11 persons externed for 6 months from Dakshina Kannada

Bengaluru, May 16: Karnataka BJP president Nalin Kumar Kateel on Tuesday alleged 'Talibanisation' has started in the state after the victory of the Congress in the Assembly polls and those indulging in "anti-national activities" are "rising up" to destroy peace.

The Lok Sabha member from Dakshina Kannada met family members of Krishnappa, a BJP worker who was allegedly hacked to death by a relative, while his wife and son were grievously injured following a clash. 

The Hoskote police arrested Aditya, 21, nephew of the deceased, charging him with the murder, while his father Ganesh managed to escape. Efforts are on to track him down, the police said. 

"Talibanisation has begun. Those indulging in anti-national activities are rising up and destroying peace and harmony. This is happening because Congress harboured and promoted these types of people. So, we cannot expect anything better from the Congress," Kateel told reporters after the meeting.

Condemning the incident, he alleged that attempts have been made to make Karnataka a 'mini-Bihar'.

"The politics of hatred is going on in the state. This sends across a message about what will happen to the state if this government continues. This is a sign that 'jungle raj' will be established here," Kateel said.

"We (BJP) will condemn it and will face it. There is no need for our workers to panic. We will face it and fight it and we will give a befitting reply. We will not sit idly," he said.

"The power struggle is going on. Everyone (top Congress leaders) is in Delhi to decide who should be the next Chief Minister. Congress workers are continuing their hooliganism in the state," Kateel said.

He asserted that incidents of violence took place in Yadgir, Shivamogga, Bhatkal and some other parts of the state (after election results were declared).

"It will be good if the Congress understands this. I have told the police officers. You should not keep quiet when such incidents happen. You have to arrest all those who are behind such incidents," Kateel said.

The Congress ousted the BJP from power by bagging 135 seats in the 224-member Assembly. The BJP secured 66 seats and the Janata Dal (Secular) headed by former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda won 19. 

The murder

According to the police, Mr. Krishnappa and Mr. Ganesh are brothers and allegedly nurtured grudges over a property dispute. On Saturday, the accused were celebrating the victory of the Congress candidate and burst crackers in front of Mr. Krishnappa, who supported the ruling party and objected to the ruckus in front of his house, said the police.

Heated arguments ensued, which took an ugly turn, when Aditya, in a fit of rage, attacked Mr. Krishnappa with an axe, the police added. Ms. Gangamma and Babu rushed to his aid, but were also attacked and severely injured. The others rushed the trio to a nearby hospital where Mr. Krishnappa was declared as brought dead, said the police. 

Bengaluru, May 24: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Wednesday said Ministers in his cabinet will soon be allocated portfolios, after the opposition BJP raised the issue in the state assembly. The CM gave the assurance in the House, in response to a question raised by former Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai of BJP, over the delay in the allocation of portfolios to the Ministers.

Siddaramaiah and state Congress President D K Shivakumar were sworn in as Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister respectively along with eight legislators as Ministers on May 20. Portfolios have not been allocated to the Ministers since then.

As soon as the CM introduced the Ministers of his cabinet in the Assembly, Bommai intervened and said, "Happy that the Chief Minister has introduced Ministers to the House, they have all worked as Ministers in the past. Congratulations to the Chief Minister and all the Ministers, but it would have been appropriate if the Chief Minister had introduced Ministers after allocating portfolios to them saying -- D K Shivakumar is Minister for this, G Parameshwara is Minister for this." "Why has it not happened? It should be done at the earliest, in my opinion, if it is done at the earliest it will be good," he added.

Responding to this, Siddaramaiah, while assuring that portfolios will be allocated to Ministers soon, pointed out that BJP leader B S Yediyurappa in the past had served as the lone member of the cabinet for quite some time, before inducting Ministers. "We will give them the responsibility at the earliest. How long was B S Yediyurappa alone in the cabinet as the Chief Minister? Mr Former Chief Minister (Bommai), you need not have any doubts, they (Ministers) will be given responsibility at the earliest," he said.

Reacting to this, Bommai said, "Yeddyurappa was alone sworn in then, so was alone, but in this case, the Ministers have taken the oath. You make them Minister and don't give them the responsibility, what will the people think? " To this, the CM said, "No one will think anything if you the opposition don't think otherwise it will be enough." As Bommai said, he was speaking on behalf of the Ministers, Siddaramaiah replied by saying, "thank you for your suggestion."

Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar are separately leaving for New Delhi today, where they are expected to meet the Congress high command and discuss cabinet expansion, and allocation of portfolios to existing Ministers.

Tainted syrup medicine imported from India was the cause of an outbreak of kidney failure that killed more than 60 children in the West African nation of Gambia last year, according to a report by a team of international experts.

The report, submitted to the Gambian health ministry earlier this year and not yet made public, is the most definitive statement yet on the cause of the episode. It contradicts the official position of Indian authorities, who insist that the country’s products weren’t to blame. A director for the Gambian ministry of health didn’t respond to calls and an emailed request for comment.

Although the committee was able to establish that a child drank the contaminated medicine from an Indian drugmaker, Maiden Pharmaceuticals Ltd., in only 22 deaths from so-called acute kidney injury, or AKI, it said that symptoms in 30 others were consistent with the poison’s effects and no other cause could be found. It lacked enough information on 13 more cases. 

“The outbreak of AKI in children in the Gambia is attributable to medicines contaminated with DEG/EG,” the committee concluded, referring to the two contaminants, diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol.

Last year’s outbreak sparked concerns about the quality of generic medicine from India, an export powerhouse that calls itself the “pharmacy of the world.” Those concerns intensified this year when exported syrups from two other Indian manufacturers were found to be tainted in the same way, leading in one case to about 20 deaths in Uzbekistan.

“We have made our stand clear that as per our testing, the product had no issue,” said Rajeev Raghuvanshi, the Indian drug controller general, in a text message to Bloomberg. He referred further questions to the health ministry, which didn’t respond to requests for comment. A representative of Maiden also didn’t respond to inquiries.

India’s central government this week imposed a new regulation requiring cough syrup to be tested by a government lab before it can be exported.

Products from Maiden, a small New Delhi firm, fell under suspicion in Gambia last September, when health officials investigating the outbreak arranged tests of several drugs given to children prior to their deaths. Three labs in three different countries would eventually confirm the presence of the contaminants in Maiden products, the committee said in its report. 

The World Health Organization issued a public alert in October and Gambia recalled the drugs.

“After the poisonous medicines were withdrawn, there were no further cases,” said Kalle Hoppu, one of the committee members, in an email to Bloomberg. He called that “a very definitive sign that this outbreak was caused by these medicines.” Hoppu is a former director of the Poison Information Center at Helsinki University Hospital in Finland.

Indian authorities have defended the drugs. In December, the Indian drug controller general at the time, V.G. Somani, told the WHO that his organization’s own tests of Maiden drugs found no contamination. He went on to accuse the agency of acting on flimsy evidence and having “adversely impacted the image of Indian pharmaceutical products across the globe.” As recently as March, the Indian government said in a statement that the drugs weren’t tainted and didn’t kill anyone. 

Earlier reports by a Gambian parliamentary committee and by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention both pointed to the Maiden drugs as the most plausible explanation for the outbreak. But the report by the 11-member expert committee was the first charged specifically with establishing the cause. 

The panel was set up by Gambia’s health ministry and consisted of five clinicians from local hospitals, two WHO officials, and four consultants from Senegal, Finland, and the UK. It was chaired by Abdou Niang, a nephrologist and professor at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Senegal. Members met for a week in December, and Hoppu said the report was submitted to the health ministry sometime around February. It’s unclear why the report has not been made public.

At the time the committee convened in December, Gambian authorities had logged 70 deaths of children suffering from AKI. Of those, the committee couldn’t get detailed information on 13, and it concluded that one death wasn’t consistent with AKI. That left 56 deaths that it examined in detail. The children in this group were about two years old on average, the committee report said.

In only four of the 56 cases did the committee find a possible alternative or contributing cause, such as Covid-19 or severe malaria. That left the 22 it tied to consumption of Maiden drugs, and 30 others where consumption of the drugs wasn’t established but the symptoms were consistent with exposure to the contaminants and no alternative cause was found. The report noted that parents can’t always recall the brand of medications they give their children.