Gold price to hit `80,650 per 10 gms Gold price on Monday surged `750 to hit `80,650 per 10 grams (99.5% purity), while silver zoomed `5,000 to `99,500 per kg in the national capital. Bullion traders attributed the jump in gold prices to pick-up in buying by local jewellers to meet rising demand in the festive and wedding season. Experts tracking the commodities market said the price escalation is also driven by the rising tensions in West Asia vijayawada l tuesday l october 22, 2024 l `9.00 l PAGES 12 l late city EDITION CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOgGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI Hoax callers to be put on no-fly list ChinA Siachin Glacier daulat BeG oldi karakoraM Pass AKSAI CHIN Y JunCtion, Depsang Express News Service Both sides arrive at patrolling deal on the LAC Y e s h i S e l i & M aya n k S i n g h @ New Delhi TO deal with the menace of hoax bomb threats to airlines, the Centre plans to amend rules to place the culprits in the nofly list and initiate criminal charges against them, Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu said on Monday He . said such threats will be made a cognisable offence, which will attract punishment and fines. Naidu said the government is considering amendments to the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against Safety of Civil Aviation Act, 1982, to strengthen measures. “Even though most of them are hoax threats, we cannot take them lightly. The lives of passengers are important, the security situation is important, and protocol is important,” he added. These hoax bomb calls also caused financial loss to airlines that had to divert flights for safety reasons. An airline official said the financial loss due to frequent diversions ranges from a few lakh rupees to a couple of crores per flight, depending on the size of the plane. The minister also announced the extension of affordable regional air connectivity scheme, UDAN, for 10 more years. Around 1.5 crore passengers have benefited so far. CISF and BCAS brass met Home Secretary Govind Mohan on Monday. Sources said the threats originated overseas but their exact location could not be traced so far. India, China iron out wrinkles ‘Secularism core part of sc observation @ New Delhi INDIA (LADAKH) Demchok The fine print The pre-2020 situation was that the Army was patrolling till its line of perception in Demchok and Depsang. “Whether we can return to those areas will be clear in the fine print,” sources said Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri’s primary briefing on Monday was about the upcoming 16th BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, but what was casually mentioned became the story of the day — that India and China have arrived at a patrolling agreement along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh. The jaw-dropping announcement of the thaw in eastern Ladakh came in response to a question from this reporter on the buzz on the possibility of Prime Minister Narendra Modi having a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jingping Chances brighten for Modi-Xi talks Product of patient diplomacy: jaishankar “There are areas which for various reasons after 2020, they blocked us, we blocked them. We have now reached an understanding which will allow patrolling as we did till 2020... It is a positive development and I would say it is a product of very patient, very persevering diplomacy,” Jaishankar said on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit. At a different event later in the day foreign minister S Jais, hankar indicated that both sides had effectively gone back to the pre-2020 situation. “With that we can say the disengagement with China has been completed. Details will come out in due course,” he said. It was in 2020 that 20 Indian jawans died after a brawl with PLA soldiers in the Galwan valley along the LAC. Bilateral ties became frigid ever since. “Over the last several weeks, Indian and Chinese diplomatic and military negotiators have been in close contact with each other in a variety of forums. As a result of these discussions, an agreement has been made for patrolling arrangements along the LAC leading to disengagement and a resolution of the issues that had arisen in these areas in 2020. We will be taking the next steps on this,’’ Misri said. Sources indicated that there is a strong likelihood of the Modi-Xi bilateral. The prime minister will also have bilateral meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Dr Masoud Pezeshkian. The announcement came days after the US law enforcement department unsealed the second indictment in the alleged murder-for-hire attempt against Khalistani radical Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on American soil, in which a former RAW officer was named and shamed. The two sticking points on the LAC that had defied resolution for this long are at Depsang and Demchok.  P7 `11k cr HUDCO loan for Amaravati EX P RESS NEWS SERVI C E @ Vijayawada Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO) has sanctioned a loan of `11,000 crore to the State government for carrying out works in the Amaravati capital city The de. cision was announced following a meeting between Municipal Administration and Urban Development (MAUD) Minister P Narayana and HUDCO CMD Sanjay Kulshrestha in New Delhi on Monday . Narayana elaborated on the State government’s action plan to develop Amaravati and re- quested the loan. Impressed by the plan, Sanjay agreed to sanction the loan. The Minister explained that the estimated cost for constructing buildings, roads, drainage, and setting up drink- ing water facilities in the capital city is around `50,000 crore. Of the total, `26,000 crore is needed for phase one works. Highlighting that the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB) have agreed to jointly provide `15,000 crore, he said HUDCO is extending the remaining amount. Special Chief Secretary Anil Singhal, HUDCO Vijayawada Regional Chief BSN Murthy and others were also present during the meeting. two-day Amaravati Drone summit to kick off today | P4 honouring the brave Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu pays tributes at a martyrs’ memorial on Police Commemoration Day at IGMC Stadium in Vijayawada on Monday | Prasant Madugula Constitution’ S u c h i t r a K a lya n M o h a n t y @ New Delhi The Supreme Court on Monday said secularism had always been held to be part and parcel of the basic structure of the Constitution.   A two-judge bench, of the court comprising justices Sanjiv Khanna and Sanjay Kumar made the observation while hearing a batch of petitions filed by former Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy advo, cate Vishnu Shankar Jain and others, challenging the insertion of the words “socialist” and “secular” in the Preamble of the Constitution.   The addition came through the 42nd constitutional amendment moved by the then Indira Gandhi government in 1976. “This court has in a number of judgments held that secularism was always part of the basic structure of the Constitution. If one looks at the right to equality and the word ‘fraternity’ used in the Constitution, there is a clear indication that secularism has been held as the core feature of the Constitution,” the bench said. “When secularism was debated, there was only the French model. The Supreme Court has struck down statutes that go against secularism. You may look at Article 25. For socialism, we have not followed the Western concept and we are happy about it,” Justice Khanna told the petitioners.