Bharat Bandh hits normal life in Karnataka
Bengaluru, Sep 10: The day-long nationwide shutdown or Bharat bandh on Monday against rising fuel prices called by the Congress affected normal life in Karnataka as public transport kept off the roads across the state.
"There is an overwhelming response from the public to our shutdown call as petrol and diesel price hike affects all, especially the poor," a Congress spokesman told IANS here.
Schools and colleges were closed although state and central government offices remained open.
In Bengaluru, global software firms like Infosys and Wipro functioned normally.
With the ruling Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) supporting its ally Congress on the bandh, their cadres as well as activists of the pro-Kannada organisations like Kannada Vedica Paksha (KVP) were seen forcing restaurants, shops and fuel stations to remain shut at least till 3 p.m.
Many theatres, multiplexes and malls did not open for business. Bank transactions were hit.
"We have not opened for business for the day to avoid damage to our property caused by frenzied mobs," a tea vendor told IANS here.
The shutdown, however, did not affect flight or train services in Bengaluru and Mysuru though passengers faced harrowing time at the airport and railway stations in the absence of buses, cabs and autos.
About 1,000 cadres and supporters of the JD-S and Congress staged a massive demonstration at the Town Hall here and took out a protest rally to the Freedom Park through main roads, which had less vehicular traffic on a working day due to the shutdown.
Emergency services, including hospitals and medical shops, were exempted from the bandh.
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After poll debacle, defeated MVA candidates to seek verification of EVM-VVPAT units
Mumbai(PTI): The Maha Vikas Aghadi candidates who faced defeat in the recent Maharashtra assembly polls have decided to seek verification of the EVM-Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs) units in their segments, a leader of the opposition alliance said.
Many losing candidates of the opposition Shiv Sena (UBT) pointed fingers at the functioning of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during their interaction with party head Uddhav Thackeray on Tuesday.
Thackeray took stock of the lacklustre performance of his party at a meeting held at his residence in Mumbai.
The poll verdict last week saw the Mahayuti coalition, comprising the Shiv Sena, BJP, and NCP, retaining power with a massive mandate, pushing the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) to margins.
The Mahayuti won 230 seats and MVA only 46 in the 288-member House.
The Thackeray-led Sena (UBT) emerged as the largest party in the opposition camp by winning 20 seats, followed by Congress which bagged 16 constituencies, while the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) sits at the bottom with a tally of 10 seats.
Talking to PTI on Tuesday, Congress leader Arif Naseem Khan, who lost the election from Chandivali assembly constituency in Mumbai, said he held a discussion with Thackeray, who also said he has got complaints from his party workers that EVMs could have been tampered.
"We are getting complaints from different parts of the state expressing doubts over the results. In a democracy, complaints need to be verified and many of us, including myself, (who faced defeat) are in the process of applying for the verification," Khan said.
As per the Supreme Court's judgement on April 26 this year, the burnt memory/microcontroller in 5 per cent of the EVMs - the control unit, ballot unit and the VVPAT - per assembly constituency shall be checked and verified by a team of engineers from manufacturers of the EVMs, after the announcement of results, for any tampering or modification, he said.
A written request for this has to be made by candidates who are in the second or third position behind the highest polled candidate.
Such a request has to be made within seven days of declaration of the result, Khan said.
A candidate making the request will have to pay the expenses of Rs 41,000 which will be refunded in case the machine is found to be tampered with, he said.
The microcontroller is a one-time programmable chip embedded into the three units of EVM-Ballot Unit, Control Unit and the VVPAT - at the time of manufacturing, as per the SC.
A Sena (UBT) MLA from Mumbai has claimed there were discrepancies between the votes polled and the votes counted in the EVMs.
"Almost all candidates raised doubts over the EVMs," the legislator said.
