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.
With the steep hike in excise duty in the past couple of months, an average consumer of petrol now pays over 275% in taxes to centre and states on a litre of the fuel. The base price of petrol is just about Rs 18. The taxes are close to Rs 50 and the pump price is over Rs 72.
India imports 85% of all its crude oil demand. After a steep hike in excise duty in the past two months despite a hold on daily price revisions by the oil public sector undertakings (PSUs), Indian consumers now pay 275% collectively in excise duty to state and centre.
The central government hiked excise on petrol and diesel by Rs 10 and Rs 13 respectively last month. The excise duty on petrol is taxed around Rs 33-a-litre while the same on diesel it is Rs 32.
The Value-Added Tax (VAT) on both petrol and diesel is Rs 16.44 and Rs 16.26 respectively. Both the taxes together are around Rs 49 while it is sold at petrol pumps at 73-per-litre.
These two taxes cumulatively account for 69% of tax which is higher than anywhere else in the world. The same is taxed at 19% in the US, 47% in Japan, UK 62% and 63% in France. The government does not pass on the benefit of lower crude oil prices to the customer.
It is to be noted that Indian consumers continued to pay Rs 70-a-litre even when crude oil prices hit a paltry US $ 20-a-barrel on April 12.
Former finance minister and Congress leader recently took a jab at the Centre over rising prices stating, “Fuel selling prices raised twice in two days, following tax hikes two weeks ago. This time to benefit oil companies. Government is poor, it needs more taxes. Oil companies are poor, they need better prices. Only the poor and middle class are not poor, so they will pay”.
Acche din for modi bakth....lets enjoy
you need only ram mandir and NRC
Bengaluru, Jan 12: Two pilgrims from Bengaluru, who were siblings, drowned in sea off Auro Beach in Puducherry today.
The deceased have been identified as V Gauthman, 22, and his brother Vivek, 20.
Gauthman and Vivek were among a group of around 150 devotees from Bengaluru to the Adhiparasakhi temple at Melmaruvathur in Kancheepuram district of Tamil Nadu. They started their journey from Bengaluru in three buses on Friday.
After offering special puja at Adhiparasakthi temple and worshipping at a few other temples, they reached Auro Beach on Sunday afternoon.
While they were having lunch on the beach, Gauthman entered the sea. He was caught in a huge wave.
Vivek, who tried to rescue his brother, too was caught in the wave.
Other pilgrims and fishermen began to search for them in fishing boats.
After an hour, their bodies were washed ashore, around two km from the spot.
The Auroville police retrieved the bodies and sent them for postmortem.
Bengaluru, Mar 27: Oncologist Dr. Vishal Rao, HCG Hospital Bengaluru on Friday said that human body cells release interferon chemical to kill viruses but it cannot be released by cells in the case of COVID-19 cases, leading to weak immune system. However, a therapy of specific concoction could be useful in treating COVID-19 patients.
"We got hold of some preprint suggesting that interferon is effective in COVID19," said Rao.
Speaking to news agency, he continued saying "When we withdraw blood for regular check-ups, we get buffy coat which can be used to take out cells and form interferon. These two chemicals and some other cytokines, in a specific concoction, could be potentially very useful in treating COVID-19 patients."
Rao said that they have built a concoction of cytokines which can be injected to reactivate immune system in COVID-19 patients.
"We are in a very initial stage and hope to be ready with its first set by this weekend. We have applied to the governement for an expedited review. We have also presented this before the state government" said Rao.
"We have a team of infection specialist, ICU team and other...all of us have worked together to build something that we believe. We want to serve the society at this hour of need," he added.
Dr Rao clarified that this is not a vaccine and this particular interferon therapy does not help to prevent the infection of COVID-19. However, this is focused and targeted towards COVID-19 positive patients or those who have just incubated the virus.
"We believe that in early stages as well as the patients who have just incubated, this particular therapy of interferon gama and other concoction of cytokines could be an effective method. In the late stages we are looking at specific dosage of the cells which are our own body cells which can actually be affective and could also be of use for the ventilator patients," he added.
Meanwhile, Dr Gururaj, Immunologist and Scientist told ANI that they are trying to cover two aspects, one is the early stage patients where they are trying to improve their immune systems.
"As Dr Vishal said, we are trying to see whether we can use the cytokines from our own immune cells which is a natural process but it is hampered in infected patients," said Dr Gururaj.
"In the last phase we are using cells which are used from the bone marrow of the patient or donors. We can use those cells to reduce the inflation and so called cytokines release syndrome which is basically the inflammatory response of the body," he added.
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CONGRATULATIONS AND ALL THE BEST ON THE OCCASSION OF ELECTED KARNATAKA SPEAKER.
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