Voting underway for four RS seats in Karnataka
Bengaluru, Feb 27: Voting in the elections for the four Rajya Sabha seats in Karnataka is underway.
Voting began Tuesday at 9 am and will go on till 4 pm. The counting will start from 5 pm.
The Congress has 133 MLAs, the BJP has 66, JD (S) 19, while others account for four.
Of the four others, the Congress claims the support of two independents and Darshan Puttanaiah from Sarvodaya Karnataka Paksha, and is confident of winning three seats. Interestingly, the fourth one - G Janardhana Reddy (of Kalyana Rajya Pragathi Paksha) met the Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Monday.
The MLAs will exercise their voting rights using an open ballot system.
These MLAs have to display their voting preference to the nominated polling agents.
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The Rajya Sabha seats fell vacant following the retirement of four members - Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar from the BJP and G C Chandrashekhar, Syed Naseer Hussain and L Hanumanthaiah from the Congress.
The Congress, which is confident of winning three seats has fielded G C Chandrashekhar, Naseer Hussain and former union minister Ajay Maken.
The BJP has fielded Narayansa Bhandage as also JD(S) candidate D Kupendra Reddy as the NDA candidate which has made the election interesting.
Congress sources claimed that the party has the support of four others.
"Besides, we may get three votes from the rival camp," a top Congress source told PTI.
Fearing cross-voting, the Congress and the BJP-JD(S) alliance huddled their MLAs in a private resort on Monday.
They also conducted a workshop for the new members to inform them about the election process and how to cast their votes.
All parties have issued whips to the MLAs, who are the voters in Tuesday's poll, amid apprehensions of cross-voting.
According to official sources, each candidate has to get 45 votes to win, if there are only four candidates in the fray, but in the case of more candidates, the preference votes kick in.
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Two arrested in K'taka for assaulting minors, uploading CSAM content
Bengaluru (PTI): Two men were arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting two minor girls, recording the acts on mobile phones and uploading the videos online as child sexual abuse material, police said on Thursday.
The accused have been identified as Kiran Kumar (29), hailing from Chitradurga district, and Aditya M K (20), hailing from Shivamogga district, they said.
A probe was initiated after information was received from the NCRP portal regarding a suspected instance of creation of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) for online dissemination, police said.
Accordingly, a case was registered at Kaggalipura Police Station under relevant sections of the IT Act on May 10, they added.
Investigation revealed that two minor girl victims were exploited and videos were created and uploaded to the internet. The child victims have subsequently recorded their statements as per procedure and further necessary legal steps have been taken, Pronab Mohanty Director General of Police, Cyber Command, said in a statement.
Based on the statements of the victims, the accused persons, who allegedly assaulted the minors, recorded the acts on mobile phones and uploaded the videos online, were arrested, he said.
Following the probe, sections 65(2) (rape) and 70 (gangrape) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, along with relevant sections of the POCSO Act, have been added to the FIR, police said.
Officials collected relevant information and on May 12, arrested the accused persons and seized three mobile phones belonging to them, in which the videos had allegedly been recorded, he said.
The accused were later produced before the court and taken into police custody for further investigation, he added.
According to him, in CSAM cases, police usually apprehend offenders who have downloaded such content or have kept them in their possession after obtaining them from elsewhere, usually the internet.
"The present case is one of the very few instances where content creators and uploaders have been apprehended," Mohanty added.
