1. Gujarat: Voting for Six Assembly Bypolls Today
Voting for the bypolls in six Assembly constituencies in Gujarat will be held on Monday, 21October, which is viewed as a battle of prestige for Chief Minister Vijay Rupani as chunk of these seats were held by the ruling BJP.
The outcome of the bypolls on 24 October will have a bearing on the current composition of the 182-member House. In the 2017 assembly elections, the BJP won 99 seats against the Congress' 77 under Rupani's watch.
The by-elections will be held on Tharad, Radhanpur, Kheralu, Bayad, Amraiwadi and Lunawada seats. The BJP had bagged all the 26 seats in Gujarat in the Lok Sabha elections held earlier this year.
The BJP is under pressure to secure the pole position given that four of the six constituencies going to polls were represented by the ruling party before the change of circumstances like some candidates winning the LS polls.
(Source: Times of India)
2. Three Held With Fake Currency Notes
Three persons were nabbed on Sunday. 20 October for allegedly possessing fake currency with the face value of Rs 1.79 lakh from Bhavnagar in Gujarat, police said.
The accused, identified as Vijay Goswami, Mehul Vanand, and Kishore Patel, were picked up from near a building adjacent to Sisadar Road on a tip-off, an official said.
Police seized counterfeit currencies in denominations of scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 from their possession. They have been booked under section 498 (B) (Using as genuine forged or counterfeit notes) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), he added.
(Source: Times of India)
3. Restaurant Owner Held With Heroin Worth Rs 15 Lakh
The Kutch police arrested a 59-year-old owner of a highway restaurant in Anjar of Kutch with heroin worth Rs 15 lakh on Saturday evening (19 October).
The accused has been identified as Amarjeet Singh, a native of Tarantal in Punjab, who runs Khalsa Dhaba on the Mundra-Gandhidham highway near Sinugra village under Anjar Taluka in Kutch.
“We raided the Khalsa Dhaba restaurant and seized heroin weighing 27.26 gm from the accused. The black market price of brown sugar is over Rs 4 crore per kilo. The accused used to run the restaurant for the past 4-5 years and has claimed that he procured the drugs from Punjab,” said an officer from Anjar police station.
(Source: Indian Express)
4. Illegal Liquor and Beer Worth Rs 2 Lakh Seized in Bayad, 1 Held
Police arrested one person and seized illegal Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) and beer worth Rs 2 lakh from two vehicles in Bayad on Sunday 20 October. Bayad is one of the six Assembly constituencies that go to bypolls Monday 21 October.
Two vehicles were intercepted outside Vrindavan Hotel in Bayad around 3 am on Sunday.
“We have seized 1,154 bottles of beer and 2,928 bottles of IMFL from the two vehicles. One of the drivers managed to escape,” said KK Rajput, station in charge, Bayad police station. The arrested person has been identified as Jayanti Rathore, a native of Arvalli.
(Source: Indian Express)
5. ‘Central Law on Data Protection Needed’
A central law on data protection is the need of the hour to check the large scale misuse and breach of data, said former executive director of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Sudarshan Sen.
Speaking on the concluding day of the two-day annual technical summit — Amalthea 2019 — at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar on Sunday, 20 October Sen said, “We need to have a central data protection law that doesn’t lack teeth.”
“They (laws) don’t stop misuse and laws also change over time but it will be a start… There will be violations, sanctions and how effective are these enforcements… It is a long process,” Sen told The Indian Express. He added that there has to be clear definition on data and said consent will be important and liability needs to be ensured.
(Source: Indian Express)
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