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President Ram Nath Kovind on Thursday expressed his condolences on the death of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
“Extremely sad to hear of the passing away of Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, our former Prime Minister and a true Indian statesman. His leadership, foresight, maturity and eloquence put him in a league of his own. Atalji, the Gentle Giant, will be missed by one and all,” he tweeted.
Vajpayee died at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi. He was 93.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday termed former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s passing away a “very big loss” to the nation.
“Very very saddened that the great statesman and former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee ji is no more with us.
“His passing away is a very big loss to our nation. I will always cherish many fond memories with him. Condolences to his family and his many admirers,” Mamata tweeted.
Vajpayee passed away at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi after prolonged illness. He was 93.
With heavy rains upto 25 cm lashing coastal and south interior districts of Karnataka, the state is working to shift people stranded in flood-hit regions, an official statement said on Thursday.
“Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy has discussed with the Air Force officials to rescue people stranded in the districts of Kodagu, Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Hassan, Shivamogga and Chikkamagaluru and shift them to safety,” a statement from the Chief Minister’s Office said.
People living in Hattihole in Kodagu district, about 270 km southwest of here, which has been receiving very heavy rains, will be shifted to safer places soon, the statement said.
“The Chief Minister has directed the district officials to respond to people affected by the rains and open safety shelters if required,” it added.
Over the last 24 hours, parts of Kodagu and Dakshina Kannada districts received extremely heavy rains measuring beyond 24 cm, according to a weather advisory from the Bengaluru division of India Meteorological Department (IMD).
Coastal districts of Udupi received heavy rains upto 11 cm, Uttara Kannada 17 cm, south interior districts of Shivamogga 20 cm and Chikkamagaluru 6 cm.
Districts in the northern part of the state, which have been facing a rainfall deficit, have also received light to moderate rainfall.
Due to the heavy rains, landslides were reported since early this week in several parts of the state, particularly on the Bengaluru-Mangaluru route, leading to several state-run buses and trains suspending their services on rain-affected routes.
The state-run Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) has suspended its operations from Bengaluru towards Mangaluru and Kerala, due to landslides, heavy rains and flooded roads, a statement said.
A total of six trains including Karwar-Yesvantpur Express, Yesvantpur-Mangalore Junction Express, were partially cancelled and a few other trains were diverted since Tuesday due to the landslides, the South Western Railway said in a statement.
With the state’s reservoirs in the Cauvery basin being filled to their maximum capacity during bountiful rains over the last two months, the incessant rains have been causing the rivers to overflow.
In the Cauvery basin, water from the Krishna Raja Sagara (KRS) reservoir across Cauvery river in Mandya district, Kabini reservoir in Mysuru districtAacross Kabini river, one of the major tributaries of Cauvery, is being released over the past few days, flooding the nearby towns and villages.
Over 1.2 lakh cusecs of rainwater was released as of Wednesday evening from KRS reservoir, 50,000 cusecs from Kabini reservoir, 15,000 cusecs from Harangi reservoir across Harangi river (tributary of Cauvery) in Kodagu district and 12,000 cusecs from Hemavati reservoir across Hemavati river (tributary of Cauvery) in Hassan district, officials said.
The Karnataka State Disaster Management Authority has warned the coastal and south interior districts to be braced for heavy rains for the next four days.
District officials in coastal and southern part of the state have formed teams prepared with lifejackets, boats and other equipment to undertake rescue operations when required.
Due to high waves and heavy winds, the IMD has asked the fishermen to avoid venturing into the Arabian Sea.
“Fishermen are advised not to venture into the Arabian sea over Karnataka coast, north Kerala coastal and over Lakshwadeep area,” it said.
Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a moderate face in saffron politics and the first non-Congress prime minister to complete a full term in office, died here on Thursday after a prolonged illness, AIIMS authorities said. He was 93.
“It is with profound grief that we inform about the sad demise of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at 5.05 p.m. on 16.08.2018,” an AIIMS press statement said.
The statement said Vajpayee was admitted on June 11 and was stable in the last nine weeks. “Unfortunately, his condition deteriorated over the last 36 hours and he was put on life support system. Despite the best of efforts, we have lost him today.”
Vajpayee, a diabetic patient, was undergoing treatment at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). His condition worsened further on Wednesday evening with leaders from across the political spectrum thronging the hospital and enquiring about his health.
The former Prime Minister, whose birthday on December 25 is celebrated as Good Governance Day, was honoured with the Bharat Ratna in 2014 at his home.
He was Prime Minister for 13 days in mid-1996 when he was forced to resign ahead of the confidence vote for which he did not have the numbers.
Vajpayee again became the Prime Minister in March 1998 but his government fell 13 months later on the floor of the Lok Sabha losing by one vote in the confidence motion after AIADMK headed by the late J.Jayalalithaa withdrew support to the BJP.
The BJP government headed by Vajpayee returned to power in 1999 and completed its full term till 2014.
Shocked over the demise of Ajit Wadekar, spin great Erapalli Prasanna on Thursday said his former teammate was one of the most elegant left handers he had played with.
“I am utterly shocked. I heard it in the morning and I still don’t know the reason. Ajit was the one of the most elegant left-handers I played with and under,” Prasanna told IANS over phone.
Wadekar, who was suffering from prolonged illness, breathed his last at the age of 77.
Wadekar was an excellent catcher in the slips and famously led India to historic series wins in the West Indies and England in 1971.
“He was a defensive captain but when the situation demanded, he used to up the ante and deliver the goods quietly. He went about his business without much ado,” Prasanna said.
Wadekar took over the reins from Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi during the 1970-71 West Indies tour thanks to the casting vote of Vijay Merchant, the chairman of selectors.
In later years, Wadekar served as India’s first ever official head coach, taking over in 1992.
“I will always remember him as a great leader and someone who never liked to lose. Bombay cricket has always been like that and he was no different. So he was defensive but when the chips were down, he knew how to get the results,” Prasanna added.
Thousands of flood-affected people in Kerala — mostly in Pathanamthitta and parts of Ernakulam and Thrissur — have been stranded as rescuers battle heavy rains to reach out to them even as the death toll in the unprecedented floods rose to 88 on Thursday.
Reports said hundreds of people are perched on the roofs of their houses in the worst-hit southern district of Pathanamthitta, where attempts to airlift the marooned families have failed.
“My 90-year-old mother-in-law, a sister-in-law who is a cancer patient, and other relatives are living in a precarious condition as water is rising not just outside their home near Thiruvalla but inside, too,” a relative told IANS.
“When we spoke to the authorities there, they said they are helpless as boats are not available,” he said.
CPI-M legislator from Chengannur Saji Cherian said: “Hundreds of people are eagerly waiting to be evacuated and the only way out is airlifting. Unless things move fast, this could turn out to be very serious.”
TV channels in the state are showing live pictures of people crying for help.
“We are standing on the terrace of our two-storied building near Chengannur and we are being told since last evening that we will be rescued soon. If help does not reach us in an hour’s time, we may not be alive, as water level is rising menacingly” is how a family reacted on a TV channel on Thursday.
Similar scenes are being shown from Aluva and Chalakudy in central Kerala, after the dam waters from the Idukki district reached the Periyar river and its tributaries.
Rahul R. Nair, Ernakulam Rural Superintendent of Police, said hundreds of people need help. “Shortage of boats is the biggest problem,” said Nair.
The National Highway from Ernakulam to Thrissur is also choked as water has now flooded the main roads in many areas.
“We have been stuck on the road for hours now and we are going to Chennai for the marriage of our cousin sister. The prospective bride is in the vehicle. We do not know how we will reach there,” said an anxious relative of the bride.
Meanwhile, Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala said with time running out, the need of the hour is larger deployment of Army rescuers.
With the coastal and other districts of Karnataka receiving heavy rain a flood alert has been sounded in the southern state, officials said on Wednesday, August 15.
According to the State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre, coastal Udupi district received up to 35.7 cm rain in certain parts over the past 24 hours.
Other coastal districts like Dakshina Kannada received 33.8 cm rain, Uttara Kannada 33.6 cm, south interior districts of Kodagu 28.8 cm, Chikkamagaluru 25.1 cm, Hassan 24.5 cm and Shivamogga 33.6 cm.
“Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy directed Deputy Commissioners of Dakshina Kannada, Kodagu, Hassan, Chikkamagaluru and Shivamogga districts, which are receiving heavy rain over the last few days, to be prepared to take up relief work,” a statement from the Chief Minister’s Office said.
He also directed officials to visit the affected districts and assess the losses.
The northern parts of the state also received light to moderate rainfall.
The Chief Minister ordered preventive steps to avoid mishaps and inconvenience to the public due to floods and landslides.
Due to the heavy rain, landslides were reported since Monday in several parts of Karnataka, particularly on the Bengaluru-Mangaluru route, leading to suspension of services of several state-run buses and trains since Tuesday night.
Landslides were reported in Sakleshpur sub-district in the Western Ghats mountains in Hassan district, obstructing vehicular movement from Bengaluru to Mangaluru.
Six trains, including the Karwar-Yeshwanthpur Express and the Yeshwanthpur-Mangalore Junction Express, were partially cancelled and a few other trains diverted since Tuesday evening due to the landslides, the South Western Railway said in a statement.
“All premium bus services from Bengaluru towards Mangaluru, Dharmasthala (in Dakshina Kannada district), and Kundapura (in Udupi district) have been cancelled due to landslides owing to heavy rain,” the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation said.
With the state’s reservoirs in the Cauvery basin filled to capacity due to the bountiful rains over two months, the incessant rains now are causing rivers to overflow.
In the Cauvery basin, water from the Krishna Raja Sagara reservoir across the Cauvery river in Mandya district, Kabini reservoir in Mysuru district across Kabini river, one of the major tributaries of Cauvery, is being released over the past few days, flooding nearby towns and villages.
“About 1.2 lakh cusecs of rainwater was released from the KRS reservoir and another 50,000 cusecs from the Kabini reservoir as of 6 p.m. on Wednesday,” Mysuru Deputy Commissioner Abhiram G. Shankar told IANS.
The released water has been flooding several farmlands and roads in the villages and towns around the reservoirs.
Due to high waves and heavy winds, the Bengaluru division of India Meteorological Department (IMD) in its weather advisory asked the fishermen to avoid venturing into the Arabian Sea.
The heavy rain in the coastal and south interior districts will continue for the next couple of days, the IMD said.
The plan to put an Indian into space, on its own, for the first time by 2022 will create as many as 15,000 jobs, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman K. Sivan said on Wednesday.
“We estimate that the human space mission will generate about 15,000 jobs over the next few years,” Sivan told IANS here.
The ISRO wants to take up the manned spaceflight in collaboration with multiple state-run scientific institutions, academia, industry and start-ups.
The space agency aims to take Indian astronauts into space to a height of 350-400 km above the earth and orbit around the planet for at least a week by 2022. The astronauts will also be conducting experiments in space, details of which are yet to be decided by ISRO.
“The human spaceflight will be a national project and not just ISRO’s, as we will be collaborating with several institutions, academia and the industry,” Sivan told reporters here.
Rakesh Sharma, a former Indian Air Force pilot, is the only Indian citizen to travel into space so far. He was part of the crew on Soyuz T-11 launched on April 2, 1984 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, a part of the then Soviet Union.
The ISRO will be working with the Institute of Aerospace Medicine in Bengaluru for training the crew and the Indian Air Force, which will select the crew, as well as with the private sector, which will be involved in research and development, Sivan said.
The ISRO Chairman addressed the press conference in this tech hub hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in his Independence Day address in New Delhi the country’s plan to put an Indian into space by 2022 on its own.
Admitting that the space agency was “surprised” by the Prime Minister’s human space mission announcement, Sivan said the technological preparations for the project were on track since 2004.
“The announcement came to us as a surprise. We were not expecting it,” Sivan said, adding that ISRO, however, has been developing several critical technologies required for the mission like the crew module and the crew escape system.
“It is not an unrealistic schedule. We are confident of achieving it even before 2022,” Sivan said.
The opportunity of exploring space will enhance the country’s science and technological capabilities, while inspiring the youth, he added.
India’s attempt to reach space by 2022 is about six decades after a Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to journey into outer space and orbit the earth in 1961.
The US, Russia and China are the only three nations to have launched manned space flights.
The ISRO is yet to finalise the exact timeline of tests before a manned mission can take off, as it plans to have two unmanned test flights onboard a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mk 3.
In the run-up to the first manned mission, said to be the largest project undertaken by the Indian space agency, the ISRO will conduct the next unmanned test flight by 2020.
“There will be two unmanned flights before the manned mission, for which the astronaut suit is also being developed,” said Sivan.
The ambitious human space mission is expected to cost about Rs 10,000 crore, in addition to the already spent Rs 300-crore in developing the technologies for the mission, like the crew module.
Institute of Product Leadership organized an “Info session” on the 11th August 2018, at The Ritz-Carlton, Residency Road, Bengaluru.
Institute of Product Leadership is India’s first B-School for technology managers, focusing exclusively on Product Leadership with the aim of transforming technology executives into future product managers and industry leaders.
Product Management has many definitions but most experts will agree that it is essentially the art and science of delivering delighting solutions to real market problems and doing so rather predictably.
The session on Product Leadership and Data Science by Prof. Pinkesh Shah and Tejaswi G was attended by more than 40 working professionals from various domains.
The “Info-session” was aimed at providing a platform to understand the nuances of Product Leadership, which also involves understanding which products to build that can add value to consumers and how Product Leadership is more than just leading a team of product managers.
However, the challenges in product leadership involve finding the product to be market-fit. A successful product is one that is valuable, usable and feasible.
We would like to bring to your notice that Institute of Product Leadership will be hosting a Leadership Summit on the 24th of August, aimed at providing new approaches to Leadership Development and gain insight into future organizations and the HR functions. It will be an opportunity to learn from the best practices driven experiences of top HR and L&D practitioners and thought leaders on what has worked and a chance at focussed networking.
The event will witness Human Resource leaders like Hari T.N (HR Head Big Basket), Bobby Joy (Senior Director Education CA Technologies), UtkarshRai (Author, Speaker, and a Leadership Expert) and many more.
Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy on Wednesday said the JD-S-Congress coalition government was committed to the development of the entire state, asserting that he has allocated more funds for all the regions than previous governments had done.
The Chief Minister hailed Kannadigas for their spirit of unity and strong will against attempts to divide the state.
“I have an emotional bonding with Belagavi (around 500km northwest of Bengaluru, bordering Maharashtra), where the state’s first legislative session was held in 2006 during my previous tenure,” he said in his address at the Sam Manekshaw Parade ground in Bangaluru on the occasion of the country’s 72nd Independence Day.
“I salute the spirit of unity demonstrated by Kannadigas against the division of Karnataka. Their strong will has silenced the feeble voices of a division of the state before they become louder,” said Kumaraswamy.
Giving an assurance on addressing problems of the people living in Goa, Kasaragod in Kerala and Solapur in Maharashtra, Kumaraswamy said he would address them in talks with his counterparts from the three states.
“The state government aims to improve the human development index of all districts across the state. Besides basic infrastructure, amenities like education, health, and social security for all are our priority,” he said.
On the Rs 49,000-crore crop loan waiver to distressed farmers, the chief minister said an official order would soon be issued on it for loans raised from state-run banks, benefiting 20.4-lakh farmers across the state.
“The state government has already waived loan raised from cooperative banks. The new order will be issued to waive loans from the state-run banks,” he noted.