BENGALURU  WEDNESDAY  FEBRUARY 08, 2023  `9.00  PAGES 22  LATE CITY EDITION NO SEPARATE LAW TO CHECK VIOLENCE AGAINST DOCTORS The Centre has decided not to go ahead with a legislation to protect healthcare professionals from physical violence BILL WITHDRAWN AFTER CONSULTATIONS EPIDEMIC DISEASES ACT TO PROTECT DOCS In a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, Union health minister Dr Mansukh Mandaviya said a draft of the Healthcare Services Personnel and Clinical Establishments (Prohibition of Violence and Damage to Property) Bill, 2019 was circulated for consultations. However, the government decided not to enact a separate law to protect healthcare professionals and institutions ■ ■ The minister said the matter was further discussed with all stakeholders and an ordinance namely The Epidemic Diseases (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020 was promulgated on April 22, 2020 Later, the govt passed the Act on September 28, 2020 under which violence against doctors are cognizable and non-bailable offences 3 months JAIL TERM AND FINE OF `50,000-2,00,000 FOR OFFENDERS UNDER EPIDEMIC ACT 2020 CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOGGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI JDS alleges corruption in Union Min’s office, Joshi refutes EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE @ Bengaluru OPPOSITION Janata Dal (Secular) on Tuesday alleged that a person working in Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Pralhad Joshi’s office was involved in corruption and demanded a high-level probe into it. Joshi has rubbished it as “wild allegations and heights of misleading the public.” Addressing a press conference in Bengaluru, JDS MLC SL Bhoje Gowda alleged that a person working in the minister’s office was involved in corruption in recommending a person’s name for membership in the National Medical Council and appointment in All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). Former chief minister Kumaraswamy was also present during the press conference. Gowda alleged that Rs 2.5 crore was transferred to a particular bank account twice and there is a need for a high-level probe to know what was the connection between money transfers, the recommendation let- ter, and who got the money. A copy of a bank statement and a letter with the name masked were released to the media. Gowda claimed they have several documents related to alleged irregularities that will be released soon. Joshi took to Twitter to rubbish the allegations. “This type of wild and baseless allegations will be dealt with seriously. I will contemplate filing a defa- mation case for tarnishing my name,” he stated. “First of all, this letter is marked to a doctor, and I am certainly not a doctor. There is no such employee working in my office. If you are so confident, why have you blurred the name and content of this letter,” he stated while tagging the letter that was released by the JDS leader. Joshi also tagged the original copy of the letter that was addressed by then Union First of all, the letter is marked to a doctor, and I am certainly not a doctor. There is no such employee working in my office. If you are so confident, why have you blurred the name and content of the letter Pralhad Joshi, Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Special SC bench to hear Bilkis Bano’s plea With you, dear: Dad holds hand of dead daughter Mesut Hancer in an orange jacket sitting on a pile of rubble, holds the hand of his dead daughter Irmak, 15, who lies on a mattress, crushed by a huge concrete block, in Kahramanmaras, close to the quake epicentre in Turkiye AFP S H R U T I K A K K A R @ New Delhi THE Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to constitute a special bench to hear the pleas challenging the Gujarat government’s order allowing premature release of 11 convicts sentenced to life in the Bilkis Bano case. During the 2002 Gujarat riots, Bano, who was five months pregnant, was gang-raped and seven members of her family killed. Urging the bench headed by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud to list the plea, advocate Shobha Gupta said Justice Ajay Rastogi was continuously sitting in a combination of himself and Justice Bela Trivedi, who had earlier recused herself from hearing the matter. The bench, also comprising judges P S Narasimha and J B Pardiwala, assured Bano that the new bench will be formed at the earliest. The top court had earlier clarified that objections pertaining to locus of pleas filed by third party petitioners by one of the convicts Radhey Shyam and the Gujarat government did not arise anymore. The court also clarified that it would take up Bilkis’s plea as lead matter. “After victim’s plea comes, the issue of locus goes... Come on merits. In these cases no technicality has to follow,” Justice Rastogi had remarked while posting the pleas for February . EXPRESS READ Gowri sworn in Madras HC addl judge New Delhi/Chennai: Lekshmana Chandra Victoria Gowri was on Tuesday sworn in as an additional judge of the Madras High Court amid protests outside the court and minutes before the Supreme Court dismissed two pleas against her appointment. P5 SC dismisses Rana Ayyub’s plea New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed journalist Rana Ayyub’s plea challenging the summons by a Ghaziabad court in a money-laundering case. She had questioned the court’s jurisdiction saying only the special court in Maharashtra could have taken cognisance of the ED complaint as the alleged offence took place in that state. @ Bengaluru THE Karnataka High Court has sent an advocate to judicial custody for a week on charges of making baseless allegations against four sitting judges. A division bench of Chief Justice Prasanna B Varale and Justice Ashok S Kinagi passed the order on February 2, 2023, in criminal contempt proceedings initiated against the ad- RESCUE RACE ON, TOLL 7,100 Y E S H I S E L I & M AYA N K S I N G H @ New Delhi WITH the toll crossing 7,100 a day after a 7.8 pre-dawn earthquake shook up Turkiye and Syria, Turkiye President Recip Tayyip Erdogan declared a state of emergency for three months in 10 of the worst-hit provinces in his country . Amid temperatures below freezing point and over 200 aftershocks, rescuers raced against time as nearly 6,000 buildings collapsed in Turkiye alone. Not all buildings have been accessed by the rescuers yet. In the Hatay province in Turkyie where 1,500 buildings were destroyed, rescue effort was yet to begin. But in areas where teams worked, occasional cheers broke out through the night as survivors were brought out of the rubble. There were also reports of people stuck in the rubble sending videos and voice messages requesting urgent assistance and rescue. So far, over 8,000 people have been pulled from the debris in Turkiye. Amid a global scramble to rush humanitarian support, India on Indian field hospital 4 IAF C17 aircraft loads of Indian relief and rescue personnel sent to Turkyie and one to Syria Field hospital sent to Turkiye to establish a 30-bed medical facility. 45-member medical team accompanying it. It has X-ray unit, ventilators, OT and other equipment vocate KS Anil by the High Court in 2019. “We asked the accused whether he requires some time to make oral submissions or to file written submissions. However, he avoided the query of the court and started behaving arrogantly.... In spite of our attempts to hear him patiently, the accused started making gestures in the court”, the court said. “Making allegations against the judges of this court clearly shows that the accused has no regard for the judicial system. As a practising advocate, the consistent behaviour of the accused on earlier occasions too, besides making wild allegations against the judicial system and the judicial officers in particular, indicates that he is trying to demean the institution and is lowering the image of the judicial system in public P5 eye,” the court said. PRESS INTAKE Bommai soldiers on with packed schedule | P4 Madamma gets electricity, but continues fight| P4 DKS wants Cauvery stopped | P5 ALL IN THE NAME Now, hear it from bugs, ‘Mogambo khush hua!’ R A G H O T TA M K O P PA R @ G a d a g MOGAMBO, Ramu Kaka. These on-screen names of Bollywood legends Amrish Puri and AK Hangal are now being given to bugs by researchers in Gadag. This new nomenclature method is trending and students and researchers have welcomed the initiative. While Apeflypupa2 has been named ‘Mogambo’, the iconic role played by Amrish Puri in the 1987 movie ‘Mr India’, Halyomorpha Halys has been Rahul Gandhi displays a poster showing Prime Minister Narendra Modi sitting with billionaire industrialist Gautam Adani in what looks like a chartered plane | PTI Rahul questions Adani-Modi link Accuses the BJP govt of tweaking rules to help the conglomerate win mega projects defence,” he added. Both the Lok Sabha and the FRESH from his five month- Rajya Sabha had not transactlong cross-country march, ed any business till this debate senior Congress leader Rahul in the ongoing Budget session Gandhi on Tuesday launched as the Opposition stuck to its a blistering attack on the demand for a Joint ParliamenNarendra Modi government tary Committee or Supreme and its alleged links with the Court-monitored probe into Adani group, which is facing allegations against Adani. Rahul Gandhi’s fiery speech allegations of stock manipudrew strong protests from lation and fraud. Rahul’s all-out offensive BJP ministers and MPs, who against the government came asked the Congress scion to on a day when Opposition par- substantiate his ‘wild allegations’ with proof. ties decided to end The former Conthe three-day logjam gress president, then, in Parliament and displayed a phototake part in the moIn 2014, Adani’s graph of Modi and tion of thanks to the position was 609 Adani in an aircraft President’s address. on the list of the together, wondering The Wayanad MP world’s richest. how many trips the alleged that the Modi Now he is in the government has been second place. It is duo must have taken together. favouring the Adani sheer magic “Modi goes to Ausgroup since it came Rahul Gandhi tralia and the next to power in 2014. He day SBI gives a $1 bilalso accused the Centre of changing rules to help lion loan to Adani. He goes to Bangladesh and the BanglaAdani acquire airports. “There was a rule that only desh Power Development a company or person with ex- Board signs a 25-year contract perience in airports be given with Adani,” he alleged, dethe responsibility of develop- manding answers to his quesing airports. But, the govern- tions from the PM in his . ment changed the rules for speech on Wednesday In his 40-minute-long speech the Adani group and six airports were handed over to in the Lok Sabha, Rahul also him. Adani now dominates sought to know how much several sectors such as ports, money Adani has given to the airports, cement, media and BJP in the past 20 years. P R E E T H A N A I R @ New Delhi HC sends ‘arrogant’ advocate to jail EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan to Dr BD Pandey Ex-Munic, ipal Councillor, New Delhi, in which the minister was acknowledging that he received the curriculum vitae of a doctor who was being recommended for appointment as member in the National Medical Commission. However, the original letter has no mention of Joshi or any staff of his office. Senior BJP leader and MLC Chaluvadi Narayanswamy said the JDS leaders are targeting Joshi after he criticised the party’s Pancharatna Yatra. “This shows immaturity of the JDS leaders,” he said. MORE ON: P4 ‘Mogambo’ named after Amrish Puri and ‘Ramu Kaka’ after AK Hangal named Ramu Kaka, role played by veteran actor AK Hangal in many movies. Researchers say the move has twin-purpose. One, to pay tribute to the celebrities and second, to create interest in research students by making the study of bugs easier for identification. Researchers Sangamesh Kadagad and Manjunath Nayak said, “We have been naming the bugs to help junior researchers easily identify them. We first tell them scientific names and then select names of legends. Now, students are easily remembering the names of the specimen. We have also named some bugs after famous politicians and cricketers based on their looks and morphology but , P5 are yet to finalise them”. We have been naming the bugs to help junior researchers easily identify them. We first tell them scientific names and then select names of legends Sangamesh Kadagad and Manjunath Nayak, researchers Tuesday sent five aircraft full of relief and rescue equipment, which includes NDRF search and rescue teams, medical equipment for creating a 30-bed makeshift hospital, drilling machines and dog squads. Out of the five IAF C17 aircraft, four have been sent to Turkiye and one to Syria. “PM Modi gave immediate instructions to build a crisis centre and all relevant Indian authorities had a meeting. This is an example of good friendship and we really appreciate it. We are in touch with the Indian Embassy in Ankara along with Indian authorities in Delhi,’’ Turkiye envoy Firat Sunel said. “We really appreciated the Indian heart,” Syrian envoy Bassam Seifeddin Alkhatib MIRACLE BABY: P12 said.