Top 10 Covid-19 updates: Centre raises FDI in defence to 74%, allows commercial coal mining
Here are the biggest developments of the day.
- Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the government will open up the coal sector for commercial mining under the automatic route. The Foreign Direct Investment limit in defence manufacturing will be raised from 49% to 74%, she added. The stimulus was part of the Centre’s Rs 20-lakh-crore economic package.
- The number of coronavirus cases in India rose 85,940 on Saturday and the toll reached 2,752. India has surpassed China’s tally of 84,038 cases.
- The Madras High Court directed the Centre and the Tamil Nadu government to submit an action taken report on the measures taken to alleviate the sufferings of migrants on the move amid the coronavirus lockdown, saying their “pathetic condition” is “nothing but a human tragedy”.
- The Centre launched an online database for migrants to monitor their movement and help them travel to their native places.
- Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday met a group of migrant workers who were camping near a flyover in the Sukhdev Vihar locality of Delhi. Gandhi’s encounter with the workers came hours after he urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to reconsider the Rs 20-lakh-crore stimulus package and emphasised the need to directly transfer money to people’s accounts.
- The Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government on Saturday said that the state will bear the entire cost of movement of migrant workers by special trains from other states.
- Twenty-four migrants were killed and several others were injured after the truck they were traveling in collided with another one in Uttar Pradesh’s Auriya district.
- Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in a letter to Modi said that economic activities should resume in the city in the fourth phase of the lockdown. However, Kejriwal said that there should be no relaxations in containment zones.
- Modi on thanked Donald Trump, a day after he said that the United States will donate ventilators to India in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. Trump had also expressed his support for Modi and said that the two nations will overcome the health crisis together.
- Globally, Covid-19 has infected over 45 lakh people and claimed more than 3.07 lakh lives, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.