Bengaluru, Feb 25: Dalit leaders warned the Deve Gowda family of teaching a lesson in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections if the SC/ST promotion order was not implemented immediately.

Speaking to reporters, Dalit leader Mavalli Shankar said that as per the decision taken in the last Cabinet meeting, the government should withdraw the demotion order for SC/ST employees based on reservation. Otherwise, Dalits would cast their votes against the JDS in the Lok Sabha elections and defeat the Deve Gowda family members.

Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy has no faith on social justice. The Cabinet should take the positive order. If the Congress has faith in social justice, it should sever the alliance with the JDS, he demanded.

Instead of cancelling all the demotions by implementing the Cabinet decision and publishing the seniority list after revising it, the government has included the order of filling backlog posts of 1999 and thus delayed the implementation of the order.

In the draft order prepared by the Chief Secretary of the government, efforts were made to consider all 3,799 SC/ST promotion posts as supernumerary posts.

All seniority lists revised in the BK Pavithra case were cancelled and all promotions and demotions given based on this seniority should also be cancelled. The demotion orders of all officers and employees should be withdrawn with effective as on prior date, he demanded.

If the government failed to cancel all the demotion orders and publish the revised seniority lists, the dalit organizations would stage protest across the state, he warned.

Dalit leaders R Mohan Raj, Guruprasad Keragodu, Gopalkrishna Aralahalli and others were present.

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Batumi (Georgia), Jul 26 (PTI): Young Indian International Master Divya Deshmukh held her nerves to hold stalwart Koneru Humpy to a draw in game 1 of the FIDE Women's World Cup final, with both players having their share of opportunities to take the lead here on Saturday.

The draw with black means Humpy, the two-time World Rapid champion, holds a slight edge going in the second and final game under the classical chess rules in the two-game mini-match, and should the deadlock continue, games of shorter duration will be played to determine the winner.

Humpy employed the Queen's gambit accepted as black and it turned out to be a pretty fascinating game right out of the opening as Divya, 19, came up with a piece sacrifice early to deny the black king the right to castle.

Humpy was the first to err and, according to computers, Divya had things under control on the 14th move. However in her bid to recover the extra material, the Nagpur girl, who has secured a place in the Candidates tournament with her sterling performance here, missed a promising continuation.

What followed the exchange of all minor pieces and the ensuing queen and rook endgame gave enough counter play to both players. The game was eventually drawn after Humpy sacrificed her rook to force perpetual checks.

"The game saw an extremely sharp battle with the game ending in a draw in 41 moves. On move 7, Divya made her aggressive intentions clear by offering another pawn,

which looked like home preparation. Humpy made a practical decision of refraining from taking the pawn and a balanced position was reached by move 10 by white," said Grandmaster Pravin Thipsay, an Arjuna awardee and the first Indian to get a chess Grandmaster norm.

"However, instead of developing the undeveloped Knight, Humpy retreated the centralised Knight on move 10, giving huge positional advantage to Divya. Divya could have gained huge positional advantage on the 12th move by moving a rook. However, she chose to play for King side attack by sacrificing a piece instead.

"Humpy, too, erred at this stage and instead of moving the King to Queen side, moved it to the King side. Divya, on move 14, could have obtained a crushing attack by threatening a mate by developing her Queen. Instead she chose to exchange a pair of Bishops first, which enabled Humpy to defend her King by returning the piece," said Thipsay.

"Players thus reached a balanced Queen and two Rooks ending. Divya continued to play ambitiously and tried to attack Humpy’s King but the latter defended accurately and the game was drawn in 41 moves by perpetual check," he added.

In the play-off for the third place, Chinese players Zhongyi Tan, the former women's world champion and top seed Lei Tingjie also decided to split points out of a Queen’s gambit declined game.

The opening raised visions of a close contest between the two but having been knocked out of title race in the previous round, none of them wanted to take any huge risk. It was still a middle game when the players shook hands.

With the top two positions sealed for the Indians, the berth to the next Candidates is also assigned, while the player finishing third will also get an entry to the premier event scheduled for 2026.

Results: Divya Deshmukh (Ind) drew with Koneru Humpy (Ind); Zhongyi Tan (Chn) drew with Tingjie Lei (Chn).