SAMBALPUR l sunday l november 08, 2020 l `8.00 l PAGES 24 l CITY EDITION 5K coaches tuned into covid care units, but only 813 used `90K avg cost of converting a coach On average, about `90,000 was spent on each of the 5,231 coaches, RTI replies received by TNIE from multiple railway offices revealed. The South Western Railway spent `3.55 crore on conversion of 320 coaches. Central Railway zone converted 482 coaches into isolation units for `3.74 crore. North Eastern Railway converted 217 coaches for `1.49 crore Nearly `45 crore was incurred on converting non-AC railway coaches into isolation facilities, according to an RTI reply Patients reluctant to use them ■ ■ 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 | P7 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 7,48,57,880 votes Electoral college votes 270 TO WIN North Carolina (99% votes counted) Electoral votes:15 Trump: + 76,479 7,05,98,535 votes 214 Georgia (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 But Trump refuses to concede, threatens legal action on vote counting 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 P9 votes.  Total seats NDA LJP OTHER 116 1 6 TV9 BHARATVARSH 115-125 110-120 3-5 10-15 REPUBLIC-JAN KI BAAT 118-138 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 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 been caste in Bihar? R a j e s h K u m a r T h a k u r & M u ke s h R a n j a n @ Patna/Muzaffarpur Cut-off mark PRoJECTIONs MGB has the die 10 MGB RJD INC NDA JDU BJP LJP OTH 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 Mercury dips in Odisha, Sonepur coldest at 11.8 C ‘Kerala church routed money via hawala’ E x p r e s s N e w s Se r v i c e 243 122 In Progress president Biden! E x p r e s s ne w s s e r v i c e Nitish exit written all over @ Kochi E x p r e s s N e w s Se r v i c e @ Bhubaneswar After conducting detailed raids in the premises of selfstyled evangelist and Believers Eastern Church founder K P Yohannan at different locations across the country, the Income Tax (IT) sleuths have found that the group routed unaccounted money through organisations that remained only on paper. “The group runs about 30 trusts, registered across the country, and most of them exist only on paper and have been found to be used for routing the unaccounted funds and for accommodation transactions,” said an IT dept communique. “It has been found that the modus operandi of the group is to systematically inflate expenses with the help of other parties, who will return the inflated amount in cash through domestic hawala channels to the functionaries of the group,” it said. The winter is setting in. Many parts of Odisha saw a dip in mercury as minimum temperature fell after the dry northerly and north-westerly winds headed towards the State. Sonepur was the coldest in the State with night temperature recording 11.8 degree Celsius, which is 2.6 degree below normal, while Angul recorded 12.6 degree, 2 degree below normal. Jharsuguda registered 14.1 degree, and Keonjhar 15 de g ree, well below normal. The India Meteorological Department said, at least 10 other places in the State recorded below normal minimum temperature on Saturday. Cuttack recorded 19 degree Celsius and Bhubaneswar 20.6 degree during the period. “Minimum temperature is likely to WITH THIS ISSUE Unlock, Travel Odisha demands details on barrages from Chhattisgarh E x p r e s s N e w s Se r v i c e @ Bhubaneswar The Odisha government on Saturday demanded that Chhattisgarh should furnish details of the barrages constructed over Mahanadi river on its side during hearing of the Mahanadi River Water Disputes Tribunal. The State has asked Chhattisgarh to provide the necessary details in the common information format. The government has also urged the Tribunal to give its verdict on how much water should be released to the Hirakud dam by the Chhattisgarh during non-monsoon season on the next hearing scheduled on December 5. In response to the demand, the Tribunal said the Odisha government can apply even if Chhattisgarh does not provide details on the number of barrages it has constructed, their capacity and height to the assessor appointed by it. A series meetings between the two states to resolves issues over the Mahanadi river water dispute have not yielded any result. The two neighbouring states are at loggerheads over Mahanadi water sharing since the last several years. EXPRESS READ Suspended BJD MLA’s audio clip triggers political storm Malkangiri: An audio clip in which suspended BJD leader and former Balasore MLA Jiban Pradip Dash was heard asking a ‘party worker’ to vote for either BJP or Congress candidate in the November 3 bypoll has created a political storm in the State | P3 fall by two to three degrees in coastal Odisha and by one to two degrees in interior parts of the State within next two days,” said Scientist of Bhubaneswar Meteorological Centre Umasankar Das. The met office has forecast shallow to moderate fog at one or two places in south interior districts on Sunday morning. “Shallow to moderate fog is likely to occur in south interior districts due to availability of the moisture,” said Das. IMD has already forecast colder winter in the country this year due to a weak La Nina phenomenon. The core cold wave zone will cover Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, extending through Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha and Telangana. The Centre constituted the Mahanadi Water Dispute Tribunal for adjudication of longstanding disputes between Odisha and Chhattisgarh over sharing of Mahanadi river water in March 2018. The Tribunal with three members was formed under Section-4 of the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956 following a directive of the Supreme Court on January 23, 2018. The State Government had moved the Supreme Court in 2016 seeking a direction to Chhattisgarh Government to stop all construction of barrages and dams on the upper stream of the Mahanadi river even as the Centre favoured the issue to be settled through negotiation. Besides, the government had also sought the formation of a Tribunal to resolve the issue. Following the apex court order, the Union Cabinet on February 20, 2018 approved the proposal to constitute a Tribunal. The Tribunal will determine water sharing among states on the basis of the overall availability of water in the complete Mahanadi basin, contribution and present utilisation of water resources in each state and the potential for future development. PLUS 12 PAGES 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.  P8 War against malaria: Malkangiri eyes at zero cases in December Colours of tradition Children play with colourful statuettes at the Terracotta Exhibition-2020 at the Exhibition Ground in Bhubaneswar | irfana Malkangiri: Once considered a malaria hotspot, Malkangiri district has registered a substantial decline in the vector-borne disease in the last one year. The district, which once contributed around 40-50 per cent (pc) of the total cases in the State, has witnessed a drastic fall of 63.18 pc in the last once year. While 3,640 cases were reported from the district from July to October in 2019, this year only 1,340 cases were reported during the period | P4