Deve Gowda, Kharge & 2 BJP candidates declared "unanimous election" to RS from Karnataka
Bengaluru: Former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, veteran Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge and two BJP candidates, who were in the fray, were on Friday declared "unanimously" elected for four Rajya Sabha seats from Karnataka.
Karnataka Legislative Assembly Secretary M K Vishalakshi, who is the returning officer for the Rajya Sabha polls, declared the "unanimous election" of Gowda and Kharge from the JD(S) and the Congress respectively, and BJP's Iranna Kadadi and Ashok Gasti, with no extra candidate in the fray.
"With none of the four validly nominated candidates in the fray withdrawing their candidature, they were declared unanimously elected," officials said.
Today was the last date for the withdrawal of candidature for the biennial election to Rajya Sabha by elected members of the Legislative Assembly.
This will be the first stint in Rajya Sabha for 77- year-old Kharge, who has always got elected directly by the people in his political career spanning over four decades.
For 87-year-old Gowda, this will be the second Rajya Sabha entry, the first time being in 1996 as Prime Minister.
Both Kharge and Gowda were defeated in the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Gulbarga and Tumkur parliamentary constituencies respectively.
For BJP's Iranna Kadadi and Ashok Gasti, who are "low profile" compared to stalwarts like Gowda and Kharge, this will be the first major break in their political career.
Both of them with Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad background has worked for BJP's organization at the grass-root level for decades.
BJP's central leadership had sprung a surprise by fielding Kadadi and Gasti as candidates, ignoring the recommendations of the party-state unit.
Polling was scheduled on June 19 to fill four Rajya Sabha seats from Karnataka, represented by Rajeev Gowda and B K Hariprasad of Congress, Prabhakar Kore of the BJP and D Kupendra Reddy of JD(S) that will fall vacant on June 25, with their retirement.
The BJP, with 117 members in the assembly (including Speaker), was in a position to ensure easy victory in two out of four seats, while Congress with 68 MLAs in one.
The JD(S), which has 34 seats in the assembly, was not in a position to win a seat in Rajya Sabha on its own but had Congress' support with its surplus votes.
A minimum of 45 votes was required for a candidate to win.
However, voting was not necessitated in this election, as no party fielded any additional candidate against each other, and limited their contest to the number of seats that they could win based on their strength in the assembly.
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Gopi Thotakura becomes 1st Indian space tourist on Blue Origin's private astronaut launch
Washington, May 19: Gopi Thotakura, an entrepreneur and a pilot, on Sunday became the first Indian to venture into space as a tourist aboard Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin’s NS-25 mission.
Thotakura was selected as one of the six crew members for the NS-25 mission, making him the first Indian space tourist and the second Indian to venture into space after the Indian Army's Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma in 1984.
Blue Origin's seventh human flight, NS-25, lifted off from Launch Site One in West Texas on Sunday morning, the company announced on social media.
This mission was the seventh human flight for the New Shepard programme and the 25th in its history. To date, the programme has flown 31 humans above the Karman line, the proposed conventional boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space.
New Shepard is a fully reusable sub-orbital launch vehicle developed for space tourism by Blue Origin.
According to Blue Origin, "Gopi is a pilot and aviator who learned how to fly before he could drive."
He co-founded Preserve Life Corp, a global centre for holistic wellness and applied health located near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
In addition to flying jets commercially, he pilots bush, aerobatic, and seaplanes, as well as gliders and hot air balloons, and has served as an international medical jet pilot.
A lifelong traveller, his most recent adventure took him to the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.
Andhra Pradesh-born Thotakura is a graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Other crew members of the flight include Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Kenneth L. Hess, Carol Schaller, and former Air Force Captain Ed Dwight, who was selected by President John F Kennedy in 1961 as the nation's first Black astronaut candidate but was never granted the opportunity to fly to space.
The rocket booster landed safely a couple minutes prior to the capsule, CNN reported.
During the mission, the crew soared to more than three times the speed of sound. The rocket vaulted the capsule past the Kármán line, an area 100 kilometers above Earth’s surface that is widely recognized as the altitude at which outer space begins — but there’s a lot of gray area, the channel said.
At the peak of the flight, passengers experienced a few minutes of weightlessness and striking views of Earth through the cabin windows, it added.
During the flight, each astronaut carried a postcard to space on behalf of Blue Origin’s foundation, Club for the Future.
This programme gives students access to space on Blue Origin’s rockets, including an all-digital method to create and send postcards. The Club’s mission is to inspire and mobilise future generations to pursue careers in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) for the benefit of Earth.
From an environmental standpoint, nearly 99 per cent of New Shepard’s dry mass is reused, including the booster, capsule, engine, landing gear, and parachutes.
New Shepard’s engine is fuelled by highly efficient liquid oxygen and hydrogen. During the flight, the only byproduct is water vapour with no carbon emissions, the company earlier said.
Blue Origin released the NS-25 mission patch. A few of the symbols embedded include: The Gemini spacecraft represents Dwight’s aerospace training era. The hand lifting of the crew capsule is a nod to his extensive artwork.
The sunrise represents Angel and Schaller’s desire to experience the overview effect. The mountains symbolise Schaller, Thotakura, and Chiron’s passion for climbing and skiing.
Jeff Bezos’ space company had paused its suborbital tourism programme following a liftoff malfunction of the New Shepard rocket. In September 2022, an uncrewed flight of New Shepard ended in flames around a minute after liftoff.
