Hate speech: Jagadish Karanth granted interim bail hours after arrest

Ballari, Apr 18: Hosapete town in Ballari district of Karnataka gasped in disbelief as it turned out that 11 members of one single family are positive for the coronavirus.

The whole town has been declared a containment zone and is being surveilled 24X7.

The family includes seven members whose tests returned positive today, three who tested Covid-19 positive on March 30 and one other member subsequently.

The seven who tested positive today had been negative when they were earlier tested along with the others.

They have all now been shifted to isolation wards at the District Hospital in Ballari.

Including this family of 11, Ballari has 13 positive cases so far, with one case each reported from Ballari and Siraguppa towns.

Startled by this sudden upsurge from Hosapete, the district administration has set up 16 fever clinics to screen people and six COVID care centres to treat positive cases. There are two dedicated COVID hospitals, one at Ballari and another at Torangallu in Sandur.

A team of psychological counsellors have been put on duty to provide support to the patients at the isolation centres.

Bengaluru, Mar 4: CM BS Yediyurappa may reconsider plans to hike taxes and curtail populist schemes in his budget on Thursday as the Centre released part of GST compensation it owes the state. Officials said the Centre released the first instalment of the bimonthly compensation for October-November amounting to Rs 2,013 crore.

"This is welcome relief as the government has been scrambling to mobilise funds," said BT Manohar, member of GST consultative committee, government of Karnataka. The second instalment of Rs 1,523 crore is also expected to be released soon.

The CM, in his seventh budget, is expected keep the focus firmly on farmers and give top priority to irrigation, agriculture and welfare schemes.

The irrigation sector is expected to land the lion's share with an allocation of at least Rs 25,000 crore, followed by agriculture. Former CM Kumaraswamy had allocated over Rs 17,000 crore for water resources.

The bulk of funds is likely to go to the Upper Krishna (UKP) and Upper Bhadra projects, as it will help backward Kalyana Karnataka and central Karnataka regions. The two are also significant political blocs. The government will also seek assistance from the Centre for the UKP project in the erstwhile Hyderabad-Karnataka region, which enjoys special status under the Constitution owing to its backwardness. P4

Yediyurappa is also expected to spell out populist schemes for the poor.

Former CM HD Kumaraswamy had allocated Rs 17,212 crore in the previous budget for water resources and Yediyurappa is likely to go well beyond that figure. "Priority will be given to irrigation and farmers," Yediyurappa had said recently. "I am making efforts to present a budget within the financial constraints."

he amounts are released once every two months, but the Centre had fallen behind on payments. PX

"There are indications that another payment will be made."

The state's optimism stems from the fact that the Centre's GST collection crossed the Rs 1 lakh crore-mark for four successive months till February.

However, the CM could still hike tax rates marginally. At a pre-budget meet on resource mobilisation where Yediyurappa is learnt to have expressed willingness to borrow funds, officials from the finance department advocated raising tax rates instead.

New Delhi, May 28: With 6,566 more coronavirus cases and 194 deaths reported in the past 24 hours, India's COVID-19 tally reached 1,58,333 on Thursday, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Affairs.

The number of active coronavirus cases stands at 86,110, while 67,692 people have recovered and one patient has migrated, it said. The death toll due to the infection has reached 4,531 in the country.

Maharashtra is the worst affected state with 56,948 cases. Tamil Nadu has recorded as many as 18,545 cases while Gujarat and Delhi have recorded 15,195 and 15,257 coronavirus cases respectively.