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The Evening Wrap: Supreme Court seeks files related to appointment of EC Arun Goel

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Dear reader, We have now made it easier for you to manage your The Hindu newsletter subscriptions in one place! Visit The Hindu newsletters page here Click MANAGE tab and then click LOGIN / SIGN UP If you don’t have an account with The Hindu, please click SIGN UP OR If you already have an account with The Hindu with this email ID, please login using the email ID The Supreme Court asked the Centre on November 23 to produce before it the file related to the appointment of Election Commissioner Arun Goel, who was appointed on November 19. A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Justice K.M. Joseph said it wants to know whether there was any “hanky panky” in Goel’s appointment as election commissioner as he was only recently given voluntary retirement from service. The bench rejected the objections of Attorney General (AG) R. Venkataramani on the court willing to see the file related to Goel’s appointment while the hearing is on. AG Venkataramani told the bench, also comprising justices Ajay Rastogi, Aniruddha Bose, Hrishikesh Roy and C.T. Ravikumar, that it is dealing with the larger issue of appointment of ECs and the chief election commissioner (CEC) and it cannot look at an individual case flagged by advocate Prashant Bhushan. “I take serious objection to this and have my reservation to the court seeing the file amidst the hearing of a Constitution bench,” he said. The bench said it started hearing a batch of pleas seeking a collegium-like system for the appointment of ECs and the CEC last Thursday and Goel was appointed as an EC subsequently on November 19. Therefore, it wants to see what prompted the step. “We want to see what is the mechanism. We will not treat it as an adversarial and keep it for our record, but we want to know as you claim that everything is hunky dory. Since we were hearing the matter and appointment was made amidst, this may be interlinked. You have time till tomorrow. Produce the documents,” it told the AG. At the outset, Bhushan, who appeared on behalf of petitioner Anoop Baranwal and made his rejoinder submission, said after the court started hearing the mater, the government hurriedly appointed an election commissioner. “This election commissioner was, till Thursday, working as a secretary-level officer in the government. Suddenly, he was given VRS on Friday and appointed as an election commissioner,” Bhushan said. Justice Joseph said as far as he recalls, it takes three months for a person to get voluntary retirement. On November 19, Goel, a 1985-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Punjab cadre, was appointed as an election commissioner. He was to retire on December 31 on attaining the age of 60 years. Once he assumes his new role, Goel would be in line to be the next CEC after incumbent Rajiv Kumar demits office in February 2025. He will join Kumar and Election Commissioner Anup Chandra Pandey on the poll panel. There was a vacancy in the Election Commission (EC) following the retirement of previous CEC Sushil Chandra in May. Goel was the secretary in the Ministry of Heavy Industries till recently and his voluntary retirement came into effect on November 18. He has also served in the Union culture ministry. Mehrauli murder: Aftab will kill me, cut me into pieces, Shraddha told Maharashtra police in 2020 Call centre employee Shraddha Walkar had two years ago complained to police in Maharashtra that her live-in partner Aftab Poonawala, who is accused of brutally murdering her, tried to kill her and she feared he would cut her into pieces and throw her away, an official said in Mumbai on November 23. In the complaint letter dated November 23, 2020, Walkar also alleged that Poonawala used to beat her up and his parents were aware of it. Poonawala (28) allegedly strangled his live-in partner Walkar and sawed her body into 35 pieces which he kept in a 300-litre fridge for almost three weeks at his residence in South Delhi’s Mehrauli area before dumping them across the city over several days past midnight. The murder occurred in May this year. Walkar was a native of Vasai town in Maharashtra’s Palghar district. In her complaint to Tulinj police in Palghar in November 2020, Walkar alleged that, “Poonawala has been abusing me and beating me up. Today he tried to kill me by suffocating me and he scares and blackmails me that he will kill me [and] cut me up in pieces and throw me anyway. It’s been six months he has been hitting me. But I did not have the guts to go to police because he would threaten to kill me,” Walkar said in the complaint. “His parents are aware that he beats me and that he tried to kill me,” she told the police. Walkar also said in the letter that Poonawala’s parents knew about them living together and they visited them on weekends. I lived with him till date as we were supposed to get married anytime soon and had the blessing of his family. Henceforth, I am not willing to live with him so any kind of physical damage should be considered coming from him as he has been blackmailing me to kill me or hurt me whenever he sees me anywhere,” she stated in the letter. On November 22, Poonawala underwent a polygraph test after a court gave permission to the Delhi Police, while investigators found more evidence, including blood stains in the flat where both lived. Poonawala told a Delhi court on November 22 that he acted in the “heat of the moment” and that it was not “deliberate”, according to Abinash Kumar, the lawyer representing the accused. Kumar later said after speaking to Poonawala that he “never confessed in the court that he killed Walkar”. Sources said a questionnaire was prepared for the polygraph test so that the sequence of events in the gruesome killing can be ascertained. Boundary violence: Police could have fired fewer shots, says Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Wednesday said the Assam police and forest personnel could have fired fewer shots during a confrontation with villagers from Meghalaya on November 22. Five villagers and a forest guard from Assam – all males – were killed in the firing that Sarma and his Meghalaya counterpart Conrad K. Sangma termed unprovoked. The incident took place in a disputed sector that Assam calls Mukhrow in West Karbi Anglong district while Meghalaya refers to as Mukroh in West Jaiñtia Hills district. “I believe the Assam police did not have to fire that many shots. I felt it was a little unprovoked,” Sarma told journalists in Delhi on Wednesday. He said he has spoken with Sangma three to four times since Tuesday and insisted neither State was viewing the incident as a battle of prestige. It was not a border dispute but the outcome of a clash between the Meghalaya locals and the forest guards of Assam, he added. “The villagers (from Meghalaya) were angry when our forest guards intercepted a timber-laden vehicle and took three persons into custody. When the Assam police went to bring the vehicle, the villagers confronted the personnel,” Sarma said. He said the Assam government favoured a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation or the National Investigation Agency. The Meghalaya government has made a similar plea to the Centre. On Wednesday, Sangma and some of his Cabinet colleagues visited the houses of the five deceased villages and offered ex-gratia of ₹5 lakh to each family. “The Assam government has agreed to cooperate in the investigation we want a central agency to undertake,” he said, attributing “all problems on the boundary” to the 50-year-old border dispute between the two States. “We are all angry after what happened yesterday (November 22) but violence cannot be the solution. We will ensure that the border issue, which is the crux of all tensions building up, is resolved at the earliest. We will take all steps to ensure that such an incident does not recur,” he said. Sangma also said a high-level team will leave for New Delhi on Thursday to apprise Home Minister Amit Shah and other central leaders of the incident and its background. The day also saw the Trinamool Congress, eyeing power in the poll-bound Meghalaya, file a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission against the Assam Forest guards for using “unprovoked lethal force” against unarmed Scheduled Tribe persons who were “exercising their constitutional right to forest produce within the borders of Meghalaya”. Meanwhile, there were some stray incidents of attacks on Assam-registered vehicles in Meghalaya. An SUV was torched in State capital Shillong on Tuesday night followed by stone-pelting at other vehicles. Hundreds of tourists and tourist vehicles from Assam are stranded in Shillong and other places of Meghalaya. Apprehending a backlash, the drivers refrained from driving back to Assam, members of a tourist vehicle operators’ body in Guwahati said. U.K. top court rules against Scottish independence vote plan The U.K. Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that Scotland does not have the power to hold a new referendum on independence without the consent of the British government. The judgment is a setback for the Scottish government’s campaign to break away from the United Kingdom. The top court ruled that the Scottish Parliament “does not have the power to legislate for a referendum on Scottish independence.” Supreme Court President Robert Reed said the five justices were unanimous in the verdict, delivered six weeks after lawyers for the pro-independence Scottish administration and the Conservative U.K. government argued their cases at hearings in London. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she was disappointed but would “respect” the judgment. But, she said on Twitter: “A law that doesn’t allow Scotland to choose our own future without Westminster consent exposes as myth any notion of the U.K. as a voluntary partnership and makes the case for (independence).” Independence supporters plan to rally outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh and at other sites later Wednesday. The semi-autonomous Scottish government wants to hold a referendum next October with the question “Should Scotland be an independent country?” The U.K. government in London refuses to approve a vote, saying the question was settled in a 2014 referendum that saw Scottish voters reject independence by a margin of 55% to 45%. The pro-independence government in Edinburgh wants to revisit the decision, though, arguing that Britain’s departure from the European Union — which a majority of Scottish voters opposed — has radically changed the political and economic landscape. Sturgeon argues that she has a democratic mandate from the Scottish people to hold a new secession vote because there is an independence-supporting majority in the Scottish Parliament. During Supreme Court hearings last month, Dorothy Bain, the Scottish government’s top law officer, said the majority of Scottish lawmakers had been elected on commitments to hold a fresh independence referendum. She also said a referendum would be advisory, rather than legally binding — though a “yes” vote would create strong momentum for Scotland to break away. U.K. government lawyer James Eadie argued that power to hold a referendum rests with the U.K. Parliament in London, because “it’s of critical importance to the United Kingdom as a whole,” not just Scotland. The Supreme Court justices agreed. They said it is clear that “a Bill which makes provision for a referendum on independence – on ending the sovereignty of the Parliament of the United Kingdom over Scotland -- has more than a loose or consequential connection with the sovereignty of that Parliament.” Reed stressed that the court was “not asked, and cannot be asked, to express a view on the political question of whether Scotland should become an independent country.” Polls suggest Scots are about evenly split on independence — and also that a majority of voters do not want a new referendum anytime soon. Scotland and England have been politically united since 1707. Scotland has had its own parliament and government since 1999 and makes its own policies on public health, education and other matters. The U.K.-wide government in London controls matters such as defense and fiscal policy. Sturgeon has said that if her government loses the court case, she will make the next U.K. national election a de-facto plebiscite on ending Scotland’s three-century-old union with England. She has not given details of how that would work. Power outages reported in Ukrainian cities, Moldova Authorities reported power outages in multiple cities of Ukraine, including parts of Kyiv, and in neighbouring Moldova after renewed strikes on Wednesday struck Ukrainian infrastructure facilities. Multiple regions reported attacks in quick succession, suggesting a barrage of strikes. In several regions, authorities reported strikes on critical infrastructure. The Kyiv city administration said that three people were dead and three wounded in the capital after a Russian strike hit a two-storey building. Russia has been pounding the power grid and other facilities with missiles and exploding drones for weeks, seemingly aiming to turn the cold and dark of winter into a weapon. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that “one of the capital’s infrastructure facilities has been hit” and there were “several more explosions in different districts” of the city. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the explosions were caused by air defense systems at work or Russian projectiles hitting targets. He said water supplies were knocked out in all of Kyiv. There were power outages in parts of Kyiv, in the northern city of Kharkiv, the western city of Lviv and in the southern Odesa region. In Moldova, Infrastructure Minister Andrei Spinu said that “we have massive power outages across the country” following a similar outage on November 15. Kharkiv’s mayor said that power was out in the city, Ukraine’s second largest, and all public transport had stopped running. Lviv regional governor Maksym Kozytskyy reports “two missile strikes on a power substation” in the region, and several districts of the region have been left without power. The entire Kyiv region is now without electricity, according to governor Oleksiy Kuleba. State-owned grid operator Ukrenergo said Russia’s missile attack was continuing, but there were already emergency shutdowns in all regions. This is a necessary step to protect power grids from additional technological accidents and support the operation of the power system,” Ukrenergo said. The repair work will begin when air raid sirens cease. The latest onslaught came hours after Ukrainian authorities said an overnight rocket attack destroyed a hospital maternity ward in southern Ukraine, killing a 2-day-old baby. Following the overnight strike in Vilniansk, close to the city of Zaporizhzhia, the baby’s mother and a doctor were pulled alive from the rubble. The region’s governor said the rockets were Russian. The strike adds to the gruesome toll suffered by hospitals and other medical facilities — and their patients and staff — in the Russian invasion that will enter its tenth month this week. They have been in the firing line from the outset, including a March 9 airstrike that destroyed a maternity hospital in the now-occupied port city of Mariupol. First lady Olena Zelenska wrote on Twitter that a 2-day-old boy died in the strike and expressed her condolences. “Horrible pain. We will never forget and never forgive,” she said. Photos posted by the governor showed thick smoke rising above mounds of rubble, being combed by emergency workers against the backdrop of a dark night sky. The State Emergency Service said the two-story building was destroyed. Medical workers’ efforts have been complicated by the succession of Russian attacks in recent weeks on Ukraine’s infrastructure. The situation is even worse in the southern city of Kherson, from which Russia retreated nearly two weeks ago after months of occupation — cutting power and water lines. Many doctors in the city are working in the dark, unable to use elevators to transport patients to surgery and operating with headlamps, cell phones and flashlights. In some hospitals, key equipment no longer works. “Breathing machines don’t work, X-ray machines don’t work... There is only one portable ultrasound machine and we carry it constantly,” said Volodymyr Malishchuk, the head of surgery at a children’s hospital in the city. On Tuesday, after strikes on Kherson seriously wounded 13-year-old Artur Voblikov, a team of health staff carefully maneuvered the sedated boy up six flights of a narrow staircase to an operating room to amputate his left arm. In Brief: C.V. Ananda Bose was on November 23 sworn in as the Governor of West Bengal. The Governor was administered the oath by Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court Prakash Shrivastava at Raj Bhawan, Kolkata. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was among the dignitaries present at the swearing-in ceremony. Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari was not present at the swearing-in ceremony. Bose has taken over responsibilities from Manipur Governor La. Ganesan who assumed charge of the State on July 18 when Jagdeep Dhankhar was elected Vice-President of India. Bose is a 1977-batch former officer of the Indian Administrative Services who has served as the Secretary of Government of India and Chief Secretary to State Governments as well as University Vice-Chancellor. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. [logo] The Evening Wrap 23 NOVEMBER 2022 [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]( Supreme Court asks Centre to produce files related to appointment of Election Commissioner Arun Goel Dear reader, We have now made it easier for you to manage your The Hindu newsletter subscriptions in one place! Visit The Hindu newsletters page here Click MANAGE tab and then click LOGIN / SIGN UP If you don’t have an account with The Hindu, please click SIGN UP OR If you already have an account with The Hindu with this email ID, please login using the email ID The Supreme Court asked the Centre on November 23 to[produce before it the file related to the appointment of Election Commissioner Arun Goel]( who was appointed on November 19. A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Justice K.M. Joseph said it wants to know whether there was any “hanky panky” in Goel’s appointment as election commissioner as he was only recently given voluntary retirement from service. The bench rejected the objections of Attorney General (AG) R. Venkataramani on the court willing to see the file related to Goel’s appointment while the hearing is on. AG Venkataramani told the bench, also comprising justices Ajay Rastogi, Aniruddha Bose, Hrishikesh Roy and C.T. Ravikumar, that it is dealing with the larger issue of appointment of ECs and the chief election commissioner (CEC) and it cannot look at an individual case flagged by advocate Prashant Bhushan. “I take serious objection to this and have my reservation to the court seeing the file amidst the hearing of a Constitution bench,” he said. The bench said it started hearing a batch of pleas seeking a collegium-like system for the appointment of ECs and the CEC last Thursday and Goel was appointed as an EC subsequently on November 19. Therefore, it wants to see what prompted the step. “We want to see what is the mechanism. We will not treat it as an adversarial and keep it for our record, but we want to know as you claim that everything is hunky dory. Since we were hearing the matter and appointment was made amidst, this may be interlinked. You have time till tomorrow. Produce the documents,” it told the AG. At the outset, Bhushan, who appeared on behalf of petitioner Anoop Baranwal and made his rejoinder submission, said after the court started hearing the mater, the government hurriedly appointed an election commissioner. “This election commissioner was, till Thursday, working as a secretary-level officer in the government. Suddenly, he was given VRS on Friday and appointed as an election commissioner,” Bhushan said. Justice Joseph said as far as he recalls, it takes three months for a person to get voluntary retirement. On November 19, Goel, a 1985-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Punjab cadre, was appointed as an election commissioner. He was to retire on December 31 on attaining the age of 60 years. Once he assumes his new role, Goel would be in line to be the next CEC after incumbent Rajiv Kumar demits office in February 2025. He will join Kumar and Election Commissioner Anup Chandra Pandey on the poll panel. There was a vacancy in the Election Commission (EC) following the retirement of previous CEC Sushil Chandra in May. Goel was the secretary in the Ministry of Heavy Industries till recently and his voluntary retirement came into effect on November 18. He has also served in the Union culture ministry. Mehrauli murder: Aftab will kill me, cut me into pieces, Shraddha told Maharashtra police in 2020 Call centre employee Shraddha Walkar had two years ago [complained to police in Maharashtra]( that her live-in partner Aftab Poonawala, who is accused of brutally murdering her, tried to kill her and she feared he would cut her into pieces and throw her away, an official said in Mumbai on November 23. In the complaint letter dated November 23, 2020, Walkar also alleged that Poonawala used to beat her up and his parents were aware of it. Poonawala (28) allegedly strangled his live-in partner Walkar and sawed her body into 35 pieces which he kept in a 300-litre fridge for almost three weeks at his residence in South Delhi’s Mehrauli area before dumping them across the city over several days past midnight. The murder occurred in May this year. Walkar was a native of Vasai town in Maharashtra’s Palghar district. In her complaint to Tulinj police in Palghar in November 2020, Walkar alleged that, “Poonawala has been abusing me and beating me up. Today he tried to kill me by suffocating me and he scares and blackmails me that he will kill me [and] cut me up in pieces and throw me anyway. It’s been six months he has been hitting me. But I did not have the guts to go to police because he would threaten to kill me,” Walkar said in the complaint. “His parents are aware that he beats me and that he tried to kill me,” she told the police. Walkar also said in the letter that Poonawala’s parents knew about them living together and they visited them on weekends. I lived with him till date as we were supposed to get married anytime soon and had the blessing of his family. Henceforth, I am not willing to live with him so any kind of physical damage should be considered coming from him as he has been blackmailing me to kill me or hurt me whenever he sees me anywhere,” she stated in the letter. On November 22, Poonawala underwent a polygraph test after a court gave permission to the Delhi Police, while investigators found more evidence, including blood stains in the flat where both lived. Poonawala told a Delhi court on November 22 that he acted in the “heat of the moment” and that it was not “deliberate”, according to Abinash Kumar, the lawyer representing the accused. Kumar later said after speaking to Poonawala that he “never confessed in the court that he killed Walkar”. Sources said a questionnaire was prepared for the polygraph test so that the sequence of events in the gruesome killing can be ascertained. Boundary violence: Police could have fired fewer shots, says Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Wednesday said the [Assam police and forest personnel could have fired fewer shots during a confrontation with villagers from Meghalaya]( on November 22. Five villagers and a forest guard from Assam – all males – were killed in the firing that Sarma and his Meghalaya counterpart Conrad K. Sangma termed unprovoked. The incident took place in a disputed sector that Assam calls Mukhrow in West Karbi Anglong district while Meghalaya refers to as Mukroh in West Jaiñtia Hills district. “I believe the Assam police did not have to fire that many shots. I felt it was a little unprovoked,” Sarma told journalists in Delhi on Wednesday. He said he has spoken with Sangma three to four times since Tuesday and insisted neither State was viewing the incident as a battle of prestige. It was not a border dispute but the outcome of a clash between the Meghalaya locals and the forest guards of Assam, he added. “The villagers (from Meghalaya) were angry when our forest guards intercepted a timber-laden vehicle and took three persons into custody. When the Assam police went to bring the vehicle, the villagers confronted the personnel,” Sarma said. He said the Assam government favoured a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation or the National Investigation Agency. The Meghalaya government has made a similar plea to the Centre. On Wednesday, Sangma and some of his Cabinet colleagues visited the houses of the five deceased villages and offered ex-gratia of ₹5 lakh to each family. “The Assam government has agreed to cooperate in the investigation we want a central agency to undertake,” he said, attributing “all problems on the boundary” to the 50-year-old border dispute between the two States. “We are all angry after what happened yesterday (November 22) but violence cannot be the solution. We will ensure that the border issue, which is the crux of all tensions building up, is resolved at the earliest. We will take all steps to ensure that such an incident does not recur,” he said. Sangma also said a high-level team will leave for New Delhi on Thursday to apprise Home Minister Amit Shah and other central leaders of the incident and its background. The day also saw the Trinamool Congress, eyeing power in the poll-bound Meghalaya, file a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission against the Assam Forest guards for using “unprovoked lethal force” against unarmed Scheduled Tribe persons who were “exercising their constitutional right to forest produce within the borders of Meghalaya”. Meanwhile, there were some stray incidents of attacks on Assam-registered vehicles in Meghalaya. An SUV was torched in State capital Shillong on Tuesday night followed by stone-pelting at other vehicles. Hundreds of tourists and tourist vehicles from Assam are stranded in Shillong and other places of Meghalaya. Apprehending a backlash, the drivers refrained from driving back to Assam, members of a tourist vehicle operators’ body in Guwahati said. U.K. top court rules against Scottish independence vote plan The U.K. Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that [Scotland does not have the power to hold a new referendum on independence without the consent of the British]( government. The judgment is a setback for the Scottish government’s campaign to break away from the United Kingdom. The top court ruled that the Scottish Parliament “does not have the power to legislate for a referendum on Scottish independence.” Supreme Court President Robert Reed said the five justices were unanimous in the verdict, delivered six weeks after lawyers for the pro-independence Scottish administration and the Conservative U.K. government argued their cases at hearings in London. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she was disappointed but would “respect” the judgment. But, she said on Twitter: “A law that doesn’t allow Scotland to choose our own future without Westminster consent exposes as myth any notion of the U.K. as a voluntary partnership and makes the case for (independence).” Independence supporters plan to rally outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh and at other sites later Wednesday. The semi-autonomous Scottish government wants to hold a referendum next October with the question “Should Scotland be an independent country?” The U.K. government in London refuses to approve a vote, saying the question was settled in a 2014 referendum that saw Scottish voters reject independence by a margin of 55% to 45%. The pro-independence government in Edinburgh wants to revisit the decision, though, arguing that Britain’s departure from the European Union — which a majority of Scottish voters opposed — has radically changed the political and economic landscape. Sturgeon argues that she has a democratic mandate from the Scottish people to hold a new secession vote because there is an independence-supporting majority in the Scottish Parliament. During Supreme Court hearings last month, Dorothy Bain, the Scottish government’s top law officer, said the majority of Scottish lawmakers had been elected on commitments to hold a fresh independence referendum. She also said a referendum would be advisory, rather than legally binding — though a “yes” vote would create strong momentum for Scotland to break away. U.K. government lawyer James Eadie argued that power to hold a referendum rests with the U.K. Parliament in London, because “it’s of critical importance to the United Kingdom as a whole,” not just Scotland. The Supreme Court justices agreed. They said it is clear that “a Bill which makes provision for a referendum on independence – on ending the sovereignty of the Parliament of the United Kingdom over Scotland -- has more than a loose or consequential connection with the sovereignty of that Parliament.” Reed stressed that the court was “not asked, and cannot be asked, to express a view on the political question of whether Scotland should become an independent country.” Polls suggest Scots are about evenly split on independence — and also that a majority of voters do not want a new referendum anytime soon. Scotland and England have been politically united since 1707. Scotland has had its own parliament and government since 1999 and makes its own policies on public health, education and other matters. The U.K.-wide government in London controls matters such as defense and fiscal policy. Sturgeon has said that if her government loses the court case, she will make the next U.K. national election a de-facto plebiscite on ending Scotland’s three-century-old union with England. She has not given details of how that would work. Power outages reported in Ukrainian cities, Moldova Authorities reported power [outages in multiple cities of Ukraine, including parts of Kyiv, and in neighbouring Moldova]( after renewed strikes on Wednesday struck Ukrainian infrastructure facilities. Multiple regions reported attacks in quick succession, suggesting a barrage of strikes. In several regions, authorities reported strikes on critical infrastructure. The Kyiv city administration said that three people were dead and three wounded in the capital after a Russian strike hit a two-storey building. Russia has been pounding the power grid and other facilities with missiles and exploding drones for weeks, seemingly aiming to turn the cold and dark of winter into a weapon. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that “one of the capital’s infrastructure facilities has been hit” and there were “several more explosions in different districts” of the city. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the explosions were caused by air defense systems at work or Russian projectiles hitting targets. He said water supplies were knocked out in all of Kyiv. There were power outages in parts of Kyiv, in the northern city of Kharkiv, the western city of Lviv and in the southern Odesa region. In Moldova, Infrastructure Minister Andrei Spinu said that “we have massive power outages across the country” following a similar outage on November 15. Kharkiv’s mayor said that power was out in the city, Ukraine’s second largest, and all public transport had stopped running. Lviv regional governor Maksym Kozytskyy reports “two missile strikes on a power substation” in the region, and several districts of the region have been left without power. The entire Kyiv region is now without electricity, according to governor Oleksiy Kuleba. State-owned grid operator Ukrenergo said Russia’s missile attack was continuing, but there were already emergency shutdowns in all regions. This is a necessary step to protect power grids from additional technological accidents and support the operation of the power system,” Ukrenergo said. The repair work will begin when air raid sirens cease. The latest onslaught came hours after Ukrainian authorities said an overnight rocket attack destroyed a hospital maternity ward in southern Ukraine, killing a 2-day-old baby. Following the overnight strike in Vilniansk, close to the city of Zaporizhzhia, the baby’s mother and a doctor were pulled alive from the rubble. The region’s governor said the rockets were Russian. The strike adds to the gruesome toll suffered by hospitals and other medical facilities — and their patients and staff — in the Russian invasion that will enter its tenth month this week. They have been in the firing line from the outset, including a March 9 airstrike that destroyed a maternity hospital in the now-occupied port city of Mariupol. First lady Olena Zelenska wrote on Twitter that a 2-day-old boy died in the strike and expressed her condolences. “Horrible pain. We will never forget and never forgive,” she said. Photos posted by the governor showed thick smoke rising above mounds of rubble, being combed by emergency workers against the backdrop of a dark night sky. The State Emergency Service said the two-story building was destroyed. Medical workers’ efforts have been complicated by the succession of Russian attacks in recent weeks on Ukraine’s infrastructure. The situation is even worse in the southern city of Kherson, from which Russia retreated nearly two weeks ago after months of occupation — cutting power and water lines. Many doctors in the city are working in the dark, unable to use elevators to transport patients to surgery and operating with headlamps, cell phones and flashlights. In some hospitals, key equipment no longer works. “Breathing machines don’t work, X-ray machines don’t work ... There is only one portable ultrasound machine and we carry it constantly,” said Volodymyr Malishchuk, the head of surgery at a children’s hospital in the city. On Tuesday, after strikes on Kherson seriously wounded 13-year-old Artur Voblikov, a team of health staff carefully maneuvered the sedated boy up six flights of a narrow staircase to an operating room to amputate his left arm. In Brief: C.V. Ananda Bose was on November 23 [sworn in as the Governor of West Bengal](. The Governor was administered the oath by Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court Prakash Shrivastava at Raj Bhawan, Kolkata. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was among the dignitaries present at the swearing-in ceremony. Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari was not present at the swearing-in ceremony. Bose has taken over responsibilities from Manipur Governor La. Ganesan who assumed charge of the State on July 18 when Jagdeep Dhankhar was elected Vice-President of India. Bose is a 1977-batch former officer of the Indian Administrative Services who has served as the Secretary of Government of India and Chief Secretary to State Governments as well as University Vice-Chancellor. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. 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