Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao will meet Janata Dal (Secular) leader Deve Gowda today, but said the meeting has “nothing to do” with upcoming elections in Karnataka. Sources in the Congress, meanwhile, claim that the high command has asked Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to pick between Chamundeshwari and Badami seats, denting his plan to contest from two seats.
Congress’s first list of candidates has been finalised. Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah will contest from Chamundeshwari while no decision has been taken yet on Badami seat. The party has decided that Siddaramaiah’s son Dr. Yatheendra will contest from Varuna. Children of PWD Minister H C Mahadevappa, Home minister Ramalingareddy and Kolar MP K H Muniyappa will also contest the upcoming Karnataka assembly polls.
BJP to announce Candidates list will be on April 15
The State BJP President B S Yeddyurappa on Friday announced that the second and the last list of candidates for the upcoming Assembly polls would be declared on April 15.
BJP had declared first list of 72 candidates on April 8. The party is yet to declare contender for the remaining 152 Assembly.
Addressing columnists here at Denissons Hotel, he said that BJP leaders had a point by point exchange about the candidates till 2 am on Friday.
“Another round of discussion will be held in New Delhi on April 15 and the list for the rest of the seats will be declared that day,” he said.
Amnesty slams Pakistan military courts over death penalties
Amnesty International has slammed Pakistan’s military courts for violating UN principles and international fair trial standards in imposing death sentences.
Amnesty International’s report — Death Sentences and Executions 2017 — released here on Thursday, expressed concern that Pakistan’s military courts “were run by military officers subordinate to the military chain of command — and who had no formal legal training — in breach of the UN Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary”.
“The charges against the defendants were not made public and those convicted did not have the right to appeal to civilian courts,” it said.
The report said that Pakistani military courts also sentenced civilians to death and added that its special courts “whose proceedings did not meet international fair trial standards imposed death sentences”.
Pakistan’s Field General Court Martial (FGCM) in April 2017 sentenced Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav to death on charges of espionage and sabotage.
India has denied that Jadhav worked for Indian intelligence agencies or that he has worked in Pakistan. The Amnesty report did not specifically mention Jadhav.
“People continued to be sentenced to death or executed for crimes that did not involve intentional killing and therefore did not meet the threshold of ‘most serious crimes’, as prescribed by Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights,” the report said.
Amnesty said that Pakistan carried out more than 60 executions in 2017, imposed over 200 death sentences and there were more than 7,000 people on death row.
During 2016, Pakistan executed at least 87 people and imposed more than 360 death sentences, according to the report.
Briefing reporters, Amnesty International Senior Director for Law and Policy Tawanda Mutasah said that death penalties have dropped steeply since a peak in 2015 when 326 people were executed.
CM Siddaramaiah poses 10 questions to Yeddyurappa : Twitter War
The war of words between chief minister Siddaramaiah and BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa is getting intense on the social media day by day in poll-bound Karnataka.
On Thursday April 12, B S Yeddyurappa criticized Congress government led by the BJP and tweeted, “The Congress govt in Karnataka has failed miserably on all fronts. 10 Percent CM Siddaramaiah has nothing to go to the voters except his misrule and misgovernance. The state is in dire need of a govt which can fulfill the aspirations of 6.5 Cr Kannadigas.”
Siddaramaiah was quick to reply to the BJP chief reminding him of corruption charges against him when he was the chief minister. He tweeted, “Big words from the man who turned Karnataka into the most corrupt state, Bengaluru into garbage city & ordered goli bar on farmers. Other than baseless allegations what do you have to offer the 6.5Cr Kannadigas?
EC to hear 20 AAP MLAs in office of profit case on May 17
The Election Commission on Friday announced that it will grant an oral hearing to the 20 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs in the office of profit case on May 17.
The Commission, in a letter on Friday, has invited the 20 legislators who were earlier disqualified in the office of profit case as well as petitioner Prashant Patel to appear before the Commission “either in person or through authorised legal representative” at 3 p.m. on this date.
The hearing would be conducted in presence of Chief Election Commissioner O.P. Rawat and Election Commissioners Sunil Arora and Ashok Lavasa.
The EC’s decision came after the Delhi High Court on March 23 set aside the disqualification of the 20 AAP MLAs on the grounds that no oral hearing was given to the MLAs before disqualifying them as legislators of the Delhi Assembly and hence there was violation of natural justice.
Quashing the Central government’s notification disqualifying the AAP MLAs, the High Court had directed the Election Commission to hear the matter afresh.
A bench of Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Chander Shekhar had observed that the Election Commission’s recommendation against the legislators was “bad in law” and “vitiated”.
3 Indian social entrepreneurs among global competition winners
3 Three Indian inventors have been named the regional grand prize winners of the 2018 ASME Innovation Showcase (ISHOW), a global competition that offers monetary and technical support to help bring design prototypes of social entrepreneurs to populations in need.
The three inventors were judged and selected out of the eight finalists who travelled to Bengaluru to vie for a share of the $500,000 in awards and technical support, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) said in a statement on Friday.
The three winners are Sanskriti Dawle of Thinkerbell Labs in Bengaluru, Balaji Teegala of Brun Health in New Delhi, and Vinayak Nandalike of Yostra Labs in Bengaluru.
ThinkerBell Labs has won the award for Annie, an affordable audio-tactile device that makes self-learning and classroom teaching of Braille possible.
The device can help improve literacy rates among the visually impaired who cannot afford a Braille display that can cost up to $4,000.
Annie runs on a Raspberry Pi and consists of hardware components such as a refreshable braille display, a digital braille slate, and a braille keyboard — all in one device.
This combination thus helps students learn how to read, write and type, with all modules complementing one another.
Brun Health has been recognised for its labour detection tool, Brun CG, which has the potential to reduce neonatal mortality rates in India. The tool helps in monitoring vital signs and communicating foetal data with clinicians for timely interventions in distant, hard-to-access locations.
Yostra Labs created Sparsh, a portable, hand-held medical device to help clinicians screen diabetic patients for symptoms of peripheral neuropathy, the permanent damage to nerves in the feet, owing to diabetes.
India has approximately 69 million diabetic patients, of which 30 per cent develop diabetic peripheral neuropathy.
The poor are significantly at risk because of inadequate management of their condition, while conventional diabetic peripheral neuropathy screening devices are bulky, not portable, expensive and need trained healthcare workers to operate the device.
Sparsh addresses these issues and can help the poor get adequate treatment for the condition.
Former PM of Pakistan, barred form holding office for life : Nawaz Sharif
Pakistan’s ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif has been barred from holding office for life after the Supreme Court today ruled that disqualification of a lawmaker under the Constitution is for life. The verdict was issued unanimously by all five judges of the bench while hearing a case related to the determination of time duration for disqualification of a lawmaker under the Constitution, the Dawn reported.
The court had grappled with Article 62(1)(f) which only stated that a lawmaker is disqualified under specified conditions but did not set out the duration of the disqualification. Article 62, which sets the precondition for a member of parliament to be “sadiq and ameen” (honest and righteous), is the same provision under which Sharif, 68, was disqualified on July 28, 2017, in the Panama Papers case.
Likewise, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) leader Jahangir Tareen was disqualified on December 15 last year by a separate bench of the apex court under the same provision. Following the verdict, both Sharif and Tareen have become ineligible to ever hold public office.
It has been stated in the decision read out by Justice Umar Ata Bandial that the disqualification of any member of parliament or a public servant under Article 62 in the future will be permanent. Such a person cannot contest elections or become a member of parliament.
Don’t politicise Kathua rape and murder case: Smriti Irani
Union minister Smriti Irani on Friday urged the opposition parties not to politicise the Kathua rape and murder case that has triggered communal tension in Jammu and Kashmir.
“Law agencies and government are taking necessary action. As a woman, I believe and request there should be no victim shaming: ANI quoted Smriti Irani as saying
the growing incidents of crime against women. Rahul, who was joined by several senior Congress leaders, took to Twitter to invite people to join the vigil. Gandhi earlier said the “unimaginable brutality” cannot go unpunished, and called the violence against the child a crime against humanity. He was referring to Kathua gangrape in which an 8-year-old girl was raped and killed. The Kathua rape and murder was a gruesome act in which an 8 year lost her life. The Jammu police have filed its charge sheet in the case and details the most horrific crime one has seen in recent times. Following the charge sheet, protests had broken out in which some sought to defend the accused persons. The Jammu police say that the primary intention of the murder was to frighten the Bakarwal community to which the girl belongs. The intention was to dislodge the nomadic tribe, the police said. Meanwhile, An FIR has been registered against rape accused BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Senger on Thursday at the Makhi police station in Unnao. The case was registered under several sections of the Indian Penal Code (including Section 376 for rape) and POCSO Act. The four-time lawmaker and his brothers allegedly gang-raped the girl in Unnao – who later attempted suicide outside Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s residence in Lucknow on Sunday.
‘No matter how influential accused is, he will not be spared’: CM Yogi on Unnao rape
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday vowed to act against the detained BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar in connection with the alleged gang-rape of a 17-year-old girl in Unnao district.
Yogi said, “Investigation has been handed over to the CBI. I believe the CBI would have arrested the MLA also. Our government will not compromise on this, no matter how influential the accused is, he will not be spared.”
Earlier in the day, The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Friday detained BJP legislator Kuldeep Singh Sengar who has been accused with the alleged gang rape of a 17-year-old girl in Uttar Pradesh, an official said. Sengar, an MLA from Bangarmau seat in Unnao district, is being questioned at the CBI headquarters here. The horrific crimes in Kathua and Unnao have led to massive outrage across the country with protests being organised in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Uttar Pradesh and other places. The four-time lawmaker and his brothers allegedly gang-raped the girl in Unnao – who attempted suicide outside Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s residence in Lucknow on Sunday – and are also accused in the custodial death of the victim’s father. Her father was held by the UP police later that day. Pappu Singh, aged around 50, was allegedly roughed up by Senger’s brother Atul Singh and his aides following which he died.
Is BJP trying to add ‘terror angle’ to Karnataka polls by calling Siddaramaiah Laden and pro-jihadi?
With each passing day, the upcoming Karnataka Assembly election 2018 is becoming nastier. While the incumbent Congress is trying its best to grab power once again in the southern state, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is attempting to ouster the ruling party to find itself one step closer to Congress-mukt Bharat. Thus both the political opponents are engaged in allegations and counter-allegations to thwart each other’s efforts to grab power in Karnataka. The latest allegation, courtesy the BJP, that Congress chief minister Siddaramaiah has to face is that he is like now-dead al-Qaeda founder terrorist, Osama bin Laden.
The Karnataka CM has been compared with the dreaded terrorist behind the 9/11 attacks in the United States (US) after he said that the Congress would defeat the likes of Union minister Anant Kumar Hegde who professes the idea of changing the Constitution.
“The issues before the #KarnatakaElection2018 are Constitutional democracy & its survival, development with social justice & fulfilling the aspirations of our youth. We will defeat Anant Kumar Hegde & his likes who have declared that BJP is in power to change the #Constitution,” tweeted Siddaramaiah.
In reply to the Karnataka CM’s tweet, the BJP ended up calling him Laden. “CM Sir, come on! Congress speaking of protecting Constitution is akin to Osama Bin Laden speaking for world peace! You may keep chanting about need to protect Constitution, but people won’t forget the history of utter disregard shown to constitutional values by Congress,” tweeted the BJP.
This is not the first time that the BJP has used derogatory words against the incumbent CM. Earlier the saffron party had called Siddaramaiah pro-Jihadi. “Our karyakartas get constant phone calls from their families asking them about their safety. Hindus have understood that this govt will not protect them. Fear of annihilation grips every Hindu household in Karavali. Pro jihadi Siddu must go. We must create #JihadiMuktaKarnataka,” the BJP tweeted. In March, the Election Commission (EC) announced the date for the polls in Karnataka. While the voting will take place on May 12, the counting of votes will be held on May 15. The state Assembly has 224 seats.