Tag Archives: New Delhi

Heavy rains cripple Indian cities; at least 35 killed

MUMBAI (Reuters) – India’s capital New Delhi and the main financial center of Mumbai were drenched with heavy rain on Monday, a day after at least 35 people were killed across the country in landslides and house collapses triggered by downpours.

The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted heavy to very heavy rain in north India, including New Delhi, over the next two days. In Mumbai, the IMD has issued a heavy rain and thunderstorm alert for the city and surrounding districts.

At least 30 people were killed on Sunday in three Mumbai suburbs when several houses collapsed in landslides after rain.

At least three people were also killed when a house collapsed in the northern state of Uttarakhand after a downpour, Reuters partner agency ANI reported.

In a separate incident on Sunday evening, a three-story building collapsed in the city of Gurugram, bordering Delhi. Two people were killed and rescue operations were still underway.

Several low-lying areas of Delhi and Mumbai were flooded and Twitter was filled with images of submerged vehicles and people wading through waist-deep water.

Mumbai’s water treatment plant in the suburbs was flooded on Sunday forcing the municipal council to impose water cuts in some parts of the city.

India is in the midst of its annual rainy season but the downpours over the past few days have been particularly heavy.

Extreme weather has hit several parts of the world in recent weeks with flooding in Europe, dam collapses in China and heatwaves in North America adding to worries about climate change.

(Reporting by Swati Bhat; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Robert Birsel)

India says new COVID variant is a concern

By Uday Sampath Kumar and Bhargav Acharya

BENGALURU (Reuters) -India on Tuesday declared a new coronavirus variant to be of concern, and said nearly two dozen cases had been detected in three states.

The variant, identified locally as “Delta plus,” was found in 16 cases in the state of Maharashtra, Federal Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan told a news conference.

The ministry said Delta plus showed increased transmissibility and advised states to increase testing.

On Monday, India vaccinated a record 8.6 million people as it began offering free shots to all adults, but experts doubted it could maintain that pace.

“This is clearly not sustainable,” Chandrakant Lahariya, an expert in public policy and health systems, told Reuters.

“With such one-day drives, many states have consumed most of their current vaccine stocks, which will affect the vaccination in days to follow.”

With the currently projected vaccine supply for the next few months, the maximum daily achievable rate is 4 to 5 million doses, Lahariya added.

The effort has so far covered about 5.5% of the 950 million people eligible, even though India is the world’s largest vaccine producer.

A devastating second wave during April and May overwhelmed health services, killing hundreds of thousands. Images of funeral pyres blazing in car parks raised questions over the chaotic vaccine rollout.

Since May, vaccinations have averaged fewer than 3 million doses a day, far less than the 10 million health officials say are crucial to protect the millions vulnerable to new surges.

VACCINE DRIVE FALTERING

Particularly in the countryside, where two-thirds of a population of 1.4 billion lives and the healthcare system is often overstretched, the drive has faltered, experts say.

Maintaining the pace will prove challenging when it comes to injecting younger people in such areas, Delhi-based epidemiologist Rajib Dasgupta said.

The capital is also facing difficulties. Authorities in New Delhi said more than 8 million residents had yet to receive a first dose and inoculating all adults there would take more than a year at the current pace.

India has been administering AstraZeneca’s vaccine, made locally by the Serum Institute of India, and a homegrown shot named Covaxin made by Bharat Biotech.

Last week, Serum Institute had said it planned to increase monthly production to around 100 million doses from July. Bharat now estimates it will make 23 million doses a month.

On Tuesday, television channel CNBC-TV18 reported that phase-3 data for Covaxin showed an efficacy of 77.8%.

India may also soon have a mass rollout of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, and the government expects to import vaccines this year from major makers such as Pfizer.

Although new infections in India have dropped to their lowest in more than three months, experts say vaccinations should be stepped up because of the transmissibility of new variants.

Over the past 24 hours India reported 42,640 new infections, the lowest since March 23, and 1,167 deaths.

Infections now stand at 29.98 million, with a death toll of 389,302, health ministry data showed.

(Reporting by Uday Sampath Kumar and Bhargav Acharya, Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru, Shilpa Jamkhandikar in Pune; Writing by Neha Arora; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Angus MacSwan and Giles Elgood)

Exclusive: India’s oxygen crisis to ease by mid-May, output to jump 25% – executive

By Shivani Singh and Devjyot Ghoshal

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India’s severe medical oxygen supply crisis is expected to ease by mid-May, a top industry executive told Reuters, with output rising by 25% and transport infrastructure ready to cope with a surge in demand caused by a dramatic rise in coronavirus cases.

Dozens of hospitals in cities such as New Delhi and Mumbai have run short of the gas this month, sending relatives of patients scrambling for oxygen cylinders, sometimes in vain.

Medical oxygen consumption in India has shot up more than eight-fold from usual levels to about 7,200 tonnes per day this month, said Moloy Banerjee of Linde Plc, the country’s biggest producer.

“This is what is causing the crisis because no one was prepared for it, particularly the steep curve up,” Banerjee, who heads the company’s South Asia gas business, told Reuters on Thursday.

Linde – whose two affiliates in the country are Linde India and Praxair India – and other suppliers are ramping up production to a total of more than 9,000 tonnes per day by the middle of next month, he said.

A logistics crisis impeding the speedy movement of oxygen from surplus regions in eastern India to hard-hit northern and western areas would also be resolved in the coming weeks as more distribution assets are deployed, Banerjee said.

“My expectation is that by the middle of May we will definitely have the transport infrastructure in place that allows us to service this demand across the country,” he said.

Banerjee said India was importing around 100 cryogenic containers to transport large quantities of liquid medical oxygen, with Linde providing 60 of those. Some are being flown in by Indian Air Force aircraft.

Many of these containers will be placed on dedicated trains that would cut across the country, each carrying between 80-160 tonnes of liquid oxygen and delivering to multiple cities.

The company is also looking to double the number of oxygen cylinders in its distribution network to at least 10,000, which would improve supply to rural areas with weak infrastructure.

“We are trying to create a hub-and-spoke type of system so that we make a lot of liquid oxygen available at the local area, from where the local dealers can pick it up,” Banerjee said.

India’s total COVID-19 cases passed 18 million on Thursday after another world record number of daily infections.

(Reporting by Shivani Singh and Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Krishna N. Das and Giles Elgood)

‘Beg, borrow, steal’: the fight for oxygen among New Delhi’s hospitals

By Devjyot Ghoshal and Aditya Kalra

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Pankaj Solanki, a doctor and the director of a small hospital in New Delhi, rushed to an oxygen vendor earlier this week to secure enough cylinders to keep 10 COVID-19 patients on the ICU ward breathing.

His supplies would only last until Thursday night, and so he has sent a driver out to try to find more.

“It is mental agony. I can’t bear it any more. What if something happens to the patients?” he told Reuters.

The last-minute scramble for oxygen at Dharamveer Solanki Hospital is playing out across the city and the country, which is facing the world’s largest surge in COVID-19 cases.

Hospitals in India’s capital, renowned for some of the best medical care in the country, are unable to guarantee basic services and thousands of lives hang in the balance – a stark warning of how India’s healthcare system is buckling amid the pandemic.

Big private hospital chains have not been spared.

This week in New Delhi, which has been hit particularly hard by the coronavirus, seven Max Healthcare hospitals treating more than 1,400 COVID-19 patients were down to between 2 and 18 hours of oxygen left.

Staff at a major facility of the Apollo group had a harrowing night wondering if oxygen to 200 patients would run out. A tanker arrived at around 3 a.m., just in time, a source at the hospital said.

As panic breaks out at hospitals unable to admit some people with severe COVID-19 symptoms, police are being deployed to secure oxygen. In court, judges are challenging the central government to do more to address shortages.

In a late-night court hearing on Wednesday, Delhi justices called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to “beg, borrow, steal or import” to meet the city’s needs. Officials said they were arranging supplies, but the judges weren’t convinced.

The state “cannot say ‘we can provide only this much and no more’, so if people die, let them die; that cannot be an answer by a responsible sovereign state,” said Justice Vipin Sanghi.

OXYGEN EMERGENCY

Demand for medical oxygen has soared. India recorded 314,835 new COVID-19 infections on Thursday, the highest tally anywhere during the pandemic. In Delhi alone, the daily rise is around 25,000.

Modi and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal have been criticized for failing to plan for the upsurge in cases.

On April 13, when Delhi recorded 13,000 new cases, Kejriwal told a news channel there was “no shortage of oxygen”. Five days later, he tweeted, “OXYGEN HAS BECOME AN EMERGENCY”.

“It is poor forecasting. Maybe they are not able to understand the gravity of the situation,” said Anant Bhan, an independent researcher of global health and bioethics.

“This is a reminder again – we should have extra reserves of oxygen. It shows poor planning.”

A senior gas industry source directly involved in supplying oxygen to Delhi hospitals said the city had moved too slowly in recent days in liaising with authorities and suppliers.

The city has few production units nearby and transportation is a challenge.

The Delhi government and federal health ministry did not respond to Reuters questions for this story.

At an INOX gas plant in the state of Uttar Pradesh, around an hour’s drive from Delhi, 12 trucks from cities across northern India were waiting to load oxygen on Thursday.

Six drivers told Reuters they had faced long delays, as surging demand from hospitals in the capital and elsewhere outstripped supply.

“We have been waiting for three days,” said Bhure Singh, one of the drivers. “Demand has increased and there is no gas.”

The plant has been visited by government officials and police, some carrying assault rifles. An Uttar Pradesh police officer said they had been given orders to escort trucks in some instances to make sure they reached their destination.

LAWYERS’ BARBS

At one Max facility in west Delhi treating 285 COVID-19 patients, oxygen supplies this week ran dry as authorities diverted their tanker to another hospital, the healthcare group wrote in a letter to Delhi’s health minister.

Staff had to borrow cylinders from another facility.

The medical superintendent at the Shanti Mukund Hospital, Kulwinder Singh, told Reuters on Thursday they were asking families of 85 patients who needed high-flow oxygen to make other arrangements because they had only two hours’ worth of supply.

Some hospitals in Delhi have run out of oxygen altogether, putting lives at risk, the city’s deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said in a televised address. “After some time, saving lives would be difficult,” he warned.

In the capital, the fight for oxygen has reached the High Court, where judges convened late on Wednesday night to hear a plea from Max hospitals.

For around two hours, lawyers for Delhi and the federal government traded barbs over transportation challenges and supplies. Other lawyers shared real-time updates on oxygen tanks reaching hospitals in the city, and a judge took notes on demand and supply statistics for the capital.

The Supreme Court also intervened, saying Modi’s administration should draw up a plan to address shortages of oxygen and critical supplies.

“The situation is alarming,” the court said.

(Additional reporting by Alasdair Pal in Yusufpur and Danish Siddiqui in New Delhi; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

Two to a bed in Delhi hospital as India’s COVID crisis spirals

By Danish Siddiqui and Alasdair Pal

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Gasping for air, two men wearing oxygen masks share a bed in a government hospital in India’s capital New Delhi, victims of the country’s growing COVID-19 crisis.

From reporting under 10,000 new daily cases earlier this year, daily infections crossed 200,000 on Thursday, according to official data, the highest anywhere in the world.

At Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital (LNJP), one of India’s largest COVID-only facilities with more than 1,500 beds, a stream of ambulances ferried patients to the overflowing casualty ward on Thursday.

Some also arrived in buses and three-wheeled autorickshaws.

The youngest patient was a new-born baby.

“We are definitely over-burdened. We are already working at full capacity,” said the hospital’s medical director, Suresh Kumar.

From an initial 54 beds, the hospital now has over 300 for COVID-19 patients in critical condition. Even that is not enough.

Unrelated patients share beds, while bodies of the recently deceased lie outside the ward before being taken to the mortuary.

“Today we have 158 admissions in Lok Nayak alone,” Kumar said. Almost all were severe cases.

After imposing one of the world’s strictest lockdowns for nearly three months last year, India’s government relaxed almost all curbs by the beginning of 2021, although many regions have now introduced localized restrictions.

LNJP’s Kumar said fast-spreading new variants that evade testing were adding to the burden, as was human behavior as the country reopened.

“People are not following the COVID guidelines,” he said. “They are just careless.”

Outside the hospital’s mortuary, weeping relatives gathered in the hot sun to wait for the bodies of loved ones to be released.

Kashmir villagers hopeful but wary after India and Pakistan agree to ceasefire

By Fayaz Bukhari and Abu Arqam Naqash

SRINAGAR, India/MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) – Villagers living on both sides of the Line of Control dividing the Himalayan region of Kashmir welcomed an agreement between long-time foes India and Pakistan to stop shelling from each side, but some were skeptical it would hold.

The nuclear-armed neighbors signed a ceasefire agreement along the Line of Control (LoC) in 2003, but that has frayed in recent years and there have been mounting casualties.

In a joint statement on Thursday, India and Pakistan said they would observe a ceasefire.

“It has given a new lease of life to us. We were living in constant fear of being hit,” said Laldin Khatana, the headman of Churnada village on the Indian side of the border.

Khatana said that two people had been killed last year by shelling in the hillside village, home to 1,600 people, many of whom gathered at a mausoleum to celebrate the new agreement.

“It was affecting our farming and grazing,” he told Reuters via telephone. “And children were scared to go to school.”

Kashmir has long been a flashpoint between India and Pakistan, which claim the region in full but rule only in part. Tensions reignited after New Delhi withdrew the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir state in August 2019 and split it into two federally administered territories.

Since 2018, Indian data shows that 70 civilians and 72 soldiers have been killed in cross-border firing.

On the Pakistani side, nearly 300 civilians have been killed since 2014, when ceasefire violations began rising, according to a Pakistan military source.

“The fresh announcement is welcome and can help us live a life free of fear, only if implemented in letter and in spirit,” said Danish Shaikh, a resident of Ban Chattar village in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir’s Neelum valley.

“Who knows how seriously and how long they will stick to the fresh understanding?”

The picturesque Neelum valley saw hundreds of hotels and guesthouses sprout up when the ceasefire held, with tourists visiting year round.

But with skirmishes and firing increasing, tourism went into a tailspin and guesthouse operators like Khawaja Owais were forced to dig into their savings.

“This is good news indeed. Not just for us who are running businesses in the valley but for everyone who has faced death and destruction during heavy shelling,” Owais said of the agreement.

“Let’s hope and pray it remains intact.”

(Writing by Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Nick Macfie)

U.S. calls for dialogue to resolve India’s farmers’ protests

By Sanjeev Miglani and Mayank Bhardwaj

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – The U.S. embassy in New Delhi urged India’s government on Thursday to resume talks with farmers whose months-long protests over agricultural reforms erupted into violence last week.

India’s Foreign Ministry said it had “taken note” of the comments and underlined ongoing efforts between Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and farmers groups to resolve the situation.

“We encourage that any differences between the parties be resolved through dialogue,” a U.S. embassy spokesperson said in a statement that also offered general support for the government’s efforts to “improve the efficiency of India’s markets and attract greater private sector investment.”

Modi’s government has held multiple rounds of talks with representatives of thousands of farmers who have camped, mostly peacefully, on the outskirts of New Delhi since late last year.

But no talks have been held since Jan 26., when some protesters clashed with police in the heart of the capital city following a military parade to mark Republic Day, and no indication has been given of when they might resume.

Television images of protesters occupying the ramparts of New Delhi’s historic Red Fort and later clashing with police drew international attention to the confrontation between Modi’s government and the farmers.

The farmers, who enjoy most support in northern India’s breadbasket states, argue that three new farm laws will hurt their interests while benefiting large firms.

But the government says the reforms will bring much-needed investment to a farm sector that accounts for nearly 15% of India’s $2.9 trillion economy but about half its workforce.

BARRICADES UP, INTERNET DOWN

Police remain on guard against further attempts by farmers to bring the protests into the capital, and have reinforced barricades at three main sites.

Earlier this week internet services were temporarily suspended in some areas, drawing widespread criticism, including from international activists and celebrities.

“We recognize that unhindered access to information, including the internet, is fundamental to the freedom of expression and a hallmark of a thriving democracy,” the U.S. embassy spokesperson said.

In response to social media posts on the internet shutdowns, India’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that vested interest groups were mobilizing international support against the country.

“Any protests must be seen in the context of India’s democratic ethos and polity, and the ongoing efforts of the government and the concerned farmer groups to resolve the impasse,” ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava said on Thursday.

Farm union leaders have been calling for a repeal of the new laws and to make the government’s crop price guarantee scheme legally binding, and for the withdrawal of legal cases against protesters.

But some farmer groups have expanded their list of demands.

At a rally in northern Haryana state on Wednesday, thousands of farmers from the politically influential Jat community backed a call to waive farm loans and increase crop prices paid by the government.

“If the government doesn’t concede to our demands, thousands more farmers will march towards Delhi,” Kek Ram Kandela, a leader among the Jat farmers, told the rally attended by more than 50,000 people.

(Additional reporting and Writing by Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Catherine Evans)

Indian govt offers to suspend farm reforms; farmers may call off protests

By Mayank Bhardwaj

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India’s government on Wednesday offered to suspend implementation of three new farm laws that have triggered the biggest farmers’ protests in years, which farm union leaders said they would now consider calling off.

The cornerstone of the reform, introduced in September, allows private buyers to deal directly with farmers.

Angry farmers, who say that will make India’s traditional wholesale markets irrelevant and leave them at the mercy of big retailers and food processors, have camped out on major highways outside New Delhi for more than two months.

Agriculture & Farmers Welfare Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said the government was open to suspending the laws for up to 18 months, during which time representatives of the government and farmers should work to “provide solutions” for the industry.

Bilateral talks have so far failed to break the deadlock – landing Prime Minister Narendra Modi with one of his most significant challenges since he was re-elected in 2019.

The next round of talks is due on Friday, and farm leader Dharmendra Malik said the unions would let the government know then if they would accept the offer and call off the protests.

The government was “sympathetic to farmers’ concerns and is trying to end the stalemate,” it said in a government, thanking them for maintaining “peace and discipline” during the protests.

Farmers plan a tractor rally through New Delhi on Jan 26, India’s Republic Day, which the Supreme Court on Wednesday declined a government petition to ban.

(Reporting by Mayank Bhardwaj; additional reporting by Suchitra Mohanty and Nigam Prusty; editing by John Stonestreet)

Death toll rises to 32 in religious violence in India’s capital

By Aftab Ahmed

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – At least 32 people have been killed in the deadliest violence to engulf India’s capital New Delhi for decades as a heavy deployment of security forces brought an uneasy calm on Thursday, a police official said.

The violence began over a disputed new citizenship law on Monday but led to clashes between Muslims and Hindus in which hundreds were injured. Many suffered gunshot wounds, while arson, looting and stone-throwing has also taken place.

“The death count is now at 32,” Delhi police spokesman Anil Mittal said, adding the “entire area is peaceful now.”

Men remove debris in a riot affected area following clashes between people demonstrating for and against a new citizenship law in New Delhi, India, February 27, 2020. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri

At the heart of the unrest is a citizenship law which makes it easier for non-Muslims from some neighboring Muslim-dominated countries to gain Indian citizenship.

U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said the new law adopted last December is of “great concern” and she was worried by reports of police inaction in the face of assaults against Muslims by other groups.

“I appeal to all political leaders to prevent violence,” Bachelet said in a speech to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Critics say the law is biased against Muslims and undermines India’s secular constitution.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has denied having any prejudice against India’s 180 million Muslims, saying that law is required to help persecuted minorities.

New Delhi has been the epicenter for protests against the new law, with students and large sections of the Muslim community leading the protests.

As the wounded were brought to hospitals on Thursday, the focus shifted on the overnight transfer of Justice S. Muralidhar, a Delhi High Court judge who was hearing a petition into the riots and had criticized government and police inaction on Wednesday.

Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the transfer was routine and had been recommended by the Supreme Court collegium earlier this month.

Opposition Congress party leader Manish Tiwari said every lawyer and judge in India should strongly protest what he called a crude attempt to intimidate the judiciary.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar said inflammatory speeches at the protests over the new citizenship law in the last few months and the tacit support of some opposition leaders was behind the violence.

“The investigation is on,” he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who romped to re-election last May, also withdrew Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy in August with the objective of tightening New Delhi’s grip on the restive region, which is also claimed by full by Pakistan.

For months the government imposed severe restrictions in Kashmir including cutting telephone and internet lines, while keeping hundreds of people, including mainstream political leaders, in custody for fear that they could whip up mass protests. Some restrictions have since been eased.

Bachelet said the Indian government continued to impose excessive restrictions on the use of social media in the region, even though some political leaders have been released, and ordinary life may be returning to normal in some respects.

(Reporting by Aftab Ahmed; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Mexico flies 300 Indian migrants to New Delhi in ‘unprecedented’ mass deportation

Mexico flies 300 Indian migrants to New Delhi in ‘unprecedented’ mass deportation
MEXICO CITY/NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Mexico has deported over 300 Indian nationals to New Delhi, the National Migration Institute (INM) said late on Wednesday, calling it an unprecedented transatlantic deportation.

The move follows a deal Mexico struck with the United States in June, vowing to significantly curb U.S.-bound migration in exchange for averting U.S. tariffs on Mexican exports.

“It is unprecedented in INM’s history – in either form or the number of people – for a transatlantic air transport like the one carried out on this day,” INM said in a statement.

The 310 men and one woman that INM said were in Mexico illegally were sent on a chartered flight, accompanied by federal immigration agents and Mexico’s National Guard. They arrived in New Delhi on Friday.

Most of the deportees were from India’s northern Punjab state, an Indian official said. Police will run checks if any of them had criminal history, another official said.

INM said the deportees had been scattered in eight states around Mexico, including in southern Mexico from where many Indian migrants enter the country, hoping to transit to the U.S. border.

The backlog of migrants in southern Mexico has grown as officials have stopped issuing permits for them to cross the country, said Caitlyn Yates, a research coordinator at IBI Consultants who has studied increasing numbers of U.S.-bound Asian and African migrants arriving in Mexico.

“This type of deportation in Mexico is the first of its kind but likely to continue,” Yates said.

(Reporting by Anthony Esposito and Daina Beth Solomon in NEW MEXICO, Rupam Jain in MUMBAI, and Zeba Siddiqui in NEW DELHI; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Muralikumar Anantharaman)