kannur l Sunday l november 08, 2020 l `8.00 l PAGES 26 l city edition 5K coaches turned into covid care units, but only 813 used Nearly K45 crore was incurred on converting non-AC railway coaches into isolation facilities, according to an RTI reply K90K avg cost of converting a coach Patients reluctant to use them On average, about D90,000 was spent on each of the 5,231 coaches, RTI replies received by TNIE from multiple railway offices revealed. The South Western Railway spent D3.55 crore on conversion of 320 coaches. Central Railway zone converted 482 coaches into isolation units for D3.74 crore. North Eastern Railway converted 217 coaches for D1.49 crore ■ ■ Many Covid patients complained of extreme heat inside these coaches during May, June and July. This, the authorities said, was a reason why most of them were not used The converted coaches will be restored for passenger services once their requirement to serve as isolation centres is fulfilled 573 coaches converted into Covid care units by southern railways CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOgGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ WARANGAL ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI JOE BIDEN 290 DONALD TRUMP Electoral college votes Electoral college votes 7,48,57,880 votes 270 TO WIN North Carolina (99% votes counted) Electoral votes:15 Trump: + 76,479 7,05,98,535 votes Georgia 214 (99% votes counted) Electoral votes:16 Biden: + 7,248 n Joe Biden n Donald Trump Nevada (88% votes counted) Electoral votes:6 Biden: +25,699 Nitish exit written all over 243 122 In Progress president Biden! But Trump refuses to concede, threatens legal action on vote counting Total seats NDA 116 After four days of uncertainty and slow pace of vote counting due to a surge of mail-in votes. US media outlets on Saturday declared Joe Biden as the winner of the November 3 presidential elections. The 77-year-old former US vice president will become the 46th president of the US, after a victory in Pennsylvania, the state where he was born put him over the 270 electoral votes needed to win. With Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes, Biden now has a total of 290 electoral votes, according to some projections. Welcoming the victory call, Biden said, “America, I’m honored that you have chosen me to lead our great country. The work ahead of us will be hard, but I promise I will be a President for all Americans - whether you voted for me or not.” Before becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, Biden served as vice president under former President Barack Obama. He is also Delaware’s longest-serving senator. Meanwhile, incumbent Republican President Donald Trump, 74, has not yet conceded defeat yet. “We all know why Joe Biden is rushing to falsely pose as the winner, and why his media allies are trying so hard to help him: they don’t want the truth to be exposed. The simple fact is this election is far from over,” Trump said in a hurriedly issued statement, indicating that the fight is far from over. He added Biden has not been certified as the winner of any states and pointed out that highly contested states are headed for recounts. Earlier in the day he had re, iterated allegations of fraud in vote counting and continued to raise doubts about mail-in P11 votes.  1 6 TV9 BHARATVARSH 115-125 110-120 3-5 10-15 REPUBLIC-JAN KI BAAT 91-117 5-8 3-6 ABP-CVOTER 108-131 104-128 1-4 4-8 Today’s Chanakya 180 55 0 People’s Pulse RJD: 85–95 Times Now C-Voter 120 118-138 E x pr e s s n e w s s e r v i c e LJP OTHER 8 BJP: 65–75 JD(U): 25–35 CONG: 15–20 LEFT PARTIES: 3–5 LJP: 3–5 GDSF/ Independents: 5–13 (Margin of error - Plus or Minus Three per cent) 2015 124 107 80 71 53 27 2 10 MGB RJD INC NDA JDU BJP LJP OTH NOW, GOLD SHAME FOR LEAGUE Spl probe team arrests IUML leader M C Kamaruddin for duping depositors in his gold business G e o rg e P o i k ay i l @ Kasaragod ON a day the United Democratic Front launched “One Vote Against Corruption” as its campaign slogan for the upcoming local body elections, its major constituent Indian Union Muslim League’s (IUML) leader and Manjeshwar MLA M C Kamaruddin was arrested in connection with duping depositors in his gold business. A special investigating team (SIT), led by assistant superintendent of police (ASP) P Vivek Kumar, questioned Kamaruddin for six hours on Saturday before arresting him at 4pm. He was produced before Hosdurg court, which remanded him in judicial custody for two weeks. The MLA is put up at a COVID care centre near the District Hospital. His bail application is like- ‘My arrest on the direction of government’ M C Kamaruddin said he was arrested on the direction of the government. “My arrest is politically motivated. My case is coming up in the High Court on Monday, but they did not even wait for that,” he said. The Manjeshwar MLA said he was not served any notice but was called to the district police chief office and arrested. “All these can’t destroy me,” he said. Muraleedharan meets dissident leaders of BJP state unit, says no issues SOVI VIDYADHA R AN @ T’Puram A DAY after the RSS stepped in to end dissidence in the state unit of the BJP, Union minister V Muraleedharan reached out to senior leaders who had raised a banner of revolt against state president K Surendran. Muraleedharan, a former state chief, spoke to veteran P M Velayudhan, who had openly accused Surendran of completely sidelining him, and other leaders following the party reorganisation in March this year. Sources say Muraleedharan wants to send out a message of reconciliation through Velayudhan to Sobha Surendran and K P Sreeshan that their complaints too would be looked into. “I’ve conveyed certain issues within the party to him (Muraleedharan) and he has agreed to address them,” Velayudhan told TNIE. It is reliably learnt that Velayudhan told the Union minister that Surendran’s style of functioning, sidelining a bunch of senior leaders, was harming the party at the ly to be heard on Monday . This is the first time Kamaruddin was questioned by the police in the case, though the first set of complaints against him were filed by three depositors on August 28. They alleged the MLA duped them of `36 lakh. Since then, 115 depositors in grassroots level. The party can ill afford such a crisis when local body polls are round the corner, he is understood to have told the former state president. Muraleedharan confirmed that he had a meeting with Velayudhan, but denied there were any serious organisational issues. “The party is facing the upcoming election unitedly he ,” told TNIE. However, it was not known whether Muraleedharan’s intervention was at the behest of the par ty’s national leadership. Meanwhile, sources close to Sobha and Sreeshan said they would settle for nothing less than an organisational revamp that gives representation to leaders from all factions. The RSS’ intervention in the issue has further emboldened them to adopt a rigid stance. “As in any other party, factionalism has always existed in the saffron party as well. It’s when one faction is totally wiped out from organisational responsibilities by another that issues begin to spiral out of control,” said a leader.  his gold business — run under the brand name Fashion Gold — have pressed charges of cheating (Section 420 of IPC) against Kamaruddin. Criminal cheating is a cognisable non-bailable offence. Kamaruddin was questioned over 77 complaints which alleged that the MLA had duped them of `13 crore. He was, however, arrested in connection with the first three cases. The SIT head told reporters that the police had evidence of the MLA defrauding his deposi● More on P5 tors of `15 crore.  Card seized during raid linked to Bineesh-funded restaurant P R a m d a s @Kochi THE debit card seized by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) during the 25-hour-long raid at Bineesh Kodiyeri’s residence in Thiruvananthapuram -- bearing the name of Bengaluru drug case accused Mohammed Anoop -- is linked to the Bengalurubased Hayaat restaurant financed by Bineesh, said a report by the agency. With this, the claim made by Bineesh’s wife that the ED team ‘planted’ the evidence at their house may have fallen flat. In its report, a copy of which TNIE gained access to, the central agency submitted that some digital evidence, suspected to contain incriminating material, were also collected from Bineesh’s house during the raid. Further, the ED has issued a summons to another person, identified as Rasheed, to record his statement regarding his alleged financial transactions with Anoop, as it is sus- been caste in Bihar? Rajesh Kumar Thakur & Mukesh R a n j a n @ Patna/Muzaffarpur Cut-off mark PRoJECTIONs MGB has the die pected that the said transactions were made on behalf of Bineesh. The agency also stated in its report that the three firms -- Beecapital Forex Trading Pvt Ltd, Bengaluru, Bcapital Financial Services Pvt Ltd, and Torres Remedies Pvt Ltd, which Bineesh Kodiyeri had claimed to be the ‘director’ of, were all shell companies registered under fake addresses. Search operations were conducted on the premises of all three firms, and it was revealed that no companies under those names existed on the declared address, the report said. The bank account details of the firms have to be obtained and more people need to be examined to ascertain if Bineesh was indulging in money laundering activities with the help of these shell companies, it added. The ED said, Bineesh has been adopting evasive tactics including health-related excuses to avoid coop● More on P5 erating with the probe.  express read Cong to ally regionally with Welfare Party in LSG polls JCB lit prize for Hareesh’s debut novel ‘Moustache’ T’Puram: The Congress high-power Political Affairs Committee has decided to have a local level tie-up with the Welfare Party of India in the local body elections. However, it has decided against inducting P C Thomas into UDF. Kochi: Malayalam writer S Hareesh has been chosen for the 2020 JCB Prize for Literature for his debut novel Moustache, the English translation of his original novel Meesha, which was written in Malayalam. Sipping tea at a roadside stall in Nathnagar, Muzaffarpur, Ram Charan Yadav was of the view that under chief minister Nitish Kumar, Bihar has seen unprecedented development. He claimed that not only him but people of all castes, Yadavs included, would vote for Nitish. “At 65, I have seen days when power used to come only for a few minutes. Now it is regular. There were no roads or water but now there is water supply at home. What else do we need, Nitish Kumar is doing his best to change the face of the state and we must support him,” Yadav said. With the third and last phase of the polling over on Saturday, the die has been cast on the Bihar elections. All the rivals can now do the math on the likely outcome at leisure. But is caste no longer a factor in the elections, as the elderly Yadav claimed? Traditionally, caste has always played a dominant role in the elections. Not surprisingly, it is said that the people of Bihar don’t cast their vote, they vote their caste. But the striking feature of this campaign was the emergence of issues, among them development, unemployment, corruption and jungle raj. It is not that caste been cast aside totally But there is a wide. spread feeling that voting this time will n o t t a ke p l a c e s o l e l y o n c a s t e considerations. “It cannot be denied that caste is not an issue in Bihar, but at the same time the development brought by Nitish Kumar is also an issue in these polls,” said Raman Jha, a businessman at Kamtaul village of Muzaffarpur. Jha is joined by Manoj Kumar, 35, of Hajipur and Shashank Kumar Yadav, 30, of Gaya. While Kumar is a Kurmi, Nitish’s caste, Shashank is a Yadav. Both claimed to have not voted along caste lines but on issues such as development and employment. Given this mood, many political parties rose above caste and community even during the distribution of election tickets. The Rashtriya Janata Dal, a champion of caste and mandal politics, effected the biggest change, giving wider representation to candidates of other castes. Of the 144 candidates it has fielded this time, only 58, or 40%, are Yadavs. In 2015, the party had contested 101 seats and gave tickets to 65 Yadavs, or 64%. As for Muslim candidates, the RJD has fielded 17 this time, down from 21 in the last elections. Muslims and Yadavs have always taken the lion’s share of the RJD’s tickets as they constitute the party’s main vote bank. The change this time is largely because of its young leader, Tejashwi Yadav, who has made Nitish his key attack.  P10 Arrest after 6-hr quizzing M C Kamaruddin arrested in connection with duping of depositors in his gold business ■ ■ ASP P Vivek Kumar arrests him at 4pm after six-hour interrogation 118 depositors in his gold business — run under the brand name Fashion Gold — have pressed charges of cheating (Section 420 of IPC) against Kamaruddin ■ Kamaruddin was questioned over 77 complaints which alleged that the MLA had duped them of C13 crore ■ M C Kamaruddin being taken away by the police officials in Kasaragod on Saturday WITH THIS ISSUE He was produced before Hosdurg court, which remanded him in judicial custody for two weeks ■ Unlock, Travel Customs summons Jaleel for quizzing tomorrow Kochi: The customs, which is probing the case related to the import of copies of the Quran by the UAE Consulate allegedly violating exceptions granted to diplomatic cargo, has issued a notice to Higher Education Minister K T Jaleel to appear before it for interrogation on Monday. The customs probe had found that 250 packets, each containing 31 copies of Quran, were imported claiming it as diplomatic cargo. PLUS 12 PAGES