Kannadigas force govt to ban Sunny Leone’s show; but continue to Google her!

Bengaluru, Apr 1: The price of petrol and diesel will go up by Rs 1.60 and Rs 1.59 per litre, respectively, from Wednesday. This is in line with Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa’s decision to hike the rate of tax on petrol from 32% to 35% and diesel from 21% to 24%.

He had announced this in his March 5 Budget for 2020-21 fiscal. At present, a litre of petrol costs Rs 71.97 and diesel Rs 64.41 in Bengaluru.

The government decided to roll out the hike from Tuesday midnight going into Wednesday, April 1, after briefly considering a postponement in view of the COVID-19 crisis. 

Finance Secretary (Budget & Resources) Ekroop Caur confirmed to DH that the hike will be rolled out. 

The 3% hike on fuel tax was a key resource mobilisation measure that Yediyurappa announced in his Budget. The hike is expected to fetch the government Rs 1,500 crore. 

Yediyurappa had also announced a 6% additional excise duty on Indian Made Liquor (IML), which could help the government mop up Rs 1,200 crore. However, the sale of liquor has been prohibited during the lockdown period. Plus, hiking fuel prices during the lockdown will not hit citizens very hard. 

Coimbatore, June 1: A communal conspiracy has been aborted by the police by arrested a miscreant who had placed meat in front of Venugopala Krishnaswamy Temple and Sri Ragavendra Temple in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu.

The miscreant has been identified as S Hari Ramprakash, 48, of Kavundampalayam in Coimbatore. He is a civil engineering graduate. It is suspected that He is a Sangh Parivar activist and the intention behind his act was to put the blame on Muslims.

Even though officials claimed that Hari appeared to be mentally disturbed, there were no medical records that stated he was mentally disturbed.

Two separate cases were registered against Hari. He was booked under sections 153 A (promoting enmity between different groups) 295 A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) and 298 (uttering words etc, with deliberate intent to wound religious feelings) of the Indian Penal Code.

City police commissioner Sumit Sharan said, “We collected CCTV footage and found a man, who had parked his motorcycle near the two temples and returned from the temples. Based on the registration number, we traced and arrested Hari.”

Commissioner added that the city has CCTV cameras in many places and it helped police officials crack the case faster. The police said he purchased one kg of pork meat from a shop at Kavundamapalaym last Friday morning and placed it in front of the temples on the same day.

Bengaluru, Apr 21: The Karnataka Government may spare its employees from salary cuts this month despite severe resources crunch it faces following steep fall in revenue collection due to the ongoing lockdown to fight the coronavirus, official sources said on Tuesday.

As of now, there is no problem with April salary and we can manage. But if May also turns out to be a wash-out (in terms of revenue collection), then the situation is going to be very tough, a senior Minister said.

Ministers and members of Karnataka Legislature are taking a 30 per cent pay-cut for a year from April 1 this year. Opposition Congress in the state has vehemently opposed any possible move to cut salaries of government employees.

You just cant even imagine, the Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa had told news agency in an interview earlier this month on the economic impact of the lock-down on the state's finances. Yediyurappa had also said that the government is now not in a position to implement Budget proposals, barring important ones, with all kinds of revenue collections having completely stopped following the lockdown.

The government recently said it proposes to regularise unauthorised properties in the state by imposing penalty, and also auction more than 12,000 corner sites belonging to the Bengaluru Development Authority, as part of resource mobilisation drive.