Pithoragarh
Kunwar Singh Kutiyal complains there are no Indian mobile towers within several kilometres of Uttarakhand's Vyas Valley, near the Indo-Nepal border, where he lives, and he has to depend on Nepalese infrastructure to connect to the world outside.
A resident of Kuti village of the Valley, he said he noticed that the Nepalese government recently provided Wi-Fi facilities in Changru village on its side of the border to strengthen communication for their security personnel deputed at a post there.
"We also need such facilities in our villages. We need to depend only on Indian communication facilities," he said.
Kutiyal is not a lone voice pressing this demand. He represents thousands of villagers of three localities — Vyas Valley, Chaundas valley and Dharchula sub-division — in this district who have no connectivity due to the lack of Indian mobile towers.
Some somehow manage to procure Nepalese SIM cards and use them to get Internet and phone connectivity by latching onto Nepalese network. “Around 40,000 villagers in about 40 villages in these localities have no connectivity. Around 3,000 of them rely on Nepalese Internet connection,” Dharchula SDM AK Shukla said.
Plea in SC for order to scrap MoUs with Chinese companies
New Delhi: A plea has been moved in the SC seeking a direction to the Centre to terminate the MoUs signed with the Chinese govt and Chinese companies, and also direct the Centre to make public its trade policies with China, against the backdrop of a clash between the two nations' armies in Ladakh. The plea, moved by Jammu-based lawyer Supriya Pandita, argued that Indian and Chinese troops have been engaged in the standoff since early May at several points along the Line of Actual Control, and on June 15, an escalated incident area occurred along the LAC.
