Morning Digest: Govt releases factsheet regarding memorial for former PM Manmohan Singh; China defends plan to build world’s largest dam over Brahmaputra, and more

The Hindu Morning Digest gives a select list of stories to start the day. Read the top news today on December 27, 2024

The Government has decided to allocate space for a memorial for former Prime Minister late Dr Manmohan Singh, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said. According to the MHA, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, immediately after the Cabinet meeting, communicated to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge that the Government will allocate space for the memorial.

India’s average household consumption spending on a per capita basis rose about 3.5% in real terms through August 2023 to July 2024 from a year ago, as per the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES), and the Centre asserted this signals a decline in consumption inequality as well as a narrowing gap between urban and rural spends.

Heavy police force has been deployed at the site for the new police post to be built in front of Shahi Jama Masjid in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal with excavation speeded up with the help of the local municipality as police want to complete the outpost construction and set it up soon.

Senior BJP leader Vijender Gupta has demanded Delhi Lt Governor V.K. Saxena advise Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel to convene a special session and ask the AAP government to table pending CAG reports. Mr. Gupta, the Leader of Opposition in the Assembly, met the L-G and submitted a memorandum, claiming the government was withholding 14 Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) reports on its performance audits of previous years, said a statement from his office.

“Take steady steps and take your time” was the advice then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gave Hamid Karzai, who became President of Afghanistan at the age of 45, when he first met him in 2004. Speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Karzai said India and Afghanistan had the “best relations” during Dr. Singh’s tenure, as India became Afghanistan’s first Strategic Partner in 2012. “I was in a hurry, as a young President, and one day he told me - you can’t build a nation in a hurry, you have to have patience for institutions to be built and human capital to develop,” Mr. Karzai said, recalling Dr. Singh’s famous speech on South Asian connectivity and a vision of being able to have “Breakfast in Amritsar, Lunch in Lahore and Dinner in Kabul”. 

China defended its plan to build the world’s largest dam on the Brahmaputra river in Tibet, saying the project will not “negatively affect” lower riparian states and that safety issues have been addressed through decades of studies. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning played down apprehensions about the massive project to dam the Brahmaputra river, which is called Yarlung Zangbo in Tibet.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) suspended Akasa Air’s head of operations and head of training for six months each for lapses in training. It said that the Director of Operations, Captain Floyd Gracious, and Director of Training, Neeraj Bhatia, were being suspended for six months. The DGCA has also asked the airline to nominate suitable candidates for the two positions.