NRIs from Karnataka want Congress to retain power: Pitroda
Bengaluru, April 30: The non-resident Indians (NRIs) hailing from Karnataka want the Congress to retain power as the party's manifesto promises to make investing in the state "easy" for the diaspora, said Congress leader Sam Pitroda on Monday.
"The NRIs from the state are coming together to ensure that the Congress wins the state elections because they believe in the party's ideology. The Congress government in the state has promised in its manifesto to ease the process of NRIs' investments in the state," he told reporters here.
Pitroda, 75, a telecom expert, is the Chairman of the party's Overseas Congress Department based in Chicago in the US. He was also the Advisor to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
State capital Bengaluru, which is the country's tech hub, will thrive in the policies that will be brought in by the Congress, he said.
"As the world looks to India for innovative solutions, India looks to Karnataka and in turn Bengaluru."
Through its poll manifesto released on Friday by Congress President Rahul Gandhi ahead of the May 12 state elections, the party said it will make Information Technology (IT) an important driver of the state economy.
The ruling party said it will work towards increasing the IT industry's contribution from the current $60 billion to $300 billion.
Calling Karnataka an "investment hub" in the country, the Congress also said that it will work towards drawing new investments in order to create job opportunities for the people of the state.
The party has vowed to create a total of one crore jobs across the state in five years.
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Around 70 people killed in attack on hospital in Sudan's Darfur region: WHO chief
El Fasher (AP): Some 70 people were killed in an attack on the only functional hospital in the besieged city of El Fasher in Sudan, the chief of the World Health Organisation said on Sunday, part of a series of attacks coming as the African nation's civil war escalated in recent days.
The attack on the Saudi Teaching Maternal Hospital, which local officials blamed on the rebel Rapid Support Forces, came as the group has seen apparent battlefield losses to the Sudanese military and allied forces under the command of army chief Gen Abdel-Fattah Burhan. That includes Burhan appearing near a burning oil refinery north of Khartoum on Saturday that his forces said they seized from the RSF.
International mediation attempts and pressure tactics, including a US assessment that the RSF and its proxies are committing genocide and sanctions targeting Burhan, have not halted the fighting.
In the Saudi hospital attack in El Fasher, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus offered the death toll in a post on the social platform X.
Officials and others in the capital of North Darfur province had cited a similar figure Saturday, but Ghebreyesus is the first international source to provide a casualty number. Reporting on Sudan is incredibly difficult given communication challenges and exaggerations by both the RSF and the Sudanese military.
“The appalling attack on Saudi Hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, led to 19 injuries and 70 deaths among patients and companions,” Ghebreyesus wrote. “At the time of the attack, the hospital was packed with patients receiving care.”
Another health facility in Al Malha also was attacked Saturday, he added.
“We continue to call for a cessation of all attacks on health care in Sudan, and to allow full access for the swift restoration of the facilities that have been damaged,” he wrote. “Above all, Sudan's people need peace. The best medicine is peace.”
Ghebreyesus did not identify who launched the attack, though local officials had blamed the RSF for the assault.
The RSF and Sudan's military began fighting each other in April 2023. Their conflict has killed more than 28,000 people, forced millions to flee their homes and left some families eating grass in a desperate attempt to survive as famine sweeps parts of the country.
Other estimates suggest a far higher death toll in the civil war.
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