Bengaluru, Jan 25: Several women have completed a 24-hour protest here against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and are going strong to stretch it to 48 hours.
"More than a thousand women gathered on the Masjid Road at Frazer Town to denounce the CAA and National Register of Citizens (NRC)," participant and Mount Carmel College student Noor Zahira told IANS.
The women protesters extended their support to the students in Jamia Millia Islamia, the Aligarh Muslim University, the Jawaharlal Nehru University and others who were recently roughed up allegedly by police and masked goons.
Zahira, 20, said the women's protest was planned only for 24 hours but is continuing to touch 48 hours.
Starting 3pm on Thursday, the women, several of them in burqas, niqabs and hijabs, are sitting on the road just outside the Haji Sait mosque in Frazer Town in a flash protest. Though they have informed the police, they did not wait for the permission. Around 11 pm, police arrived and shut off the protesters' loud speakers.
Zahira said already four such women's anti-CAA protests were taken out in Bengaluru. Women from all ages groups have joined the protest and are sloganeering.
As the women are protesting on the road, men are guarding them standing on the opposite road, ensuring all supplies such as food and others to them, she added.
"Muslim women were not alone in denouncing the CAA... we were joined by the transgenders, Hindu women, Christian women, Dalits and others, " she said.
Some of the protesters also indulged in creative work such as composing songs against the CAA and making placards.
Though four anti-CAA women's protests happened at the Town Hall and other landmarks in Bengaluru, they were only a few hours long.
The protesting women are also showing support to women protesters at Shaheen Bagh in Delhi who were accused of demonstrating for Rs 500. However, the protest did not align anti-CAA demonstration with any political party, keeping it apolitical.
Bengaluru, June 23: Karnataka Congress chief D K Shivakumar has urged his party colleagues to be active on social media to counter the propaganda of Bharatiya Janata Party.
Speaking to media persons, the KPCC president said that no more than 20 out of the 68 Congress MLAs are active on social media.
“All those MLAs who are doing well need to be projected. We want leaders, not mere followers. They all should be the face of Congress in Karnataka. Party should not depend on just my face or Siddaramaiah’s,” he said.
Shivakumar’s diktat has resulted in the party’s social media unit scrambling to get leaders to create their accounts.
“We’re pressuring all the party MLAs and leaders. We’re asking their personal assistants or gunmen to operate their accounts if they are not savvy with social media,” KPCC social media chief A N Nataraj Gowda said.
He pointed out that the 20 MLAs who are active on social media include U T Khader, Dinesh Gundu Rao, Priyank Kharge, Krishna Byre Gowda among others.
“We’re also trying to get the accounts verified of those who are beginning to get active. For example, it was only recently that we got the accounts of S R Patil and Vijay Singh verified,” Gowda said.
Tapping the full potential of social media is crucial for the Congress because the BJP has found much success in reaching out to voters through various online platforms.
In fact, ahead of the 2018 Assembly elections, the Congress found that there were 10 ministers and some 40 MLAs who had turned a blind eye towards social media.
Shivakumar said he was also working on putting in place a system in the party under which all developments related to the state and country will be communicated to all party leaders at 10 am every day.
Bengaluru, Mar 8: The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has identified three more locations to open Viral Research Diagnostic Laboratories (VRDL) including in Mysuru, Hassan, and Shivamogga in Karnataka.
According to a statement issued here on Sunday, these laboratories will start functioning shortly in Mysuru Medical College and Research Institute, Hassan Institute of Medical Sciences, and Shivamogga Institute of Medical Sciences. Besides, the ICMR has also identified sample collection centres in Vijayanagar Institute of Medical Science in Ballari and Kalaburgi Institute of Medical Sciences.
B G Prakash, State Joint Director (Communicable Diseases), said that the new Laboratories will help to ease the load on the two designated laboratories in Bengaluru. Currently, the virology laboratory in Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute and the NIV branch in Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases are doing COVID-19 tests in Karnataka.
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