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Condemning the attack on former JNU student leader Umar Khalid outside the Constitution Club, New Delhi, where he had gone to address a meeting on August 13, the All India Forum for Right to Education (AIFRTE) said, he was physically manhandled by an armed assailant, who grappled with him and was fortunately overpowered by two of Umar’s friends before he escaped, firing and throwing away his gun.
AIFRTE said, "The present regime at the Centre, which is constantly proclaiming itself to be the sole guardian of national security, has to be held accountable for this blatant incompetence endangering the life of a student leader who had requested state security as he had received numerous threats to his life." It wondered why was no security provided to him.
AIFRTE said, the reason for the attack on students and public intellectuals, in particular -- who are "critical of the anti-constitutional and anti-democratic Hindutva ideology and the organizations that violently prom…

Dalit rights activists from 500 villages of Gujarat, led by Navsarjan Trust founder Martin Macwan, organized a rally from Gandhi Ashram to the Ahmedabad district collector’s office to highlight the failure of the state government to provide scholarship to nearly 70,000 Dalit and Adivasi students over the last two years. Carried out under the banner “Vote nahi Lot” (not vote, but wheat flour), the rally handed over hundreds of wheat flour bags to the Ahmedabad district collector to be handed over to chief minister Vijay Rupani.
“We wanted to send the message that if they don’t have money to disburse Rs 2.73 crore as scholarship to 70,000 children, they could l sell these wheat flour bags to give scholarships”, Macwan said. Twelve activists handed over the wheat flour packs along with a memorandum to the district collector. The memorandum said, “It is most unfortunate that on the eve of the 72nd year of India’s Independence Day celebrations, we would have to hand over collect wheat flo…

The Minority Coordination Committee (MCC), Gujarat, has warned that it would begin a wide-scale protest over the sudden disappearance of Majid Theba, 27, from his house in Bhuj on July 19 following cops entering his house, beating him up and his pregnant wife. Majid’s wife, Aashiyana Theba, who filed a FIR 26 years ago on disappearance of her husband, hasn’t heard from the police about the whereabouts of her husband.
“If Majid is not found, we will take out a rally from Ahmedabad to Bhuj”, said the Gujarat-based minority rights body, which has sought immediate intervention of the Gujarat DGP, the home minister and the chief secretary. The reason for beating up Majid and his sudden disappearance are not known.
MCC said, her family was having dinner when three policemen, including a head constable, came in asking for Majid. They started beating him. When Aashiyana tried to stop them, they thrashed her. She had to be admitted to GK General Hospital in Bhuj because of her pregnancy. On h…

Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers' Association (JNUTA)  statement on attack on Umar Khalid, "a JNU student": JNU student Umar Khalid has been shot at just outside Constitution Club on the afternoon of August 13, 2018. He luckily escaped unhurt.
As teachers of JNU it is unbearable to see our students being rendered so vulnerable. Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers’ Association would like to express deep anguish at the way JNU as a community have been vilified through an organized political campaign. Violence against JNU students especially from marginalised backgrounds is being normalised and routinized every day in this manner on social media and electroic media. The university lawyers stand in courts of law and vilify its own students.
For over a year, Delhi Police has been unable to find a single clue to lead to Najeeb Ahmad who was made to disappear from the campus.
We condemn the attack on our student in unequivocal terms. The Delhi Poilce must expedite the investi…

Dalit rights activist Kirit Rathod has claimed that, over the last two years, the Gujarat government has failed to disburse Rs 2.73 crore to 60,934 Dalit and Adivasi school going children as scholarship. Seeking to highlight the failure. Gujarat Dalit activists have decided to hold a rally on August 14 near the district collector's office in Ahmedabad.
Rathod said, there was failure to disburse the scholarship to Dalit and Adivasi students despite the fact that there was budgetary allocation for it. "While government spent Rs 3000 crore on publicity, why it did it fail to provide money for scholarship to school-going children?", he asked, adding, "This is happening despite a clearcut policy which requires scholarship to paid to Dalit and Adivasi students studying free of cost in private schools."
"On August 14, representatives from about 500 villages from across Gujarat will gather in Ahmedabad with wheat flour bags to be sent to the Gujarat government. t…

Dharmil Sheth, co-founder of PharmEasy, a leading Mumbai-based pharma aggregator, which connects patients with local pharmacy stores and diagonistic centres, giving a talk at the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad on How to Start a Startup, said the main reason why he initiated startup was, he “wanted to make money”.
Sheth, a Forbes Under 30 persona, who had earlier fouded 91 Streets, a shopping search platform and BoxPlay Sports, claimed to be a world-class sports infrastructure set-up for teams and individuals to play soccer and cricket, ironically, is President of Ekagrata Foundation, an NGO, which works towards the welfare of underprivileged children.
Sheth said, the “cribbing” about the low pay of IT industries led him to begin thinking in terms of a startup, and after meeting a school friend, Dhaval Shah, who introduced him to healthcare industry people, he found that having stock of all medicines at every store was still a problem.
Starting by delivering medicine to cu…