BJP supremo Amit Shah to visit Mangaluru on Oct 4

Belagavi, Apr 19: Veteran writer and Translator Chandrakanth Kusnoor passed away in his house on Sunday due to age-related disease.

He was 90.

He was survived by wife, four sons and one daughter.

According to family sources, the last rites were held in the wee hours of Sunday.

Mr Kushnoor, a multi-faceted personality, maybe the one of the few who had won the Karnataka Nataka Academy, Karnataka Lalitha Kala Academy and Karnataka Sahitya Academy awards for his works as writer, translator, novelist, poet, playwright, painter, art critic and institution builder.

He had translated many books from Kannada (late U R Ananthmurthy and Srikrishna Alanahalli) into Hindi, and other books into Marathi and Urdu.

He was among the pioneering abstract writers in Kannada. His plays like Dindi, Vidushaka, Ratto Ratto Rayara Magale and Ani Bantu Ondu Ani, were widely performed.

His biographical novel Gohar Jan chronicles the growth of professional theatre music tradition.

He had converted his home in Channamma Nagar into a mini art gallery and used to paint till recently. He hailed from Kalaburagi where he worked as a college professor for some years. He had settled in Belagavi after his retirement as the Deputy Director of Kannada and culture.

He had won the Karnataka Rajyotsava Award.

Vijayapura, June 16: Even as a video of a man wearing a burqa who is being thrashed by locals is going viral on social media, netizens targeted Bharatiya Janata Party for their activist resorting to heinous acts. 

The man who was caught in burqa has been identified as Siddu Paragond, an activist of Snagh Parivar hailing from Sindgi town in Karnataka’s Vijayapura district. 

The bizarre incident took place in Sindgi on June 11 outside a bank.

“While people including women were standing in a queue outside the bank, the person in burqa was acting in a suspicious manner. The person was trying to get too close to women which was making them feel awkward,” local residents said.

“Getting suspicious, some locals tried to interact and their suspicion rose with the strange behaviour of the person. Suddenly some men took the person away from the bank and checked only to find that it was a man in burqa. The men thrashed him and handed him over to police,” the sources said.

Confirming this, Superintendent of Police Anupam Agrawal said that the Siddu Paragond has been arrested and remanded to judicial custody. He, however, made it clear that no suspicious objects were found on Siddu. “We are trying to find out the motive for his act,” the SP said.

Bengaluru, Jul 18: Bringing a major change in the  administration of Bengaluru, which has emerged as a Covid-19 hotspot, the state government on Saturday transferred B H Anil Kumar out of the BBMP and brought N Manjunath Prasad to take his place. 

Manjunath Prasad, who headed the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) before being replaced by Kumar, will take over with immediate effect. The government has also placed him in concurrent charge of the Revenue Department as well as the Disaster Management, Bhoomi and UPOR.

Kumar, an Additional Chief Secretary, has been put in a place where earlier a secretary was posted. He now heads the Department of Public Enterprises. The posting would have brought him two spots down had it not been for the government upgrading it to the level of additional chief secretary. 

Anil Kumar, who was earlier praised for his work to contain the coronavirus pandemic, had faced criticism by the High Court of Karnataka for the BBMP's failure to help people in containment zones as well as other issues on the spread of the pandemic. 

Sources in the government said, pressure has been building up against Anil Kumar over the last two months after most of the Bengaluru MLAs complained to the chief minister's office.

"No MLA backed him. Everyone had a problem," a source said. 

Things came to the head with regard to a Rs 436 crore project given to KRIDL. "The issue reached the chief minister's office as all the MLAs took an issue with the way the project was awarded," a source said. 

Another source said that Kumar came under fire after a central team flagged the issue of failing Covid-19 surveillance measures in Bengaluru. The central team's criticism, it is widely believed in the government, came as the last straw.