Rush Hour: HC allows TMC to use funds from frozen accounts, Australia-India deal on uranium & more
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The Calcutta High Court allowed the Trinamool Congress to use the funds from its three bank accounts that were frozen by the West Bengal Police and the Enforcement Directorate. The party has been allowed to use the funds for day-to-day operations under the supervision of a court-appointed special officer till September 30.
The police had frozen the accounts after rebel TMC MLA Biswanath Das filed a complaint alleging that party funds had been misused. The High Court also observed that at the interim stage, it was unable to find sufficient material justifying the “abrupt” freezing of the accounts within a day of a first information report being registered.
The party had described the ED’s action on Wednesday as “politically motivated”. Read on.
Australia will begin exporting uranium to India for peaceful purposes after the two countries finalised the arrangements needed to implement a civil nuclear cooperation agreement. The pact had been stalled since 2014.
The announcement came during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trip to Australia, where he met his counterpart Anthony Albanese. The leaders did not announce how much uranium Australia would export or when shipments would begin. Read on.
About 3,000 liquefied petroleum gas cylinders were swept away because of heavy rainfall into the Patalganga river from a bottling facility of the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation in Panvel, in Maharashtra’s Raigad district. The cylinders were filled and empty.
In Thane, three persons were killed in rain-related incidents and 800 were evacuated in the past week.
Delhi received near-continuous rainfall for the second consecutive day, leading to waterlogging and traffic congestion. Read on.
Union Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari told The Indian Express that the claims made online about damage to cars because of blending petrol with ethanol are part of a “false narrative”. He added that the average mileage of vehicles may have been marginally reduced because of the ethanol fuel.
“Show me a single car that has suffered damage because of E20 fuel,” he told the newspaper. Meanwhile, consumers have complained that the new fuel mix damages and reduces their mileage. Read on.
The toll in the landslide in Kerala’s Wayanad reached five with the recovery of two bodies at the disaster site. Search operations were underway to locate three persons who are still missing.
Three of the 10 persons injured in the landslide, which occurred two days ago, had been discharged and four remained in hospital in stable condition. Three persons were in the intensive care unit, including two in critical condition. Read on.
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