Ullal is hub of ganja mafia and communal gangs; govt doing nothing: SDPI

Bengaluru, Mar 4: The Karnataka High Court has issued a notice to the state government in connection with the denial of retirement benefits to a retired deputy commissioner of commercial taxes who had fought against the illegal iron ore lobby.

Justice G Narendra also directed the state to respond to the notice before March 9, stating the reasons for withholding the officer’s retirement benefits.

Advocate Ramananda, appearing for the retired officer Josephat Andrews, explained that the single-judge bench also warned the government of stringent action.

Petitioner Josephat Andrews said his retirement benefits amounting to Rs 25.88 lakh were being withheld since 2014.

In 2009, Andrews detected a huge scam involving Vijaya Leasing, a company associated with former minister Gali Janardhan Reddy. Immediately he wrote to his higher officials explaining to them how the department was owed Rs 1,400 crore in taxes by the company. Immediately after that, Andrews was transferred to Bengaluru.

The media exposed the scam in 2012. Thereafter, to harass the officer, Andrews was served notice for allegedly not conducting an inspection of M/s Vijaya Leasing, which was controlled by the family of then tourism minister Gali Janardhana Reddy, on July 11, 2012.  He was discharged by a full departmental enquiry.

The petitioner was issued a second show cause notice on Jan 29, 2014 on the same charges. Before his retirement, he was docked two increments, denied promotional benefits and his pension was reduced without following due process.

He was served yet another notice with charges that he did not inspect goods vehicles, and an order was passed on April 30, 2019 reducing his pension by 5 per cent, an unprecedented punitive action.

This order was quashed by the Karnataka Administrative Tribunal (KAT), which also ordered payment of retirement benefits to Andrews within five months. However, the benefits were not released to him.  

“Rule 214 of the Karnataka Civil Services Rules (KCSR) make it clear that no enquiry can be held four years after an officer’s retirement.  Belying all statutory rules and precedents of the Supreme Court, Josephat Andrews’ retirement benefits were withheld for five years. Andrews therefore approached the High Court,” advocate Ramananda explained.

Josephat Andrews recalled to Deccan Chronicle that although mining activity was in full swing in 2008, the commercial tax department maintained that it had nothing to do with mining. “I travelled to Gujarat, Maharashtra and Bellary to investigate. I found tax evasion of thousands of crores. When I visited M/s the Vijaya Leasing facility – it was operating from an old oil mill premises–within 20 minutes I got calls from Ali, a person claiming to be the personal assistant of Gali Janardhan Reddy. He told me to get out of the premises as it belonged to his boss. Then calls came from minister Sreeramulu and MLA Nagendra. 

Within minutes 200-300 rowdies gathered around the building and my superior asked me to come back. Instead of filing a police complaint and forming a special team to deal with the situation, the department transferred me to Bengaluru,” he explained.

Talking about the High Court directive, Josephat Andrews said, “I have suffered a lot. Instead of getting a reward for increasing revenues by Rs 2,000 crore, I was punished.”

Bengaluru, Mar 27: A software engineer has been arrested for giving a "call" to the people to sneeze in the open and spread coronavirus, police said on Friday.
The person identified as Mujeeb Mohammad had made this call in a Facebook post.
"Let's join hands, go out and sneeze with open mouth in public. Spread the virus," he wrote.

"The person who put this post saying people should go out and sneeze and spread the virus has been detained. His name is Mujeeb. He works in a software company," Bengaluru Joint Commissioner of Police Sandeep Patil said in a statement.

40 migrant labourers working in Mumbai caught while trying to flee to UP in truck, booked
Meanwhile, Infosys tweeted: "We are deeply concerned with an inappropriate post being attributed to an Infosys employee. We strongly reaffirm our commitment to responsible social-sharing.

The company also said, "Our preliminary enquiry, and discussions with our employees suggest that this could be a case of a mistaken identity."
"However, given the seriousness with which we take such matters, we are investigating this further and will also assist with any independent investigation. The company would take appropriate action based on its investigation," it added

Pune/Bengaluru, Mar 25: e-Zest Solutions and Neurosynaptic Communications today announced the ReMeDi SCAN-CORONA platform, an innovative technology solution to help control the Novel COVID-19 pandemic.
As countries worldwide grapple to contain the spread and flatten the curve while treating the ones infected, the need of the hour is to deploy widespread screening and testing procedures to identify and isolate those showing symptoms.
The ReMeDi® SCAN-CORONA platform has a three-pronged approach to controlling the pandemic that makes the task of screening, testing, tracking and reporting extremely easy and manageable at a large scale.
"Mass screening and testing is the need of the hour. With the scarcity of healthcare professionals, there is a need of technology enabled platforms to do this at a large scale with minimal to no human intervention. The ReMeDi SCAN-CORONA brings together remote healthcare expertise and the power of emerging technology such as AI & ML, and promises to reduce the load on the healthcare system, so that timely care reaches the right set of people as fast as possible," said Shree Shingane - Founder and Managing Director, e-Zest Solutions GmbH.
The solution features a Corona-Screen Kit - a portable, lightweight kit that includes basic screening tools that seamlessly connect and feed data into a Patient Health Record (PHR) system without any manual intervention.
It also features a geo-tagging powered Screening app that, by importing and analyzing data from the screening tools as well as travel and medical history. The input from a third-party COVID-19 rapid testing kit further enhances the accuracy of the outcome.
"ReMeDi SCAN-CORONA helps front-line health workers to quickly assess the essential risk factors for a person digitally. It has the unique ability to track the progression of symptoms with time. The tele-consultation facility allows individuals to obtain counselling as well as consult doctors independent of location, to access timely information and guidance. We are proud to present this solution in collaboration with e-Zest," said Sameer Sawarkar CEO - Neurosynaptic.
The beauty of this solution is that while it can bring a big relief for COVID-19 screening efforts, it is equally advantageous to heavily burdened Healthcare Providers in remotely treating the non-corona health requirements as well.
The team acknowledges the valuable contribution in terms of clinical inputs for application development, from Dr Nandakumar, a renowned public health expert.
"e-Zest vision is to leverage Healthcare technologies to impact human life positively. We are happy to be part of this collaboration & look forward to it's contribution to combat the pandemic challenge globally," said Devendra Deshmukh, e-Zest CEO.
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