'Vote theft' case: Burnt voter records found near Ex-BJP MLA Guttedar’s house in Aland
Kalaburagi (PTI): Heaps of burnt voter records were found near former BJP MLA Subhash Guttedar’s residence in the district on Saturday as the SIT intensified its probe into alleged 'vote theft' in the Aland assembly segment during the 2023 assembly elections.
Guttedar said there was nothing suspicious about the burnt voter records, blaming his housekeeping staff.
“As part of the cleanliness drive ahead of the festival, our staff threw it outside and burnt it. If we had some malicious intention, then we would have preferred burning it away from our house. Why would anyone do it in front of the house? There were no ulterior motives behind it,” he told reporters here today.
The SIT had on Friday raided several locations linked to Guttedar, his sons, and a chartered accountant, sources said.
The SIT was formed after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi alleged large-scale 'vote theft'. To support his claim, he cited the Aland constituency during the 2023 Karnataka assembly elections.
The Congress has alleged that fraudulent phone calls were made on behalf of some genuine voters to delete "Congress voters" from the rolls.
Congress leaders claimed that the timely detection of the fraud led to the victory of their candidate B R Patil, and the defeat of the BJP candidate, Subhash Guttedar.
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Catherine O'Hara, Emmy-winning comedian of 'Schitt''s Creek', 'SCTV' fame, dies at 71
Los Angeles (AP): Catherine O'Hara, a gifted Canadian-born comic actor and “SCTV” alum who starred as Macaulay Culkin's harried mother in two “Home Alone” movies and won an Emmy as the dramatically ditzy wealthy matriarch Moira Rose in “Schitt's Creek,” died Friday. She was 71.
O'Hara died at her home in Los Angeles “following a brief illness,” according to a statement from her agency, Creative Artists Agency. Further details were not immediately available.
O'Hara's career was launched at the Second City in Toronto in the in 1970s. It was there that she first worked with Eugene Levy, who would become a lifelong collaborator — and her “Schitt's Creek” costar. The two would be among the original cast of the sketch show “SCTV,” short for “Second City Television.”
The series, which began on Canadian TV in the 1970s and aired on NBC in the US in the early '80s, spawned a legendary group of esoteric comedians including Martin Short, John Candy, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis and Joe Flaherty.
Hollywood didn't entirely know what to do with O'Hara and her scattershot style. She played oddball supporting characters in Martin Scorsese's 1985 “After Hours” and Tim Burton's 1988 “Beetlejuice” — a role she would reprise in the 2024 sequel.
She played it mostly straight as a horrified mother who accidentally abandoned her child in the two “Home Alone” movies. The films were among the biggest box office earners of the early 1990s and their Christmas setting made them TV perennials
Her co-star Culkin was among those paying her tribute Friday.
“Mama, I thought we had time,” Culkin said on Instagram alongside an image from “Home Alone” and a recent recreation of the same pose. “I wanted more. I wanted to sit in a chair next to you. I heard you. But I had so much more to say. I love you."
Meryl Streep, who worked with O'Hara in “Heartburn,” said in a statement that she “brought love and light to our world, through whipsmart compassion for the collection of eccentrics she portrayed.”
O'Hara would find her groove with the crew of improv pros brought together by Christopher Guest for a series of mockumentaries that began with 1996's “Waiting for Guffman” and continued with 2000's “Best in Show,” 2003's “A Mighty Wind” and 2006's “For Your Consideration.”
“Best in Show” was the biggest hit and best remembered film of the series. It sees her paired as Levy's wife as the couple, Gerry and Cookie Fleck, takes their Norwich terrier to a dog show, and constantly run into Cookie's former lovers along the way.
“I am devastated," Guest said in a statement to The Associated Press. “We have lost one of the comic giants of our age.”
Born and raised in Toronto, O'Hara was the sixth of seven children in a Catholic family of Irish descent. She graduated from Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute, an alternative high school. She joined Second City in her early 20s, as an understudy to Gilda Radner before Radner left for “Saturday Night Live.” (O'Hara would briefly be hired for “SNL” but quit before appearing on air.)
Nearly 50 years later, “Schitt's Creek” would be a career-capping triumph and the perfect personification of her comic talents. The small show created by Levy and his son, Dan, about a wealthy family forced to live in a tiny town would dominate the Emmys in its sixth and final season. It brought O'Hara, always a beloved figure, a new generation of fans and put her at the center of cultural attention.
She told The Associated Press that she pictured Moira, a former soap opera star, as someone who had married rich and wanted to “remind everyone that (she was) special, too.” With an exaggerated Mid-Atlantic accent and obscure vocabulary, Moira spoke unlike anyone else, using words like “frippet,” “pettifogging” and “unasinous,” to show her desire to be different, O'Hara said. To perfect Moira's voice, O'Hara would pore through old vocabulary books, “Moira-izing” the dialogue even further than what was already written.
The show also brought a career renaissance that led to a dramatic turn as therapist to Pedro Pascal and other dystopia survivors on HBO's “The Last of Us" and a straitlaced comic role as Seth Rogen's reluctant mentor and freelance fixer on “The Studio,” both of which earned her Emmy nominations.
“Oh, genius to be near you," Pascal said on Instagram. “Eternally grateful. There is less light in my world.”
O'Hara is survived by her husband, Bo Welch, sons Matthew and Luke, and siblings Michael O'Hara, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Maureen Jolley, Marcus OHara, Tom O'Hara and Patricia Wallice.
