LS polls: JD(S) to get 3 seats including Mandya, says BJP leader Radha Mohan Das Agarwal
Bengaluru, Mar 23: BJP national general secretary and Karnataka in-charge Radha Mohan Das Agarwal on Saturday said the party's ally JD(S) will contest the Lok Sabha elections from Mandya, Hassan and Kolar.
He also said the BJP and JD(S) workers will cooperate and work for each other's victory.
"We are not fighting alone...We are fighting it with JD(S). We have given Mandya, Hassan and Kolar seats to the JD(S). When we have given these seats to the JD(S), we too are at loss. You will see us (BJP and JD(S)) fighting this battle shoulder to shoulder," Agarwal said at a party event here.
The BJP has released the list of candidates for 20 of the 28 Lok Sabha constituencies in Karnataka. It is yet to release the list of other seats it would be contesting.
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Leader of the Opposition in the Karnataka Assembly R Ashoka said the ball is now in the BJP central parliamentary board's court and its decision will be final with regard to Mandya.
Mandya constituency was the bone of contention between the two parties and the announcement over the list of seats was delayed due to the alleged adamant stance of the sitting MP Sumalatha Ambareesh, an independent.
Sumalatha, multilingual film actress and wife of eminent Kannada actor-turned-politician late Ambareesh, contested the 2019 Lok Sabha election as an independent candidate and defeated Nikhil Kumaraswamy, grandson of former Prime Minister and JD(S) supremo H D Deve Gowda and son of former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy.
Sumalatha is yet to reveal her plans. However, she has been insisting on contesting from Mandya, which she terms as her base.
Sources in the JD(S) said the party had decided to field H D Kumaraswamy from Mandya. The party was also insistent about fielding a candidate from the constituency as it has a strong base in the district given the fact that there is a substantial Vokkaliga population, which the JD(S)' first family belongs to.
The JD(S) had won all seven seats in Mandya district in the 2018 Assembly elections. However, its lost ground in 2023 Assembly polls when it won only one seat while the Congress emerged victorious in six segments.
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Melinda French Gates resigns as Gates Foundation co-chair, 3 years after her divorce from Bill Gates
New York, May 13: Melinda French Gates will step down as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the nonprofit she and her ex-husband Bill Gates founded and built into one of the world's largest philanthropic organisations over the past 20 years.
“This is not a decision I came to lightly,” French Gates posted on the X platform on Monday. “I am immensely proud of the foundation that Bill and I built together and of the extraordinary work it is doing to address inequities around the world.”
She praised the foundation's CEO, Mark Suzman, and the foundation's board of trustees, which was significantly expanded after the couple announced their divorce in May 2021.
“The time is right for me to move forward into the next chapter of my philanthropy,” French Gates wrote in her statement. She organises some of her investments and philanthropic gifts through her organisation, Pivotal Ventures, which is not a nonprofit.
Bill Gates thanked French Gates for her “critical” contributions to the foundations in a statement, saying, “I am sorry to see her leave, but I am sure she will have a huge impact in her future philanthropic work.”
French Gates will receive $12.5 billion as part of her agreement with Gates, which she said would commit to future work focused on women and families.
The Gates Foundation did not immediately return a request for comment about whether those assets would come from the foundation itself. In an emailed statement, the foundation said that Suzman announced the decision to employees on Monday.
“After a difficult few years watching women's rights rolled back in the US and around the world, she wants to use this next chapter to focus specifically on altering that trajectory,” Suzman said of French Gates.
Suzman said he knew many had joined the foundation in part because of their admiration for her advocacy, especially around gender equity.
“I know how beloved Melinda is here,” Suzman wrote.
The Gates Foundation holds $75.2 billion in its endowment as of December 2023, and announced in January, it planned to spend $8.6 billion through the course of its work in 2024.
The Associated Press receives financial support for news coverage in Africa from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and for news coverage of women in the workforce from Pivotal Ventures.
