ABVP protesters defy police warning; several injured in lathicharge

Bengaluru, Aug 5: Touted as a first of its kind in the nation, a mobile Covid-19 lab was inaugurated on Wednesday by the Karnataka Medical Education Minister Dr K Sudhakar.

The lab, approved by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) can do 9,000 RT-PCR (reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction) tests per month, an official press release said here. "This is a unique lab having all safety features and capable of producing 100% accurate results within four hours," Dr Sudhakar was quoted as saying in the press release.

The Indian Institute of Science (IISC) had developed the lab and handed it over to the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS).

The mobile lab can also be used for molecular diagnostic-testing and can be deployed in coronavirus hot spots quickly, the release said adding, apart from Covid-19, the lab can be utilised for testing H1N1, HCV, TB, HPV and HIV among others.

Bengaluru, Jul 28: Several state Congress leaders, including its President D K Shivakumar, among others, were detained by police as they tried to march towards Raj Bhavan here against the alleged attempts by BJP to topple the party's government in Rajasthan.

Shivakumar, along with Leader of the Opposition Siddaramaiah, state Congress Working President Eshwar Khandre, Salim Ahmed among others were stopped by the police midway as they marched from KPCC office towards Raj Bhavan.

Congress leaders then staged a dharna at the place where they were stopped. Addressing the gathering, Shivakumar accused the BJP of trying to "murder" democracy by destabilizing and removing elected governments.

"We wanted to protest against it and submit a memorandum to the President through the Governor," but the Karnataka government by using police was not letting them proceed towards Raj Bhavan, he said. "Despite our being a peaceful protest, the police stopped us," he said.

Siddaramaiah, echoing similar views, said peaceful protests against injustice was the right of every citizen. Alleging that the BJP was attempting to destabilise and remove the elected government in Rajasthan as it did in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh, he said the Governor's office there (Rajasthan) was being 'misused'.

The Governor was working like an agent of the central government, he charged. He said, despite repeated appeals by the Rajasthan cabinet, the Governor there had not convened the assembly session, for the floor test to take place and for Congress to prove its majority. Police subsequently detained Shivakumar and some other Congress leaders and took them to a nearby police station.

They were later released. Meanwhile, as the Congress' protest amid Covid19 pandemic did not follow social distancing norms, Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar hit out at that party's leaders. In a tweet Sudhakar said, for Congress leaders getting publicity was more important than social concerns.