First list of Cong candidates for Karnataka polls ready; to be out in a day or two

Bengaluru, May 25: BJP leader and Mysore-Kodagu MP Pratap Simha has called for a statewide protest from June if the Congress does not fulfill its poll guarantee of providing 200 units of free electricity to the people of Karnataka.

Free electricity, Rs 2,000 to women, free bus ride for women, and incentives for unemployed graduates among others are some of the guarantees which were promised by the Congress after coming to power.

Reiterating the poll promises by the Congress, Simha told reporters in Mysuru, “Siddaramiah and DK Shivakumar when they made their poll promises did not highlight the terms and conditions to avail the benefits. They assured that a decision on these guarantees will be taken after the first cabinet meeting and that no one has to pay their electricity bills from June. However, they are now saying that these guarantees come with terms and conditions.”

He further stated that “If 200 units of electricity is free and the consumption exceeds by 10 units, the government should charge only for the extra 10 units. I will call for a statewide protest if at all the government does not give free electricity from June.”

He urged people not to pay electricity bills from June 1, if their consumption was below 200 units.

The Congress government is facing criticism from the BJP over the delay in the formation of the cabinet. There are already reports of people refusing to pay electricity bills and women demanding free bus rides in some places, in light of the Congress’ poll guarantees.

Bengaluru, May 16: Amid intense lobbying for the Chief Minister's post in Karnataka, senior Congress leader G Parameshwara on Tuesday said he was ready to take up the responsibility if the party high command asked him to run the government. The former state Congress President said, the high command is aware of his service to the party, and he doesn't feel the need to lobby for the post. "If the high command decides and asks me to run the government, I'm ready to take up the responsibility," the former Deputy Chief Minister told reporters here.

"I have faith in the party high command. I have certain principles. I can also take about 50 legislators and do the shouting, but for me the discipline of the party is important. If people like us don't follow things, there won't be any discipline in the party. I have said that if the high command gives me the responsibility, I will take it up. I have not said I won't.", he said.

"They (high command) too are aware that I have worked for the party, served it for eight years (as KPCC President) and brought it to power (in 2013). Also I have served as the Deputy Chief Minister. They know everything, there is nothing for us to say afresh. So I feel there is no need for me to ask for the post or lobby for it, and I'm quiet. That doesn't mean i'm incapable, I'm capable and if given an opportunity will do the job," he added.

State Congress President D K Shivakumar and former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah are locked in an intense power struggle over who will lead the government, after the Congress stormed to power by winning 135 seats in the May 10 elections to the 224-member Karnataka Assembly. Both the leaders are in Delhi to discuss with the party central leadership on the government formation and the next CM.

The three central observers of the Congress, who interacted with newly elected party MLAs on their choice for Chief Minister, briefed party chief M Mallikarjun Kharge and submitted their report on Monday. The Congress Legislature Party (CLP), which met at a hotel in Bengaluru on Sunday, had passed a unanimous resolution authorising Kharge to pick the next Chief Minister. Noting that the party had faced the elections under collective leadership, but Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah were at the front, as someone has to lead, Parameshwar said, the high command will decide on the next CM, and felt it won't be a difficult task. He said, the party has the responsibility to deliver to the people, with the huge mandate in hand. Parameshwara, a Dalit, was Deputy Chief Minister during Congress-JD(S) coalition government led by H D Kumaraswamy.

He was also the longest-serving KPCC chief (eight years) and has a PhD in plant physiology from the Waite Agriculture Research Centre of the University of Adelaide. Parameshwara, who represents Koratagere in Tumakuru district, had lost the 2013 assembly polls, when he was KPCC president. He was a contender for the chief minister's post then, but as he lost the elections, he was made an MLC and a minister in the Siddaramaiah government. 

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.