Modi govt to sell Air India, Bharat Petroleum by March 2020

Mangaluru, Jun 27: The second flight chartered by the Karnataka Sports and Cultural Club (KSCC) to repatriate stranded Kannadigas in UAE landed at Mangalore International Airport at 6 p.m. today.

The Air Arabia flight with 171 passengers took off from Sharjah international airport around 1 am (UAE Time). The flight had 18 pregnant women, 9 children, 3 infants, 8 senior citizens, 20 people with medical emergencies besides those have lost jobs, stranded visit visa holders and those who had reported deaths in their families.

KSCC had set up help desk to finalize list of passengers and guide them throughout the process. All the legal procedures were carried out smoothly.

KSCC president Mohammed Ismail accorded a warm welcome to all passengers. Rapid tests for Covid-19 were conducted before departure. Mandatory quarantine for all the passengers was arranged in three hotels in Mangaluru for a period of seven days.

KSCC office bearers Ismail, Javed, Safwan and volunteers were present at the airport during the time of departure. KSCC has expressed its gratitude to Consulate General, DC of DK district, Umar U H and Ataullah Jokkate for their support.

Thrissur, Mar 7: A local temple in Kerala is at the centre of a social media storm after the picture of a ''Brahmins-only toilet'' outside its main campus went viral on online platforms, prompting the management to remove the signboard.

The picture of three toilets, with signboards showing "Men", "Women" and "Brahmins", at the Kuttumukku Mahadeva Temple in Thrissur, has gone viral with many social media users viewing it as an unethical practise that can portray the progressive state in a bad light.

However, temple officials said the toilets were located outside the main campus and the board was brought to their notice only now.

Kannan, an official of the temple committee, said the board was placed nearly two decades ago and nobody raised any complaint against it so far.

"That particular toilet was being used by priests and other temple employees. We didn't even notice that board... As soon as we came to know about it, we removed it and affixed a staff-only board," he told PTI.

Also a CPI-M functionary and ward councillor, Kannan said the shrine and it's management was against all kinds of unethical customs.

The temple official said they were planning to pursue legal measures against the man who posted the photo of the toilets on social media.

"We suspect that he did it deliberately to create issues during the time of the festival and to tarnish the shrine's reputation. Not only that, the photo he shared was an old one though he claimed that it was taken during the time of the festival, " he said.

Bengaluru, May 19: In the wake of assurance by Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa to look into their demands, hotels and restaurants in Karnataka today decided to continue takeaway services for three more days.

Hotels were also exempted from the total lockdown on Sundays in Karnataka - under the state guidelines issued for Lockdown 4.0.

The Karnataka Pradesh Hotel and Restaurants' Association (KPHRA) had earlier threatened to stop takeaway services over refusal to allow dine-in facility in the fourth phase of the lockdown. 

B Chandrashekar Hebbar, president of KPHRA said that the CM urged hoteliers to wait for three days, assuring that a decision will be taken. 

"We appraised the government over the mounting losses by keeping just take-away services open. Noting that social distancing and other guidelines will be followed, we urged him to allow dine-in facility," he said.

The Association will wait three more days before discontinuing parcel services, Hebbar said. 

The government also provided relaxation to hotels from the total lockdown announced in Karnataka on Sundays, he said. 

A package for hotel employees such as cooks and waiters, along the lines of those announced for farmers, cab drivers and weavers, was also sought in a petition submitted to the chief minister.

In fact the state government had expressed its willingness to open hotels under the Lockdown 4.0, subject to restrictions. However, the central guidelines do not allow dine-in services.