BENGALURU  WEDNESDAY  MARCH 10, 2021  `7.00  PAGES 20  LATE CITY EDITION AMID CHAOS, TRAI SUSPENDS ANTI-SPAM RULES FOR 1 WEEK The decision follows disruptions in banking, credit card payment and other transactions that involve SMS and OTP generation NEW NORMS USE BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY TELCOS BLAME PAYMENT COMPANIES The disruption happened after telcos implemented the new norms for commercial messages, which came into effect on Monday. The rules aim to curb unsolicited and fraudulent messages. SMSes and OTPs, when sent by banks and payment companies, are checked against the templates registered on the blockchain platform — a process called SMS scrubbing ■ On Monday, banking and telcos traded charges over the SMS, OTP disruptions. Telcos blamed it on the payment companies saying they did not register their content template before the deadline ■ “It has been observed that some of the principal entities have not fulfilled the requirements,” Trai also said in a statement 40 crore MESSAGES FAILED TO DELIVER ON MONDAY, ACCORDING TO MEDIA REPORTS 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 Even I cannot tame B’luru land mafia: Minister EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE @ Bengaluru THE powers that be within the State Government and the Revenue Minister himself cannot control the land mafia that is encroaching government property in Bengaluru. Punitive action too does not work against errant and corrupt Revenue Department officials, who collude with unscrupulous real estate players, admitted Revenue Minister R Ashoka on the floor of the Assembly on Tuesday . “We suspend officials for allowing a builder to construct buildings on government land. But they are back in the department in no time,” he said, replying to Assembly members, who pointed to many illegal layouts coming up in and around Bengaluru. BJP MLA Goolihatti Shekar said that a layout was developed without documents at Huliman- Banks should penalise crony lending: CEA Says quality of lending a challenge since 90s Survey also highlighted that the banking sector’s problems originated from large loans CHIEF Economic Advisor that were not necessarily lent (CEA) Krishnamurthy Subra- to the most creditworthy bormanian on Tuesday said banks rowers. This problem gets acmust become more serious centuated in the context of inabout allocating capital opti- frastructure,” he said. mally and that senior manageSubramanian also suggested ment should be penalised for that the compensation of sencrony lending. ior management in banks must “Crony lending is the ele- be linked to the quality of credphant in the room. Fiit, and there should be a nancial sector in India claw-back provision in has to take responsibilinstances of ever-greenity that it is the ultimate ing of loans or zombie arbiter of capital and lending. ensure optimal capital “The board of direcallocation,” the CEA tors cannot be asleep at said, while speaking at the wheel,” he said, adda Ficci event. K Subramanian, CEA ing that auditors are Subramanian said the first line of defence the quality of lending has re- on this. mained a key challenge for the “Auditors cannot say this is banks since the early 1990s, es- something they cannot do. Data pecially when it came to large analytics can do. Zombie lendloans in the infrastructure sec- ing and evergreening should be tor and advised banks to give avoided as they lead to suboptiloan on creditworthiness of the mal capital allocation,” he said. company . Subramanian noted that the “Banks need to ensure that size of the financial sector recapital allocation to the infra- mains very small compared to structure sector is to creditwor- the size of the overall economy thy borrowers. The Economic on any parameter. EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE @ New Delhi gala village near Anekal taluk and 41 sites were developed and sold. “Special deputy commissioners at the Revenue Department are more powerful than the Chief Secretary,” he mocked. JDS MLA AT Ramaswamy, who has presented a lengthy report on illegal encroachments in the city too said that the land , has been converted illegally at that spot. The government does not have any records, but the land has been converted as builders have colluded with officials, he added. Responding, Ashoka, one of the most powerful ministers in the Yediyurappa cabinet, said that his hands are tied. “A builder has constructed a multi-storeyed apartment on a government land, which is worth `160 crore, at KR Puram. The company even started selling the flats. When I came to know about it, I suspended officials involved. But within four hours, they approached the Karnataka Administrative Tribunal, got a stay and were back in their chairs. I then ordered their transfer to Tumakuru. But they were back within P7 days,” he said. AFTER four days of intense lobbying to save his chair, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat on Tuesday tendered his resignation to Governor Baby Rani Maurya, who asked him to continue in a caretaker position for now. Rawat is the first BJP chief minister to be replaced midstream during the Modi-Shah tenure at the helm. It’s also be- ing read as an indication to other party chief ministers to perform or perish. Had Rawat stayed on, he would have completed four years as CM. The BJP’s Uttarakhand legislature party is scheduled to meet at 10 am on Wednesday to select its new leader. The party’s central observers, including national vice-president Dr Raman Singh and national general secre- Cong MLAs chant Jai Shri Ram, irk ministers EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE @ Bengaluru CHANTS of Jai Shri Ram echoed in the hallowed Assembly Hall on Tuesday But this time, . quite surprisingly it was from , the opposition Congress party and not the ruling BJP . Congress Legislature Party leader Siddaramaiah, who was speaking on increasing prices of essential commodities across the country pointed out , that even BJP Rajya Sabha member Subramanian Swamy has tweeted, “Petrol price Rs 93 in Ram’s India, Rs 53 in Sita’s Nepal, Rs 51 in Ravan’s Lanka.” ‘Press freedom intact’ ACB officers seen at the residence of RTO official Channaveerappa in Mandya on Tuesday | EXPRESS 9 govt officials raided by ACB BALA CHAUHAN @Bengaluru IN an early morning crackdown against alleged corrupt government officers, the ACB on Tuesday conducted widespread raids and searches against nine government officials at 28 places in 11 districts in Karnataka, under the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA), said official sources. The accused officials, searched over alleged disproportionate assets, were Krishnegowda, project director, Nirmiti Kendra, Chikkaballapura; Hanamantha Shivappa, Chikkannanavara, deputy chief electrical inspector, Belagavi Circle; Subramanya K Vaddar, joint director, Town & Country Planning, Mysuru; Munigopal Raju, superintendent engineer, CHESCOM, Mysuru; Channaveerappa, first division assistant, RTO office, Mysuru South, Lakshmipuram; Raju Pattar, account officer, GESCOM, Yadgir; Victor Simon, police inspector, Bengaluru Metropolitan Task Force; K Subramanyam, junior engineer, assistant director, Town Planning Office, BBMP Yelahan, ka Zone, Bengaluru City; and K M Pratham, deputy director, Factories and Boilers, Davanagere Division, said sources. In all, sleuths recovered 3.5 kg gold, 35 kg silver and cash worth `9.23 lakh during the raids. tary Dushyant Kumar Gautam, will oversee the change of guard. Leaders like Dhan Singh Rawat, Anil Baluni, Ajay Bhatt and Surendra Bhatt are in the race to replace Rawat. There is some buzz on the party experimenting with a Brahmin as the new CM, in which case Baluni could be the front-runner. “This is to balance the vote bank in the state,” P10 said a source. Golden opportunity Rawat, who announced his resignation at a press conference, said, “Only in the BJP, a boy who hails from a small village can become chief minister.” ‘KNEW IT 4 MONTHS AGO’ Big leader behind CD gate, alleges Jarkiholi B A N S Y K A L A P PA @ Bengaluru KPCC president DK Shivakumar has a word with CLP leader Siddaramaiah in Bengaluru on Tuesday | ASHISHKRISHNA HP With this cue, Congress members started chanting Jai Shri P4 Ram repeatedly . Revenue Minister R Ashoka said that he has requested Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa to allocate D100 crore only to fence properties cleared of encroachments. When I was in the Opposition, I had raised this issue a number of times in the Assembly. But when I sit in this place as a minister, I realise that it is very difficult to tackle them (land mafia and Revenue Dept officials). They are so powerful. R Ashoka, Revenue Minister Farmer stir: India summons UK envoy Uttarakhand CM quits, new name today V I N E E T U PA D H YAY @ Dehradun D100 CRORE SOUGHT TO FENCE PROPERTIES: ASHOKA FORMER water resources minister Ramesh Jarkiholi, who went incommunicado after he resigned a week ago following a sleazy video allegedly showing him leaked, on Tuesday claimed that the entire episode aimed at sullying his reputation was managed by a “great leader”, but refused to name him or identify the party he belongs to. He alleged that a person staying on the fourth or fifth floor of an apartment near Orion Mall at Yeshwanthpur in Bengaluru is behind the incident. “Almost `100 crore has been spent. Nine people have operated out of two locations at Bannerghatta Road and Yeshwanthpur. I knew of this plot four months ago and h a d d i s c u s s e d i t w i t h m y f a m i l y, ” P4 Jarkiholi said. Dismissing aspersions about lack of press freedom in India, the Indian mission in London said, “Foreign media in India have witnessed the events first-hand.” P U S H K A R B A N A K A R @ New Delhi A day after the UK Parliament held a debate on the farm protests and the three farm laws, the Ministry of External Affairs summoned British High Commissioner Alex Ellis to express New Delhi’s opposition to the “gross interference”. “Foreign Secretary summoned the British High Commissioner and conveyed strong opposition to the unwarranted and tendentious discussion on agricultural reforms in India in the British Parliament. For- eign Secretary made it clear that this represented a gross interference in the politics of another democratic country. He advised that British MPs should refrain from practising vote bank politics by misrepresenting events, especially in relation to another fellow democracy,” a terse statement from the ministry read. Earlier in the day the Indian , High Commission in London dismissed the debate as being based on false assertions and without substantiation of facts. British parliamentarians held the debate on Monday in response to the e-petition initiated by Liberal Democratic Councillor Gurch Singh. UK law mandates that any petition which garners over one lakh signatures must be debated in Parliament. According to a former diplomat, the harsh tone of British MPs indicates India’s handling of the farm protests has not gone down well with them. Another diplomat said that any country can discuss any issue in their Parliaments, but it will affect India’s image if a resolution is passed.