Supreme Court refuses to stop Kambala for now; final hearing on Mar 12

Mangaluru, Jan 1: Led by two local MLAs belonging to Bharatiya Janata Party, dozens of people today forcibly stopped toll fee collection at Talapady toll gate on the outskirts of the city allowing vehicles plying between Karnataka and Kerala on the national highway 66 to travel without paying any fee for some time.

Mangaluru City South MLA D Vedavyasa Kamath and Mangaluru City North MLA Y Bharat Shetty, who led the workers, said that the Navayuga Udupi Tollway Pvt. Ltd. (NUTPL), the concessionaire of the about 90-km-long highway widening project between Talapady and Kundapura in Karnataka, had failed to complete the project since over a decade.

The service roads and two flyovers under the project remained uncompleted. Hence motorists were facing a hardship. Notwithstanding Nalin Kumar Kateel, Dakshina Kannada MP, arranging ₹56 crore loan to the NUTPL through Axis Bank to complete the prominent Pumpwell flyover in the city, the company had failed to complete it.

The MLAs said that they stopped the toll collection as a symbolic protest to bring pressure on the company to complete the project within this month.

The BJP workers who gathered near the toll gate around 7.30 a.m. forcibly removed the barricades and made the vehicles ply without paying the fee. The workers of the company managing the toll booth did not resist.

The BJP workers said that vehicles would ply without paying toll till about 6 p.m. If the company resumed the collection during the day on Wednesday, the party workers would again forcibly stop it on Thursday, they said.

Shivaprasad Rai, in-charge of toll collection of the company at Talapady, Hejmady and Sasthana on the same highway told The Hindu that the NUTPL collected about ₹7 lakh as toll fee daily at Talapady from over 12,000 vehicles. The loss on Wednesday could be about ₹4 lakh.

The project is being implemented under build, operate and transfer basis.

Bengaluru, Jan 28: The state government is set to allow investors who bought farmland for industrial and other purposes to sell it off if they fail to use it within seven years. The new buyers, however, must utilise the land parcel for the same purpose for which it was allotted.

An amendment bill in this regard will be tabled during the joint session of the assembly, which begins on February 17.

Currently, investors remain tied to unused parcels. Law and parliamentary affairs minister JC Madhuswamy said the amendment to Section 109 of the Karnataka Land Reforms Act, which deals with the purchase of farmland for non-agricultural purposes, would remove hurdles for disposal of such plots. “To prevent misuse of land, the bill makes it mandatory for the new buyer to utilise it for the purpose for which the land was purchased by the first investor,” he said.

The government will also table a bill which seeks to regulate the affairs of religious and educational trusts. It will empower the government to intervene in the affairs of the trusts when irregularities come to light.

“Currently, the government has no role to play when allegations of irregularities and mismanagement crop up against trustees. The bill seeks to address this,” Madhuswamy said. He clarified the government didn’t want to interfere in trusts’ affairs. But some issues, he added, were of concern: trustees illegally selling off the trust property.

Tumakuru, Feb 5: Former Lokayukta Justice N Santhosh Hegde has questioned the integrity of the B S Yediyurappa led BJP government as it has not taken an action to abolish the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) to re-establish the Lokayukta in Karnataka.

Speaking after felicitating the retired scientist of NASA Gopal Iyengar at the Karnataka Public School at Kadaba in Gubbi taluk he reminded that the BJP had promised to establish the Lokayukta.

"No party will like to strengthen the Lokayukta and now BSY is also tightlipped and even put an end by appreciating that ACB has been doing a good job", he regretted.

In fact, the Lokayakuta had the power to prosecute even the top brass of officials and now the ACB cannot without the government's permission, he clarified.

He denied any remarks on the CAA and NRC but observed that the youths of the country have been misguided by the politicians as they lost their focus on education by involving in protest rallies.

"I suggest they to straight away take a political plunge instead of getting misused at the hands of the politicians with selfish motives", he said.