Mangaluru, Nov 29: A Gram Panchayat member and his wife were assaulted by a group of persons at Meramajalu village under Bantwal taluk in the wee hours on Friday.
Police said local Gram Panchayat member Yogish Prabhu and his wife Shobha have sustained injuries during the attack. The attack was carried out by a group of three unidentified men.
Bengaluru, Jun 6: Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa on Saturday said hotels and restaurants would be allowed to re-open, but the precautionary measures laid down by the Centre against coronavirus were mandatory.
The Chief Minister on Friday held a meeting with the tourism and transport department, also stakeholders, regarding revival of tourism in the state.
Hotels associations and transport companies have said they would follow the guidelines issued by the government, an official press release said here.
The Karnataka government had said it would go by the Centre's direction on opening religious places of worship, shopping malls, hotels, restaurants and other hospitality services on June 8.
Buses, hotels and taxi owners association placed some demands at the meeting, the release said, adding that Yediyurappa informed them that he would examine their demands and take appropriate decisions.
The Chief Minister also released a handout regarding the guidelines that need to be followed as the tourism department is opening hotels, guest houses and tourist destinations.
Deputy Chief Minister Laxman Savadi, Tourism Minister C T Ravi and senior officials of the department participated in the meeting.
The government had, on Thursday, said safaris, trekking, jungle lodges and resorts in areas that fall outside the COVID-19 containment zones can re-open provided they adhere to social distancing, hygiene as issued by the governments.
The euphoria over the claim that around 3,000 tonnes of gold reserves, worth Rs 12 trillion, have been discovered in Uttar Pradesh’s Sonbhadra district could not last even 24 hours, with the Geological Survey of India (GSI) clarifying on Saturday there had been no such discovery.
The GSI, headquartered in Kolkata, rebutted the claims of the Uttar Pradesh Directorate of Geology and Mining (UPDGM), and said “miscommunication” must have led to the wrong reporting of facts.
M Sridhar, director general of the GSI, said nobody in the agency gave any such data. He said 52,806 tonnes of gold ore was found in Sonbhadra district during the exploration work in 1998-2000. From this reserve, only 160 kg of gold can be extracted.
“There must have been some miscommunication of facts because of which the gold ore deposits have been overestimated. We have written a letter to Uttar Pradesh (UPDGM), stating the facts. The GSI has not estimated such kind of vast resource of gold deposits in Sonbhadra,” Sridhar said.
ALSO READ: 2,900-tonne gold mine found in Sonbhadra, 4 times that of India's reserves
The UPDGM had said on Friday that gold deposits were found in Son Pahadi and Hardi areas of the district. Sridhar said while gold ore was found in the area during the GSI’s exploration work in 1998-2000, it had told the state government about the discovery in November last year.
Under the new regulation, which came into effect from 2015, the GSI has to inform the state government when ore deposits are discovered. Earlier, no such action was mandatory. In its report, the GSI estimated that only 3.03 gm of gold can be extracted from a tonne of ore. It also clarified that even the extraction amount was tentative and could not be established for certain.
Moreover, Sridhar said the deposits were spread across only 0.5 sq km in forest land, which made the mining of ore economically unviable. “When there are several mines nearby, we can club it into a block and then it makes sense to mine the ore. But in this case, the deposits are too small to make it viable for any company to mine it,” he said. The GSI usually prioritises its exploration work based on the needs of the Centre. While strategic minerals like tin, cobalt, lithium, beryllium, germanium, gallium, indium, tantalum, niobium, selenium, and bismuth are atop the list in GSI exploration, gold is another commodity on its priority list.
According to the World Gold Council, India has reserves of 630 tonnes of gold.
Madikeri, Mar 29: In an alarming situation in neighbouring Kerala State and instances of inter-state migration of Coronavirus suspects, the authorities on Sunday sealed both Dakshina Kannada and Kodagu borders, prohibiting entry of people from Kerala into Karnataka.
Dakshina Kannada had sealed its borders after repeated instances of people misusing ambulance services to travel to Mangalore. Villagers along with the police hauled mud on to the roads that were used as alternate routes.
The road that connects the two States, which people from east Kasargod used to enter into Karnataka, were closed at Mulleria by dumping mud on the road.
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