NITK student drowns in sea after photo session at St Mary's Island

Mangaluru, Feb 10: Sandeep Malani has been of lately winning back to back awards at various events and film festivals. Being an actor, he has won 3 Best Actor awards (2 for his gripping performance in the Kannada feature film, Mookavismitha, directed by Gurudutt Sreekanth and one award for his multi faceted performance in the short film, Nishyabda Nishi directed by his son Silver). These awards were honored at the Indian Cine Film Festival in Mumbai and Karunadu Kannada Rathna Award in Bengaluru.

He also won an award for his woman empowerment film, Sulige Sikkidaaga in Pune, while his musical documentary on Sridevi titled SrideviBaaz won him two awards at Pune and Kolhapur International film festivals. His other short film on transgender Mamta (Maternal Love) won the Audience Awards in USA.

Very recently he was honored by the Filmaholic Foundation in Bengaluru for being a successful short film maker with two Kannada films Jo Jo Laali and Sulige Sikkidaaga, both featuring award winning actress Kalpana Pandit, winning multiple awards and making news at International Film Festivals. This honor was given at the Karnataka Youth International Short Film Festival.

With donning so many feathers of awards in his hat, he recently bagged the most prestigious one; that being receiving the Award for Best Feature Film shot on Mobile for his film ‘Maa – Yeh CineMaa Hai’ shot on iPhone at the 1st ever IMFF India (International Mobile Film Festival India 2020) held at World Trade Center, Mumbai on 8th February.

With a whole lot short films in the category and barely few feature films in the Feature Film Category, Malani verged out to be the winner as his Hindi film was a complete family entertainer that of 5 songs, sentiment value, and a wholesome entertainer with 100 artists working in the film that consists of stage and television actors, newcomers, models and common people. The film starred Sandeep’s family members playing important roles. His mother, Meena Malani (playing the title role), wife Reshma Malani (playing one of the lead actress) and son Silver Malani (playing an important character). The cast includes Mahesh Dulam, Anita Dulam, Ranjeet Jha, Bharath Lakshmikanth, Mahendra Pandey, Vishal Digani, Akash Hora, Shuba Raksha, Sanjukta Ghosh, Sharanya Kaur, Varsha Acharya, Kkewal Sharma, Anant Joshi, Vivek Punjabi, Valerian Menezes, Nigel Pereira. Veteran actresses Sarojini Shetty, Deepali Khambadkone, Vinny Fernandes also features in the film while Kalpana Pandit, Sudha Chandran, Sonal Monteiro, Adaa Khan and others give a social message on mother, womanhood and empowerment.  The film has been jointly produced by RKJ Film Productions, The Studio Agency and Malani Talkies.

The decision of the Indian government to ease the coronavirus-linked global travel restrictions imposed on those having OCI cards has given a big relief to many stranded overseas citizens of India across the world.

OCI card is issued to people of Indian origin globally which gives them almost all the privileges of an Indian national except for the right to vote, government service and buying agricultural land. The OCI card gives them a visa-free travel to India.

On Friday, the central government allowed certain categories of OCI card holders, who are stranded abroad, to come to the country. Earlier, according to the regulations issued by the Indian government in April, visas of foreign nationals and OCI cards were suspended as part of the new international travel restrictions following the COVID-19 pandemic.

This privilege of visa free travel to India was causing distress among a large number of people of Indian-origin and Indian citizens in countries like the US whose children were OCI card holders as they were born in this country.

Many Indian parents, several of whom lost their jobs as a result of the economic crisis due to coronavirus pandemic, but were not allowed to take the special evacuation flights of Air India from various US cities, took to social media and urged the Indian leaders to allow them to travel to India.

“This is a big relief for the OCI card holders. It was a humanitarian crisis in the making. I am pleased that the Indian Government listened to their voices,” said social activist Prem Bhandari, chairman of Jaipur Foot USA, who has been taking up the cause of the OCI card holders.

Dr Arathi Krishna, former deputy chairperson of NRI Forum of Karnataka government, who had been demanding this relaxation, many of the thousands of stranded OCI card holders in defferent parts of the world were in pursuading her to exert pressure on the authorities concerned for this much needed relaxation.

The restrictions on traveling of OCI card holders to India was issued by govt of India on March 13 in the wake of global outbreak of coronavirus pandemic. 

She said: "Many parents who are Indian nationals could not travel for emergency purpose to India after repatriation flights started due to their minor children being OCI card holders. Many children who were OCI card holders could not travel to India to perform last rites when there was death in their family due to these restrictions"

"I was constantly pressurising and bringing these issues to the attention of ministry officials in External Affairs and Home Affairs departments. I was following up with Mr Dammu Ravi who is heading the COVID task force  task firce in the ministry of overseas Indian affairs who took interest in solving this problem through his consistent efforts with MHA. Iam thankful to Fireign Secretary too for his efforts and concern and to MHA for making it easier now for OCI card holders to travel in repatriation flights with emergency reasons," she said.

Udupi, July 1: In a concerning development, another SSLC student in Udupi district has tested positive for covid-19.

With this the number of covid-19 patients among SSLC students in the coastal district rose to three. All of them are girls.

The fresh case has been reported from Byndoor. She has already written three papers.

She had reportedly developed some of the symptoms and hence her throat swabs were sent for testing on June 30. Today she received positive report, sources said.