DMK seeks Bharat Ratna for Karunanidhi
New Delhi, Aug 10: The DMK on Friday demanded the nation's highest civilian award, Bharat Ratna, for party patriarch M. Karunanidhi who passed away in Chennai on August 7.
The party said the award will be a real tribute to the late Tamil Nadu leader's outstanding and exemplary work which had left an indelible mark in history.
Karunanidhi, who led the DMK for five decades, was the Chief Minister for 19 years spread over five terms.
Raising the issue during Zero Hour in the Rajya Sabha, DMK's Trichy Siva dubbed Karunanidhi the "tallest leader of the country and a Dravidian stalwart".
"He lived five years short of a century, out of which he contributed 80 years to the public life, fighting for the cause of the downtrodden, backward and the suppressed people.
"He was an outstanding orator, a prolific writer, a novelist, a short-story writer, a philosopher, a philanthropist and also a dramatist. He was an actor and also wrote scripts for 80 movies," Shiva said enumerating the achievements of Karunanidhi.
He said that Karunanidhi was "unparalleled" and made a mark in all walks of life.
"His life cannot be described in words. He was a staunch and untiring soldier. He was fighting till his last breath, for social justice, secularism, state autonomy and self respect.
"I would urge the government to confer upon him posthumously the Bharat Ratna, which will be a real tribute to his outstanding and exemplary work which had left an indelible mark in the annals of history," the DMK lawmaker said.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
