The Evening Wrap: EC halts Bengal Governor's proposed Cooch Behar visit

Acting tough, the Election Commission of India (EC) on Wednesday advised a halt to the proposed tour of West Bengal Governor C.V. Ananda Bose to Cooch Behar on April 18-19 saying it would violate the Model Code of Conduct. EC sources said that the commission felt there was no “imminently known” requirement to visit the place and it would disturb polling officials on the eve of election and has hence advised that the proposed tour may not be undertaken. Cooch Behar will vote in the first phase of Lok Sabha polls on April 19. The “silence period” or end of campaign period begins from Wednesday evening. “Under Model Code of Conduct and being poll day, no local programme can be organised for the Governor as proposed in his issued programme”, the Commission noted in its communication to the Office of the Governor. It further said that the entire district administration and police force will be fully occupied in election management during April 18-19 and it would be a diversion for them if they need to provide any protocol and local security cover to Governor’s visit. As per Section 126 of Representation of Peoples Act 1951, the “silence period” brings in a multitude of restrictions and a higher level of enforcement by election authorities, the sources said. The EC has issued standing instructions to all District Election Officers and District Police Chiefs to ensure that all high-profile persons, campaigners, political workers who are not voters of that election area shall exit immediately on beginning of the “silence period” to ensure free and fair poll process. In March, the ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal had lodged a complaint with the poll body against the Governor for allegedly interfering with the Lok Sabha election process. In a letter addressed to the Chief Election Commissioner, the Trinamool Congress claimed that the Governor was running an office parallel to the EC and that Raj Bhavan has lodged a new portal ‘Log Sabha’ to listen to the grievances of voters and directly connect with them during the election. Lok Sabha polls Phase 1: 8 Union Ministers, 2 former CMs, one ex-governor in fray Eight Union Ministers, two former chief ministers and one ex-governor are among those who are set to test their electoral fate in the first phase of elections on April 19 when 102 seats across 21 States and Union Territories will go to polls. Union Road and Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari is seeking a hat-trick of wins from the Nagpur seat. In 2014, he had defeated seven-time MP Vilas Muttemwar by a margin of 2.84 lakh votes and retained the seat in 2019 by defeating current Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole by 2.16 lakh votes. Union Minister Kiren Rijiju is contesting from Arunachal West seat. The 52-year-old has represented the constituency thrice since 2004. Rijiju’s main rival is former chief minister and present president of Arunachal Pradesh Congress Nabam Tuki. Sarbanada Sonowal, Union Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, is seeking a return to Lok Sabha from Dibrugarh in Assam. Sonowal, a Rajya Sabha member, was fielded from Dibrugarh after Union Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Rameswar Teli, was not given a ticket. Muzaffarnagar, known for its intricate caste dynamics, is witnessing a three-cornered electoral battle, with Union Minister Sanjeev Baliyan locked in competition against Samajwadi Party’s Harindra Malik and BSP candidate Dara Singh Prajapati. Jitendra Singh, a two-time parliamentarian and a junior Minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Cabinet, is aiming for a hat-trick in Udhampur. Bhupendra Yadav, Union Minister and Rajya Sabha member who replaced sitting MP Balak Nath, is in a contest with sitting Congress MLA Lalit Yadav, who belongs to Matsya region of Alwar district in Rajasthan and enjoys the support of the Yadav community. Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal is pitted against former Congress minister Govind Ram Meghwl from Bikaner parliamentary seat in Rajasthan. The Nilgiris Lok Sabha constituency in Tamil Nadu is witnessing one of the keenly watched battles between A Raja, the incumbent DMK MP, and former telecom minister, and L Murugan of the BJP, who is the Union Minister of State for Fisheries. This will be the first time that Murugan, who was elected to Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh, is contesting from here. Sivaganga MP Karti Chidmabaram is aiming for a re-election from a seat his father won seven times, competing against BJP’s T. Devanathan Yadav and AIADMK’s Xavier Dass. Tamil Nadu BJP president K. Annamalai is set to take the ballot test in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore where he is pitted against DMK leader Ganapathy P. Rajkumar and AIADMK’s Singai Ramachandran. Tamilisai Soundararajan, who recently resigned as governor of Telangana and Lt Governor of Puducherry to return to active politics, is contesting from Chennai South Lok Sabha constituency. Daughter of veteran Congress leader Kumari Anantha, Soundararajan had contested 2019 Lok Sabha elections against DMK’s Kanimozhi, but lost by a huge margin in Thoothukudi. This time, Kanimozhi is seeking a re-election from the seat. NDA ally Tamil Maanila Congress (Moopanar) has fielded SDR Vijayaseelan and AIADMK has fielded R. Sivasami Velumani from the constituency. Nakul Nath, son of Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath, is seeking a re-election Chhindwara. The seat has remained firmly with Kamal Nath, who has won the seat nine times since 1980. In the 2019 polls, the BJP bagged 28 seats out of the State’s 29, but missed out on picking Chhindwara, where Nakul beat the BJP’s candidate by 37,536 votes to emerge as the lone Congress MP in the State. Of the two Lok Sabha constituencies in Tripura, the seat of West Tripura that votes in the first phase on April 19 will see a high-voltage clash between former chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb and State Congress president Ashish Kumar Saha. Having won Lok Sabha elections twice since 2014 from Kaliabor constituency in Assam, Gaurav Gogoi, Congress’s deputy leader in Lok Sabha and son of former chief minister Tarun Gogoi, finds himself as the new candidate in neighbouring Jorhat, where BJP’s Topon Kumar Gogoi won in 2019. Gaurav Gogoi’s shift to Jorhat came after the impact of delimitation exercise in his 2019 constituency, Kaliabor. Manipur Law and Education Minister Basanta Kumar Singh is BJP’s nominee for the Inner Manipur constituency and is pitted against JNU professor and Congress candidate Bimal Akoijam. Singh, who belongs to the Meiti community, is the son of Thounaojam Chaoba Singh who served as the Union Minister of State for sports, youth affairs, culture and food processing in the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The BJP stronghold of Churu, in northern Rajasthan, is readying for an interesting match between BJP candidate Devendra Jhajharia, a two-time Paralympic gold medallist javelin thrower, and Rahul Kaswan from the Congress. Kaswan is a turncoat who has made the fight for Churu interesting. The two-time left the BJP only in March after he was denied a ticket by the party. Rahul and Akhilesh hold the PM to account for corruption Two days before the first round of Lok Sabha polls, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav held Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party to account for the alleged corrupt practices in the electoral bond scheme. Addressing the first joint press conference with the SP head after the INDIA alliance was forged, Gandhi described PM Modi as the “champion of corruption”. At the same time, Yadav said the “moral bubble” of the BJP had gone bust after the revelations in the electoral bond scheme. “The wind that starts from Ghaziabad today will sweep the BJP away from the State. Ghaziabad se lekar Ghazipur tak safaya hoga. NDA will be defeated by PDA,” he declared, referring to the party’s agenda to bring together backwards, Dalits and minorities. Yadav said the way the BJP was bringing the corrupt under its umbrella, it shows the party has become the “godown of corruption.” Gandhi described Modi’s interview to a news agency where the PM defended the electoral bond scheme a “flop show”. “If the electoral bonds were brought for transparency and cleanse the politics, then why did the Supreme Court cancel it.” The SP and Congress have come together after the debacle of the 2017 Assembly polls in the State. andhi sidestepped the question of contesting from Amethi saying the central election committee of the party will take a call on it. He said he open-heartedly joined hands with the SP and that’s the reason the party is contesting on 17 seats. “We have released our separate manifestos but if an alliance partner comes up with a suggestion we are open to incorporating it,” he said. Diving into the perceived internal tussle of the BJP in UP, Yadav said it is no longer the double engine government. “The hoardings of the BJP across UP display the photo of just one person. Even the candidates are absent from the hoardings.” Describing the BJP as the party of “loot and jhoot [falsehood] that hasn’t fulfilled the promises made to the farmers and youth, Yadav also brought up the issue of ten examination papers getting leaked in the State. He said it has affected the lives of 60 lakh youth and their families across the State. “It means the vote of the BJP will drop by 2.5 lakhs in each constituency,” he claimed. Yadav addressed the charge of the dynastic party by asking the BJP to release the list of its candidates who have family background in politics and not to seek votes from those who have families. Yadav and Gandhi will hold a joint rally in Amroha on April 20. X takes down four posts by leaders of BJP, AAP, YSR Congress, TDP on Election Commission of India order Social media platform X (formerly Twitter), released a letter by the Election Commission of India (EC) ordering a takedown of four posts on the platform by political leaders in the YSR Congress Party, the Telugu Desam Party, the Aam Aadmi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party. The company said that it disagrees with the takedown order issued by the EC, and that “freedom of expression should extend to these posts and political speech in general”. The company has taken the tweets down in India, but they are visible from non-Indian Internet connections. This is the first time that X is proactively disclosing a takedown notice from India to the public since April 2023, when it stopped publishing summaries of such orders with links to affected posts on the Lumen Database website. The EC has issued such orders in the past to X, which have been disclosed and reported in the media; however, subsequent disclosures for government takedowns around the world come selectively through the handle of the social media platform’s Global Affairs team. In the current batch of orders, the poll body has cited a prohibition on campaigners targeting their rivals’ personal lives while politicking. The YSR Congress’s post was not immediately available on Tuesday evening, indicating that the party has chosen to delete the post altogether. Telugu Desam Party leader N. Chandrababu Naidu’s post featured what appears to be a document from the Central Bureau of Investigation, where he says that the agency “seized a staggering 25,000 kilos of drugs at Vizag Port, today,” and that “non-cooperation of AP Police and port employees suggests complicity and point towards the potential involvement of the ruling party.” Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party is in the opposition in Andhra Pradesh. The Aam Aadmi Party’s post features a headline from the online news portal The Quint, which reads, “ED Arrested Aurobindo Pharma’s Director. 5 Days Later, It Bought Electoral Bonds.” The party added a caption to the post saying “Bond Chor [thief],” over an image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi edited to redden his eyes and superimpose a pose by the actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui from the poster for the film Raman Raghav 2.0, where the actor plays a serial killer. The final tweet takedown was from the account of Bihar Deputy Chief Minister and BJP member Samrat Choudhary, who in a video and tweet said that Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad was a “seasoned player” in selling tickets to contest elections. Choudhary added a remark that Prasad “did not even spare his daughter” in this, and “took a kidney from her and then gave a ticket.” Choudhary appeared to be referencing the fact that Prasad’s daughter Rohini Acharya had donated her kidney to him for a transplant last February. ‘5,000 lives in one shell’: Gaza’s IVF embryos destroyed by Israeli strike When an Israeli shell struck Gaza’s largest fertility clinic in December, the explosion blasted the lids off five liquid nitrogen tanks stored in a corner of the embryology unit. As the ultra-cold liquid evaporated, the temperature inside the tanks rose, destroying more than 4,000 embryos plus 1,000 more specimens of sperm and unfertilised eggs stored at Gaza City’s Al Basma IVF centre. The impact of that single explosion was far-reaching -- an example of the unseen toll Israel’s six-and-a-half-month-old assault has had on the 2.3 million people of Gaza. The embryos in those tanks were the last hope for hundreds of Palestinian couples facing infertility. “We know deeply what these 5,000 lives, or potential lives, meant for the parents, either for the future or for the past,” said Bahaeldeen Ghalayini, 73, the Cambridge-trained obstetrician and gynaecologist who established the clinic in 1997. At least half of the couples — those who can no longer produce sperm or eggs to make viable embryos — will not have another chance to get pregnant, he said. “My heart is divided into a million pieces,” he said. Three years of fertility treatment was a psychological roller coaster for Seba Jaafarawi. The retrieval of eggs from her ovaries was painful, the hormone injections had strong side-effects and the sadness when two attempted pregnancies failed seemed unbearable. Jaafarawi, 32, and her husband could not get pregnant naturally and turned to in vitro fertilization (IVF), which is widely available in Gaza. Large families are common in the enclave, where nearly half the population is under 18 and the fertility rate is high at 3.38 births per woman, according to the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics. Britain’s fertility rate is 1.63 births per woman. Despite Gaza’s poverty, couples facing infertility pursue IVF, some selling TVs and jewellery to pay the fees, Al Ghalayini said. At least nine clinics in Gaza performed IVF, where eggs are collected from a woman’s ovaries and fertilized by sperm in a lab. The fertilized eggs, called embryos, are often frozen until the optimal time for transfer to a woman’s uterus. Most frozen embryos in Gaza were stored at the Al Basma centre. In September, Jaafarawi became pregnant, her first successful IVF attempt. “I did not even have time to celebrate the news,” she said. Two days before her first scheduled ultrasound scan, Hamas launched the October 7 attack on Israel. Israel vowed to destroy Hamas and launched an all-out assault that has since killed more than 33,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities. Jaafarawi worried: “How would I complete my pregnancy? What would happen to me and what would happen to the ones inside my womb?” Her ultrasound never happened and Ghalayini closed his clinic, where an additional five of Jaafarawi’s embryos were stored. As the Israeli attacks intensified, Mohammed Ajjour, Al Basma’s chief embryologist, started to worry about liquid nitrogen levels in the five specimen tanks. Top ups were needed every month or so to keep the temperature below -180C in each tank, which operate independent of electricity. After the war began, Ajjour managed to procure one delivery of liquid nitrogen, but Israel cut electricity and fuel to Gaza, and most suppliers closed. At the end of October, Israeli tanks rolled into Gaza and soldiers closed in on the streets around the IVF centre. It became too dangerous for Ajjour to check the tanks. Jaafarawi knew she should rest to keep her fragile pregnancy safe, but hazards were everywhere: she climbed six flights of stairs to her apartment because the elevator stopped working; a bomb levelled the building next door and blasted out windows in her flat; food and water became scarce. Instead of resting, she worried. “I got very scared and there were signs that I would lose (the pregnancy),” she said. Jaafarawi bled a little bit after she and her husband left home and moved south to Khan Younis. The bleeding subsided, but her fear did not. They crossed into Egypt on November 12 and in Cairo, her first ultrasound showed she was pregnant with twins and they were alive. But after a few days, she experienced painful cramps, bleeding and a sudden shift in her belly. She made it to hospital, but the miscarriage had already begun. “The sounds of me screaming and crying at the hospital are still (echoing) in my ears,” she said. Jaafarawi wanted to return to the war zone, retrieve her frozen embryos and attempt IVF again. But it was soon too late. Ghalayini said a single Israeli shell struck the corner of the centre, blowing up the ground floor embryology lab. He does not know if the attack specifically targeted the lab or not. “All these lives were killed or taken away: 5,000 lives in one shell,” he said. Poll roundup The Rajputs in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, held a ‘mahapanchayat’ and decided to boycott the BJP candidates in Muzaffarnagar, Kairana and Saharanpur Lok Sabha constituencies for allegedly neglecting the community while distributing party tickets, a leader said on April 17. The ‘mahapanchayat’ was called on April 16 in the Kheda area by Thakur Pooran Singh, the national president of Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan and a prominent Rajput leader in the area. It was attended by the Chaubisa Rajput Community spread across Muzaffarnagar constituency and other Rajput communities from nearby districts. “The boycott is being done as a sign of protest for insulting the Rajput Community by neglecting it in ticket distribution which has been done by the Bharatiya Janata Party,” Singh said. “People of the Rajput community in these areas will not vote for the BJP candidate but will opt for another strong contender from other parties in his place,” he said. The Lok Sabha elections in eight constituencies of Uttar Pradesh will be held on April 19. The Election Commission of India (ECI) on April 16 served a notice on Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) president and former Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao regarding his recent remarks targeting Congress leaders during a press conference in Siricilla. Rao has been asked to explain his reported derogatory comments by 11 a.m. on April 18. The ECI said it would proceed with appropriate action if no response is received within the specified timeframe. This notice follows a report submitted by the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Telangana, based on a complaint filed by Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) senior vice-president G. Niranjan, in which he had alleged that during the press conference in Sircilla, Rao made vulgar, derogatory, and objectionable remarks against the Congress party. Rao reportedly referred to Congress members as “sons of dogs,” and “lathkhors”. In Brief The TMC on April 17 released its Lok Sabha poll manifesto promising several social welfare measures and repeal of the CAA if the opposition INDIA bloc comes to power at the Centre. Releasing the manifesto at the party headquarters here, TMC’s Rajya Sabha party leader Derek O’ Brien said, “these are the promises which we will fulfill as part of INDIA bloc, when it forms the next government.” “We promise to control petrol and diesel prices through the formulation of a price stabilisation fund. We also promise to repeal the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and stop the National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise in the country,” senior TMC leader Amit Mitra said. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. [logo] The Evening Wrap 17 April 2024 [The Hindu logo] Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day’s biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. [[Arrow]Open in browser]( [[Mail icon]More newsletters]( Election Commission halts proposed visit of West Bengal Governor to Cooch Behar Acting tough, the [Election Commission of India (EC) on Wednesday advised a halt to the proposed tour of West Bengal Governor C.V. Ananda Bose to Cooch Behar]( on April 18-19 saying it would violate the Model Code of Conduct. EC sources said that the commission felt there was no “imminently known” requirement to visit the place and it would disturb polling officials on the eve of election and has hence advised that the proposed tour may not be undertaken. Cooch Behar will vote in the first phase of Lok Sabha polls on April 19. The “silence period” or end of campaign period begins from Wednesday evening. “Under Model Code of Conduct and being poll day, no local programme can be organised for the Governor as proposed in his issued programme”, the Commission noted in its communication to the Office of the Governor. It further said that the entire district administration and police force will be fully occupied in election management during April 18-19 and it would be a diversion for them if they need to provide any protocol and local security cover to Governor’s visit. As per Section 126 of Representation of Peoples Act 1951, the “silence period” brings in a multitude of restrictions and a higher level of enforcement by election authorities, the sources said. The EC has issued standing instructions to all District Election Officers and District Police Chiefs to ensure that all high-profile persons, campaigners, political workers who are not voters of that election area shall exit immediately on beginning of the “silence period” to ensure free and fair poll process. In March, the ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal had lodged a complaint with the poll body against the Governor for allegedly interfering with the Lok Sabha election process. In a letter addressed to the Chief Election Commissioner, the Trinamool Congress claimed that the Governor was running an office parallel to the EC and that Raj Bhavan has lodged a new portal ‘Log Sabha’ to listen to the grievances of voters and directly connect with them during the election. Lok Sabha polls Phase 1: 8 Union Ministers, 2 former CMs, one ex-governor in fray [Eight Union Ministers, two former chief ministers and one ex-governor are among those who are set to test their electoral fate in the first phase of elections on April 19]( when 102 seats across 21 States and Union Territories will go to polls. Union Road and Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari is seeking a hat-trick of wins from the Nagpur seat. In 2014, he had defeated seven-time MP Vilas Muttemwar by a margin of 2.84 lakh votes and retained the seat in 2019 by defeating current Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole by 2.16 lakh votes. Union Minister Kiren Rijiju is contesting from Arunachal West seat. The 52-year-old has represented the constituency thrice since 2004. Rijiju’s main rival is former chief minister and present president of Arunachal Pradesh Congress Nabam Tuki. Sarbanada Sonowal, Union Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, is seeking a return to Lok Sabha from Dibrugarh in Assam. Sonowal, a Rajya Sabha member, was fielded from Dibrugarh after Union Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Rameswar Teli, was not given a ticket. Muzaffarnagar, known for its intricate caste dynamics, is witnessing a three-cornered electoral battle, with Union Minister Sanjeev Baliyan locked in competition against Samajwadi Party’s Harindra Malik and BSP candidate Dara Singh Prajapati. Jitendra Singh, a two-time parliamentarian and a junior Minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Cabinet, is aiming for a hat-trick in Udhampur. Bhupendra Yadav, Union Minister and Rajya Sabha member who replaced sitting MP Balak Nath, is in a contest with sitting Congress MLA Lalit Yadav, who belongs to Matsya region of Alwar district in Rajasthan and enjoys the support of the Yadav community. Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal is pitted against former Congress minister Govind Ram Meghwl from Bikaner parliamentary seat in Rajasthan. The Nilgiris Lok Sabha constituency in Tamil Nadu is witnessing one of the keenly watched battles between A Raja, the incumbent DMK MP, and former telecom minister, and L Murugan of the BJP, who is the Union Minister of State for Fisheries. This will be the first time that Murugan, who was elected to Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh, is contesting from here. Sivaganga MP Karti Chidmabaram is aiming for a re-election from a seat his father won seven times, competing against BJP’s T. Devanathan Yadav and AIADMK’s Xavier Dass. Tamil Nadu BJP president K. Annamalai is set to take the ballot test in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore where he is pitted against DMK leader Ganapathy P. Rajkumar and AIADMK’s Singai Ramachandran. Tamilisai Soundararajan, who recently resigned as governor of Telangana and Lt Governor of Puducherry to return to active politics, is contesting from Chennai South Lok Sabha constituency. Daughter of veteran Congress leader Kumari Anantha, Soundararajan had contested 2019 Lok Sabha elections against DMK’s Kanimozhi, but lost by a huge margin in Thoothukudi. This time, Kanimozhi is seeking a re-election from the seat. NDA ally Tamil Maanila Congress (Moopanar) has fielded SDR Vijayaseelan and AIADMK has fielded R. Sivasami Velumani from the constituency. Nakul Nath, son of Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath, is seeking a re-election Chhindwara. The seat has remained firmly with Kamal Nath, who has won the seat nine times since 1980. In the 2019 polls, the BJP bagged 28 seats out of the State’s 29, but missed out on picking Chhindwara, where Nakul beat the BJP’s candidate by 37,536 votes to emerge as the lone Congress MP in the State. Of the two Lok Sabha constituencies in Tripura, the seat of West Tripura that votes in the first phase on April 19 will see a high-voltage clash between former chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb and State Congress president Ashish Kumar Saha. Having won Lok Sabha elections twice since 2014 from Kaliabor constituency in Assam, Gaurav Gogoi, Congress’s deputy leader in Lok Sabha and son of former chief minister Tarun Gogoi, finds himself as the new candidate in neighbouring Jorhat, where BJP’s Topon Kumar Gogoi won in 2019. Gaurav Gogoi’s shift to Jorhat came after the impact of delimitation exercise in his 2019 constituency, Kaliabor. Manipur Law and Education Minister Basanta Kumar Singh is BJP’s nominee for the Inner Manipur constituency and is pitted against JNU professor and Congress candidate Bimal Akoijam. Singh, who belongs to the Meiti community, is the son of Thounaojam Chaoba Singh who served as the Union Minister of State for sports, youth affairs, culture and food processing in the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The BJP stronghold of Churu, in northern Rajasthan, is readying for an interesting match between BJP candidate Devendra Jhajharia, a two-time Paralympic gold medallist javelin thrower, and Rahul Kaswan from the Congress. Kaswan is a turncoat who has made the fight for Churu interesting. The two-time left the BJP only in March after he was denied a ticket by the party. Rahul and Akhilesh hold the PM to account for corruption Two days before the first round of Lok Sabha polls, [Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav held Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party to account for the alleged corrupt practices in the electoral bond scheme](. Addressing the first joint press conference with the SP head after the INDIA alliance was forged, Gandhi described PM Modi as the “champion of corruption”. At the same time, Yadav said the “moral bubble” of the BJP had gone bust after the revelations in the electoral bond scheme . “The wind that starts from Ghaziabad today will sweep the BJP away from the State. Ghaziabad se lekar Ghazipur tak safaya hoga. NDA will be defeated by PDA ,” he declared, referring to the party’s agenda to bring together backwards, Dalits and minorities. Yadav said the way the BJP was bringing the corrupt under its umbrella, it shows the party has become the “godown of corruption.” Gandhi described Modi’s interview to a news agency where the PM defended the electoral bond scheme a “flop show”. “If the electoral bonds were brought for transparency and cleanse the politics, then why did the Supreme Court cancel it.” The SP and Congress have come together after the debacle of the 2017 Assembly polls in the State. andhi sidestepped the question of contesting from Amethi saying the central election committee of the party will take a call on it. He said he open-heartedly joined hands with the SP and that’s the reason the party is contesting on 17 seats. “We have released our separate manifestos but if an alliance partner comes up with a suggestion we are open to incorporating it,” he said. Diving into the perceived internal tussle of the BJP in UP, Yadav said it is no longer the double engine government. “The hoardings of the BJP across UP display the photo of just one person. Even the candidates are absent from the hoardings.” Describing the BJP as the party of “loot and jhoot [falsehood] that hasn’t fulfilled the promises made to the farmers and youth, Yadav also brought up the issue of ten examination papers getting leaked in the State. He said it has affected the lives of 60 lakh youth and their families across the State. “It means the vote of the BJP will drop by 2.5 lakhs in each constituency,” he claimed. Yadav addressed the charge of the dynastic party by asking the BJP to release the list of its candidates who have family background in politics and not to seek votes from those who have families. Yadav and Gandhi will hold a joint rally in Amroha on April 20. X takes down four posts by leaders of BJP, AAP, YSR Congress, TDP on Election Commission of India order [Social media platform X (formerly Twitter), released a letter by the Election Commission of India (EC) ordering a takedown of four posts]( on the platform by political leaders in the YSR Congress Party, the Telugu Desam Party, the Aam Aadmi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party. The company said that it disagrees with the takedown order issued by the EC, and that “freedom of expression should extend to these posts and political speech in general”. The company has taken the tweets down in India, but they are visible from non-Indian Internet connections. This is the first time that X is proactively disclosing a takedown notice from India to the public since April 2023, when it stopped publishing summaries of such orders with links to affected posts on the Lumen Database website. The EC has issued such orders in the past to X, which have been disclosed and reported in the media; however, subsequent disclosures for government takedowns around the world come selectively through the handle of the social media platform’s Global Affairs team. In the current batch of orders, the poll body has cited a prohibition on campaigners targeting their rivals’ personal lives while politicking. The YSR Congress’s post was not immediately available on Tuesday evening, indicating that the party has chosen to delete the post altogether. Telugu Desam Party leader N. Chandrababu Naidu’s post featured what appears to be a document from the Central Bureau of Investigation, where he says that the agency “seized a staggering 25,000 kilos of drugs at Vizag Port, today,” and that “non-cooperation of AP Police and port employees suggests complicity and point towards the potential involvement of the ruling party.” Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party is in the opposition in Andhra Pradesh. The Aam Aadmi Party’s post features a headline from the online news portal The Quint, which reads, “ED Arrested Aurobindo Pharma’s Director. 5 Days Later, It Bought Electoral Bonds.” The party added a caption to the post saying “Bond Chor [thief],” over an image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi edited to redden his eyes and superimpose a pose by the actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui from the poster for the film Raman Raghav 2.0, where the actor plays a serial killer. The final tweet takedown was from the account of Bihar Deputy Chief Minister and BJP member Samrat Choudhary, who in a video and tweet said that Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad was a “seasoned player” in selling tickets to contest elections. Choudhary added a remark that Prasad “did not even spare his daughter” in this, and “took a kidney from her and then gave a ticket.” Choudhary appeared to be referencing the fact that Prasad’s daughter Rohini Acharya had donated her kidney to him for a transplant last February. ‘5,000 lives in one shell’: Gaza’s IVF embryos destroyed by Israeli strike [When an Israeli shell struck Gaza’s largest fertility clinic in December, the explosion blasted the lids off five liquid nitrogen tanks stored in a corner of the embryology unit.]( As the ultra-cold liquid evaporated, the temperature inside the tanks rose, destroying more than 4,000 embryos plus 1,000 more specimens of sperm and unfertilised eggs stored at Gaza City’s Al Basma IVF centre. The impact of that single explosion was far-reaching -- an example of the unseen toll Israel’s six-and-a-half-month-old assault has had on the 2.3 million people of Gaza. The embryos in those tanks were the last hope for hundreds of Palestinian couples facing infertility. “We know deeply what these 5,000 lives, or potential lives, meant for the parents, either for the future or for the past,” said Bahaeldeen Ghalayini, 73, the Cambridge-trained obstetrician and gynaecologist who established the clinic in 1997. At least half of the couples — those who can no longer produce sperm or eggs to make viable embryos — will not have another chance to get pregnant, he said. “My heart is divided into a million pieces,” he said. Three years of fertility treatment was a psychological roller coaster for Seba Jaafarawi. The retrieval of eggs from her ovaries was painful, the hormone injections had strong side-effects and the sadness when two attempted pregnancies failed seemed unbearable. Jaafarawi, 32, and her husband could not get pregnant naturally and turned to in vitro fertilization (IVF), which is widely available in Gaza. Large families are common in the enclave, where nearly half the population is under 18 and the fertility rate is high at 3.38 births per woman, according to the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics. Britain’s fertility rate is 1.63 births per woman. Despite Gaza’s poverty, couples facing infertility pursue IVF, some selling TVs and jewellery to pay the fees, Al Ghalayini said. At least nine clinics in Gaza performed IVF, where eggs are collected from a woman’s ovaries and fertilized by sperm in a lab. The fertilized eggs, called embryos, are often frozen until the optimal time for transfer to a woman’s uterus. Most frozen embryos in Gaza were stored at the Al Basma centre. In September, Jaafarawi became pregnant, her first successful IVF attempt. “I did not even have time to celebrate the news,” she said. Two days before her first scheduled ultrasound scan, Hamas launched the October 7 attack on Israel. Israel vowed to destroy Hamas and launched an all-out assault that has since killed more than 33,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities. Jaafarawi worried: “How would I complete my pregnancy? What would happen to me and what would happen to the ones inside my womb?” Her ultrasound never happened and Ghalayini closed his clinic, where an additional five of Jaafarawi’s embryos were stored. As the Israeli attacks intensified, Mohammed Ajjour, Al Basma’s chief embryologist, started to worry about liquid nitrogen levels in the five specimen tanks. Top ups were needed every month or so to keep the temperature below -180C in each tank, which operate independent of electricity. After the war began, Ajjour managed to procure one delivery of liquid nitrogen, but Israel cut electricity and fuel to Gaza, and most suppliers closed. At the end of October, Israeli tanks rolled into Gaza and soldiers closed in on the streets around the IVF centre. It became too dangerous for Ajjour to check the tanks. Jaafarawi knew she should rest to keep her fragile pregnancy safe, but hazards were everywhere: she climbed six flights of stairs to her apartment because the elevator stopped working; a bomb levelled the building next door and blasted out windows in her flat; food and water became scarce. Instead of resting, she worried. “I got very scared and there were signs that I would lose (the pregnancy),” she said. Jaafarawi bled a little bit after she and her husband left home and moved south to Khan Younis. The bleeding subsided, but her fear did not. They crossed into Egypt on November 12 and in Cairo, her first ultrasound showed she was pregnant with twins and they were alive. But after a few days, she experienced painful cramps, bleeding and a sudden shift in her belly. She made it to hospital, but the miscarriage had already begun. “The sounds of me screaming and crying at the hospital are still (echoing) in my ears,” she said. Jaafarawi wanted to return to the war zone, retrieve her frozen embryos and attempt IVF again. But it was soon too late. Ghalayini said a single Israeli shell struck the corner of the centre, blowing up the ground floor embryology lab. He does not know if the attack specifically targeted the lab or not. “All these lives were killed or taken away: 5,000 lives in one shell,” he said. Poll roundup - The [Rajputs in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, held a ‘mahapanchayat’ and decided to boycott the BJP candidates in Muzaffarnagar, Kairana and Saharanpur Lok Sabha constituencies]( for allegedly neglecting the community while distributing party tickets, a leader said on April 17. The ‘mahapanchayat’ was called on April 16 in the Kheda area by Thakur Pooran Singh, the national president of Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan and a prominent Rajput leader in the area. It was attended by the Chaubisa Rajput Community spread across Muzaffarnagar constituency and other Rajput communities from nearby districts. “The boycott is being done as a sign of protest for insulting the Rajput Community by neglecting it in ticket distribution which has been done by the Bharatiya Janata Party,” Singh said. “People of the Rajput community in these areas will not vote for the BJP candidate but will opt for another strong contender from other parties in his place,” he said. The Lok Sabha elections in eight constituencies of Uttar Pradesh will be held on April 19. - The [Election Commission of India (ECI) on April 16 served a notice on Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) president and former Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao]( regarding his recent remarks targeting Congress leaders during a press conference in Siricilla. Rao has been asked to explain his reported derogatory comments by 11 a.m. on April 18. The ECI said it would proceed with appropriate action if no response is received within the specified timeframe. This notice follows a report submitted by the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Telangana, based on a complaint filed by Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) senior vice-president G. Niranjan, in which he had alleged that during the press conference in Sircilla, Rao made vulgar, derogatory, and objectionable remarks against the Congress party. Rao reportedly referred to Congress members as “sons of dogs,” and “lathkhors”. In Brief The [TMC on April 17 released its Lok Sabha poll manifesto promising several social welfare measures and repeal of the CAA]( if the opposition INDIA bloc comes to power at the Centre. Releasing the manifesto at the party headquarters here, TMC’s Rajya Sabha party leader Derek O’ Brien said, “these are the promises which we will fulfill as part of INDIA bloc, when it forms the next government.” “We promise to control petrol and diesel prices through the formulation of a price stabilisation fund. We also promise to repeal the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and stop the National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise in the country,” senior TMC leader Amit Mitra said. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. 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