I am not money bag of JD(S), says BM Farooq who owns assets worth Rs 778 crore

Bengaluru, Jun 11: Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa on Thursday allowed the Opposition Congress party's newly elected state president DK Shivakumar to have a formal swearing-in function.

He told media, “I have spoken to Shivakumar and informed him to conduct the event after taking precautionary measures against the spread of the COVID-19 disease”.

The move came after the state government received flak from the main Opposition Congress leaders, for refusing to permit the newly elected State Congress president to have a formal swearing-in function take reigns from his predecessor Dinesh Gundu Rao.

Jan 28: Hindu temple processions with an elephant adorned in ornaments carrying the idol, with percussionists and devotees walking side by side, are no new sight in Kerala. However, a similar procession in Kerala's cultural capital, Thrissur, turned heads. Hundreds of Muslims were seen holding hands and clearing traffic to help the procession move smoothly.

Muslims made way for the passage of a Hindu temple procession during their protest against Citizenship Amendment Act(ACT) in Thrissur on Saturday, January 25.

Various Muslim organisations had organised a mass protest in the Swaraj ground in the town. On the same day, the local Bhaktapriyam temple's procession was also taking place. Stuck in a dilemma, the temple authorities approached the police and the Muslim organisations to find a solution. The Muslim organisations then promised to help proceed the temple procession without any obstacles.

Nearly a thousand people who had turned up for the protest volunteered to clear traffic and control the crowd so that the temple procession could smoothly pass through the town.

A video of the procession was shared on Facebook by the Thrissur City Police on Saturday, which showed Muslims holding hands on either side of the procession to make way.

"Humanity is bigger than religion. That's the lesson the residents of Thrissur are giving to the country. Thrissur is truly the cultural capital of Kerala," read the caption of the post in Malayalam. The video soon went viral and was viewed by over 36k views.

The Karnataka BJP, which faced action on Twitter earlier this month over incendiary tweets, this time has passed the blame of Sangh Parivar sponsored Delhi violence to the victims.

In an insensitive tweet on Friday, it dubbed the protests against the notorious Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) as "fake" and added that the violence that followed was "the most well-planned assault on the Idea of India," in an apparent attempt to portray the victims as villains.

The handle, notorious for tweets targeting Muslims, blamed the clashes that erupted in Delhi between people demonstrating for and against the CAA on "so called 'Peacefuls'" - a known right-wing slur for Muslims.

ZERO - Number of Indians who lost their Citizenship due to the #CAA.

40+ - Number of Indians who lost their lives due to the #CAARiots.

The fake protests against CAA and subsequent riots by the so called Peacefuls are the most well planned assault on the "Idea of India."

— BJP Karnataka (@BJP4Karnataka) February 28, 2020

Many people on social media called out the tweet for misleading people and covering up the role of Delhi BJP leader Kapil Mishra's provocative speech for triggering the violence or the failure of the Delhi Police, which reports to the former BJP chief and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, in controlling the riots.

Earlier this month, the Karnataka BJP had tweeted a video of Muslim women standing in queue to vote in the Delhi elections, showing their voter ID cards, with the snarky caption: "Keep the documents safe, you will need to show them again during NPR (National Population Register) exercise."

Soon after, the party unit's Twitter handle was blocked by the social media platform for 24 hours after many accused it of encouraging Islamophobia.

NPR has been widely criticised by opposition parties as a precursor to the government's planned NRC or National Register of Citizens which intends to make Indians prove their citizenship with documents that many poor or illiterate do not possess.

Many fear that combined with the already imposed CAA - which promises citizenship to only non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh - the NRC can be used to make millions of Muslims stateless.

The government has denied the allegation and said the CAA only intends to help those who have faced religious persecution. In recent weeks, it has gone back on its rhetoric on the NRC which was announced by Amit Shah in parliament as "it will certainly happen".

The CAA, which was cleared by parliament in December, has triggered deadly protests in the country which left at least 25 dead till Sunday. Since then, at least 42 more people have been killed as large-scale violence erupted in northeast Delhi and hundreds of homes and shops have been burned to the ground.