Today in Politics: Amit Shah to chair high-level huddle on J-K security, Amarnath Yatra preps

Shah is to chair the meeting three days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a similar meeting where he directed officials to deploy the “full spectrum of counter-terror capabilities” after a spate of terror incidents, including an attack on a bus carrying pilgrims.

The meeting called by Shah would be attended by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir Manoj Sinha, Army Chief General Manoj Pande, Army Chief-designate Lt General Upendra Dwivedi, Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla, Director of Intelligence Bureau Tapan Deka, Director General of CRPF Anish Dayal Singh, Director General of Jammu and Kashmir Police R R Swain and other top security officials.

Shah would be apprised about the security situation in J & K, the deployment of forces along the International Border (IB) and Line of Control (LoC), infiltration attempts, the status of ongoing anti-terror operations and the strength of terrorists operating in the Union Territory, sources said.

In context: Terrorists struck at four places in Reasi, Kathua and Doda districts of J & K in the last four days, killing nine pilgrims and a CRPF jawan and leaving seven security personnel and several others injured.

Two suspected Pakistani terrorists were also killed in an encounter with security forces in Kathua district and a huge quantity of arms and ammunition were recovered from them.

The incidents come ahead of the annual pilgrimage to the cave shrine of Amarnath in the south Kashmir Himalayas.

Dhankhar to inaugurate ‘Prerna Sthal’

The Vice-President and Rajya Sabha Chairman, Jagdeep Dhankhar, will on Sunday inaugurate ‘Prerna Sthal’ – an earmarked area in the Parliament complex, which will house all statues of freedom fighters and other iconic leaders that were earlier there at different places.

The event is taking place days ahead of the first session of the newly-elected 18th Lok Sabha, which will convene between June 24 and July 3.

An official statement said all members of Parliament have been invited to the event where the outgoing Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and other dignitaries will also be present.

While the Congress has criticised the decision to remove the statues from their existing places, the Lok Sabha secretariat has said their placements at different places made it difficult for visitors to see them properly.

The Congress has claimed that the idea behind relocating the statues of Mahatma Gandhi, B R Ambedkar and Chhatrapati Shivaji among others is to ensure that they are not in a prominent place where MPs could conduct peaceful and democratic protests.

A statement from the Lok Sabha secretariat, however, said, “The ‘Prerna Sthal’ has been constructed so that the dignitaries and other visitors coming to Parliament House Complex could conveniently see and pay tributes at these statues in one place. An action plan has been made to make the life stories and messages of these great Indians available to the visitors through new technology.”

Lawns and gardens have been laid out around the statues at ‘Prerna Sthal’ to allow visitors to easily pay their tributes to them and also take inspiration from their lives through QR code, the statement added.

– With PTI inputs