7.5 lakh Muslims, Christians converted to Hinduism in 10 years: Togadia

Hubballi/Vijayapura, Feb 26: A 40-year-old resident of Talikoti town in Vijayapura was arrested on Tuesday and charged with sedition for allegedly saying 'I Love Pak Army' on a social media page and sharing a video of a song, 'Pakistan Zindabad'.

Police said they registered an FIR against Meru alias Merusab Hasansab Byagwat on a complaint filed by a contractor, Ashok Rathod of Nebgiri Tanda.

Byagwat has been booked under IPC sections pertaining to sedition (124A), promoting enmity between communities and making assertions prejudicial to national integration (153 A & B), among others.

In his complaint, Rathod said Meru had posted the video on his social media account on February 22. Rathod said he took a screenshot of the video and made some inquiries before approaching police.

Police said Meru would be produced in court soon.

Police said they are keeping a watch on pro-Pakistan activities. On Monday, slogans praising Pakistan surfaced on the walls of a government primary school in Budarsinghi. In the third week of February, three Kashmiri students shot a video hailing Pakistan and circulated it on social media in Hubballi.

Bengaluru, May 3: Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa requested his Maharashtra counterpart Uddhav Thackeray to release six TMC water from his state's reservoirs to rivers in Karnataka to meet acute drinking water shortage in North Karnataka.

Yediyurappa pointed out that the North Karnataka districts, namely Belagavi, Vijayapura, Bagalkot, Kalaburagi, Yadagiri and Raichur are facing acute shortage of drinking water due to onset of summer during early days of March this year.

"I request you to kindly direct the concerned authorities to release 3 TMC of water from Warna/Koyna reservoirs to Krishna river and 3 TMC of water from Ujjaini reservoir to Bhima river on humanitarian grounds for drinking purpose," Yediyurappa said in his letter.

He reminded Thackeray that even in the past the Maharashtra government had released water from its reservoirs to meet the drinking water needs of both human beings and livestock in drought-affected areas of Karnataka.

Bengaluru, Apr 28: Karnataka has found that the rapid antibody test kits for COVID-19 that the Centre supplied to the state have only 47% sensitivity. The state will be returning the kits to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

Karnataka had received 11,400 rapid antibody test kits from the ICMR a few days back, out of which it had sent around 200 of them to NIMHANS for validation.

After the ICMR, on Monday, sent a circular to all states to return the test kits to the suppliers, Dr CN Manjunath, Director, Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research, and nodal officer for lab testing in the state's COVID-19 task force, said, "We have cancelled the orders we placed to Guangzhou Wondfo Biotech and Zhuhai Livzon Diagnostics for one lakh rapid antibody test kits. Since the ICMR supplied us with 11,400 kits out of the 6.5 lakh kits it procured, we will be returning the kits to them."

Manjunath told said that the validation at NIMHANS revealed the kits to have only 47% sensitivity. Sensitivity is the ability of a test to identify the true-positives in a population, i.e., the actual number of people who've been infected with the disease. With the rapid antibody testing kits being shelved, the state's plan to randomly test high risk groups has taken a backseat. 

So far, the state has tested 43,791 samples. 

Karnataka now has 22 testing facilities -- 14 government and seven private labs. Many private labs have not tested any samples so far because of the lack of test kits (the state has made it clear that it will not provide test kits to private labs). So, getting an ICMR approval for testing has become a moot point.p

Agreeing to the setback the state's plans of ramping up testing has taken, Manjunath said, "It is true that RT-PCR test kits are in shortage. Even Pune's Mylabs had a shortage in supplying test kits. But we are relying on institutes like Kidwai, Narayana Health and Biocon's Syngene that have received approval for testing. They're big institutes and we hope that they will test a large number of samples."

On reports that the Centre has RT-PCR test kits that will last for only a week, he said, "We have test kits that will last for eight to 10 days. We have ordered for more. We are hoping to receive them before the current kits run out."