taking office in early June and would signal the resumption of "shuttle diplomacy" between the two nations' leaders, Yonhap news agency reported. Lee and Ishiba last met in person on June 17 on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in Canada, during which they discussed ways to advance bilateral ties and bolster trilateral cooperation with the United States. Lee is also widely expected to visit Washington for his first summit with US President Donald Trump later this month, though the presidential office has yet to announce the schedule. "The schedules for a South Korea-Japan summit and South Korea-US summit are still being arranged, and have not been confirmed. We will announce them once they are confirmed," Kang told reporters. Last month, South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun met with Ishiba, during which the Japanese leader reaffirmed his intent to maintain and further develop good relations with Seoul. Ishiba made the remarks during his 15-minute meeting with Cho at the prime minister's residence, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said during a press briefing. "While maintaining and building on the favorable momentum in South Korea-Japan relations, I also intend to advance cooperation among South Korea, the US and Japan," Ishiba was quoted as saying. Hayashi said he believes the two countries have been communicating closely since the Lee Jae Myung administration took office, describing South Korea and Japan as "important neighbors and partners" on many international issues. Cho held talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya, during which he highlighted South Korea's efforts to bolster ties with "friendly nations" under the Lee government, signaling an intent to maintain the thaw in bilateral relations with Japan. In a subsequent meeting with South Korean correspondents in Tokyo, the South Korean foreign minister said he has emphasised to Japanese officials the need to develop bilateral ties in a future-oriented manner.
Indian Express
27 minutes ago
- Indian Express
What Rahul Gandhi's vote ‘chori' allegations reveal about our democracy
On August 7, Rahul Gandhi addressed a press conference about vote chori executed in the Mahadevapura assembly segment of Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency. The evidence presented is based on an independent investigation conducted by the Congress party's research team, which painstakingly analysed voter data to unearth a story the public deserved to know. As revealed, in this assembly segment, 1,00,250 fake votes were planted by the BJP with the help of the Election Commission of India (ECI) to win the Lok Sabha seat in 2024. Given the magnitude of this fraud, it is hard to dismiss it as 'clerical error'. Instead, it hints at a deliberate and systematic manipulation of the voter's list. In Mahadevapura, thousands of voters are registered at house number 'zero'. Octogenarians are registered as 'first-time voters' on rolls meant for 18-year-olds. Phantom residents of breweries and commercial spaces are enrolled en masse. Thousands of electors had blurred/missing/too-tiny-to-identify photos on voter rolls. Thousands of others are registered to vote at multiple booths, sometimes across states, and they also vote more than once. This has raised critical questions about the credibility of the ECI, the sanctity of the electoral process, and the legitimacy of each and every elected representative across India. If the referee is not neutral, there is no sport. If the Election Commission is not impartial, there is no democracy. And if there is no democracy, there is no India as we claim to know it. Potentially, India is being ruled by the unelected, imposed through fraud. The question that haunts the Indian public is: If it happened in Bangalore Central, what's the guarantee it didn't happen everywhere? The answer is none. The scope of this scam is impossible to assess, given the limited resources. The only way to audit the electoral rolls of the entire country is to automate the process. In order to be able to do so, we would need digital/machine-readable electoral rolls of all the constituencies. Then, an unbiased, apolitical computer programme can analyse the electoral rolls — constituency after constituency — to produce an indisputable report card on their accuracy. If proven correct, it will immensely enhance the credibility of the ECI that maintains these rolls and the BJP, which happens to be in power at the centre and in the majority of the states/ UTs. The ECI and the ruling party should welcome this idea. Why? Because any democratic institution that trusts its functioning and processes should not be threatened by scrutiny. On the contrary, the ECI has left no stone unturned to make independent scrutiny increasingly difficult. It proposes to destroy CCTV footage from polling booths — the very evidence that could confirm or disprove these allegations. It has categorically refused to release digital electoral rolls despite the fact that such data exists in digital form. What they have given us instead are multiple 7 ft tall stacks of paper rolls for one assembly seat. We could still have extracted the data through Optical Character Recognition (OCR), a technology that recognises text within a digital image and would make it considerably easier for us to digitise the paper rolls supplied by the ECI. But the ECI deliberately provides non-machine-readable rolls that are immune to OCR. This only solidifies the apprehensions that the ECI, indeed, had something to hide. Otherwise, why else would it try tooth and nail to rule out any possibility of an independent scrutiny? Consequently, our team, which was earlier determined to analyse the electoral rolls of multiple constituencies, was forced to sift through the electoral rolls of just one assembly segment in one Lok Sabha seat because it had to be done manually – line by line – a process that took six months and thousands of man-hours. This seat, we found, was rigged with a lakh fake votes. When the results of a people's election are treated as proprietary property, we are no longer talking about open competition. We are talking about a scoreboard hidden from the very citizens who make the game possible. Retrospectively, it also became clear why the ECI has been resisting sharing digital/machine-readable data. Instead of engaging with hard evidence, the ECI is resorting to half-baked reactions. It first sought that Rahul Gandhi submit documentary proof of all 1,00,250 fake votes, under oath. Even the ECI is certainly unsure about the rule under which this oath has been demanded. Nevertheless, the BJP had hoped that it would use this oath as a smokescreen to launch a mudslinging operation against Rahul Gandhi in the media and the social media. Many BJP functionaries, godi media personnel and influencers jumped the gun. Some discredit the evidence-backed investigation by peddling disinformation and misinformation, and still others dismiss the prospect of any independent investigations into the functioning of the ECI. Much to the BJP's horror, however, this exercise is no longer confined to the Congress party alone. In fact, it has already spilled far beyond partisan boundaries. Concerned citizens, journalists, digital influencers, domain experts, and members of civil society have voluntarily stepped in, taking ownership of the process. They are independently examining electoral data, cross-checking official records, and publicly challenging the BJP's narrative — essentially turning this from a party investigation into a people's investigation. A striking example came on August 8. BJP IT Cell head Amit Malviya posted photos on X of three voters of a family holding their EPIC cards. Rahul Gandhi had spoken about this family in his press conference as part of thousands of voters on the Mahadevapura rolls who had indistinguishable photos, and hence were likely to be bogus voters. Malviya's point was that these voters did indeed exist in real life. But his attempt backfired. Independent users on social media quickly noticed that the EPIC numbers on the cards in Malviya's photos did not match the EPIC numbers on the electoral rolls for people with the same details, leaving Malviya red-faced. But more importantly, Malviya's defence of the indefensible only incriminated the Election Commission further. This is what the BJP has forever feared — an informed citizenry that is empowered to think independently and ask questions. Guardianship of democracy must extend beyond Parliament — to courts willing to interrogate procedure, technologists capable of exposing manipulation, media that are still committed to truth-telling, and citizens who know that without verifiability, the vote is theatre. That is the invitation now — not to save democracy, but to reinvent it. To demand digital/machine-readable voter data. To insist on CCTV preservation and procedural audits. To refuse to let the vote be stolen in silence. Because this is no longer about one party, one election, or one seat. It is about every Indian's right to vote. The writer is chairman, media and publicity department, All India Congress Committee
