New Delhi: Congress parliamentarian from Karnataka K C Ramamurthy on Wednesday tendered his resignation as a member of Rajya Sabha and is likely to join the BJP, sources said.

His resignation has been accepted by House Chairman M Venkaiah Nadu, they said. Ramamurthy is likely to join the ruling BJP in coming days, party sources said.

In the recent past, Bhubneshwar Kalita and Sanjay Singh, both from the Congress, had resigned from the upper house.

Neeraj Shekhar, Surendra Singh Nagar and Sanjay Seth had recently quit the Samajwadi Party and given up their Rajya Sabha membership to join the BJP. They were later re-elected to the Upper House on a BJP ticket, boosting the strength of the ruling party in Rajya Sabha where it lacks majority.

In June this year, four Telugu Desam Party members from Rajya Sabha had joined the BJP.

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ISLAMABAD: At least two more cases of poliovirus were reported in Pakistan, taking the number of infections to 52 so far this year, a report said on Friday.

“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health has confirmed the detection of two more wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases in Pakistan," an official statement said.

The fresh infections — a boy and a girl — were reported from the Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

“Genetic sequencing of the samples collected from the children is underway," the statement read. Dera Ismail Khan, one of the seven polio-endemic districts of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has reported five polio cases so far this year.

Of the 52 cases in the country this year, 24 are from Balochistan, 13 from Sindh, 13 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.

There is no cure for polio. Only multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine and completion of the routine vaccination schedule for all children under the age of five can keep them protected.