Mangaluru (Karnataka) BJP MLC Pratapsimha Nayak on Wednesday called for the resignation of Minister Priyank Kharge over the alleged allotment of a land to a trust run by his family including his father and Congress President M Mallikarjun Kharge.

Speaking to reporters here, Nayak said Kharge, who is the Minister for Electronics, IT/BT and Rural Development & Panchayat Raj in the Congress government should step down, accusing him of exerting undue influence in securing the Civic Amenity (CA) site to Siddhartha Vihar Trust, an organisation associated with Kharge family members.

The family has the best CA sites registered in their trust which is a ‘scam’, he claimed.

Nayak also stated that the Siddaramiah government was on a shaky pitch, and every minister and MLA in the government were busy creating action plans for themselves in the impending situation for the Congress party.

On Tuesday, the BJP petitioned the Karnataka Governor seeking the dismissal from the Cabinet of Minister Kharge over the alleged allotment of a land to a trust run by his family.

However, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah defended the land allotment and said it has been done in accordance with law.

New Delhi: More people have lost their lives in India in road accidents than wars, militancy and Naxalism, Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Wednesday.

Addressing the sixth Edition of FICCI Road Safety Awards and Conclave 2024, Gadkari further said the number of blackspots is increasing because of bad detailed project reports (DPRs) of road projects.

“More people have lost lives in road crashes than wars, militancy and Naxalism,” he said.

According to Gadkari, India accounts for 5 lakh accidents and 1.5 lakh deaths annually, while 3 lakh people are injured.

“This caused a 3 per cent loss to the country’s GDP. Like a sacrificial lamb, a driver is blamed for every accident. Let me tell you, and I observe minutely — often, the road engineering is at fault,” he said.

The minister emphasised on the need to conduct safety audit of all highways.

He also noted that to reduce number of accidents, “we need to follow lane discipline”.

Gadkari added that the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways is readying codes for ambulance and its drivers, to train them in using sophisticated machinery like cutters to rescue road accident victims quickly.

New Delhi: Declaring that “enough is enough”, President Droupadi Murmu on Wednesday said it is time for India to wake up to the “perversion” of crimes against women and counter the mindset that sees women as “less powerful, less capable, less intelligent”.

“Those who share such views then go further and see the female as an object… We owe it to our daughters to remove the hurdles from their path of winning the freedom from fear.

Referring to the August 9 rape and murder of a junior doctor in a Kolkata hospital, a “dismayed and horrified” president said what is even more depressing is that it is part of a series of crimes against women.

Murmu said no civilised society can allow daughters and sisters to be subjected to such atrocities. “The nation is bound to be outraged, and so am I,” she wrote.

The hard-hitting and personalised article, titled “Women’s Safety: Enough is Enough”, is the first time the president has articulated her views on the August 9 Kolkata incident that has once again shaken the conscience of the nation and led to widespread, continuing protests.

The president gave the article after a detailed conversation on topical issues with a team of PTI senior editors, who called on her at Rashtrapati Bhavan to mark the 77th anniversary of the news agency’s founding on August 27, 1947.

“Even as students, doctors and citizens were protesting in Kolkata, criminals remained on the prowl elsewhere. The victims include even kindergarten girls,” Murmu said.

During the interaction, she recalled her recent meeting with a group of schoolchildren on Raksha Bandhan. “They asked me innocently if they could be assured that there would be no recurrence of the Nirbhaya-type incident in future,” the president said, referring to the brutal rape and murder of a physiotherapy intern in Delhi in December 2012.

She noted that an outraged nation then made plans and devised strategies, and the initiatives did make some difference. In the 12 years since, there have been countless tragedies of similar nature though only few drew nationwide attention, Murmu said.

“Did we learn our lessons? As social protests petered out, these incidents got buried into a deep and inaccessible recess of social memory, to be recalled only when another heinous crime takes place,” she said.

Taking a macro view of the rights of women, she said they have had to fight for every inch of ground they have won. Social prejudices as well as some customs and practices have always opposed the expansion of women’s rights, Murmu added.

“This is a rather deplorable mindset… This mindset sees the female as a lesser human being, less powerful, less capable, less intelligent,” she wrote.

In her view, it is the objectification of women by a few that is behind the crimes against women.

“It is ingrained deeply in the minds of such people,” the president said, stressing that countering this mindset is a task for both the State and society.

Acknowledging that there have been laws and social campaigns, she said, “Yet, there is something that continues to come in the way and to torment us.”

History, the president said, “often hurts” and societies scared to face history resort to “collective amnesia” to bury their heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich.

“Now the time has come not only to face history squarely but also to search within our souls and probe the pathology of crimes against women,” she said in her impassioned appeal.

“Let us deal with this perversion in a comprehensive manner so as to curb it right at the beginning. We can do this only if we honour the memory of the victims by cultivating a social culture of remembering them to remind us of our failures in the past and prepare us to be more vigilant in future,” Murmu said.

The society needs honest, unbiased self-introspection, and ask itself some difficult questions, the president said.

“Where have we erred? And what can we do to remove the errors? Without finding out the answer to that question, the half of our population cannot live as freely as the other half,” she said.

Kolkata : BJP workers clashed with the police at several places across West Bengal on Wednesday as they tried to enforce a 12-hour shutdown, which had a mixed impact in the state.

Several BJP leaders, including former MPs Roopa Ganguly and Locket Chatterjee, Rajya Sabha MP Samik Bhattacharya and MLA Agnimitra Paul, were detained for blocking roads since the morning.

The ‘Bangla Bandh’, which began at 6 am, was called by the BJP in protest against Tuesday’s police action on participants of ‘Nabanna Abhijan’ or march to the secretariat, organised by the newly formed students’ group Chatra Samaj over the rape and murder of the doctor at RG Kar hospital.

The shutdown partially affected daily life in the state with many people choosing to remain indoors apprehending trouble on the roads.

In state capital Kolkata, the usual weekday flurry was missing with a smaller number of buses, auto-rickshaws and taxis plying. Private vehicles were also significantly less, even as markets and shops remained open.

Schools and colleges were open, though the number of students was fewer. Many English-medium schools in Kolkata suspended classes.

In many private offices, attendance was low with employees asked to work from home. However, attendance was as usual in government offices.

Several BJP leaders were detained across the state for attempting to enforce the shutdown.

Ganguly and Paul were detained from south Kolkata’s Gariahat area when they were urging traders to down their shutters and requesting people to support the bandh.

Chatterjee was detained from Shyambazar when she was leading a demonstration, while Bhattacharya was detained from Wipro More in Salt Lake Sector 5.

Kolkata’s Ward 50 councillor Sajal Ghosh was detained from his residence in Sealdah shortly after BJP workers scuffled with TMC supporters while trying to enforce the bandh in the nearby Koley Market.

His wife Tania Ghosh then took out a rally, alleging that police held him without any warrant.

Later, Deputy Commissioner (Central) Indira Mukherjee said Ghosh was arrested for making provocative comments.

State BJP president Sukanta Majumdar, a Union minister, led a procession at Baguihati in the northern fringes of the city but had an altercation with the police who tried to stop him. Former MP Debasree Choudhury and hundreds of party workers accompanied him.

Following the demonstration, Majumdar went to central Kolkata and blocked the CR Avenue outside the state BJP headquarters along with his supporters. He had heated arguments with senior police officers who swung into action to clear the arterial road.

At Alipurduar, BJP MP Manoj Tigga was arrested for allegedly enforcing the bandh.

An official of the Eastern Railway said bandh supporters blocked tracks at 49 places under its jurisdiction in the state.

While the blockades were lifted at most places, it was continuing in nine stations, mostly in the Sealdah South section, he said.

BJP workers demonstrated at the Bongaon station in North 24 Parganas, Gocharan station in South 24 Parganas, and the Murshidabad station in support of the bandh. Tension was palpable at the Barrackpore station in North 24 Parganas as BJP supporters and TMC workers came face to face.

At Bhatpara in North 24 Parganas district, BJP alleged that two of its workers were shot at.

Police, however, claimed that the two men were beaten up by some people outside Anglo India Jute Mill.

The injured persons were initially taken to the Bhatpara State General Hospital, but were later shifted to a hospital in Kolkata for better treatment, they said.

Former BJP MP Arjun Singh and Jagaddal’s TMC MLA Somnath Shyam along with their supporters reached the area after the incident, triggering tensions. Police intervened and brought the situation under control.

“Miscreants owing allegiance to the Trinamool Congress fired the shots, if police are not around we will show TMC the people’s power,” Singh said.

Shyam countered by saying that the BJP leader was trying to incite violence in the area.

Picketing by BJP supporters on the roads led to the disruption of public transport services in Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, Siliguri and Malda in northern West Bengal, and in Purulia, Bankura and some other places in the southern part of the state.

Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari led a protest march in Nandigram in Purba Medinipur, his home district.

In Malda, activists of the TMC and BJP engaged in a brawl over the blocking of a road. Police intervened to disperse the two groups.

Aam Aadmi Party leader and Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh surrendered before a special court here on Wednesday in connection with a 2001 street-protest case and was granted bail.

“Sanjay Singh surrendered in the MP-MLA court here. The court granted him bail on a surety bond of Rs 50,000,” his advocate Madan Singh said.

The surety was deposited on the directions of the Allahabad High court which had on August 22 stayed the execution of the sentence awarded by the Sultanpur court.

The special court had on January 11 last year sentenced the AAP leader to three months of rigorous imprisonment and slapped a fine for obstructing traffic and inciting violence during a protest in Uttar Pradesh’s Sultanpur district

Surendranagar: A bridge on the Bhogavo river in Gujarat’s Surendranagar district collapsed on Tuesday afternoon due to a sudden rise in water following discharge from an overflowing dam, officials said.

No casualties were reported in the incident.

The bridge, around 100-metre long, connected Habiyasar village with Chotila town, said Sub Divisional Magistrate of Chotila, KK Sharma.

Gujarat has been receiving heavy showers for the last three days. Surendranagar, Kheda, and Devbhumi Dwarka were also battered by rains in the morning hours.

The SDM said he did not know about the year when the bridge was built. Sarpanch of Habiyasar village, Tejabhai Bharwad who shot the video, claimed the bridge was constructed only five years ago.

“A large volume of water flowed into the river after a dam near Nani Morsal village overflowed, which caused the bridge crash. No one was injured in the incident,” said Sharma.

He said the administration never received any representation about structural issues of the bridge or whether it was weak.

Bharwad claimed that Habiyasar village is now cut off from the rest of the state in the absence of an alternative route.

“This bridge was built just five years ago. It collapsed at around 1:30 pm when I was at the spot.

When the bridge was being constructed, I protested because of faulty construction techniques. However, the contractor said it’s a new construction method. The bridge eventually fell apart today,” Bharwad claimed, adding that 800 villagers are cut off from the state.

This is the first time when the actual strength of the bridge was tested in five years as a large volume of water flowed into the river from the overflowing dam, he said

Asserting that her government has zero tolerance to incidents of rape, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said an amendment to existing laws will be passed in the state assembly next week to ensure capital punishment to convicted rapists.

Banerjee said that she would sit for dharna outside Raj Bhavan if the governor delays in giving assent to the amended bill or forwards it to the President for ratification.

The chief minister also said that the TMC will launch a movement from Saturday at the state’s grassroots to create pressure on the Centre to pass legislation for capital punishment of convicted rapists.

“We will pass the amended bill in a special session of the assembly next week. We will then send it to the governor for his nod. We will stage dharna outside Raj Bhavan if he sits on the bill,” she thundered from the Trinamool Congress Chhatra Parishad foundation day rally here.

Banerjee also urged the agitating junior doctors of Bengal, who have struck work for 20 days now to urgently consider returning to duty.

“I have remained sympathetic towards the cause of the doctors from the very beginning since they were seeking justice for their colleague. We did not take any action against them although so many days have passed since the incident. We understand your pain. But please come back to work now since patients are suffering,” she appealed.

Coming down heavily on the BJP for calling a 12-hour bandh, Banerjee said, “They called a bandh since they wanted political dividends over a dead body. The BJP is trying to exploit the emotions of ordinary people in the wake of the death of a young woman. They want to malign Bengal and plotted a conspiracy to derail the probe into her death so that the victim and her family do not get justice.”