If not in India, will Ram Mandir be built in Pakistan, asks Cong MLA Roshan Baig

Hubli, April 6: A disinfection tunnel was installed at the entrance of the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) market here on Sunday.

The tunnel, installed with the help of Young India.org, sprays people with a small percentage of Sodium hypochlorite solution through nozzles in order to sanitise them before they enter the market.

"It is helpful for all the farmers, vegetable vendors and other people who are coming and going to the APMC market. This is very useful," said Jagdish Shettar, Minister of Large and Medium Scale Industries, Karnataka.

With regards to any plans of more devices being added in the near future, Shettar added: "Firstly, we will have to see what would be the public's reaction and then, later on, we will decide."

President of Confederation of Indian Industry, Hubli VSV Prasad said that the setting up of this tunnel can help curtail the spread of Coronavirus "by disinfecting the bacteria of the body".

While it was on the trial stage right now, Prasad hopes that the trial is successful and the chamber is set up in more public places. With regards to the cost of the tunnel, he said: "The cost is around Rs 1.5 Lac to Rs 2 Lac and hopefully it will come down once we go for production," he added.

Srinivas Joshi, a representative of Young India.org, speaking to news agency said: "We have added 1.8 percent of Sodium hypochlorite solution in 100 litres of water. It is pumped through high-pressure pumps and sprayed like a mist via nozzles for 3-5 seconds which is very less time to cause any kind of allergy."

"People who are allergic to chemicals should avoid going through this chamber. We are putting signboard very soon," he added.

The number of positive cases of coronavirus in the country continues to surge. As per the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases is 3,577 with 83 deaths.

New Delhi, Feb 12: The Centre on Wednesday said the NRC data in Assam is safe even though some technical issues were visible and that will be resolved soon.

The Union Home Ministry clarification came in view of reports that data of the final list of the National Register of Citizens has been made offline from its official website.

"The NRC data is safe. Some technical issues are in visibility on cloud. These are being resolved soon," a home ministry spokesperson said.

The data was not available for a couple of days and it created panic in the public, mostly among the people excluded from the list as the rejection certificates were yet to be issued.

NRC State Coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma accepted that the data has been made offline, but refuted the allegation of any "malafide" intent in it.

The cloud service for the huge set of data was provided by IT firm Wipro and their contract was till October 19 last year. However, this was not renewed by the previous coordinator.

So, the data got offline from December 15 after it was suspended by Wipro, Sarma said.

He said the state coordination committee had decided to do necessary formalities in its meeting on January 30 and wrote to the Wipro during the first week of February.

"Once Wipro makes the data live, it will be available for public. We hope people will be able to access it in the next 2-3 days," Sarma said.

The complete detail of exclusion and inclusion of bonafide Indian citizens in the NRC was uploaded on its official website http://www.nrcassam.nic.in after the final list was published on August 31, 2019.

The final NRC was published by excluding 19,06,657 persons. A total of 3,11,21,004 names were included out of 3,30,27,661 applicants.

After the earlier NRC State Coordinator Prateek Hajela relinquished the charge on November 11 following his transfer to home state Madhya Pradesh on a direction from the Supreme Court, Sarma was appointed in his place on November 9.

Mysuru, Mar 15: The renowned Mysore Palace will remain closed for tourists for a week from March 15 to 22, in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, Mysore Palace committee said on Saturday.

The Karnataka government has ordered shutting down for a week all places and activities where people gather in large number including swimming pools, shopping malls, schools, colleges and cinema halls, state Health Minister B Sriramulu said amid the coronavirus threat.

This comes after Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa chaired an emergency meeting with ministers and senior officials on Friday to discuss the situation.

Earlier, schools in the state had announced early summer vacation for their students this academic year as a precautionary measure. Other public places have been shut down in the state amid the coronavirus scare.

The central government had on Thursday said that the death of the 76-year-old man from Kalaburagi in Karnataka was confirmed to be caused due to co-morbidity while he was also tested positive for COVID-19. The man visited Saudi Arabia on January 29 and returned to India a month later on February 29.

Till date, India has reported two deaths and 84 confirmed cases of the deadly coronavirus.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. The virus, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan last year has spread to more than 100 countries worldwide, infecting over 1,30,000 people.