Belagavi, Dec 12: Senior Legislator K Pratapchandra Shetty of Congress was unanimously elected as Karnataka Legislative Council Chairman here on Wednesday during the ongoing Winter Session at Suvarna Vikas Soudha.
Mr Shetty was the lone candidate who had filed his nomination papers yesterday. The senior leader from Udupi has been a four-time MLA and three time MLC.
Senior member of the house and former Minister S R Patil and Allam Veerbhadrappa, both from Congress proposed Mr Shetty's name.
Shivamogga, May 21: An FIR has been registered against Congress interim President Sonia Gandhi in Sagar taluk of Shivamogga district of Karnataka over tweets on May 11 by the party's official handle about PM-CARES fund.
The FIR, registered under Sections 153 (wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot) and 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), identifies Gandhi as the handler of the social media account.
The complaint by advocate Praveen KV alleged that the Congress party, through the tweets, has made rumourous statements against the Government of India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and was trying to provoke the people against the government.
According to the FIR, the Congress party had on May 11, 2020, made false and baseless allegations, claimed misappropriation of PM-CARES Fund and cast aspersions on the Government of India through the tweets.
"A Twitter account handled by All India Congress Committee headed by Sonia Gandhi had on May 11, 2020, published tweets terming PM CARES Fund as PM CARES Fraud. They had claimed that the PM CARES fund is not being used for the public," Praveen KV told ANI on Thursday.
He said that he has collected all the details related to the tweets and account from the handle and filed a complaint in the matter, following which a preliminary enquiry was conducted and an FIR was registered in the matter.
"They had also said that the Prime Minister was enjoying and going to foreign trips with this fund. This is clearly rumourous news against the Government of India in this COVID-19 pandemic situation. In this regard, I had filed a complaint. After a primary enquiry, the Sagar Police has filed an FIR against Sonia Gandhi, who heads the INC Twitter account," Praveen KV said.
New Delhi, May 12: Air India is planning to operate 149 repatriation flights to 31 countries between May 16 and May 22 during the second phase of the Vande Bharat mission to bring back home Indians stranded abroad amid the coronavirus-triggered lockdown, officials said. During the first phase of the Vande Bharat mission, Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express are scheduled to operate total 64 flights between May 7 and May 14 to bring approximately 15,000 Indians from 12 countries on a payment basis.
"In the second phase, Air India and Air India Express will operate 149 flights to countries such as the USA, the UAE, Canada, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Malaysia, Oman, Kazakhstan, Australia, Ukraine, Qatar and Indonesia," the airline officials stated.
Other countries to where the national carrier would operate flights between May 16 and May 22 are Russia, Philippines, France, Singapore, Ireland, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait,
Japan, Georgia, Germany and Tajikistan, officials noted.
The flights during the second phase will also be operated to Bahrain, Armenia, Thailand, Italy, Nepal, Belarus, Nigeria and Bangladesh, they mentioned.
India has been under lockdown since March 25 to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, which has infected more than 70,000 people and killed around 2,290 people in the country till now. All scheduled commercial passenger flights have been suspended for the lockdown period.
Bengaluru, Mar 11: Heated verbal exchange between Minister K Sudhakar and former Speaker K R Ramesh Kumar in the assembly over disqualification of 17 MLAs last year, continued to disrupt the proceedings on Wednesday, with both opposition and treasury benches pushing for a privilege motion and demanding action.
Chaotic scenes and adjournments marked the House proceedings, with both sides not ready to budge.
As the House met for the day, around 11 am, senior Minister K S Eshwarappa accusing Congress MLA Ramesh Kumar of using "expletive" during a debate last evening, demanded his apology and that he be kept out of the proceedings.
Sudhakar, against whom expletive was allegedly used by Kumar, said, the words used were unpardonable and he should be heard, as he has given notice.
Leader of Opposition Siddaramaiah then demanded that he be allowed to speak first as he had given notice on Tuesday itself.
The Congress leader on his part has accused Sudhakar of breaching Kumar's privilege by allegedly making derogatory remarks against him.
Intervening, Speaker Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri said he has received breach of privilege notice from both sides and would allow it only after the question hour as per rules.
Though Congress expressed its agreement with the Speaker about letting them raise the matter after question hour, BJP legislators including Ministers said, Ramesh Kumar should be suspended.
Pointing out that Kumar was not inside the House, some ruling party MLAs even called him "escapist" and demanded action against him.
Strongly objecting to it, Siddaramaiah questioned the ruling party's intentions in running the house smoothly.
As this was followed by heated arguments between both sides, the Speaker adjourned the House for 15 minutes.
When the house met after much delay at 12:55 pm, the chaos continued.
As the Speaker allowed Minister Jagadish Shettar to speak, who was requesting permission to raise a point, Siddaramaiah objected to it and said he had given notice first.
He said, "this is not correct, it looks like government doesn't want the House to function, they don't want discussion on the budget, they are purposely blocking the proceedings of the House".
However, some BJP MLAs reacted to this by shouting slogans "shame shame Ramesh Kumar".
As his repeated attempts to conduct the proceedings failed, the Speaker adjourned the House for lunch.
Sudhakar, while speaking during a special discussion on the Constitution on Tuesday evening had made critical remarks against the decision of Kumar, as speaker, to disqualify 17 Congress-JD(S) MLAs under the anti-defection law, including him.
Angered by this Kumar, who opposed discussion on the subject, amid heated argument between BJP and Congress members allegedly uttered the expletive, which aggravated the situation and had resulted in pandemonium in the House last evening.
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CONGRATULATIONS AND ALL THE BEST ON THE OCCASSION OF ELECTED KARNATAKA SPEAKER.
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