Mumbai News

Mumbai News Live: Mamata Banerjee on 3-day visit to Mumbai; likely to meet Sharad Pawar – The Indian Express

Mamata Banerjee also plans to invite Mumbai based industrialists to Global Business Summit held in Bengal in 2022. (PTI)

Mumbai Live News: West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee is on a three-day visit to Mumbai. Mamata is likely to meet NCP supremo Sharad Pawar. She also aims to attract investments for Bengal, news agency PTI reported. Banerjee, who was in Delhi last week, did not visit Sonia Gandhi after TMC’s equation with Congress party had turned tumultuous.

Mamata’s meeting with Pawar is an attempt by Banerjee to expand TMCs’ reach by aiming to spread its footprint and to form a coalition challenging the current government in the next 2024 general elections.

Meanwhile, six days after a 32-year-old Dombvli resident with international travel history from South Africa tested Covid-19 positive upon arrival in Mumbai via Delhi on November 24, the Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC) is unable to track the taxi driver, who drove the man from Mumbai airport to Dombvli. The patient tested negative in an RT-PCR test conducted 72 hours prior to his connecting flights from Cape Town to Mumbai.

Home Minister Dilip Walse Patil has asked Mumbai Police Commissioner Hemant Nagrale to inquire how IPS officer Param Bir Singh met arrested assistant police inspector Sachin Waze when he appeared before the Chandiwal Commission.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, he said, “One can’t meet an accused in judicial custody and what has happened is very wrong.”

Asked if Mumbai Police are under pressure because Singh is a senior IPS officer, Patil said, “Mumbai Police are not under any pressure. Singh has got protection from the Supreme Court and is appearing before various agencies and the police.” Read more

Former Maharashtra home Minister Anil Deshmukh on Tuesday appeared before a commission probing corruption allegations levelled against him by former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh.
          
Deshmukh, who was earlier arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with a money laundering case, is currently in judicial custody.
        
On Friday, special PMLA court judge H S Satbhai had allowed Deshmukh’s production warrant for appearance before the Justice K U Chandiwal Commission.
        
The Maharashtra government had in March this year formed the single-member commission of Justice Chandiwal (retired) to probe the allegations of corruption levelled by Param Bir Singh against the then state home minister and NCP leader Deshmukh. (PTI)
     

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is all set to resume the Biometric Attendance system in municipality offices from January 1.

Last week, the BMC issued a circular to all its offices across the city directing them to ensure biometric machines are working without any glitches.

There are about 1 lakh employees with BMC across the city working in headquarter at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus area, 24 administrative ward offices, and other central agency offices. Read more

A magistrate court here on Tuesday cancelled a non-bailable warrant (NBW) issued against former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh in connection with an extortion case registered at the Marine Drive  police station.
          
The case was registered following a complaint filed by real estate developer Shyamsunder Agrawal on July 22 this year.
        
The court had earlier this month issued the NBW against Singh in connection with the case.
        
The Maharashtra Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which is conducting a probe into the case, had earlier sought a non-bailable warrant against the senior IPS offcer.
        
On Tuesday, additional chief metropolitan magistrate R M Nerlikar cancelled the NBW against Singh. (PTI)

As many as 23 customers of a bank allegedly lost Rs 2.24 lakh to a cyberfraud where an unidentified cheat leaked their debit card details and used them to withdraw money from their accounts.

The Goregaon police have registered an FIR on the complaint of a 62-year-old man on Monday and prima facie suspects this to be a case of card-cloning.

The complainant, a carpenter from Goregaon (west), has a bank account in a nationalised bank. On November 25, at 10.41 pm, he received an SMS alert from his bank informing him that Rs 6,600 had been debited from his account. He immediately called his bank’s customer care number and the executive told him that the bank was not at fault and asked him to approach the local police. Read more

A retired Navy officer was duped of Rs 9.50 lakh by a cyber fraudster who impersonated as a manager from the State Bank of India (SBI) in Mumbai. The accused tricked the complainant into revealing all his personal information using which he changed the mobile number being used for net banking and transferred the money from the bank account.

The 79-year-old said he had received a text message, last week, purported to be sent by SBI bank asking him to complete his pending verification process. The message also contained a mobile number.

On November 25, the senior citizen called on the number and the fraudster identified himself as a bank representative. The fraudster already had personal details of the complainant like his date of birth and bank account number. Read more

Mumbai Fire Brigade on Tuesday reported fire early morning, in a room due to gas cyclinder explosion at Worli. As per reports, four people got injured and were sent to Nai hospital. 

Out of the four — Mangesh Puri, four months old, is in a critical state and Anand Puri, 27 years old, too is in a critical state.

Later the fire was doused by the joint efforts of Mumbai Fire Brigade and Mumbai police. (ENS)

One out of 5,885 — or 0.02% — recovered Covid-19 patients were reinfected in Mumbai, data analysed by the BMC has shown.

Of the 7.41 lakh Covid patients who were surveyed by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) from the start of the pandemic till November 1, 126 patients were found to have been reinfected with Covid-19 after recovery.

In general, reinfection means a person was infected with novel coronavirus once, recovered, and later became infected again due to exposure to a different or similar strain of Covid-19. Read more

Maharashtra CM Udhhav Thackeray, due to health issues, will not be meeting West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee during her two-day visit to Mumbai, shared Shiv Sena. (ENS)

A special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court on Monday extended by 14 days the judicial custody for former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh in a money laundering case filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on allegations that he received bribes from bar owners in the city.

On October 29, the Bombay High Court had rejected Deshmukh’s plea seeking quashing of summons by the ED, asking him to appear before it in connection with the money laundering case. The ED arrested Deshmukh on November 2 after questioning him for over 12 hours at its office.

Read more

Mumbai taxi unions demanded a hike in fares after the price of Compressed Natural Gas, the primary fuel of their vehicles, was raised.

The price of CNG is now Rs 61.50 per kilogram after Mahanagar Gas Limited raised the price by Rs 3.96 last week.

The Mumbai Taximen’s Union, one of the oldest associations of black-and-yellow taxis in the metropolis, said the minimum fare should be hiked to Rs 30 from Rs 25, as the revision in gas prices will leave them with a loss of Rs 100 per day. (PTI)

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will be on a three-day visit to Mumbai from November 30, during which he is scheduled to meet NCP supremo Sharad Pawar and her Maharashtra counterpart Uddhav Thackeray.

She is also expected to meet industrialists in Mumbai on December 1 and invite them to Bengal Global Business Summit, to be held in April next year.

“Mamata Banerjee will be on three-day visit to Mumbai from tomorrow. She will hold meetings with NCP supremo Sharad Pawar and Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray. The CM also aims to attract investments to the state,” a senior TMC leader said. (PTI)

Former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh on Monday appeared before the commission probing corruption allegations against former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh. Following Singh’s appearance, the Justice K U Chandiwal Commission cancelled the bailable warrant issued against him and asked him to deposit Rs 15,000 in the chief minister’s relief fund. The one-member commission was formed in March this year to probe the allegations levelled by Singh against the then home minister and NCP leader Deshmukh. The panel had earlier fined Singh on multiple occasions for failing to appear before it and also issued a bailable warrant against him.

The Bombay High Court on Monday quashed and set aside the order of a single bench of the HC that had refused to restrain Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik from making public statements against the Narcotics Control Bureau’s (NCB) zonal director Sameer Wankhede and his family. A division bench of Justices S J Kathawalla and Milind Jadhav quashed and set aside the order after Malik and  Wankhede’s father Dnyandev consented that the single bench order be recalled and Dnyandev’s grievances against the minister, raised through an interim application on his defamation suit filed against Malik, be heard afresh by the HC.

The Bombay High Court on Monday held that blotter paper forms an integral part of the lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) to decide whether the drug was consumed in small or commercial quantity.

The high court set aside an order of the special Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act court that directed re-weighing of LSD drug samples, recovered from an alleged drug peddler who was booked by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) following the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput last year.

The trial court had directed the central agency to send samples to the forensic science laboratory (FSL) in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, to assess the drug’s weight without blot paper and also sought to know whether the weight of the recovered LSD included the weight of paper. Read more

The Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) said nearly 20 per cent of its staffers reported for duty on Sunday and of the 250 bus depots in the state, 50 were partially functioning and 1,108 corporation buses plied from these depots.

Of the 92,266 employees, 18,375 staffers reported to work on Sunday, which is maximum since State Transport Minister Anil Parab announced a hike of up to 41 per cent on the basic salaries of staffers in order to end the strike.

According to an MSRTC official, more staffers will be joining work from Monday and at least 30,000 staffers are expected to join work. The official also sad that so far, the corporation has registered 50 FIRs during the month-long strike and 31 cases were related to vandalism of buses.

Opposing the hike in CNG price  by Rs 3.06 per kilogram, the Mumbai Taximen’s Union is demanding fare revision of taxis by Rs 5 in the base fare and has threatened to go on strike if the demand is not fulfilled.

The demand for fare revision has come less than nine months after minimum taxi fare was revised from Rs 22 to Rs 25 in March.

Maharashtra on Sunday reported 832 fresh COVID-19 cases and 33 fatalities, taking the state’s tally to 66,34,444 and toll to 1,40,941, an official said. The discharge of 841 people during the day increased the recovery count to 64,81,640, which is 97.7 per cent of the overall caseload, leaving Maharashtra with an active tally of 8,193, he said, adding that the fatality rate stood at 2.12 per cent. With 1,00,508 samples being examined on Sunday, the number of tests in Maharashtra went up to 6,53,57,358, he added. 

Mumbai saw 210 new cases and four deaths, which took the tally and toll to 7,62,584 and 16,330, respectively.

Asking people not to lower their guard against coronavirus in view of the new Omicron variant detected in South Africa, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Sunday said the state cannot afford to have another lockdown and in order to avoid it, everyone must follow COVID-appropriate behaviour. He also asked the state authorities to take necessary steps on a war footing to protect citizens from the new variant without waiting for the Centre’s directives in this regard. “Saying ‘kuch nahi hota yaar’ (nothing will happen) won’t do at all,” he said.  

“The  challenge of the new variant Omicron and its severity will also have to be tackled by the administration in Mumbai and rest of the state. If the virus spreads again, we can’t afford steps like a lockdown. If that is to be avoided, COVID-appropriate behaviour is a must. Regular use of face mask, avoiding crowd, maintaining physical distancing, have to be followed,” he said.

A 32-year-old resident of Dombivli in Mumbai, who arrived from South Africa via Delhi on November 24, tested positive upon arrival, though health officials are yet to ascertain if he is infected with the Omicron variant of Covid-19.

“The passenger travelled from Cape Town to Delhi via Dubai. He gave a sample in Delhi and was allowed to board the connecting flight to Mumbai. On arrival in Mumbai, he was found to be positive. He is asymptomatic and had home quarantined himself. Later, the corporation quarantined him in an institution,” said Pratibha Panpatil, Chief Medical Officer of  the Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC).

KDMC health officials said they have alerted the airport authorities and efforts are on to locate the man’s co-passengers.

West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee met with PM Narendra Modi. (Twitter/PMO)

Last week, Mamata Banerjee paid visit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi during her visit to Delhi in order to present her requirement in terms West Bengals’ development.

These demands precisely talked about Border Security Force’s jurisdiction in border states, including West Bengal and the alleged Tripura violence.

Mamata Banerjee also plans to invite Mumbai based industrialists to Global Business Summit held in Bengal in 2022. The West Bengal CM will also offer prayers at the Siddhivinayak Temple.

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/mumbai-news-live-updates-omicron-coronavirus-traffic-weather-7646587/