BJP will oppose Karnataka government celebrating Tipu Jayanti: Yeddyurappa

Bengaluru, Jan 24: The JD(S) is looking to leverage anti-Citizen (Amendment) Act (CAA), National Register of Citizens (NRC) and National Population Register (NPR) sentiment sweeping the country to revive itself and will hold protests in Bengaluru and New Delhi.

The Bengaluru protest is scheduled for Friday. At a meeting of party workers in Bengaluru on Thursday, party patriarch HD Deve Gowda and former chief minister HD Kumaraswamy urged the rank and file to participate in the rally to send out a loud and clear message to the BJP.

"The BJP has set out to make Muslims second-grade citizens. India has 40 crore Muslims, can these communal forces eliminate them all?" Gowda said in his address. "We should have the guts to launch a massive protest at Jantar Mantar. We should be prepared to go to jail in the fight against [Prime Minister] Narendra Modi and [Union home minister] Amit Shah."

Gowda said he will lead the rally in Delhi and urged secular parties to unite to take on the BJP. "It is important that regional parties, which share a secular ideology, unite on a common agenda and fight the BJP. Bihar, Kerala and Odisha have said they will not implement CAA. The sentiment is likely to spread to other states," Gowda said.

Kumaraswamy said not only Muslims but many other communities will also bear the brunt of BJP’s "divisive politics". "This pair of Hakka-Bukka [Modi and Shah] is not targeting Muslims alone," he said. "For them, all communities other than upper caste Hindus are inferior Shudras. They will treat even Lingayats, Vokkaligas and Dalits with the same contempt."

The former CM made a special appeal to Lingayats, who generally back the BJP, to stop supporting the saffron party’s caste-oriented politics. "You had appreciated my farm loan waiver scheme and promised support in the elections. But, the results were contrary to that," he said.

The JD(S) passed three resolutions including one to condemn the Centre for enacting CAA. The others were to protest against the Centre’s indifference to the floods in the state and the failed economic policy of the Centre.

Bengaluru, Jan 28: Brace for hefty traffic penalties as the state government is all set to reverse a notification on revised fines which came into effect last September following pushback from road users and opposition parties.

The Karnataka government will implement traffic penalties as stipulated in the amended Motor Vehicles Act, 2019, in a phased manner following a diktat from the Centre. The government did not specify the timeline for it.

“At a recent meeting of transport ministers from various states, the Union government explained why it wanted to implement these huge fines. We found it convincing and will implement it in its original form,” said transport minister Laxman Savadi on Monday.

Savadi said India’s image globally has taken a beating due to the high number of road deaths and the Centre wants to change it at any cost. However, he said the entire set of hefty fines would not be reintroduced all at once.

BJP govt revised rates in Sept

The BJP government last September had revised fines on compoundable offences and those which are fined on the spot by traffic cops by 50%- 80%, barring drunken driving and racing.

As per the revised rates, helmetless riding attracted a penalty of Rs 500 against Rs 1,000 notified by the Centre. Driving without a licence attracted a fine of Rs 1,000 for

two- and three-wheelers and Rs 2,000 for light motor vehicles as against the earlier Rs 5,000 for all types of vehicles.

The central government recently told states and Union Territories they should enforce fines as per the amended Act and they cannot be rolled back. The road transport and highways ministry said fines cannot be reduced below the minimum amount fixed by law, unless the President gives his assent.