Dakshina Kannada temporarily ban supply of poultry from Kerala

Avian Influenza

The District Commissioner for Dakshina Kannada has passed an order.

TNM Staff

PTI

Owing to the spread of bird flu in Kerala, the Dakshina Kannada district administration banned transportation of poultry from the state temporarily. The Deputy Commissioner of the district, K V Rajendra directed in a notification that the vehicles transporting poultry to Kerala should be disinfected while re-entering the district after offloading. He added that this is being enforced as a precautionary measure since bird flu (H5N8) is being reported in Kerala. He assured that the departments of health and animal husbandry are taking adequate measures and that people don’t have to panic. Rajendra further instructed the management of poultry farms to ensure cleanliness in their premises and asked them to stay vigilant. He also instructed people to inform veterinary officials in case of unnatural deaths among chicken or other birds. Speaking to TNM, the Deputy Commissioner said, “We have imposed this as a precautionary measure. We are trying to create awareness among people to report cases and have provided a helpline number too.” He further added that people may not comprehend the gravity of the issue, hence, veterinarians have also been instructed to regularly visit poultry farms in their areas. “There’s no need to worry. The samples of the six crows that died in Dakshina Kannada, their reports came back negative,” added Rajendra. Six crows died in Karnataka and their samples were sent for avian influenza (bird flu) testing. The districts in Karnataka bordering Kerala, where bird flu cases were first reported in the south, are all on alert.  According to reports, the state Animal Husbandry Department has issued a general alert to all District Collectors. Dakshina Kannada, Mysuru, Madikeri and Udupi districts are on high alert after birds in Alappuzha and Kottayam districts in the neighbouring Kerala were declared to have been affected with the H5N8 strain of bird flu. Reports suggested that migratory birds may have been the source of the flu, official confirmation is awaited. Apart from Kerala, the flu has been reported in Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh. The Union government said that 12 epicentres were identified in four states. The first outbreak of avian influenza in India took place in 2006.   (With PTI inputs)

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Karnataka govt’s 'Cauvery Emporium' products can now be bought online

Handicrafts

Currently 30 products have been listed on Flipkart and more products will be made available soon, on other platforms as well.

TNM Staff

In a bid to reach more customers and promote indigenous handicrafts, the Karnataka State Handicrafts Development Corporation (KSHDC) will sell its products on major e-commerce portals. This announcement was made by newly appointed KSHDC Managing Director and senior IPS officer D Roopa. KSHDC is a Karnataka government undertaking and is owned jointly by the state and Union government. Taking to Twitter, Roopa said that 100 products of Cauvery Emporium, the brand name under which KSHDC products are sold, will be available for purchase online soon. “Cauvery Emporium  products are now in Flipkart. We have listed 30 items. We will list 70 more. This is the first e-market we have ventured into. Soon we will be on other e-platforms too,” she tweeted. Speaking to TNM, Roopa said that while the proposal to place KSHDC products on online platforms was not new, it was long pending. She said that KSHDC is in talks with other major online platforms like Amazon and soon, more of the company’s products will be sold online. She said existing physical stores under the Cauvery Emporium brand will continue. “This idea was there for a long time in the pipeline but now it has become operational,” she said. Soon after taking her position as MD, Roopa had tweeted, “First time I'm handling a company. So, I put myself on probation. I went and spent the whole day in the retail showroom of Cauvery Emporium. Spent time at the cash counter, billing section, addressed staff on problems, and spoke to customers for feedback. A day as a probationer, spent well.” It may be recalled that D Roopa was the Home Secretary until recently and was transferred unceremoniously amidst a controversy over the ‘Safe City’ project tender. 

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Two BJP MLCs resign from panel formed to probe Karnataka Legislative Council ruckus

Politics

The two MLCs, H Vishwanath and SV Sankanur, have said they are dissatisfied with the formation of the committee.

TNM Staff

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Two BJP Members of the Karnataka Legislative Council have resigned from the committee that was set up to probe into the incident that happened in Legislative Council on December 15. H Vishwanath and SV Sankanur resigned from the committee saying that the leaders were not consulted before the formation of the committee. H Vishwanath said that some members of the committee were also a part of the ruckus that had happened on December 15, and so them probing the matter is unfair.  “The entire state was embarrassed by the riots that happened inside the Vidhan Parishad (Legislative Council) last month. We have resigned from the committee. This is an act of showing our dissatisfaction with the way committee was formed and the uproar that happened in the Parishad,” H Vishwanath said to the media on Friday. Vishwanath, along with SV Sankanur, was appointed as the committee member by Pratapachandra Shetty, the chairman of the State Legislative Council. Maritibbe Gowda, member of JD(S) and an MLC, was also the part of the committee. A meeting of the committee was called on Friday but BJP members did not attend the meeting, to oppose composition of the committee. The JD(S) had also opposed the committee. Only members of the Congress party—MLCs BK Hariprasad and RB Thimmapur—reportedly attended the Friday meeting. On December 15, members of Legislative Council had gotten into a brawl over the no-confidence motion being passed against Pratapchandra Shetty, the chairman of the council. Deputy Chairman Dharme Gowda was dragged away from his chair and accused of wrongfully acquiring the seat. Days after the incident, the Deputy Chairman was found dead near railway tracks in Chikkamangaluru. Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla has called for an inquiry into the death.

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ABVP protests outside Bangalore University, seeks probe into exam evaluation scam

Protest

A complaint was filed by the University after Optical Mark Reader (OMR) answer sheets of as many as 804 students were found to be tampered with.

TNM Staff

ABVP

Nearly 400 members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidya Parishad’s (ABVP), the BJP’s youth wing, staged a protest outside the Bangalore University on Friday, seeking a probe into the exam ‘evaluation scam’ that was unearthed by the University. On January 5, the varsity had registered a complaint against a private firm after finding out that it had allegedly tampered with Optical Mark Reader (OMR) answer sheets of as many as 804 students while scanning them. “The employee at the private firm named Charan Babu in a letter to the company has admitted that he has under the pressure of certain influencers from the university indulged in malpractice, yet the university is not taking any action other than filing an FIR,” Harsha Narayan, a member of ABVP, told TNM.  Registrar (Administration) K Jyothi, according to Deccan Herald, demanded an inquiry against the private firm, which has been given the tender since 2018 to scan the scripts and upload the marks of Under-Graduate and Post-Graduate courses. She had also said that the university will conduct an internal inquiry as well. However, the ABVP has said that when a question paper was leaked in 2018, the university had been inactive then as well. Harsha Narayan further alleged that the varsity, like in 2018, will merely register a complaint with the police and not punish the culprits. “We demand that the university take action against the culprits sooner. They should set up a committee and probe the matter,” he added. The ABVP has said that the University's Vice Chancellor, Venugopala, has accepted the ABVP's appeal and has assured that stringent legal action will be taken immediately. The University syndicate, the highest decision-making body at the varsity, met on Tuesday, January 6 and decided to withdraw results of the students involved in the scam. They also decided to approach the Criminal Investigation Department and hand the case over to them. ABVP’s Harsha Narayan also alleged that there was a land scam on the university campus as well. “A private entity took over a part of university land. Of the 1,000-acre land, they have taken over 227 acres of land,” Narayan claimed, further adding that they have demanded the state government’s intervention into the matter. 

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Protestors in K’taka gather against leasing forest land to businesses

Environment

The state government recently extended the lease of 20,000 hectares of forest land spread over four districts to the Mysore Paper Mills.

Soumya Chatterjee

A large group of protesters gathered in Karnataka’s Shivamogga on Thursday, demonstrating against the state government’s decision to extend the lease for 20,000 hectares of forest land to private companies through the now-defunct Mysore Paper Mills (MPM). These 20,000 hectares of forest land are spread across four districts-- Shivamogga, Chikkamagaluru, Chitradurga and Davangere districts.  The protesters consisted of environmentalists, farmers and civil society members under the umbrella of Nammorige Acacia Beda Horata Samiti. They had initially planned to gather at the Chief Conservator of Forest’s office. Their plan was foiled by police, who were present in large numbers at the site, preventing the protestors from entering the building. The protestors however, continued with their demonstration behind the barricades in the vicinity. While the MPM is a state government company (set up by the erstwhile Mysore kingdom), activists have raised concerns about how the government is looking to involve private companies in managing the forest lands through subcontracting.  A majority of the protesters demanded that the government return the land to the forest department, as the company is not only environmentally destructive but is also making losses. The MPM grows acacia trees in the land, which they use to source the wood needed to make paper. A majority of its employees have availed of the voluntary retirement scheme when the company stopped its day-to-day functioning in 2015. The previous lease of 40 years to MPM had expired in August 2020, but recently the government extended the lease to the company till 2026.  For years, the MPM has earned the ire of local residents in the region for creating a monoculture of acacia plantations and destroying the natural biodiversity. Some environmentalists had also gone to the Karnataka High Court to stop the company’s functioning on environmental grounds.  Akhilesh Chipli, a conservationist who took part in the protests, claimed that the High Court in its order had said at the time that the lease should not be extended. “The MPM and the government was told it can’t go on damaging the environment and should do some balancing act by replanting natural local species. So even before the lease ended, we had met all leading politicians both in the government and the Opposition. So our agenda is clear, the government has to cancel this lease extension and return the forest land to the forest department,” he said. 

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Protestors in K’taka gather against leasing forest land to businesses

Environment

The state government recently extended the lease of 20,000 hectares of forest land spread over four districts to the Mysore Paper Mills.

Soumya Chatterjee

A large group of protesters gathered in Karnataka’s Shivamogga on Thursday, demonstrating against the state government’s decision to extend the lease for 20,000 hectares of forest land to private companies through the now-defunct Mysore Paper Mills (MPM). These 20,000 hectares of forest land are spread across four districts-- Shivamogga, Chikkamagaluru, Chitradurga and Davangere districts.  The protesters consisted of environmentalists, farmers and civil society members under the umbrella of Nammorige Acacia Beda Horata Samiti. They had initially planned to gather at the Chief Conservator of Forest’s office. Their plan was foiled by police, who were present in large numbers at the site, preventing the protestors from entering the building. The protestors however, continued with their demonstration behind the barricades in the vicinity. While the MPM is a state government company (set up by the erstwhile Mysore kingdom), activists have raised concerns about how the government is looking to involve private companies in managing the forest lands through subcontracting.  A majority of the protesters demanded that the government return the land to the forest department, as the company is not only environmentally destructive but is also making losses. The MPM grows acacia trees in the land, which they use to source the wood needed to make paper. A majority of its employees have availed of the voluntary retirement scheme when the company stopped its day-to-day functioning in 2015. The previous lease of 40 years to MPM had expired in August 2020, but recently the government extended the lease to the company till 2026.  For years, the MPM has earned the ire of local residents in the region for creating a monoculture of acacia plantations and destroying the natural biodiversity. Some environmentalists had also gone to the Karnataka High Court to stop the company’s functioning on environmental grounds.  Akhilesh Chipli, a conservationist who took part in the protests, claimed that the High Court in its order had said at the time that the lease should not be extended. “The MPM and the government was told it can’t go on damaging the environment and should do some balancing act by replanting natural local species. So even before the lease ended, we had met all leading politicians both in the government and the Opposition. So our agenda is clear, the government has to cancel this lease extension and return the forest land to the forest department,” he said. 

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Kannada actor Radhika Kumaraswamy appears before Bengaluru police in cheating case

Crime

The actor was summoned after officials found monetary transactions worth Rs 75 lakh between Radhika and an accused in a cheating case.

TNM Staff

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Sandalwood actor Radhika Kumaraswamy on Friday appeared before the Central Crime Branch in Bengaluru after investigation officials found monetary transactions between the actor and the prime accused in a cheating case. In December last year, the CCB had arrested 52-year-old Yuvaraj alias Swamy for allegedly posing as a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker and cheating government job aspirants of several lakh rupees. Radhika Kumaraswamy was summoned by the CCB, which found monetary transactions worth Rs 75 lakh between her and Yuvaraj.  The CCB claimed that the money had been transferred by Yuvaraj to Radhika. In a press conference held on Wednesday, the actor said that she had known Yuvaraj for the last 17 years and that he had approached her to act in the lead role in a period drama. Radhika said that Yuvaraj was also her family's astrologer and that his predictions about her life, career and also her father's death, had come true. She said that she had deeply trusted Yuvaraj and was shocked when she learned of his arrest last year. On December 16, 2020, the CCB said that it had seized 100 cheques worth Rs 91 crore from Yuvaraj's residence after his arrest.  Read: Bengaluru man arrested for posing as RSS worker to dupe job aspirants "Yuvaraj owns a production company and he had approached me to act in a role for a historical movie. Since I have known him for 17 years, I immediately agreed to it. He said that he would send me an advance of Rs 15 lakh, which he transferred from his account to me," Radhika Kumaraswamy said. When asked about the rest of the money, she said that Rs 60 lakh was transferred to her allegedly from Yuvaraj's brother-in-law's account.  The money was transferred to Radhika Kumaraswamy's account between February and March 2020. The actor said that due to the pandemic and the lockdown, she had not questioned Yuvaraj regarding the shooting of the film. "Yuvaraj had predicted my father's death several years ago. He also predicted what would happen in my life, career and other things that have come true. We have been in contact ever since my father's death. It was because of this trust that I agreed to taking up the role in his film," she said.  CCB sleuths claimed that Radhika Kumaraswamy and Yuvaraj had not signed any written agreement for her remuneration for the alleged film that the accused was to produce. "In many of my movies, I accept payment because of the trust I place with the producers. I have not signed agreements in the past. Here too, I did not sign an agreement because I trusted him. My accountant asked me to have an agreement drawn up this time. I called him multiple times but I did not receive a response. I was shocked when he was arrested, that such a respected person could cheat so many people. It was hard for me to believe," she added. 

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