Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi has “insulted” 7.4 crore Kannadigas by “pushing out” Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar during a protest rally in Delhi, Chief Whip of the Opposition in Legislative Council N. Ravi Kumar alleged on Tuesday. However, Mr. Shivakumar has said that he was never “pushed” as claimed.

“I am making this statement notwithstanding the political and ideological differences we have with the Chief Minister because Mr. Shivakumar represents the collective honour, dignity and self-respect of 7.4 crore Kannadigas,” Mr. Ravi Kumar said in a statement issued in Bengaluru.

He accused Mr. Rahul Gandhi of showing “crudity and brazenness” by rudely pushing Mr. Shivakumar during the protest march. This is a proof of Mr. Rahul Gandhi’s utter disrespect for his own party Chief Minister, he maintained.

Meanwhile speaking in Delhi, Mr. Shivakumar said, “Mr. Rahul Gandhi did not push me. He only showed concern by suggesting that I should board the vehicle that was following us as there was too much rush”.

““The BJP loves me a lot, and hence, they are indulging in such a propaganda,” he said.

Later in the day, the Chief Minister also shared a picture of him with Mr. Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadhra during the high tea hoasted by Mr. Gandhi in Delhi.

Various individuals and organisations representing Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes communities in the State expressed deep disappointment with the Karnataka High Court verdict that struck down the enhanced reservation.

Basavaraj Kowthal, convener of Forum for Justice for Scheduled Castes, criticised that it is unfair to sacrifice the share of SC/ST communities in reservation to maintain a 50% ceiling. “Because of political equations, OBCs have been given 32%. It could be reduced to 27% and the SC/ST share could be increased to 24%,” he suggested.

The Karnataka Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Reservation of Seats in Educational Institutions and of Appointments or Posts in the Services under the State) Act, 2022, was introduced by the Basavaraj Bommai-led BJP government in the State in 2023. However, the law was not added by the Central Government to the Ninth Schedule, which would have provided it some shielding from being challenged in courts.

“The BJP took pride in its double-engine sarkar, and the Union government brought in the constitutional amendment providing 10% EWS reservation. Why, then, did they not do this? It shows how anti-Dalit they are,” Mr. Kowthal criticised.

He also criticised the Congress government, saying that while previous Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had written to the Union government seeking the inclusion of the law in the Ninth Schedule, the government should have exerted more pressure on the Union government.  

Grave injustice

V.S. Ugrappa, former MP and Congress leader, pointed out that the 2011 Census puts the SC population in Karnataka at around 17.1% and the ST population at 7%. “Both the reports of Justice Nagmohan Das and Justice Subhash B. Adi have indicated that SCs, STs and OBCs are inadequately represented in employment and education. None of these aspects has been considered by the court,” he said. 

“There are only two possible remedies for a permanent solution. First, the law must be included in the Ninth Schedule, as was done in Tamil Nadu. Second, the Karnataka government must challenge the order by filing a special leave petition before the Supreme Court,” he said.

Joint effort

D. Chandraiah from The Karnataka State SC/ST Employees’ Association said that legal experts, senior advocates, and the government are being consulted to ensure that a unified, strong legal challenge is mounted in the Supreme Court against the HC verdict.

According to him, the association will implead itself as a party/litigant in the Supreme Court proceedings. The association will also submit a joint memorandum on Thursday to the Cabinet Sub-Committee on backlog vacancies. 

“The 10% EWS did not violate the 50% cap, but adding a 6% hike for SC and ST was deemed a violation by the court. This is inconsistent,” he said.  

Mr. Chandraiah criticised the government for failing to convince the High Court using available empirical data regarding the backwardness of SC/ST communities across key sectors, including education, healthcare, land ownership, industry, commerce, and so on. He added that the court also failed to adequately consider whether the report findings constituted the “extraordinary circumstances” under which reservation could exceed 50%. 

The tenders for Bengaluru Smart Infrastructure Limited’s (B-SMILE) eight elevated corridors, which have now been cancelled, were based on a common template that combined provisions from two standard contract documents while also introducing additional conditions found in neither, according to the Urban Development Department’s (UDD) tender-cancellation order. The report noted that no government approval had been obtained for this hybrid or composite document.

According to the report, the tender documents combined provisions from the K/W-4 contract and the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways’ (MoRTH) Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) documents, while also adding more than 10 conditions that were not part of either standard.

Fair competition?

The report flagged key eligibility criteria that deviated from MoRTH norms, raising questions about bidding conditions and fair competition. It also highlighted inconsistencies in contractual provisions, eligibility criteria and financial requirements.

The report identified 13 conditions common to all eight tenders that deviated from both standards. These included the absence of a time limit for milestone payments and interest on delayed payments, as well as the deletion of the clause governing the valuation of variations in the scope of work, leaving no provision for changes in scope. The tenders also limited delay damages to 10% of individual milestone payments rather than the total contract price.

Further, while maintenance was stated to be included in the estimated annual payment, it was also specified as separately payable at 0.25% or 0.50% of the contract price annually. For the Sirsi Circle project, this amounted to around ₹20.19 crore against an estimated maintenance cost of ₹4.01 crore, the report noted.

Other concerns included making contractors liable for delays caused by utility agencies, the absence of a contractual right for contractors to terminate the agreement even in the event of the authority’s default, and the removal of arbitration provisions without providing an alternative dispute-resolution mechanism.

The B-SMILE tenders did not permit joint ventures, whereas MoRTH allows them for projects valued above ₹100 crore. The report also flagged the use of a five-year period to assess technical capacity, instead of the 10-year period prescribed in a MoRTH letter dated November 2, 2020, for stand-alone specialised projects. It noted that the flyover-length criterion was used in the Minerva Circle tender to reject a bidder.

Financial model

To qualify for bidding, five tenders required contractors to have turnover equivalent to 200% of the estimated annual payment in two of the preceding five years and liquid assets of 33.33%, without a net-worth test. The remaining three adopted MoRTH’s requirements of 15% average turnover and 5% net worth.

Thus, the requirement ran opposite to the size of the work, the report said. It cited the Pipeline Road corridor, valued at ₹327.46 crore, as requiring a turnover of ₹654.92 crore, while Sirsi Circle, valued at ₹538.28 crore, required a turnover of ₹80.74 crore. It noted that no source or recorded rationale had been provided for adopting the 200% turnover model for five projects and a different financial model for the remaining three.

With these tender conditions flagged, the UDD directed the SPV to cancel the tenders, although B-SMILE was on the verge of issuing work orders after Cabinet approval.

‘Will refloat tenders’

A B-SMILE source told The Hindu that they had “hybridised” standards to secure better contract conditions, but approval had not been obtained. “We will get government approval and then refloat the tenders soon,” the source said.

L&T Technology Services (LTTS) is betting on artificial intelligence (AI) for manufacturing and operations to offset pricing pressure from AI-led efficiencies in parts of its engineering business, as it seeks to monetise the technology through proprietary tools, licences and new industrial applications, chief executive Amit Chadha said on Monday.

Speaking at the launch of the company’s Engineering Intelligence (EI) Lab for Manufacturing and Operations in Bengaluru, Mr. Chadha said AI was reducing the effort required for engineering tasks while opening up new business opportunities in products and manufacturing.

“The third part of the business is AI for manufacturing and operations, which is what this lab is about. And this, again, is a net new for us,” he said, outlining LTTS’s three areas of AI activity: engineering, products, and manufacturing and operations.

Pricing pressure is more pronounced in IT and AI-assisted product development, where automation reduces the effort required to complete tasks. LTTS is seeking to offset this through growth in AI-enabled products and manufacturing applications, he said.

The engineering research and development (ER&D) company is already pursuing manufacturing AI projects with clients in pockets of the U.S. and with two European clients. Built on Siemens and NVIDIA technologies, the new Bengaluru lab will serve as an experience centre where customers can explore applications such as digital twins, factory simulations and improvements in material movement across production lines.

LTTS plans to extend its work beyond discrete manufacturing to process industries, including pharmaceuticals. It is also exploring the use of drones and autonomous mobile robots in manufacturing facilities, warehouses, distribution and supply chains. The company plans to set up another manufacturing-focused lab in the U.S. before the end of the current financial year.

Monetising AI

Mr. Chadha said AI was reducing the effort involved in generating code, models, diagrams, mechanical drawings and Mr. components. LTTS is developing proprietary tools and working with technology partners to help clients complete such tasks faster.

“Does effort go down? Yes, effort goes down,” he said.

LTTS is already generating revenue from proprietary tools and licences, which account for 1% of its revenue, he said.

The company is also developing AI-enabled products that process inputs such as visual images, heat and sound at the edge. Pricing for physical AI work is “definitely different and better”, he said, without disclosing comparative pricing, margins or the expected revenue contribution from manufacturing AI.

Mr. Chadha said LTTS’s six strategic bets accounted for about 50% of its revenue at the end of the previous financial year. The company expects these areas to contribute about 80% of revenue over the next five years.

The six strategic bets are Software-Defined Mobility; Plant Buildout and Modernisation; Energy and Industrial Automation and Digital Manufacturing; Next-Generation Compute and AI Infrastructure; Software Platforms and Engineering Intelligence; and MedTech.

LTTS did not disclose the investment in the Bengaluru lab or quantify the productivity gains and reductions in factory downtime customers could achieve through the solutions demonstrated there.

The company spends about 2% of its revenue on research and development-related activities, including laboratories, employee training and engineering assets, Mr. Chadha said.

Gurugram emerged as India’s top residential market by launch value in calendar year 2025, recording ₹1.38 lakh crore across 23,809 units, with an average value of over ₹6 crore per unit, according to real estate analytics firm PropEquity.

Only four cities—Gurugram, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Hyderabad—crossed the ₹1 lakh crore mark in residential launch and sales value, the firm said.

Bengaluru recorded ₹1.30 lakh crore across 72,250 units, while Mumbai clocked ₹1.27 lakh crore from 29,627 units and Hyderabad generated ₹1.16 lakh crore from 52,388 units.

“NCR, especially Gurgaon, can no longer be ignored by any top developer as it is not a volume-led real estate story but a value and profit-maximisation-led growth engine, where rising wealth, premiumisation, migration and high employment generation are coming together to redefine India’s next real estate cycle,” said Samir Jasuja, founder and CEO of PropEquity.

“The opportunity is no longer simply about building more—it is about building better, in the right locations and for a more sophisticated homebuyer,” he added.

The overall National Capital Region (NCR) market recorded ₹2.16 lakh crore across 50,167 units, translating into an average value of ₹4 crore per unit, PropEquity said.

Post-Covid, NCR property prices have appreciated 450%, compared with an average of 250% across other cities, the firm said, attributing the sharper rise to a demand-supply mismatch.

“NCR has the highest population among Tier 1 cities (about 3 crore) yet the lowest number of launches at about 50,000 units. This is as compared with Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), which has a population of about 2.5 crore but a total supply of over 1.4 lakh units,” it said.

“This creates a demand–supply mismatch of about 3:1 in favour of NCR compared to the other top cities—the main reason behind NCR’s higher appreciation,” it added.

A 22-year-old student from Kerala sustained minor injuries after an argument between her male friend and an unidentified walker escalated into a knife attack at Kanakadasa Park in Domlur on Tuesday (October 6) night.

According to the police, the woman was sitting with her male friend, also a student from Kerala, at the park around 8 p.m. when the walker approached them and questioned why they were seated there. He allegedly told them that people could misuse the park.

The woman’s friend questioned the man over his remarks, following which an argument broke out between the two. During the altercation, the walker allegedly took out a knife and attempted to attack the male student.

The woman intervened and sustained a minor injury to her lip in the process. She was taken to a hospital for treatment.

The accused fled the spot following the incident. A case has been registered at Halasuru police station.

The police said the accused has not yet been identified and efforts are on to trace him.

The rainfall received by Karnataka during the southwest monsoon (SWM) is the second lowest in the last 70 years (after 1956) and the seventh lowest in the last 125 years (after 1901), shows data, pointing to the severity of the drought. The year 2002, which had the lowest SWM rainfall since 1956, had received just 10 mm less than 2026.

As against the normal rainfall of 852 mm for the SWM period from June to September, the State received only 551 mm, reporting a shortage of 35%.

What has caused concern is that while the overall rainfall deficit is 35%, the actual shortage is even higher in some regions. The cumulative rainfall deficit during the southwest monsoon stands at 41% for South Interior Karnataka, 42% for North Interior Karnataka, 38% for Malnad region, and 28% for coastal region. SWM has been either deficit or largely deficit in 209 taluks of the total 240 in the State.

The State has already declared 217 taluks as drought hit as per the Centre’s drought manual’s norms. This number is likely to increase as the ground-truthing exercise is on in the remaining 23 taluks.

Repeated droughts

Drought is not a new phenomenon for Karnataka, which stands next only to Rajasthan in terms of drought-prone areas, as 80% of its geographical area is prone to drought. Since 2001, the State has faced drought for 16 years. But the present drought stands out for its severity and impact on lives of people, particularly agriculture sector.

Unlike a few other States, including Tamil Nadu, that can rely on the northeast monsoon (NEM), Karnataka depends prominently on SWM, which is the mainstay of the State’s weather system, accounting for about 74% of the calendar year rainfall. NEM accounts for a just 16%. This means that the impact of the drought is bound to grow when the shortage of water is expected to increase.

Already, the agriculture sector has taken a serious hit during the kharif season. While the sowing coverage for the season, which marks the main agricultural season for the State, took a hit owing to poor rains, most of those who took up sowing had to face losses since crops wilted because of prolonged dry spells.

Huge crop losses

As against the target of 84.1 lakh hectares, sowing was undertaken only on 69.57 lakh hectares in the State during kharif, accounting for a coverage of 83%. Foodgrains in general and cereals in particular are the crops that saw lesser coverage in terms of sowing. As against a target of 37.6 lakh hectares, cereals were sown only on 27.27 lakh hectares, accounting for 73% coverage. The total coverage of foodgrains accounted for 76% as they were sown on 46.21 lakh hectares as against a target of 60.45 lakh hectares.

Worse, a sizeable extent of crops that were sown dried up. The assessment in 101 taluks alone has shown that standing crops on a total of 19.52 lakh hectares worth around ₹18,748.23 crore have been lost. The total crop losses in 201 taluks has been estimated to be around ₹46,000 crore. These figures are likely to increase when crop losses in other taluks are also considered.

While the State has already submitted two memoranda to the Centre seeking assistance to overcome the crisis, agricultural experts and policy makers fear that the food production may take a severe hit this year.

In a significant move aimed at reforming the language used in cases involving custody of a child between couples in conflict, the High Court of Karnataka has directed all family courts and courts dealing with guardians and wards (G&WC) cases henceforth to use the term “parenting time” instead of “visitation,” observing that no parent should be treated as a mere “visitor” in a child’s life.

Justice Lalitha Kanneganti, who was hearing a child custody case, issued the direction while pointing out that it is time for a small change in the language employed in judicial proceedings.

Pointing out that courts often use the word “visitation” to describe the time the child spends with a parent, who is a non-custodial parent, the court said that the word “visitation” is familiar, but “it carries an unfortunate suggestion that one parent is part of the child’s life while the other merely visits.”

“A child should not be made to understand the relationship through the word visitation, which is used for someone who arrives and leaves as a guest. Children read the conduct of adults and sometimes the words of courts to understand where they belong. Calling it parenting time recognises a simple truth that no parent is a visitor in the life of a child,” the court said.

Though a change in terminology does not decide questions of custody, when a court imposes restrictions on the access to the child, the word “parenting” is more humane, Justice Kanneganti said.

Also, the High Court directed the Registrar of General to issue a circular to all courts in this regard on the use of “parenting time” while also directing that even in the applications for child’s custody the word “parenting time” should be used instead of “visitation.”

Environment Minister Ramalinga Reddy has directed forest officials to take immediate action against all illegally established resorts and homestays in the Eco Sensitive Zone (ESZ) and buffer zone of various tiger reserves and protected areas.

Mr. Reddy, who chaired a meeting of the Standing Committee of the State Board for Wildlife, sought details on the number of resorts, homestays and other commercial activities in the ESZ and buffer zone after the ESZ was notified for various tiger reserves and protected areas.

Silent zones

He also directed that there should be minimal disturbance in ESZ areas and that they should be declared as silent zones.

He also sought preparation for Zonal Master Plans to create awareness among people on the dos and don’ts in ESZ areas.

At the meeting, a proposal for the establishment of an eco resort on private land falling within the buffer zone of Bhadra Tiger Reserve was placed which was deferred.

No quarrying

Also, a proposal for allowing quarrying activities in the ESZ of Kappatagudda Wildlife Sanctuary in Gadag was rejected.

The proposals for electrification BSNL saturation towers, OFC cables and a small connecting bridge were approved for recommendation to the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife (SC NBWL).

At the meeting, it was also decided to submit a proposal to the SC NBWL for rationalisation of the boundary of the Shettihalli Wildlife Sanctuary where the boundary was not properly demarcated while notifying it.

The Standing Committee of the State Board for Wildlife also decided not to alter the ESZ of the Bannerughatta National Park.

Opinion to Union govt.

“With regard to the ESZ re-notification for Bannerughatta National Park it was decided to submit an opinion to the Union government that since all the elephant corridors are already part of the ESZ and the ESZ has been notified after due deliberations the same may be continued, without any modification,” said a statement from the Minister.

It was also decided to review the existing buffer zone notifications for the tiger reserves through a Technical Committee and discuss whether any rationalisation of the existing buffer zones is required.