Here are the top 5 news updates of June 22, 2021:
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi today urged the government to prepare for the third wave of coronavirus by improving medical infrastructure and vaccinate on a war footing to protect all Indians. He also released a "white paper" by the party on the Centre's Covid handling, saying, "It is pretty clear that the management of the first and second wave was disastrous." Gandhi also took a swipe at the prime minister for turning emotional while talking about Covid deaths in his address to the nation, and said the deaths have been needless and could have been avoided.
Titled, "Reforms by Conviction and Incentives", Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his blog on Tuesday wrote, 23 states availed of additional borrowings of Rs.1.06 lakh crore out of a potential Rs 2.14 lakh crore through implementing a set of reforms that allowed them to borrow more from the Centre. He said states were able to raise an extra Rs 1.06 lakh crores in 2020-21 through the reforms. "This significant increase in availability of resources was made possible by an approach of Centre-State bhagidari," PM Modi wrote.
The Supreme Court today stayed the Bombay High Court verdict which cancelled the caste certificate of Navneet Kaur Rana, an independent Lok Sabha MP representing reserved Amravati constituency in Maharashtra. A vacation bench of Justices Vineet Saran and Dinesh Maheshwari took note of Rana's appeal and issued notice to Maharashtra and others including the person who had complained against the caste certificate of the lawmaker. The high court had on June 9 cancelled the caste certificate of Rana saying it was obtained fraudulently using fabricated documents and had imposed Rs 2 lakh fine on her.
Bharat Biotech's Covaxin has shown 77.8 per cent efficacy after the Subject Expert Committee (SEC) under the drug regulator reviewed its Phase III trials data today, sources told news agency ANI. The Hyderabad-based COVID vaccine manufacturing company had submitted data from the Phase III clinical trials of Covaxin to the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) over the weekend. Bharat Biotech's 'pre-submission' meeting with the World Health Organization (WHO) will take on Wednesday for the approval for Covaxin. Covaxin is one of the three vaccines which are currently being used in India. The phase III data of its vaccine has been questioned various times and this is what makes the data that ascertains the efficacy of the vaccine crucial.
Equity benchmark Sensex ended on a flat note after scaling the 53,000 mark today as investor booked profits at higher levels. After touching a lifetime intra-day peak of 53,057.11, the 30-share BSE index settled 14.25 points or 0.03 per cent higher at 52,588.71. Similarly, the broader NSE Nifty rose 26.25 points or 0.17 per cent to 15,772.75. Maruti was the top gainer in the Sensex pack, rallying over 5 per cent, followed by L&T, UltraTech Cement, TCS and Titan. On the other hand, Asian Paints, Bajaj Finance, Nestle India and HUL were among the laggards.
