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Counting begins for Lok Sabha, Assembly bypolls in Karnataka

Agencies
November 6, 2018

Bengaluru, Nov 6: Counting of votes for the bypolls to three Lok Sabha and two Assembly constituencies in Karnataka began on Tuesday.

Bypolls for the three Lok Sabha constituencies - Shivamogga, Ballari and Mandya; and two Assembly constituencies - Ramanagara and Jamkhandi, which were held on Saturday, are seen as a prestigious popularity test for the ruling Congress-JDS coalition.

An estimated 67 per cent voter turnout was recorded in the bypolls.

Counting of votes began at 8 am and a total of 1,248 counting staff have been deployed for it.

Elaborate security arrangements have been made to ensure to that no untoward incident takes place during the counting of votes, police officials said.

A total of 31 candidates were in the fray from the five constituencies, though the contest is mainly between the Congress-JDS combine and the BJP.

The bypoll results will determine the fate of Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy's wife Anita Kumaraswamy, state BJP chief B S Yeddyurappa's son B Y Raghavendra and former chief minister S Bangarappa's son Madhu Bangarappa among others.

Anita Kumaraswamy is expected to have a smooth sailing in Ramanagara, after BJP nominee L Chandrashekhar withdrew from the contest and rejoined the Congress.

In Jamkhandi, it remains to be seen whether the Congress' Anand Nyamagowda will be able to make a successful electoral debut, riding on sympathy wave following the death of his father Siddu Nyamagouda.

Former chief minister Siddaramaiah, who is the Congress MLA from neighbouring Badami assembly constituency had invested lot of time for campaigning in Jamkhandi.

In Shivamogga, former chief minister Yeddyurappa's son B Y Raghavendra is testing his fortunes against another ex-chief minister S Bangarappa's son Madhu Bangarappa of the JD(S).

Janata Parivar veteran and former chief minister J H Patel's son Mahima J Patel is also in the fray as a JD(U) candidate. In Ballari, senior BJP leader Sriramulu's sister J Shantha is fighting against V S Ugrappa of the Congress.

In the Vokkaliga bastion of Mandya, JD(S)'s Shivarame Gowda is pitted against a fresh face -- Dr Siddaramaiah, a retired commercial tax officer, of the BJP.

Among the interesting things that one needs to watch out for is to what extent the BJP would be able to make inroads into the JD(S) bastion of Mandya and the Congress stronghold of Jamkhandi.

Of similar interest would be to what extent the Congress will be able to regain its significance in its erstwhile party stronghold of Ballari.

The Congress and JD(S) had fought bitterly against each other in the May Assembly polls, especially in the old Mysuru region, but had joined hands to form a coalition government after a fractured mandate.

The outcome of the bypolls is expected to have a bearing on the equations between the Congress and the JDS for the 2019 general elections and also be a factor in determining the bargaining power of the two parties.

The bypolls assume significance as the ruling coalition partners contested together, terming it a "prelude" to the Lok Sabha polls next year, and called for a similar "grand secular alliance" against the BJP at the national level.

The announcement of the bypolls for the Lok Sabha seats came as a surprise to all the three major political parties in the state -- the Congress, BJP and JD(S) -- who questioned the need for the exercise when the general elections are due early next year.

The byelections were necessitated after Yeddyurappa (Shivamogga), Sriramalu (Ballari), and C S Puttaraju of JD(S) (Mandya) resigned as MPs following their election to the Karnataka Assembly.

Bypolls to Jamkhandi Assembly seat was necessitated due to the death of Congress MLA Siddu Nyamagouda, while Ramanagara fell vacant after Kumaraswamy gave up the seat, preferring Chennapatna, the other constituency from where he had also won.

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Agencies
August 2,2020

New Delhi, Aug 2: The National Commission for Women (NCW) has issued notice to some Bollywood celebrities named in a complaint against the promoter of a company for allegedly blackmailing and sexually assaulting a number of girls on the pretext of giving them a career in modelling.

Taking cognizance of the complaint filed by social activist Yogita Bhayana of People Against Rape in India (PARI), the NCW scheduled a virtual hearing presided by its chairperson on August 6.

The complaint against Sunny Verma, promoter of a company named IMG Ventures with its headquarter in Chandigarh, alleged that he has been blackmailing and sexually assaulting a number of girls on the pretext of giving them career in modelling.

PARI's Yogita Bhayana wrote a complaint letter to NCW chairperson Rekha Sharma.

"Through his company, he (Sunny Verma) invites the girls on the pretext of organising a Miss Asia contest with a claim that the contest will launch them as models. To make it look genuine, his company has also been taking an entry fee of Rs 2,950. Once the girls apply, they are alluded by the female accomplices of Sunny Verma to submit their nude pictures in order to get the better ranking in the contest," the complaint letter said on July 31.

It alleged that Verma, after receiving the pictures and sometimes even before, used to get in touch with the girls and ask for completely nude pictures and videos.

The complaint letter said that Verma also used to allude as well as threaten the girls to submit to his sexual desires if they were interested in modelling as a career or wish to win the contest.

"Once he established a physical relationship with the girls, he used to blackmail them for regular sexual favours. Many girls from across the country have suffered a sexual and mental assault from Sunny and his accomplices," said the complaint citing several letters, texts and audio clips from several girls as proof of this modus operandi of Sunny Verma and his company.

The complaint also said that Sunny Verma has been previously also arrested on charges of sexual assault.

"We would demand that NCW should investigate the case to its depth and get the guilty punished so that any other person should not dare to exploit these kinds of innocent girls on any pretext. It will be a message to people like Sunny Verma and all associated Bollywood stars. Looking forward to strict action from NCW against sexual offenders like Sunny Verma & others," the complaint said.

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Agencies
July 18,2020

New Delhi, Jul 18: India's national cybersecurity agency CERT-in, has warned people of credit card skimming spreading across the world through e-commerce platforms.

Attackers are typically targeting e-commerce sites because of their wide presence, popularity and the environment LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP), the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) said in a notice on Thursday.

Recently, attackers targeted sites which were hosted on Microsoft's IIS server running with the ASP.NET web application framework, it said.

Some of the sites affected by the attack were found to be running ASP.NET version 4.0.30319, which is no longer officially supported by Microsoft and may contain multiple vulnerabilities, CERT-In said.

The notice also included a list of best practices for website developers including the use of the latest version of ASP.NET web framework, IIS web server and database server.

The advisory is based on research by Malwarebytes which found that this skimming campaign likely began sometime in April this year.

Credit card skimming has become a popular activity for cybercriminals over the past few years, and the increase in online shopping during the pandemic means additional business for them, too, Malwarebytes said in a blog post, adding that attackers do not need to limit themselves to the most popular e-commerce platforms.

Researchers from global cybersecurity and anti-virus brand Kaspersky had warned in December last year that more cybercriminal groups will target online payment processing systems in 2020. 

It said that over the past couple of years, so-called JS-skimming (the method of stealing of payment card data from online stores), has gained immense popularity among attackers. 

Kaspersky researchers in their report said they are currently aware of at least 10 different actors involved in these type of attacks.

Their number will continue to grow during the next year, the report said, adding that the most dangerous attacks will be on companies that provide services such as e-commerce as-a-service, which will lead to the compromise of thousands of companies.

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Agencies
July 13,2020

New Delhi, Jul 13: The Income Tax Department has facilitated a new functionality for banks and post offices to ascertain TDS applicability rates on cash withdrawal of above Rs 20 lakh in case of a non-filer of the income-tax return and that of above Rs 1 crore in case of a filer of the income-tax return.

In a statement, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said that now banks and post offices have to only enter the PAN of the person who is withdrawing cash for ascertaining the applicable rate of TDS.

So far, more than 53,000 verification requests have been executed successfully on this facility, a statement by the CBDT said.

"CBDT today said that this functionality available as 'Verification of applicability u/s 194N' on www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in since 1st July 2020, is also made available to the Banks through web-services so that the entire process can be automated and be linked to the Bank's internal core banking solution," it said.

On entering PAN by the bank or the post office, a message will be instantly displayed on the departmental utility: "TDS is deductible at the rate of 2 per cent if cash withdrawal exceeds Rs 1 crore", in case the person withdrawing cash is a filer of the income-tax return.

In case the person withdrawing cash is a non-filer of income tax return, the message shown would be: "TDS is deductible at the rate of 2 per cent if cash withdrawal exceeds Rs 20 lakh and at the rate of 5 per cent if it exceeds Rs 1 crore."

The CBDT said that the data on cash withdrawal indicated that huge amount of cash is withdrawn by the persons who have never filed income-tax returns.

To ensure filing of return by these persons and to keep track on cash withdrawals by the non-filers, and to curb black money, the Finance Act, 2020 with effect from July 1, 2020 further amended IT Act to lower threshold of cash withdrawal to Rs 20 lakh for the applicability of this TDS for the non-filers and also mandated TDS at the higher rate of 5 per cent on cash withdrawal exceeding Rs 1 crore by the non-filers.

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