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Bengaluru, Jan 13: Though he submitted his resignation as leader of the opposition over a month ago, former chief minister Siddaramaiah continues as the face of the Congress in Karnataka.

However, this may change as All India Congress Committee (AICC) interim president Sonia Gandhi has summoned Siddaramaiah to Delhi for a final consultation over change of guard. Over the past month, there has been speculation over the possibility of Congress persisting with Siddaramaiah as opposition leader and either party troubleshooter DK Shivakumar or former ministers MB Patil, HK Patil or Eshwar Khandre replacing incumbent president Dinesh Gundu Rao. Both tendered resignations owing moral responsibility for the party's dismal performance in the 15 bypolls held last month.

In the past 24 hours, there has been talk of Siddaramaiah being asked to be the state unit president and vacating the other post for a young turk or experience legislator including the likes of Shivakumar who could be the face of KPCC by 2023 if he gets a clean chit from the ED in cases of money-laundering, etc. Seniors, including former KPCC president and DyCM G Parameswara and former minister HK Patil, are strong contenders to be leader of the opposition if Siddaramaiah is asked to vacate the post.

However, sources in the Siddaramaiah camp dismissed the possibility of him becoming KPCC president. "He has never aspired for the post and the high command is not inclined to do it," said a member in his camp.

Siddaramaiah may meet Sonia on Tuesday morning. It's still unclear if any other KPCC functionaries have been summoned. Sources said Sonia is scheduled to leave India for medical treatment on January 15 and wanted to complete the consultations about Karnataka. The high command has reportedly gone through reports submitted by party observers Madhusudan Mistry and Parameswara.

Bengaluru, Mar 16: Hundreds of people gathered to felicitate the newly appointed Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president DK Shivakumar in Bengaluru on Monday.

"Everyone is a team, I'm not alone. We all are together and we will work together," Kumar had said after his appointment.

Shivakumar was appointed as the chief of Karnataka Congress last week on Wednesday.

Party leaders Eshwar Khandre, Satish Jarkiholi and Saleem Ahmed were appointed working presidents of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee.

New Delhi, May 3: The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has crossed over one million RT-PCR tests for COVID-19 on Saturday evening marking a big landmark, ICMR officials said.

"We have tested about 10,40000 tests till Saturday evening. In a few days, we have increased our testing capacity. ICMR has been doing more than 70,000 tests in the last two consecutive days," he said.

On Saturday, ICMR released that a total of 976363 samples have been tested till date. From May 1 till evening on Saturday, 1,37,346 tests were done.

The top three states which are doing vigorous testing includes--Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan. As on date, these three states have conducted more than one lakh test respectively.

However, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Delhi still need to ramp up their testing capacity.

ICMR has always emphasised that the confirmatory test for diagnosis of COVID-19 infection is RT-PCR test of the throat and/or nasal swab, which detects virus at an early stage. Recently, Dr GS Toteja, Additional Director General of ICMR had said that to contain coronavirus infection, RT-PCR tests must be continued vigorously as the principal diagnostic tests.

RT-PCR tests are now available in 310 government laboratories and 111 private set up across the country.

On Friday, the Centre informed that ICMR has ordered 21.35 lakh diagnostic kits. As on date, India has reported about 37,776 confirmed coronavirus cases and 1223 deaths.