History of Hyderabad State (1948–56)

Hyderabad State was a state in Independent India, formed after the accession of the princely state of Hyderabad into the Indian Union on 24 November 1949. It existed from 1948 to 1956.

Following the States Reorganisation Act Hyderabad State was merged with Andhra State in 1956 and renamed Andhra Pradesh.

HIstroy

Operation Polo, the code name of the Hyderabad "Police Action" was a military operation in September 1948 in which the Indian Armed Forces invaded the State of Hyderabad and overthrew its Nizam, annexing the state into the Indian Union.

At the time of Partition in 1947, the princely states of India, who in principle had self-government within their own territories, were subject to subsidiary alliances with the British, giving them control of their external relations. In the Indian Independence Act 1947 the British abandoned all such alliances, leaving the states with the option of opting for full independence. However, by 1948 almost all had acceded to either India or Pakistan. One major exception was that of the wealthiest and most powerful principality, Hyderabad, where the Nizam, Osman Ali Khan, Asif Jah VII, a Muslim ruler who presided over a largely Hindu population, chose independence and hoped to maintain this with an irregular army recruited from the Muslim aristocracy, known as the Razakars. The Nizam was also beset by the Telangana uprising, which he was unable to subjugate.

The Indian government, anxious to avoid what it termed a Balkanization of what had been the Indian Empire, was determined to effect the integration of Hyderabad into the new Indian Union.  Amidst atrocities by the Razakars, the Indian Home Minister Sardar Patel decided to annex Hyderabad in what was termed a "police action". The operation itself took five days, in which the Razakars were defeated easily.

The operation led to massive violence on communal lines. The Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru appointed a commission known as the Sunderlal Committee. Its report, which was not released until 2013, concluded that "as a conservative estimate...27,000 to 40,000 people had lost their lives during and after the police action." Other scholars have put the figure at 200,000, or even higher.

Military Governor

Major General El Edroos (at right) offers his surrender of the Hyderabad State Forces to Major General (later General and Army Chief) J. N. Chauhuri atSecunderabad.

After the Annexation into the Indian Union, Major General J. N. Chaudhuri who led Operation Polo stayed on as Military Governor till December 1949.

The state witnessed Mulkhi agitation in 1952 by the locals after a government jobs meant for the locals were given to non-locals.

Rajpramukh

telanagana movement Hyderabad State had its last Nizam, HEH Mir Osman Ali Khan (b. 1886 -d. 1967) as Rajpramukh from 26 January 1950 to 31 October 1956.

First Appointed Chief Minister

After the Annexation of Hyderabad State into India, M. K. Vellodi was appointed the Chief Minister of the state on 26 January 1950. He was a Senior Civil servant in the Government of India. He administered the state with the help of bureaucrats from Madras state and Bombay state.

The Nizam was given the ceremonial position of "Raj Pramukh" or "Governor".

First Elected Chief Minister

In the first State Assembly election in India, 1952, Dr. Burgula Ramakrishna Rao was elected Chief minister of Hyderabad State. During this time there were violent agitations by some Telanganites to send back bureaucrats from Madras state, and to strictly implement 'Mulki-rules'(Local jobs for locals only), which was part of Hyderabad state law since 1919.

Districts of Hyderabad State

Administratively, Hyderabad State was made up of sixteen districts, grouped into four divisions:

• Aurangabad Division included Aurangabad, Beed, Nanded, and Parbhani districts;
• Gulbarga Division included Bidar District, Gulbarga, Osmanabad, and Raichur District;
• Gulshanabad Division or Medak Division included Atraf-i-Baldah (Hyderabad), Mahbubnagar district, Medak district, Nalgonda district (Nalgundah), and Nizamabad districts, and
• Warangal Division included Adilabad, Karimnagar, and Warangal districts (present Khammam district was part of Warangal district).

Merger with Andhra State

In 1956 during the Reorganisation of the Indian States based along linguistic lines, the Telugu-speaking region of the state of Hyderabad State was merged with Andhra State. The Marathi speaking region was merged with Bombay state and Kannada speaking region with Mysore State.

The States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) was not in favour of an immediate merger of Telugu speaking Telangana region of Hyderabad state with Andhra state, despite their common language. Para 378 of the SRC report said One of the principal causes of opposition of Vishalandhra also seems to be the apprehension felt by the educationally backward people of Telangana that they may be swamped and exploited by the more advanced people of the coastal areas.

Andhra state and Hyderabad State were merged to form Andhra Pradesh on 1 November 1956, after providing safeguards to Telangana in the form of Gentlemen's agreement. But in June 2014, Telangana re-emerged as a separate state. Hyderabad City will continue to be the capital of both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana for 10 years.

Kumar Rajesh Chandra appointed as Chief of Bureau of Civil Aviation Security

Senior IPS officer Kumar Rajesh Chandra was appointed as Chief of Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), the aviation security wing of the Government. His appointment was cleared by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) presided by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He has been appointed in place of IPS officer G S Malhi, who had completed his tenure as BCAS chief in November 2012. Since then crucial post was lying vacant. Kumar Rajesh Chandra is IPS officer of a 1985 batch of Bihar cadre. Prior to this appointment, Chandra was working as Additional Director General (Modernisation) of Bihar Police. 
About Bureau of Civil Aviation Security 
BCAS is a nodal independent agency of the Union Ministry of Civil Aviation for civil aviation security. It was established as in January 1978 as a department of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) based on the recommendation of Pande Committee. Later in April 1987, BCAS became an independent agency of the Ministry of Civil Aviation as a result of the bombing of Air India Flight 182 (Kanishka) in 1985 by the Sikh militant group Babbar Khalsa. BCAS’s main function is to lay down standards and measures in respect of security of civil flights at domestic and international airports in India.

ICICI Bank signs MoU with BRICS’s New Development Bank

India’s largest private sector lender ICICI Bank has inked a MoU with the BRICS Grouping-promoted New Development Bank (NDB) for a partnership in bond issuances, co-financing, treasury management and human resources. With this ICICI Bank becomes first financial institution in the country to tie up with the BRICS Grouping-promoted NDB. The MoU was signed by BDB’s first President and ICICI Bank veteran KV Kamath and ICICI Bank Chief Chanda Kochhar in Mumbai, Maharashtra.
Key facts 
The MoU will help NDB in exploring rupee-denominated bonds in the domestic and international markets. It will make both the lenders collaborate to fund development projects in India. They will also leverage a mutually beneficial partnership in other areas such as treasury risk management, human resource development and account and cash management services. The MoU will help NDB to leverage the deep market access and insight of ICICI Bank in the India’s financial markets. 
About New Development Bank
NDB is a multilateral development bank promoted by BRICS nations viz. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. It is outcome of 6th BRICS Summit being held in Fortaleza, Brazil. It is headquartered in Shanghai, China. It will have a regional office in Johannesburg, South Africa. NDB began its operations in July 2015 with an initial capital of 100 billion dollars. The goal of the bank is to fund infrastructure projects in emerging economies for sustainable development. In the NDB, each participant country has been assigned one vote, and none of the countries have veto power.

SpaceX successfully launches Japanese JCSAT-14 Satellite

US based private space transport service company, SpaceX has successfully launched Japanese JCSAT-14 communication satellite into the space. The satellite was place into its intended preliminary geostationary transfer orbit by SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket which was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, US. After meeting its primary goal of the mission, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully landed on an ocean (floating) platform, known as a drone ship, off the coast of Florida. This is for the second time in row the reusable main stage booster of Falcon 9 rocket successfully landed on offshore floating platform after the April 8, 2016 landing.
About JCSAT-14 Satellite
JCSAT-14 Satellite is owned by Sky Perfect JSAT Corporation. The satellite will boost the company’s fleet of relay stations to 17. The satellite is built by Space Systems/Loral and is equipped with 26 C-band and 18 Ku-band transponders. It has design life of 15 years and replaces the aging JCSAT-2A which is now stationed at 154 degrees East longitude. Sky Perfect JSAT Corporation is the only non-governmental provider of multi-channel pay television and satellite communications in Japan and a major communications provider across Asia and Oceania.

Sadiq Khan sworn in, promises a ‘better’ London

Mr. Khan hailed his victory as the triumph of "hope over fear and unity over division".

Newly elected London Mayor’s opening words at his swearing-in ceremony – “Good Morning, I’m Sadiq Khan, and I’m the Mayor of London” – were drowned in claps and whistles by the audience at the Southwark Cathedral in London.

The 44-year old human rights lawyer of Pakistani descent is not only the first Muslim head of London, but set a record by winning 1.1 million votes. His lead over his closest rival was bigger than that achieved by both his predecessors Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone. With a 45 per cent election turnout, he finished with a margin of 13.6 percentage points over Zac Goldsmith of the Conservative Party.

Warmly acknowledging the introduction made by Doreen Lawrence, the mother of the British teenager Stephen Lawrence who was killed in a racist attack in London in 1993, Mr. Khan promised to “lead the most transparent, engaged and representative council London has ever seen”.

He harked back to his humble beginnings – “So you better know this but I grew up in a council estate,” – and said he achieved what he never dreamt of because of the opportunities and “helping hand” the city offered him and his family. Promising a “better” London, he pledged to give all Londoners the opportunities that he was offered.

Smear campaign

Mr. Khan led an energetic campaign that was turned increasingly toxic by the personal attacks and slander levelled against him by his opponent, the billionaire Mr. Goldsmith, including the smear that he shared platforms with extremists in the past.

Mr. Goldsmith’s campaign, which started with a focus on green and sustainable solutions to city issues, rapidly descended into racism and divisiveness. His piece in the Daily Mail four days before the elections made the schism between him and his opponent unbreachable. He warned that with a Labour victory “we will have handed control of the Met, and with it control over national counter-terrorism policy, to a party whose candidate and current leadership have, whether intentionally or not, repeatedly legitimised those with extremist views.”

There was mounting criticism even within the Conservative Party to Mr. Goldsmith’s campaign. Andrew Boff, a former Conservative member of the London Assembly, told Newsnight that Mr. Goldsmith’s tactic of painting religious conservatives as “extremists” had alienated the party from the city’s ethnic minority voters.

Leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn’s absence at Mr. Khan’s swearing-in has led to speculation of an increasingly frosty relationship between the two.

Mr. Khan, a practising Muslim, is a liberal who received death threats from extremists for his support for the legalisation of gay marriage in 2013.

Dinosaurs fled Europe over 100 million years ago: study

Dinosaurs fled Europe over 100 million years ago: study Dinosaurs migrated out of Europe between 125 and 100 million years ago after the original super continent broke up, according to a new study that used 'network theory' for the first time to visually depict the movement of dinosaurs around the world.

The research also reaffirms previous studies that have found that dinosaurs continued to migrate to all parts of the world after the 'super-continent' Pangaea split into land masses that are separated by oceans. "We presume that temporary land bridges formed due to changes in sea levels, temporarily reconnecting the continents," said Alex Dunhill, from the University of Leeds in the UK, who led the study. "Such massive structures - spanning, for example, from Indo-Madagascar to Australia - may be hard to imagine," Dunhill said. "But over the timescales that we are talking about, which is in the order of tens of millions of years, it is perfectly feasible that plate tectonic activity gave rise to the right conditions for such land bridges to form," he said. The researchers used the Paleobiology Database that contains every documented and accessible dinosaur fossil from around the world. Fossil records for the same dinosaur families from different continents were then cross-mapped for different periods of time, showing connections that show how they have migrated. Some regions of the world, such as Europe, have extensive fossil records from a long history of palaeontology digs, while other parts of the world have been largely unexplored. To help account for this disparity in fossil records, which could otherwise skew the findings, the researchers applied a filter to the database records to only count the first time that a dinosaur family connection occurred between two continents. The findings support the idea that, although continental splitting undoubtedly reduced intercontinental migration of dinosaurs, it did not completely inhibit it. The research also showed that all connections between Europe and other continents during the Early Cretaceous period (125-100 million years ago) were out-going. While dinosaur families were leaving Europe, no new families were migrating into Europe, researchers said. While network theory is commonly used in computer science for quantifying internet data, such as friend connections on Facebook, it has only recently been applied to biology research and this is the first study to use it to on dinosaur research.

Comet craters helped create 'seeds of life' on Earth

Large meteorite and comet impacts into the sea may have formed the nurseries from which life on Earth first sparked, a new study has found.

Researchers from the Trinity College Dublin propose that meteorite and comet impacts created structures that provided conditions favourable for life. Water then interacted with impact-heated rock to enable synthesis of complex organic molecules, and the enclosed crater itself was a micro-habitat within which life could flourish.  It has long been suggested that the meteoritic and cometary material that bombarded the early Earth delivered the raw materials - complex organic molecules, such as glycine, beta-alanine, gamma-amino-n-butyric acid, and water - and the energy that was required for synthesis. "Previous studies investigating the origin of life have focused on synthesis in hydrothermal environments," said Edel O'Sullivan, postgraduate researcher at Trinity College Dublin. "Today these are found at mid-ocean ridges - hallmark features of plate tectonics, which likely did not exist on the early Earth," said O'Sullivan.  "By contrast, the findings of this new study suggest that extensive hydrothermal systems operated in an enclosed impact crater at Sudbury, Ontario, Canada," she said. Although no very ancient terrestrial impact structures are preserved, the Sudbury basin provides a unique opportunity to study the sediment that filled the basin as a guide to what the earlier impact craters would have looked like.  The Sudbury has an unusually thick (nearly 2.5 km) basin fill, and much of this is almost black in colour (due to carbon) containing also hydrothermal metal deposits. Representative samples across the basin fill were analysed for their chemistry and for carbon isotopes.  Researchers found that the crater was filled with seawater at an early stage, and remained sub-marine throughout deposition. The water in the basin was isolated from the open ocean for long enough to deposit more than 1.5 km of volcanic rock and sediment.  The lower fill is made up of rocks that formed when the water entered the crater whose floor was covered by hot impact melt. Fuel-coolant reactions deposited volcanic rocks and promoted hydrothermal activity. Above these deposits, reduced carbon starts and the volcanic products become more basaltic. Microbial life within the crater basin was responsible for the build-up of carbon and also for the depletion in vital nutrients, such as sulphate, researchers said. Only after the crater walls collapsed, did the study show replenishment of nutrients from the surrounding sea.  These sub-marine, isolated impact basins, which experienced basaltic volcanism and were equipped with their own hydrothermal systems, thus present a new pathway to synthesis and concentration of the stepping stones to life.