Bengaluru: As the Income Tax raids at various properties linked to Karnataka Minister D K Shivakumar continued for the third consecutive day today,Chief Minister Siddaramaiah called it a “politically motivated” move on the part of the central government.

Raking up the issue of IT sleuths using CRPF during the searches, he also hit out at the BJP for calling it a fight against corruption, saying most of its own leaders were facing graft charges.

In a swoop down that has raised a political storm, the IT department on Wednesday began its searches on various properties linked to Shivakumar, who is hosting 44 Gujarat Congress MLAs at a resort on city outskirts to forestall alleged attempts by BJP to poach on them ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls.

Ahmed Patel, political secretary to Congress President Sonia Gandhi, is locked in a bitter fight in the election.

During the searches at about 66 places across the countryin connection with a case of alleged tax evasion, IT officialssaid they have seized cash and jewellery worth over Rs 15 crore have sofar.

“This is a politically motivated raid; the timing also clearly shows that it is politically motivated,” Siddaramaiah told reporters here.

He said “I’m not against the raid or search on anyhouse, but the time that they have selected and the intentionof the central government and the IT department…”

On Wednesday, Siddaramaiah in a statement had charged that the IT department action was an attempt to silence the voice against BJP.

Asked whether he feels that Shivakumar will come out clean, the Chief Minister today said “let us see, we do not know what has happened, what they have found during the searches, but according to me it is a politically motivated.”

“He is a Minister. Taking reserve police to his houseand other places is not fair,” he said.

Without divulging any details, IT department sources said the searches at different places and questioning of the minister in this regard continued today also.

Questioning the motive behind IT sleuths going to the resort where MLAs are lodged, Siddaramaiah objected to the use of CRPF without keeping the state police in the loop.

Also, hitting back at the BJP for terming raids as fight against corruption, he said, “there are corruptioncharges against (union minister) Ananth Kumar, only inquiry is still going on.”

“There are corruption charges against so many BJP leaders in Karnataka. Is Yeddyurappa (Karnataka party chief) not facing corruption charges?” he said.

(PTI)

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court today sought a response from journalist Arnab Goswami and his channel Republic TV on Congress MP Shashi Tharoor’s plea to refrain from “misreporting” his wife Sunanda Pushkar’s death and asked them to respect his “right to silence”.

Justice Manmohan issued notice to Goswami and Republic TV after Tharoor alleged that they continued to engage in “defaming and maligning” him despite an assurance given in the court on May 29 by their counsel.

Taking note of this, the bench said, “You (Goswami and the channel) have to respect Tharoor’s right to silence.”

Senior advocate Salman Khurshid, appearing for Tharoor, submitted that the court must direct Goswami and the channel to not mention the expression “murder of Sunanda Pushkar”, as it is yet to be established by a competent court that her death was “murder”, to ensure the trial was not prejudiced.

Senior advocate Sandeep Sethi, appearing for Goswami and the channel, said they have only placed the actual evidence and the police report while broadcasting the news.

“We have not called him a murderer in any of the news broadcasts on the channel (Republic channel),” Sethi said.

The judge, however, said orally that he had asked the counsel who had assured that names would not be taken.

“They will have to abide by that,” the judge said.

Advocate Sethi replied, “My client stands by what was assured by me.”
The court has now fixed the matter for further hearing on August 16.

The court was hearing an application moved by Tharoor in his pending Rs 2 crore defamation suit against Goswami and the channel for allegedly making defamatory remarks against him while airing news relating to the mysterious death of his wife.

Pushkar was found dead in a suite of a five-star hotel in south Delhi on the night of January 17, 2014. The matter is still under investigation.

(PTI)

Ahmedabad: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Friday faced hostile black-flag waving crowds shouting slogans in favour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his tour of flood-hit Dhanera town in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district, forcing him to beat a retreat. His car was pelted with stones, shattering some windows.

The person who threw stones at Gandhi has been detained, Banaskantha’s superintendent of police told news agency PTI.

Gandhi, who arrived here on Friday on a day-long visit to flood-affected regions of north Gujarat, flew down to Dhanera straight from flood-affected Rajasthan areas and spoke to people from Manotra village as well as surrounding areas, before proceeding to the town’s agriculture produce marketing yard to meet the farmers and traders there.

Later, as he reached Lal Chowk in Dhanera he met with crowds showing him black flags and shouting slogans for Prime Minister Modi while protesting against him.

“BJP goons attack Congress VP Rahulji’s car in Lal Chowk, Dhanera, Banaskanta, Gujarat. Disgusting and disgraceful,” Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said in a tweet on Friday.

The Congress vice-president was to address a brief public meeting in Lal Chowk but it had to be cancelled after he was heckled. Police lathi-charged the people to disperse them and Gandhi left the scene.

Even as his car moved on, people pelted water pouches at his cavalcade. He later proceeded on a visit of flood-hit villages of Banaskantha district. As he was going to Dhanera helipad, his car was pelted with stones and some window panes were shattered.

Gandhi is to take a tour of Banaskantha and Patan districts, which are the worst-affected regions in the floods in the state in 70 years. North Gujarat is otherwise a drought-prone region.

Over 200 persons are estimated to have died and 4.5 lakh people affected by the floods in the state.

(Agencies)

New Delhi: Supreme Court today criticized the Karnataka Government for demanding a hefty amount from PDP leader Abdul Nasser Madani for his travel and security expenses while leaving for Kerala to see his mother and attend his son’s wedding.

It’s the State’s responsibility to provide security to a trial prisoner, said the apex court, and added that extracting such a huge amount cannot be granted.

The SC said that it considered the Karnataka Government’s move as an attempt to prevent his journey. The petition was submitted before the Bench chaired by Justice S.A. Bobade, who gave him permission to attend the wedding of his son to be held on August 9. In his petition, Madani alleged that the Karnataka Government is trying to scuttle his plan to go to Kerala.

His lawyer contended that when Madani went Kerala before there were only four security guards. In its place, Karnataka appointed a 19-member group to accompany Madani. Senior lawyer Prashanth Bhushan appeared for Madani in the SC.

His journey became uncertain when Karnataka demanded Rs 15 lakh for his security. It includes the salary and travel expenses of a 19-member police team headed by an assistant commissioner.

Madani informed his inability to provide such a huge amount and decided to call off the journey. Later, he approached the apex court.

Meanwhile, the Kerala government has intervened to facilitate Madani’s visit to Kerala. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday sent a letter to the Karnataka Government expressing willingness to provide police escort to Madani during the visit.

Madani’s bail applications to meet his parents and attend his son’s wedding were granted by the NIA Court in Bengaluru and the Supreme Court.

An accused in the Bengaluru serial bomb blast case, Madani was granted bail from August 1 to 14 by both the courts.

(Agencies)

New Delhi: A superintendent of the newly- established GST Council has been arrested by the CBI for allegedly receiving bribe through one of his close aides.

Monish Malhotra, the superintendent, and Manas Patra, the alleged middleman, were arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) last evening, an official said.

This could be the first instance of a GST Council official being arrested by the central investigating agency.

It is alleged that Patra, a tax consultant, on the instruction of Malhotra, who was earlier posted in the Central Excise, had collected illegal gratification from a number of private parties in the past few days, which was to be delivered to Malhotra yesterday.

(PTI)

Raichur: Congress party has reportedly postponed a convention of party workers scheduled at Raichur in which AICC vice president Rahul Gandhi scheduled to address his party workers on August 4. The move to postpone the event came in the wake of IT raid on Karnataka State Minister, Congress leader DK Shivakumar.

Reports said, Rahul Gandhi is reluctant to visit Karnataka following IT raid on his senior party member. However, the party sources said, the rally cancelled in the wake of death of former Karnataka chief minister, Congress leader N Dharam Singh last week.

Congress party leaders said, the convention of the party workers, a foot march from Sindhanur to Raichur led by AICC vice president has been postponed to another day. Meanwhile, close associates of Rahul Gandhi said, he is busy with next Rajya Sabha polls and elections scheduled for the post of vice president of India.

(Agencies)

Boston: Nearly 1.5 billion people in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are likely to face deadly heat waves within the next few decades due to climate change, exposing them to unsurvivable temperatures and widespread food crisis, an MIT study has warned.

Scientists predicted that by the end of this century climate change could lead to severe summer heat waves in South Asia, a region of deep poverty where one-fifth of the world’s population resides.

There is still time to avert such severe warming if measures are implemented now to reduce the most dire consequences of global warming, researchers said.

However, without significant reductions in carbon emissions, the heat waves could begin within as little as a few decades to strike the fertile Indus and Ganges river basins that produce much of the region’s food supply, they said.

The areas likely to be hardest hit in northern India, Bangladesh and southern Pakistan are home to 1.5 billion people.

These areas are also among the poorest in the region, with much of the population dependent on subsistence farming that requires long hours of hard labour out in the open and unprotected from the Sun.

“That makes them very vulnerable to these climatic changes,” said Elfatih Eltahir, from MIT.

While the projections show the Persian Gulf may become the region of the worst heat waves on the planet, northern India is a close second, Eltahir said, and eastern China, also densely populated, is third.

The highest concentrations of heat in the Persian Gulf would be out over the waters of the Gulf itself, with lesser levels over inhabited land.

The new analysis is based on recent research showing that hot weather’s most deadly effects for humans comes from a combination of high temperature and high humidity, an index which is measured by a reading known as wet-bulb temperature.

This reflects the ability of moisture to evaporate, which is the mechanism required for the human body to maintain its internal temperature through the evaporation of sweat.

At a wet-bulb temperature of 35 degrees Celsius, the human body cannot cool itself enough to survive more than a few hours.

A previous study of temperature and humidity records show that in today’s climate, wet-bulb temperatures have rarely exceeded about 31 degrees Celsius anywhere on Earth.

While an earlier report from researchers showed that this survivability limit would start to be exceeded occasionally in the Persian Gulf region by the end of this century, actual readings there in the summer of 2015 showed that the 35-degree wet-bulb limit had almost been reached already, suggesting that such extremes could begin happening earlier than projected.

The summer of 2015 also produced one of the deadliest heat waves in history in South Asia, killing an estimated 3,500 people in Pakistan and India. Yet, India and China remain two countries where emission rates of greenhouse gases continue to rise, driven mostly by economic growth, Eltahir said.

The study shows that by century’s end the most extreme, once-in-25-years heat waves would increase from wet-bulb temperatures of about 31 to 34.2 degrees Celsius. “It brings us close to the threshold of survivability,” he said.

In today’s climate, about two per cent of the Indian population sometimes gets exposed to extremes of 32-degree wet-bulb temperatures.

According to this study, by 2100 that will increase to about 70 per cent of the population, and about two per cent of the people will sometimes be exposed to the survivability limit of 35 degrees.

The region is important agriculturally, it is not just those directly affected by the heat who will suffer, Eltahir said.

“With the disruption to the agricultural production, it doesn’t need to be the heat wave itself that kills people. Production will go down, so potentially everyone will suffer,” he said.

(Agencies)