Death toll touched 5 in Dharwad building collapse

Agencies
March 20, 2019

Dharwad, Mar 20: The death toll in the buildingcollapse at Dharwad in north Karnataka mounted to fiveWednesday as rescuers pulled out two more bodies from the debris and one person succumbed to injuries at hospital, police said.

Rescuers had pulled out 55 people from the rubble of the four-storeyed under construction building, which collapsedTuesday evening at Kumareshwaranagar in the heart of Dharwad,about 400 km from here.

"Five people have lost their lives while 55 people have been rescued. We fear that some 15 to 20 people are still trapped inside the rubble," Hubballi-Dharwad commissioner of police M N Nagaraj told PTI.

He said no arrests have been made.

"We have registered a case. Arrests will also follow but our focus at present is on the rescue operations," Nagarajadded.

Police said rescue operations had been intensified to extricate people believed to be still trapped beneaththe debris.

In addition to 10 ambulances and five fire tenders deployed for relief and rescue operations, three teams of the National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) have been engaged, two from Ghaziabad and one from Bengaluru.

"Two more teams of #NDRF are being airlifted from Ghaziabad in addition to one team which was moved from Bangalore in connection with Dharwad building collapse," the NDRF tweeted earlier in the day.

About 150 police, fire and emergency personnel too have joined the rescue operations.

Former Karnataka minister and Congress leader from the region Vinay Kulkarni had said Tuesday that one of the partners in the building was his relative and that whoever wasinvolved should face action.

An eye-witness had alleged that the building did not have the capacity to bear four storeys whereas an extra floorwas being added.

"The builders had used substandard materials," he told reporters Tuesday.

Most of those trapped were migrant labourers from north India who were engaged in laying tiles.

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News Network
June 28,2020

Bengaluru,  Jun 28: Sixteen deaths due to COVID-19 and 1,267 new cases of COVID-19 were reported in Karnataka, according to information provided by the State Health Department.

The total number of COVID-19 cases in Karnataka has reached 13,190, including 783 cases from Bengaluru Urban. While 7,507 patients have been discharged after treatment, 207 deaths have been reported, said the health department.

With 19,906 new cases, the highest single-day spike so far, India's COVID-19 count touched 5,28,859 including 2,03,051 active cases, 3,09,713 cured/discharged/migrated, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. 410 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours and the cumulative toll reached 16,095 deaths. 

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News Network
June 17,2020

Bengaluru, Jun 17: Amid rising COVID cases in the past two weeks, the Karnataka government is planning to increase testing capacity to 25,000 samples a day, said a minister.

"Due to increase in cases in the last two weeks, the government is trying to scale up testing to 15,000 to 25,000 samples per day," said Medical Education Minister K. Sudhakar.

He said people living in crowded places, sanitation workers, street vendors, healthcare workers, police and other frontline staff would be extensively tested.

"It has also been decided to mandatorily test all those who have symptoms of Influenza Like Illness (ILI) and Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI)," he said.

Similarly, all people over 50 with ILI symptoms will be tested.

The health department will also randomly test samples in old containment zones to make sure that the infection is not recurring.

Currently, there are 72 Covid testing labs in the southern state, 41 government operated and 31 private labs.

However, for a few days, the number of Covid tests in the state have plummeted.

On Monday, the health department has tested only 5,362 samples across the state.

Likewise, on Tuesday, only 7,936 samples were tested, diverging from earlier weeks when around 10,000 cases were tested on an average.

In all, 4.57 lakh samples have been tested so far, of which 4.39 lakh have tested negative.

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News Network
July 28,2020

Bengaluru, Jul 28: Several state Congress leaders, including its President D K Shivakumar, among others, were detained by police as they tried to march towards Raj Bhavan here against the alleged attempts by BJP to topple the party's government in Rajasthan.

Shivakumar, along with Leader of the Opposition Siddaramaiah, state Congress Working President Eshwar Khandre, Salim Ahmed among others were stopped by the police midway as they marched from KPCC office towards Raj Bhavan.

Congress leaders then staged a dharna at the place where they were stopped. Addressing the gathering, Shivakumar accused the BJP of trying to "murder" democracy by destabilizing and removing elected governments.

"We wanted to protest against it and submit a memorandum to the President through the Governor," but the Karnataka government by using police was not letting them proceed towards Raj Bhavan, he said. "Despite our being a peaceful protest, the police stopped us," he said.

Siddaramaiah, echoing similar views, said peaceful protests against injustice was the right of every citizen. Alleging that the BJP was attempting to destabilise and remove the elected government in Rajasthan as it did in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh, he said the Governor's office there (Rajasthan) was being 'misused'.

The Governor was working like an agent of the central government, he charged. He said, despite repeated appeals by the Rajasthan cabinet, the Governor there had not convened the assembly session, for the floor test to take place and for Congress to prove its majority. Police subsequently detained Shivakumar and some other Congress leaders and took them to a nearby police station.

They were later released. Meanwhile, as the Congress' protest amid Covid19 pandemic did not follow social distancing norms, Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar hit out at that party's leaders. In a tweet Sudhakar said, for Congress leaders getting publicity was more important than social concerns.

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