First flight from Dammam with stranded Kannadigas to land at Mangaluru Airport on June 21
Under Vande Bharat Mission
Mangaluru: In what has come as a relief to the stranded Kannadiga NRIs in Saudi Arabia, a flight under Vande Bharat Mission will fly from Dammam to Mangaluru Airport on June 21 with stranded Indians.
With International flights suspended since March due to the Corona lockdown, thousands of Kannadiga NRIs are reportedly stranded in the Kingdom awaiting their repatriation.
Several organisations including Saudi Kannadigas Humanity Forum have been pressing the State and Central Government to arrange flights from the Kingdom to Karnataka.
Zakaria Bajpe and Shaikh Karnire, led the movement along with other businessmen and officials of several organisations. Several video conferencing meeting were held with State and Central ministers in this regard. But it had availed no fruits as under Vande Bharat flights from various countries were arranged to repatriate stranded NRIs but no flights were arranged from Saudi to Karnataka. Triggering dissent among the Kannadigas in Saudi.
Now the government has finally arranged a flight from the Kingdom to Mangaluru on June 21.
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Chhattisgarh coal levy scam: Rs 4 crore assets of suspended IAS officer attached
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.
