Guwahati, September 16 (PTI): The customs sleuths have seized various goods worth Rs 110 crore in 710 operations in North East since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country and the region, a senior official said on Wednesday. Addressing a webinar on ''Combating Counterfeiting and Smuggling during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond'' organized by industry chamber FICCI, Commissioner of Customs (North East) G M Kamei said their officials are conducting raids in coordinatio

Guwahati/Agartala, September  15 (IANS): Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, air passenger movement in northeast India is growing since July, Airport Authority of India (AAI) officials said on Tuesday. According to the officials, the Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport in Guwahati has registered 111 per cent increase in airline passengers from 2,812 on July 10 to 5,924 on September 10. Agartala airport witnessed a 104 per cent increase, Assam's Dibrugarh 126 per cen

Guwahati, September 14 (IANS): Months ahead of the next year's assembly polls in the state, a new political party -- the Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP) -- was formed on Monday with the coming together of two of the state's most powerful students' organisations. Earlier, the influential All Assam Students' Union (AASU) and the Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chatra Parishad (AJYCP), which have come together to form the AJP, had set up an 18-member Assam Advisory Committee (AAC) o

Guwahati, September 14 (PTI): The political outfit to be floated by Assam''s powerful students'' organisations AASU and the AJYCP will be named the ''Asom Jatiyo Parishad''. Convenors of the Assam Advisory Committee (AAC) formed by the All Assam Students'' Union (AASU) and the Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chatra Parishad (AJYCP) made the announcement on Monday. "The name was selected from three suggestions made during a meeting of the commit

Guwahati, September 13 (IANS): The raging oil well fire in Assam which continued for more than three months has been largely controlled and it would take a few more weeks to fully control the gas leakage and fire, state-owned Oil India Limited (OIL) officials said on Sunday. "The natural gas of the well number five at Baghjan has been diverted partly into production and partly flared in two flare pits. The main aim of this operation is to reduce well head pressure of the blowou

GUWAHATI, September 7 (Reuters): The Indian Army has asked its Chinese counterpart if five civilians who went missing from an eastern border state days ago were in their custody, an Indian military spokesman said on Monday. Relations between the nuclear-armed Asian giants have hit a multi-decade low since clashes at their western Himalayan border in June that killed 20 Indian soldiers. Both sides have since stepped up monitoring of their largely unsettled 3,488 km (2,167 miles) b

Guwahati, September 6 (PTI): The political party to be launched by the All Assam Students’ Union and AJYCP will contest 80-100 seats in the assembly elections in Assam due early next year, a top AASU leader said on Sunday. After the 18-member ‘Assam Advisory Committee’ suggested the two organisations to form a political party, a source close to the development said the new outfit will be launched within the next 10 days. Though the AASU and Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuv

Guwahati, September 6 (IANS): A government doctor and his academician wife on the run after scalding their minor domestic help with hot water have been arrested from central Assam's Nagaon, police said on Sunday. Dibrugarh district police officials said that Siddhi Prasad Deuri, a doctor at the Assam Medical College and Hospital in Dibrugarh, and his wife Mitali Konwar, Principal of Moran College, were arrested on Saturday night while travelling by a car from New Jalpaiguri in W

New Delhi, September 6 (PTI): Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati have developed methods to detect and prevent the novel coronavirus using bio-interface interactions between the virus and the surface spike protein. According to the team of researchers, the novel coronavirus (SARS CoV-2) is composed of inner nucleic acid which is covered with surface spike glycoprotein and the engineered surfaces can be potentially applied for the detection as well as pr

Guwahati, August 31 (PTI): The four-day Autumn session of Assam Assembly began on a sombre note on Monday with just 50 per cent of MLAs present inside the House to maintain social distancing norms for preventing the spread of COVID-19. The usual excitement found when the House is in session was missing in the Assembly complex. On the first day, the list of supplementary grants, a number of reports and 20 bills were tabled by the government. The Question Hour took place, but the Spea

Guwahati, August 31 (PTI): The opposition Congress and AIUDF on Monday walked out of the Assembly after the speaker disallowed their adjournment motions to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic and its handling in Assam. The Assam government, however, said they are ready to discuss the matter if it is brought in the House through any other way but not as an adjournment motion. Leader of the Opposition Debabrata Saikia referred to Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma''s recent sta

Agartala/Aizawl/Guwahati, August 29 (IANS): As the deadly coronavirus continued to spread across the northeast, Mizoram on Friday became the latest state in the region to see its tally cross the 1,000 case mark, while Tripura surpassed the 10,000-mark. Mizoram, however, is the only state in India where there is no death reported so far due to the contagious virus. According to Mizoram Health and Family Welfare Department officials, with 29 more cases detected in the past 24 hours

Guwahati, August 29 (PTI): A television serial was banned here following protests by right-wing groups, alleging that it promoted "love jihad" and denigrated Hindu and the Assamese culture, officials said on Saturday. The TV serial, ''Begum Jaan'', was banned for two months on the recommendations of the Kamrup (Metro) district-level monitoring committee, Guwahati Police Commissioner Munna Prasad Gupta told PTI. A prohibitory order was issued under the Ca

Guwahati, August 26 (IANS): The Bharatiya Janata Party-led government in Assam on Tuesday extended the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 — AFSPA, in the state for six more months beyond August 28, an official said. An official of Assam Home Department said that the AFSPA has been extended in view of the recent terror attacks on security forces in the northeastern region, and recovery of illegal arms and ammunition from different areas of Assam. Various political parti

Guwahati/Agartala, August 26 (IANS): To facilitate the marketing of agricultural and farm products of the northeastern states outside the region, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has launched the 'Krishi-Udan Scheme', officials said on Wednesday. AAI's Regional Executive Director (North East) Sanjeev Jindal said that it was one of his wishes that has come true after a dedicated domestic freighter started its services in the northeastern region. "Under the Kr

Guwahati, August 24 (IANS): A six-member central team would arrive in Assam on Wednesday to assess the damage caused by the monsoon floods that affected 57 lakh people and killed at least 113 people between May 22 and August 20, officials said on Monday. Assam's Revenue Department Commissioner-cum-Secretary M.S. Manivannan said that the central team led by Sandeep Poundrik, Joint Secretary (Mitigation), National Disaster Management Authority, would visit some flood-affected dist

Guwahati, August 24 (PTI): Guwahati on Monday got the country''s longest river ropeway that will connect two banks of the Brahmaputra. Built at a cost of Rs 56 crore, the ropeway will cover a distance of 1.8 km, and bring down the travelling time between north Guwahati and the central part of the city to eight minutes. It will help in not only promoting tourism but also make commuting easier, state Finance and Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said after inaugurating th

Guwahati/Itanagar, August 24 (PTI): The opposition Congress on Monday staged a protest at the Guwahati airport against the Centre''s decision to privatise it by leasing out to Adani Enterprises for 50 years. Besides, the Airport Authority Employees Union (AAEU) has been agitating every day since August 19 when the Centre decided to privatise the Guwahati, Jaipur and Thiruvananthapuram airports. "The Congress has been protesting since 2018 when the BJP government deci

Guwahati, August 23 (IANS): The Assam BJP on Sunday rubbished Congress leader and former Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi's claim that former Supreme Court Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi could be the BJP's chief ministerial candidate in the next year's Assembly polls, and instead praised CM Sarbananda Sonowal. Tarun Gogoi, the Chief Minister for 15 years until the BJP came to power in 2016, told the media in Guwahati on Saturday that the former CJI could be the BJP's chief min

Guwahati, August 23 (PTI): The first serological survey in Assam was launched here by the Minister of state for Health and Family Welfare Pijush Hazarika on Sunday to assess whether people surveyed have developed immunity to novel coronavirus. A serological survey involves testing of the blood serum of individuals to check for the prevalence of antibodies against an infection. The survey titled ‘A.A.S.H.A Assessment of Anti- SARSCoV2 Seroprevalence in Habitants of Assam: a