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Mangaluru, Jan 1: Led by two local MLAs belonging to Bharatiya Janata Party, dozens of people today forcibly stopped toll fee collection at Talapady toll gate on the outskirts of the city allowing vehicles plying between Karnataka and Kerala on the national highway 66 to travel without paying any fee for some time.

Mangaluru City South MLA D Vedavyasa Kamath and Mangaluru City North MLA Y Bharat Shetty, who led the workers, said that the Navayuga Udupi Tollway Pvt. Ltd. (NUTPL), the concessionaire of the about 90-km-long highway widening project between Talapady and Kundapura in Karnataka, had failed to complete the project since over a decade.

The service roads and two flyovers under the project remained uncompleted. Hence motorists were facing a hardship. Notwithstanding Nalin Kumar Kateel, Dakshina Kannada MP, arranging ₹56 crore loan to the NUTPL through Axis Bank to complete the prominent Pumpwell flyover in the city, the company had failed to complete it.

The MLAs said that they stopped the toll collection as a symbolic protest to bring pressure on the company to complete the project within this month.

The BJP workers who gathered near the toll gate around 7.30 a.m. forcibly removed the barricades and made the vehicles ply without paying the fee. The workers of the company managing the toll booth did not resist.

The BJP workers said that vehicles would ply without paying toll till about 6 p.m. If the company resumed the collection during the day on Wednesday, the party workers would again forcibly stop it on Thursday, they said.

Shivaprasad Rai, in-charge of toll collection of the company at Talapady, Hejmady and Sasthana on the same highway told The Hindu that the NUTPL collected about ₹7 lakh as toll fee daily at Talapady from over 12,000 vehicles. The loss on Wednesday could be about ₹4 lakh.

The project is being implemented under build, operate and transfer basis.

New Delhi: BJP leader Yogish Gowda, who was a member of the Dharwad Zilla Panchayath in Karnataka, was killed because of "political reasons", the CBI has alleged in its charge sheet filed against eight accused before a Dharwad court, officials said on Thursday.

Mr Gowda was killed on June 15, 2016 in front of a gym in Dharwad.

The charge sheet was filed before the Judicial Magistrate First Class Court in Dharwad against Santosh Savadatti, Dinesh M, Sunil KS, Harshith, Aswath S, Nazeer Ahamad, Shanawaz and Nutan K. All but one are in judicial custody.

"The accused allegedly came to Dharwad on two occasions in June 2016 and with the support of the other accused, allegedly planned the murder of Yogish Gowda. These accused fled after the crime," CBI spokesperson RK Gaur said.

The agency has alleged that the killing had "political reasons" behind it and was a result of political rivalry, the officials said.

The agency had taken over the case on September 24, 2019, nearly three years after the murder, on the request of the BJP government in Karnataka and a referral from the centre.

The case was earlier probed by the Karnataka Police which had charged six people for allegedly planning and executing the killing.

The CBI has arrested eight accused in the case of which seven are in judicial custody, they said.

"Further investigation into the role of the other accused and larger conspiracy in this case is continuing on a day-to-day basis," Mr Gaur said.

BJP leader murder caseYogish GowdaCentral Bureau of Investigation (CBI)