Mangaluru: As private bus services in the city resumed, some of the bus conductors were seen using PPE kits to ensure safety from COVID-19.

Conductors of bus services plying between State Bank and Shakti Nagar (Route no. 6A) were seen wearing PPE kits and face shields to safeguard themselves from contracting the deadly virus.

The bus services in the city resumed earlier this week with strict guidelines from the administration including the limiting of the number of passengers on the busses.

However, several buses in the city were seen having passengers in excess of the allowed numbers, but the move by conductors wearing PPE kits for personal safety was lauded by many on local social media platforms.

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Raipur (PTI): The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) has attached properties of Rs 4 crore belonging to suspended IAS officer Sameer Vishnoi, an accused in a coal levy scam, for allegedly amassing assets beyond his known sources of income, officials said.

The EOW had registered a disproportionate assets case against Vishnoi in July 2024, an official release said on Saturday.

During the investigation, the agency identified nine immovable properties, valued at around Rs 4 crore, allegedly acquired through illicit means in the names of Vishnoi’s family members and associated firms, it said.

“An application seeking attachment of these properties was filed before the Special Court under the Prevention of Corruption Act in Raipur. Following a hearing on April 17, the court ordered attachment of all such properties,” the statement said.

Accordingly, the Anti-Corruption Bureau/Economic Offences Wing attached the properties. The attached properties cannot be sold or transferred, it said.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had earlier provisionally attached five immovable properties linked to Vishnoi in connection with the coal levy scam, it added.

Proceedings are also underway in cases involving other public servants, including action taken in September last year against properties linked to Saumya Chaurasia, who was deputy secretary in the chief minister’s office during the Congress government, the statement said.

Vishnoi, a 2009-batch Indian Administrative Service officer, was first arrested in 2022 by the ED in connection with the alleged coal levy scam. He was among several accused who were granted bail last year by the Supreme Court.

The case refers to an alleged Rs 540 crore racket between July 2020 and June 2022, when an illegal levy of Rs 25 per tonne was being extorted by a cartel involving senior bureaucrats, businessmen, politicians and middlemen for every tonne of coal transported in the state.