Morning Digest: Washington Post report says Amit Shah authorised covert operations in Canada; Manipur MLAs have ‘unanimously resolved’ to appeal for peace, says Centre, and more

The Hindu Morning Digest gives a select list of stories to start the day. Read the top news today on October 16, 2024

Canadian officials had shared information with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval suggesting that Home Minister Amit Shah and a senior R&AW official, had authorised attacks and intelligence-gathering on pro-Khalistani figures in Canada, according to the Washington Post.

Exit polls are creating a huge distortion by raising expectations that do not match the actual election results, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar said on Tuesday. He also termed as “nonsense” the practice of news channels showing early leads even before vote counting begins.

The Ministry of Home Affairs on Tuesday (October 15, 2024) said that a group of legislators from Manipur, “representing the Kuki-Zo-Hmar, Meitei, and Naga communities” met in New Delhi and “unanimously resolved” to appeal to the people of all communities in the State to “shun the path of violence so that no more precious lives of innocent citizens are lost”.

Singapore scrambled two F-15 fighter jets after an Air India Express flight from Madurai to Singapore received a bomb threat, while another Air India flight from Delhi to Chicago flight was diverted to Iqaluit airport in Canada on a day there were atleast six threats received for various Indian airlines.

Canada’s claims linking Indian diplomats to transnational organised crime gangs are “simply not true”, India said on Tuesday (October 15, 2024). Noting that the Canadian government had engaged with Indian High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma during its investigation into the 2023 murder of pro-Khalistan preacher Harjeet Singh Nijjar, sources in New Delhi termed Ottawa’s latest accusations against the High Commissioner as “absurd”.

While the Tamil Nadu government on Tuesday announced that the Samsung workers’ strike had been called off, the leaders of Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) said the decision on withdrawing the strike will be taken only on Wednesday, October 16, 2024.

Assembly elections in Maharashtra will be held in a single phase on November 20, the Election Commission of India announced on Tuesday (October 15, 2024). With this, the political parties have begun gearing up for an election which will be unprecedented in many ways. This is the first time that two factions of the two largest regional parties in the State, the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party, will fight against each other, with a six-polar tussle on the election battlefield. Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena has decided to go alone, and some regional players are also looking to put together a third front.