Kalladka row rocks Karnataka Assembly; Khader, Jain defend embattled Rai

Bengaluru: The Congress on Sunday released its list of seven candidates for the biennial MLC elections on June 13. The elections were necessitated due to the retirement of 11 members on June 17.

As expected, the Congress has fielded Karnataka Science and Technology Minister N S Boseraju and Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's son Dr Yathindra Siddaramaiah.

The other candidates are Vasanth Kumar, K Govindraj, lvan D'Souza, Bilkis Bano and Jagdev Guttedar.

The party also announced Basanagouda Badarli for the forthcoming MLC byelection for a seat that fell vacant owing to the resignation of former chief minister Jagadish Shettar, who joined the Congress briefly after he rebelled against the BJP when he was denied a ticket in the 2023 assembly election.

"The election dates to fill that post have not been announced yet but our party has declared him as our candidate whenever the election takes place," a Congress leader said.

Shettar contested the assembly election in 2023 on a Congress ticket and after his defeat, his new home rewarded him with an MLC seat.

Earlier this year, he went back to his parent organisation and is contesting the Lok Sabha election on a BJP ticket from Belgaum (Belagavi) constituency against Congress's Mrinal Hebbalkar, who is the son of Women and Child Development Minister Laxmi Hebbalkar.

Notorious gangster Jayesh Poojary, who had been brought to a court in Belagavi connection with the cases pending against him, allegedly raised 'Pakistan Zindabad' slogans in the court premises, resulting in people and advocates, assembled there, roughing him up on Wednesday.

Police personnel present there secured Poojary and brought him to the APMC police station.

Poojary, a native of Dakshin Kannada, has been housed at Central Prison, Hindalga in Belagavi. He had earlier made threatening calls to the office of Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari and had demanded ransom.

Nagpur police had taken him into their custody for investigations.

He was brought to court here on Wednesday in connection with a pending case when the incident took place.

Melkar Women’s PU College, Marnabail, Dakshina Kannada, has been conferred with ‘Excellence Award’ by Muslim Educational Institutions Federation (MEIF) for achieving cent per cent result in 2nd PUC arts, commerce and science streams in the academic year of 2023-24. 

S M Rashid Haji, chairman of Mangalore Education Enhancement Trust (MEET) received the award on behalf of the management committee of the college during recently held MEIF annual conference in Mangaluru. 

Mohammed Farhaad, Pro Chancellor of the Yenepoya (deemed to be) University, Nisar Ahmed, Chancellor of Presidency University, Syed Mohamed Beary, Chairman of Bearys Group of Institutions, Musabba Beary, chairman of MEIF, Iqbal Ahmed, Umar Teekay and B M Mumtaz Ali were present.