Waiver of education loan sought
To attract youth voters towards the Congress in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, KPCC general secretary and Ram Manohar Lohia Thinkers Forum chairman B.S. Shivanna has demanded that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah announce a waiver of education loans borrowed by rural students for pursuing graduation and postgraduation studies.
A large number of youth voters are seen as supporters of the BJP in the parliamentary elections. To check this, Mr. Shivanna has written to Mr. Siddaramaiah, who will present the State Budget on February 16, to announce a one-time waiver of education loans borrowed by rural students. With rising unemployment, the Congress leader, who had filed a PIL petition in the High Court of Karnataka seeking waiver of educational loans two years ago, said in the letter that a large number of rural graduates had become unemployed and payment of monthly of loan instalments to banks had caused financial distress in rural areas.
Fight over street fest
Dakshina Kannada MP Nalin Kumar Kateel and Mangaluru City South MLA D. Vedavyasa Kamath, both from the BJP, are patrons of Kudla Samskritika Prathisthana which has been hosting a street food festival and a tiger dance competition in Mangaluru for the last two years. The Opposition Congress in the Mangaluru City Corporation council raised an issue pertaining to the festival, the second edition of which was organised in January 2024, in the meeting of the council last month.
Leader of the Opposition in the council T. Praveenchandra Alva, quoting from a newspaper report, began to criticise the corporation council, led by the BJP, for permitting the festival as it caused inconvenience to many vehicle users. One entire side of M.G. Road was used for the festival, creating traffic hassles, Mr. Alva and other Opposition members said. And pat came Mayor Sudheer Shetty Kannur’s reply, that the Speaker and Manglauru MLA U.T. Khader from the Congress had attended the inaugural session of the festival and praised it. The Speaker even suggested that the festival should be bigger and better from next year, the Mayor said. With this, the issue came to an end abruptly and the council took up other matters for discussion.
Time and tide
A recent event to felicitate the former Congress Minister and senior Socialist leader Kagodu Thimmappa in Sagar had his longtime associate B.R. Jayanth, also a Congress leader, recalling an incident from the Emergency days.
Those days Mr. Thimmappa was in the Opposition. Many opposing the Emergency were behind bars. The police were looking for Mr. Thimmappa and his companions. They hid in a village on the banks of the Varada. Somehow, the police learnt about their hideout and were making efforts to reach them. Mr. Thimmappa decided to move out, crossing the river. His associates suggested getting caught by the police was better than the risk of crossing the river.
However, Mr. Thimmappa, being an expert swimmer and someone who knew the ways of the river well, not only crossed the Varada safely but also helped the other two non-swimmers reach the other end. “Because of Thimmappa, we escaped from the police and stayed in the forest for three days,” recalled Mr. Jayanth.
However, for him, the tides of politics were far less easy to predict. He lost in the election held soon after the Emergency.
