Unfair deal for the fair caste? Brahmins of Karnataka threaten to hit NOTA

Mangaluru, May 19: With lockdown 4.0 coming into force, the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) started bus services from Mangaluru to various destinations today.

According to officials, buses started plying from Mangaluru to Bengaluru, Mysuru, Shivamogga, Hubballi and other areas with limited passengers. A bus, which left for Bengaluru from Mangaluru had less than 30 passengers on board.

“Depending on the demand, the buses will be operated with 50% of the capacity. Measures have been taken to ensure that social distancing norms are adhered to while purchasing tickets from the counter,” said S N Arun, KSRTC Divisional Controller.

However, the KSRTC is yet to take a decision on operating Nagarasarige buses in the city. 

“Only those destinations, which can be reached by 7 pm has been considered by the KSRTC while operating the buses. As a result, after 11 am, no buses will travel to Bengaluru from Mangaluru. Further, permission will not be accorded for the travelling of pregnant women, children below 10 years old and senior citizens above 60 years old. Thermal scanning is used for checking the temperature of the passengers before boarding the buses. All the buses are sanitised after each trip,” he said.

Further, he said the contact number, name and address of the passengers are collected by the officials during the travel.

May 6: Congress general secretary KC Venugopal on Tuesday termed as "inhumane" the government's decision to "impose excessive costs" on NRIs and expatriates for bringing them into the country from COVID-19-affected nations.

He demanded that the central government fly in the poor and vulnerable free of cost while charge the others with normal fares instead of high costs.

"The central government's decision to impose excessive costs on NRIs flying in special flights from the Covid-affected countries is an inhumane act," he said in a statement.

Venugopal said it was due to protests by a large number of expatriates and their relatives as well as the general public over the past few days that the central government took the decision to bring back Indian citizens from abroad.

"However, it is cruel that the Central government has taken advantage of this plight of expatriates by increasing the price of air fares up to three times. This is inhumane," Venugopal said in his statement.

He urged the Centre to take urgent steps to provide free travel to the most vulnerable, unemployed, sick and pregnant women and to others on normal fare.

Air India will operate 64 repatriation flights for a week from May 7 while the Navy deployed two ships as India rolled out a massive evacuation plan on Tuesday to bring back thousands of its nationals stranded abroad due to the coronavirus-triggered lockdown.

Those availing the repatriation flights will be charged, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri told a virtual press conference in New Delhi. A passenger on a London-Delhi flight will be charged Rs 50,000 and on a Dhaka-Delhi flight Rs 12,000, he added.

From the Gulf countries to Malaysia and the UK to the US, the multi-agency operation christened 'Vande Bharat Mission' will see the state-owned airline operate the non-scheduled commercial flights till May 13 to ferry around 15,000 Indian nationals from 12 countries.

Mysuru, Jan 2: Mysuru-based Karnataka State Open University is gearing up to offer courses online from this year onwards and a proposal in this connection will be placed before the University Grants Commission (UGC) this month, after approval from the board of management.

As of now, the university offers 31 courses, including undergraduate, postgraduate, and diploma programmes.

Vice-chancellor Vidyashankar S Said that the university will submit its proposal to the UGC soon.

“This is being done to make learning convenient and help students study their courses of choices from the comfort of their homes.”

After launching online admissions for courses, this is another step to go paperless and towards an e-campus, the V-C explained.

The university has also proposed to launch 12 new courses for 2020-21.

A proposal in this regard will be placed before the board for approval on Thursday and the same will be submitted to the UGC for its nod.

Prof. Vidyashankar said the these courses will be in addition to the 31 already available.

The new courses include LLM, MA in Education, BBA, BSc, BCA, diploma in Information Technology, postgraduate diploma in Information Technology, BSc in Information Technology, MSc in Information Technology, MSc in Botany, PG diploma in Banking and Insurance, MSc in Zoology, MA in Telugu, Executive MBA, and MSc in Food Sciences and Nutrition.

The new courses had been proposed based on students’ feedback and the trend.

The V-C said the admissions for the January cycle have begun and over 380 students had so far taken admissions online.

“We are hoping for good admissions this cycle and are expecting around 12,000 admissions,” he replied.