Archives for December 2021

BIJNOR: A portion of a newly constructed road cracked when a BJP MLA smashed a coconut on the road to mark its inauguration in Uttar Pradesh’s Bijnor district.

Upset over the incident, BJP MLA Suchi Chaudhary sat on a dharna and scolded officials over the poor quality of the road. A total of Rs 1,16,00,000 was spent on the construction of the road, according to sources. On Thursday evening, the Bijnor MLA had gone to inaugurate the seven-km-long road near Kheda village.

During the inaugural ceremony, she smashed a coconut on the road but it did not break and instead a gravel came off.

When the MLA’s husband Mausam Chaudhary, who was also there on the spot, used a shovel on the newly constructed road, the surface started disintegrating.

Executive engineer at the Irrigation Division Vikas Aggarwal said a sample has been taken for analysis.

BENGALURU: It has been a month since the state government cut taxes on fuels, which Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai had said would lead to a revenue loss of Rs 2,000 crore to the state exchequer. However, the cut in fuel prices has led to nearly a 10-fold increase in the sales of petrol and diesel, minimising losses to the state. 

On November 4, soon after the government announced the cuts, she had said that the revenue loss would be made up with the increase in consumption which has come true. Karnataka had reduced the taxes and levies by about Rs 7 per litre of petrol and diesel, while the Centre had effected a cut of around Rs 5.

BT Manohar, Chairman, state GST committee, said, “With the fuel rate cut, the consumption has increased. This has resulted in an increase in revenues from fuel sales.” Despite heavy rain and inclement weather, the fuel sales were up in November. The consumption will only go up over the next few months with the weather expected to ease up, sources said.  

‘Rs 5-6/L price diff in K’taka’

Sources from the oil industry said, “Karnataka enjoys a price difference of at least Rs 5-6 per litre as compared to neighbouring states of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, which makes a big difference for the transport sector. With this, the sale of diesel has shot up at bunks along the border, while the petrol sales have not seen such a big jump.”

RAJOURI: Former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday urged security forces to avoid collateral damage during anti-terror operations in the Union Territory.

Heaping praises for the Army’s work in Jammu and Kashmir, Azad said, “Armymen are doing great work here in close cooperation with locals but they should avoid collateral damage during anti-terror operations.”

The Congress leader said many times it has been seen terrorists run and enter a house in order to hide and security forces use explosives to blast the entire house, resulting in civilian killings. “That should be avoided,” he said.

Recalling the days of his tenure, Azad said, “As chief minister, I had asked the security forces to cordon off the house and wait for two days. The militant will eventually come out. No doctor has said that you have to kill him the same day. The militant can be killed after two days.”

MUMBAI: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has mandated seven-day home quarantine of people arriving in the city from high-risk countries amid global concerns over the Omicron variant of coronavirus.

The civic body’s order said that with the coordination of the airport authorities, the BMC will everyday receive a list of passengers, who arrive from the countries defined as “high-risk” or “at risk”.

The list will also include the detailed address and contact numbers of these travellers.

“The BMC will get the list at 10 am daily, after which its staff will contact the passengers to inform them to remain home quarantined for the next seven days.

Adherence to the home quarantine order is mandatory and the passengers will be shifted to government-run institutions if they are found violatingit,” it said.

“An RT-PCR test will be conducted after seven days and necessary steps will be taken accordingly,” the order added.

The Omicron strain, first detected in South Africa, has been classified as a ‘variant of concern’ by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The first cases of Omicron variant in India have been confirmed in two individuals in Karnataka.

BHOPAL: A man allegedly killed a stray dog after it bit his son in Madhya Pradesh’s Gwalior district, police said on Wednesday.

The incident took place about a month back in Simariatal village, while a video of the brutal killing surfaced on social media on Sunday, following which an animal activist lodged a police complaint, Dehat police station in-charge Anand Kumar said.

In the purported video shot from a distance, the man is seen hitting the dog, screaming with pain, with a sharp-edged tool and then chopping off its leg.

An activist of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) demanded action in the matter from Gwalior police.

Superintendent of Police Amit Sanghi told PTI that an FIR has been registered against the man following the complaint.

“According to the villagers, the accused, Sagar Vishwas, was angry as the dog had attacked his son and bitten off flesh of the boy’s jaw. The dog had also bitten at least five other people of the village,” Kumar said.

A notice will be issued to the accused for appearing before a court, he said.

Based on a complaint by NGO People for Animals (PFA) activist Chhaya Tomar, the police registered the FIR against the man under Indian Penal Code Section 429 (mischief by killing, poisoning, maiming an animal) and relevant provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.

PETA activist Meet Ashar and PFA’s Priyanshu Jain said the incident was caught on a video that went viral on social media platforms.

The PETA in a statement said it is learnt that the man allegedly killed the community dog by repeatedly beating the animal with a rod and then chopping off its leg with a knife.

“PETA India commends the Gwalior police for taking steps to send across the message that cruelty to animals will not be tolerated,” Ashar said.

Jain said they had never come across such an act of cruelty against an animal in Madhya Pradesh.

“The accused needs mental evaluation and counselling. Cases like these signify the need for stronger laws against animal abuse,” Jain said.

Bengaluru: In a heart-wrenching incident, the bodies of two COVID-19 victims, who died in July 2020, are “rotting” in the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation Hospital mortuary in the city for the past over one year.

According to hospital sources, a 40-year old woman and a man in his early 50s were admitted in the hospital in Rajajinagar with coronavirus in June 2020 and died a few days later in the following month.

Since then, their bodies are kept in the mortuary as the final rites were not performed for unknown reasons.

In this regard, Rajajinagar BJP MLA and former minister S Suresh Kumar has written to Karnataka Labour Minister A Shivaram Hebbar requesting him to get the matter investigated and punish those responsible for the “inhuman incident.”

In his letter, whose copy he shared with reporters, Kumar said that during the first wave of COVID-19 two people died in the ESI Hospital in July 2020 and their bodies are still rotting in the mortuary of the hospital.

“The role of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanaara Palike and the ESI authorities is grave. In this regard, I request you order a high level probe, get the detailed inquiry report and initiate stringent action against those who are responsible for this inhumane act,” Kumar wrote.

In his emotionally charged letter, Kumar said such incidents should never occur anywhere.

“During the peak of COVID-19, we came across various heart-wrenching incidents but the incident that came to the light in the ESI Hospital is most unfortunate. It is the height of irresponsibility and inhuman behaviour,” Kumar wrote.

Bengaluru: Amid the Omicron variant of COVID-19 creating concern globally, Karnataka Health Minister Dr K Sudhakar on Monday said the sample of one of the two persons who arrived in Bengaluru recently from South Africa is ‘different from the Delta variant’.

The minister said he was not supposed to say anything officially as he was still in touch with the union health ministry and the Indian Council for Medical Research officials.

“There is a delta variant for the past nine months only, but you are saying that one of the samples is Omicron. I cannot say about it officially. I am in touch with the ICMR and central government officials,” Sudhakar told reporters here.

The sample has been sent to ICMR, he said.

Refusing to divulge the identity of the man, the minister said his COVID report shows that he has contracted a different variant of the novel coronavirus.

“There is a 63-year-old man whose name I should not disclose. His report is a bit different. It appears different from the delta variant. We will discuss with the ICMR officials and will let people know by the evening what it is,” the minister said.

The minister said he would chair a marathon meeting on Tuesday with the officers of his department, from the Principal Secretary to the Primary Health Centre level doctors, regarding the steps to be taken.

He added that the members of the Technical Advisory Committee on COVID-19 have also been invited for the meeting.

Sudhakar also said that he has sought a detailed report on the Omicron variant.

“We will get a clear information on December 1 about how the Omicron behaves after the genomic sequencing. Accordingly we will initiate all measures,” he explained.

Underlining the fact that the new variant is visible in at least 12 nations, Sudhakar said the international travellers will be tested carefully and those tested positive will be hospitalised compulsorily.

“We are tracking and closely watching all those who came from South Africa in the past 14 days. We have started tracing and testing their primary and secondary contacts since Saturday,” the minister said.

Speaking about Omicron, Sudhakar, who himself is a medical professional, said he has also spoken to his classmate doctors working in South Africa, who told him that the new variant is not as dangerous as the delta variant.

“The satisfying thing I came across after talking to my classmates in South Africa is that this (Omicron variant) spreads rapidly, but it is not as dangerous like Delta.

People feel nausea and vomiting and sometimes the pulse rate goes up, but loss of taste and smell is not there. There is less hospitalisation because it’s intensity is not severe,” Sudhakar explained.

To a query on the possibility of a lockdown, Sudhakar said there was no such proposal before the government and there was no need to panic as people have already suffered losses due to the earlier lockdown in terms of loss of lives and livelihood.

According to health department officials, the two persons who flew into Bengaluru from South Africa tested positive for COVID-19 on November 11 and 20. Both were hospitalised, they added.

New Delhi: The government has no proposal to recognise Bitcoin as a currency in the country, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in a reply to the Lok Sabha on Monday.

She also informed the House that the government does not collect data on Bitcoin transactions.

Whether the government has any proposal to recognise Bitcoin as a currency in the country, the Finance Minister said “No, sir”.

Bitcoin is a digital currency that allows people to buy goods and services and exchange money without involving banks, credit card issuers or other third parties.

It was introduced in 2008 by an unidentified group of programmers as a cryptocurrency as well as an electronic payment system. It is reportedly the first decentralised digital currency where peer-to-peer transactions take place without any intermediary.

Meanwhile, the government plans to introduce the Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2021 in the ongoing Winter Session of Parliament. The Bill seeks to ban all but a few private cryptocurrencies to promote underlying technologies while allowing an official digital currency by RBI.

In reply to another question, Sitharaman said, ministries and departments have spent Rs 2.29 lakh crore as capital expenditure during the April-September period of the current fiscal.

This is 41 per cent of the Budget Estimate (BE) of Rs 5.54 lakh crore for 2021-22. The actual expenditure during current fiscal is about 38 per cent higher than the corresponding expenditure in FY 2020-21, she said.

To accelerate capital expenditure for creation and upgradation of infrastructure in the economy, Government of India had launched the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) with projected infrastructure investment of Rs 111 lakh crore during the period 2020-2025 to provide world-class infrastructure across the country, and improve the quality of life for all citizens.

NIP was launched with 6,835 projects, which has expanded to over 9,000 projects covering 34 sub-sectors. NIP is expected to improve project preparation, attract investments into infrastructure, and play pivotal role in economic growth, she said.

National Monetization Pipeline (NMP) was also launched on August 23, 2021 to unlock the value of investments in public sector assets by tapping private sector capital and efficiencies for delivering infrastructure services, she said, adding, the monetization proceeds are envisaged to be ploughed back to augment existing/ create greenfield infrastructure to boost the economy.

Subsequently, she said, Gati Shakti (National Master Plan for Infrastructure Development) was launched on October 13, 2021 as a digital platform to bring Ministries/Departments together for integrated planning and coordinated implementation of infrastructure connectivity projects.

It will also facilitate the last mile connectivity of infrastructure and also reduce travel time for people, she added.

On inflation, the Finance Minister said price situation of major essential commodities is being monitored by the government on a regular basis and corrective actions are taken from time to time.

“The uptrend in inflation has been largely led by exogenous factors viz. increased international prices of crude oil and edible oils which have an impact on domestic inflation due to India’s import dependence on these items,” she said.

The rise of WPI inflation is also mostly driven by ‘fuel and power’ and manufactured products inflation, once again driven by increased global prices of crude oil and increase in international commodity/input prices, she said.

Several supply side measures have been taken by the government to curb the inflationary pressures, she said.

To check the petrol and diesel prices, Sitharaman said, the central government has reduced Central Excise Duty on Petrol & Diesel by Rs 5 and Rs 10 respectively with effect from November 4, 2021.

“In response many states governments have also reduced Value Added Tax on petrol and diesel. Consequently, retail prices of petrol and diesel have sobered down,” she said.

As an additional measure to control prices, India has agreed to release 5 million barrels of crude oil from its Strategic Petroleum Reserves, she said, adding, this release will happen in parallel and in consultation with other major global energy consumers including the USA, People’s Republic of China, Japan and the Republic of Korea.