The 72.13 per cent voter turnout in the Karnataka assembly elections has broken all records and is the highest since the 1952 state polls, Chief Electoral Officer Sanjeev Kumar said today.

Women and young voters exercised their franchise in large numbers yesterday, he told PTI.

"The voter turnout in the polls broke all records last night. By midnight, the figures showed that it was 72.13 per cent," he told PTI in Bengaluru.

The turnout was the highest-ever in Karnataka since the 1952 assembly elections, he said.

Kumar said the 2013 assembly polls had recorded a turnout of 71.45 per cent, which was the highest in the last six assembly elections.

It was 65 per cent in 2008 and 2004, 69 per cent in the 1989 and 1994 and 69 per cent in the 1990 elections, he said.

To a question on seizures in the run up to the polls, he said Rs 94 crore in cash, besides liquor worth Rs 24.78 crore and other items such as clothes, vehicles and electronic gadgets worth Rs 66 crore had been seized.

Kumar said re-election would take place in a polling station at Lottegollahalli in Hebbal constituency here since an electronic voting machine developed a glitch.

The election for the Jayanagara seat in Bengaluru was countermanded following the death of BJP candidate and sitting MLA B N Vijaykumar on May 4.

The Election Commission has deferred the polls for the Rajarajeswari Nagar seat to May 28 after a massive row erupted over a large number of voter ID cards being found in a Bengaluru apartment.

A single-phase polling was held in 222 constituencies out of the 224 elected seats in the assembly, including 36 reserved for the Scheduled Castes (SC) and 15 for the Scheduled Tribes (ST). Karnataka has an electorate of over 4.97 crore, including 2.52 crore men and 2.45 crore women.

There were 15.42 lakh new voters, all in the age group of 18-19. The counting of votes will take place on May 15.  -- PTI

The results of the ICSE class 10 and ISC class 12 examinations will be announced tomorrow, an official said.

The Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations, which conducts the exams, will announce the result at 3 pm, CISEC chief executive and secretary Gerry Arathoon said.

"The council will announce the results tomorrow at 3 pm. The results will be made available through CAREERS portal, the website of the council and through SMSes," Arathoon said.

For results through SMSes, candidates will have to type ICSE or ISC followed by their seven-digit unique ID code and send the message to 09248082883.

In 2017, class 12th saw a pass percentage of 96.47, while 98.53 per cent students passed class 10th.

In the class 12th examination, the pass percentage of girls was 97.73 per cent while that of the boys stood at 95.39 per cent. From this year, the CISCE has decided to reduce the pass per cent for class 10, 12 annual board exams.

While ICSE students need 33 per cent to qualify, ISC students need 35 per cent to clear the board exams.

Though initially the council decided to implement it from next year, months later it decided to implement the changes this year onwards.

Earlier, the pass percentages were 35 per cent and 40 per cent for ICSE and ISC students, respectively.

"The objective of this is to bring about a close conformity with other boards in the country," the council had said.  -- PTI

Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, through a video message, today said that he would return to his home state in the 'next few weeks' from the United States, where he has been undergoing medical treatment since March.

The video message was played at a Bharatiya Janata Party workers' meeting that was addressed by party president Amit Shah.

Parrikar, 62, is undergoing treatment for a pancreatic ailment at a hospital in the US, where he was admitted in the first week of March after being treated at Mumbai's Lilavati Hospital.

The Congress has demanded the appointment of a 'full-time' chief minister for the coastal state in Parrikar's absence.

In the absence of the chief minister, a three-member advisory committee, comprising cabinet ministers, is looking after the day-to-day affairs of the government.  -- PTI

Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah today appointed Kanna Lakshminarayana, who had left the Congress to join the party in 2014, as its Andhra Pradesh chief and made Somu Veerraju, also a contender for the post, the state convener of the election management committee.

In a statement, the party also said that Shah has appointed Ravindra Raina as president of its Jammu and Kashmir unit following the induction of Raina's predecessor Sat Sharma into the People's Democratic Party-BJP government as a minister.

The appointments made in Andhra Pradesh underlined Shah's efforts to do a balancing act as Lakshminarayana was said to be unhappy with the party over reports that he may be ignored for the top post.

He was a minister in several Congress governments in the state, but left it to join the BJP in 2014.

Lakshminarayana comes from the Kapu community, a group the BJP is eyeing to make inroads in the state.

Reports had said that he was set to quit the saffron party recently, but was prevailed on to continue and the appointment is seen as an effort to placate him and a number of other leaders who had left other parties, especially the Congress, to join it.

Veerraju is an old BJP hand and was considered till recently a favourite for the top post.

Following Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu's decision to sever his party's ties with the BJP, the saffron party is keen to broaden its base in the state where it has long been a marginal player.

The assembly polls in the state are scheduled to be held together with the Lok Sabha elections next year. -- PTI

As top leaders of the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party battled it out for the Karnataka assembly polls, some prominent faces were missing from the high-voltage campaigns to the run up to the election.

Polling in the southern state took place yesterday and the results will be declared on Tuesday.

Seventy per cent voter turnout was recorded in the high-stakes election.

Union Minister Sushma Swaraj did not participate in the campaign perhaps due to health reasons, BJP sources said.

On the other hand, the party did not invite actor and MP Hema Malini and Union Minister Manoj Sinha to bat for it in the state, said a BJP functionary.

"We only did not invite Hema Malini and Sinha. Their presence was not very much required here," he said.

From the Congress, the party's social media in-charge and actor  Ramya did not participate in the election campaign.

"We invited her repeatedly, but she did not turn up. We have no idea what prevented her from campaigning actively," a party functionary said.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, his deputy Manish Sisodia and AAP leaders Atishi Marlena and Gul Panag featured in the party's list of star campaigners, but they, too, did not show up.

AAP sources said Kejriwal, Sisodia and Marlena were occupied with the issue pertaining to the removal of the advisors of Delhi ministers by the Centre.

The party had no information why Panag did not take part in the election campaign, they said.

"We tried our best to bring them. We were told that they were held up with the issue relating to the dismissal of Atishi Marlena (adviser to the Delhi education minister)," sources said.

The Centre had last month cancelled the appointments of nine advisors to Delhi Ministers, saying these posts were 'not sanctioned'.

"It is also a fact that if Kejriwal had come, he would have addressed a public meeting," an AAP functionary said.  -- PTI

Strong winds, dust storm and rainfall hit Delhi and NCR on Sunday evening, prompting Indira Gandhi International Airport to put flight movements on hold.

In Fridabad, the sky turned dark due to dust storm, which also interrupted Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's programme in Delhi's IP Extension.

Vistara's Srinagar flight to Delhi has been diverted to Amritsar following bad weather conditions.

Meanwhile, the weather office warned today that thunderstorm and dust storm with winds speeds of up to 70 km per hour are 'very likely' tomorrow in 26 districts of Uttar Pradesh.

It said the districts that could be affected are Bahraich, Shrawasti, Balrampur, Gonda, Siddharth Nagar, Maharajganj, Kushinagar, Gorakhpur, Sant Kabir Nagar, Basti, Faizabad, Sultanpur, Azamgargh and Ambedkar Nagar.

The other districts are Mau, Deoria, Ballia, Ghazipur, Jaunpur, Pratapgargh, Allahabad, Sant Ravidas Nagar, Varanasi, Chandauli, Mirzapur and Sonbhadra, it said.

The meteorological office also forecast rain in isolated parts of east Uttar Pradesh and said the weather is most likely to remain dry in west UP.

On May 9, several parts of the state were hit by a severe storm that left 18 dead and 27 others injured.

Five people died in Etawah district, three each in Mathura, Aligarh and Agra, two in Firozabad and one each in Hathras and Kanpur Dehat.

Thunderstorms and lightning on May 2-3 killed 134 people and injured over 400 in UP, Rajasthan, Telangana, Utttarakhand and Punjab.

UP was the worst affected, accounting for 80 deaths, most of them in Agra district in the western part of the state.  -- ANI, PTI

IMAGE: Visuals from New Delhi's Vijay Chowk area near Parliament. Photograph: ANI

The Aligarh Muslim University Students' Union (AMUSU) leaders began their indefinite relay hunger strike late last night demanding judicial enquiry into the violence on the campus over the portrait of Pakistan's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

The protesters, however, announced that they would not disrupt the holding of annual and entrance examinations that began yesterday.

Today, the protesters allowed the opening of the main AMU gate, Baab-e-Syed, which had been locked for the past 11 days to facilitate the movement of those students who are appearing in the engineering entrance.

Earlier, several AMU students sat on an indefinite dharna after a clash with the police on May 2 when they were demanding action against the right-wing Hindu activists, who had entered the campus and shouted slogans against Jinnah's portrait.

They are asking for a judicial probe into the alleged police inaction and the manner in which the row erupted after Bharatiya Janata Party MP Satish Gautam had objected to the portrait in the students' union office.

Meanwhile, former AMU vice-chancellor Lt Gen (retd) Zameer Uddin Shah alleged today that the recent attack by armed goons at the AMU campus, even while former vice president Hamid Ansari was visiting the campus, was 'actually an attempt to target Ansari by forces inimical to him'.

The incident which took place on May 2, was not concerning Jinnah's portrait on AMU premises, he said in a statement.

Ansari had come to the varsity to receive the AMUSU life membership and deliver a lecture on the topic: 'Failure of India to Establish a Pluralistic Society'.  -- PTI

An employee of the Himachal Pradesh Public Works Department, who was shot at during a demolition drive against illegal constructions in Kasauli, succumbed to his injuries at the PGIMER  Chandigarh, officials said today.

A PGIMER official said Gulab Singh, 46, died late last night.

Gulab Singh was critically injured after allegedly being shot at by Vijay Singh Thakur, the son of a guest house owner during the court-ordered demolition drive on May 1.

Vijay Singh also allegedly shot dead Assistant Town Planner Shail Bala Sharma when she was supervising the sealing process at the Narayani Guest House on the Dharampur-Kasauli road.

Singh's condition had worsened on May 10 and he had to be put on a ventilator at Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in  Chandigarh where he was admitted after the incident.

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur had also met him at the hospital on May 9.

Gulab Singh was a member of Sharma's team and was a resident of a village in Kasauli.

On May 3, a joint team of Himachal Pradesh and Delhi police had arrested the 54-year-old accused from Uttar Pradesh's Mathura district.

After the shooting incident, Solan district magistrate had issued an order directing the affected hotel and guest house owners and any staff working there to deposit their firearms, weapons and ammunition at the nearest police stations immediately.

The apex court had on April 17 ordered the state government to demolish unauthorised structures in several hotels and guest houses in Kasauli and Dharampur areas of Solan and four teams were constituted by the authorities to carry out the work.  -- PTI

IMAGE: The accused Vijay Singh, sitting, after being arrested. Photograph: ANI

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has said that he's 'ready to sacrifice CM's post for a Dalit', says ANI quoting Tv9 Kannada.

An NDTV report said Siddaramaiah was ready to make way for a Dalit in the state's top post if the party high command so desires.

'The comment is seen as the first sign of the party considering the possibility of a split verdict in the elections and anticipating the demands of Janata Dal-Secular's H D Deve Gowda, who has no fondness for Siddaramaiah,' the report said.

In a recent interview with Rediff.com well-known journalist and Outlook magazine's former editor-in-chief Krishna Prasad has said that id the JD-S decides to go with the Congress, they will not accept Siddaramaiah as the chief minister.

"In such a scenario the JD-S will insist that the chief ministership should either be given to H D Kumaraswamy -- depending on how many seats the JD-S wins -- or to some other face from the Congress, maybe some Dalit leader.

"The JD-S is now known to be extremely Dalit friendly, so it may be that this time they back the candidature of a Parameshwara Rao, or may be even D K Shivakumar," he had said.

Naming a few probables, Prasad said, "...there is a feeling among Dalits that they have not been given their due. For example, Karnataka Congress president G Parameshwara Rao; he always wanted to be the deputy chief minister, but he lost the 2013 elections. Or people like Mallikarjun Kharge, who is also a Dalit, would like to be given a chance and they too have their factions."

IMAGE: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah shares a light moment with Karnataka Congress chief G Paramaeshwara during an election campaign in Kolar district. Photograph: Kind courtesy @siddaramaiah/Twitter

A pack of dogs mauled a 12-year-old girl to death in a village in Sitapur, taking the toll in fatal attacks by feral hounds in the district to 13 in the last six months, the police said.

The incident took place in Maheshpur Village under the Khairabad police station.

"A 12-year-old girl identified as Reena died today after being attacked by a pack of dogs," Superintendent of police Anand Kulkarni told PTI.

This was the seventh such death this month, the police said.

Kulkarni said the administration was tackling the menace and the number of dogs in packs was decreasing.

"Earlier they used to attack in pack of six to eight dogs. Now they are reduced to two or four," he said.  -- PTI

Janata Dal-Secular supremo H D Deve Gowda on Sunday said that he was not yet 'prepared' to 'accept or reject' anything and asked people to wait for the results day.

His reaction came after the exit poll projections showed his party emerging as the Kingmaker in Karnataka.

"I am not prepared to accept or reject anything, let's wait for May 15 (counting of votes), we will get to know the reality," he told ANI.

Yesterday, after casting his vote, Deve Gowda had said that his party expects a possibility of forming the government.  -- ANI

A knifeman who killed one person and wounded four others in a suspected terror attack in central Paris was born in Chechnya in 1997, a judicial source said today.

The parents of the attacker, who witnesses said shouted 'Allahu akbar' during the assault on Saturday night before being shot dead by police, have been taken into custody, the source added.  -- Agencies

IMAGE: French policemen secure a street after a man killed a passer-by in a knife attack in the heart of Paris and injured four others before being shot dead by police, according to French authorities in Paris, on Saturday. Photograph: Lucien Libert/Reuters

A Hindu businessman and his son were shot dead during a robbery bid in Pakistan's Balochistan province, a media report said.

The incident occurred yesterday in the Gadani area of Hub district in Balochistan province, The Express Tribune reported.

Jay Pal Das and his son Girish Nath were shot dead killed by unidentified assailants near a cement factory whenthey resisted the robbery bid, police said.

The bodies were handed over to the family after completion of medico-legal formalities. The police lodged a case and opened investigation into the matter.

Meanwhile, Lasbela Senior Superintendent of Police Muhammad Hashim along with Adviser to Balochistan CM Dhanish Kumar met with the Hindu community and offered condolences.

"An investigation team has been assigned the task to nab the culprits and very soon they will be in police custody," Hashim said.

"Strict security measures have been adopted in residential areas of the Hindu community as it is our responsibility to make sure of your safety as well as of all others," he added.

Hindu business community in Balochistan province has faced violence often perpetrated by criminal groups.  -- PTI

The engine of Patna-Kota express train derailed after it hit a fallen tree in Dariyabad town in Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh, on Saturday night.

The accident occurred when the train travelling to Lucknow from Patna via Faizabad, collided with a tree that had fallen on the track due to thunderstorm that struck UP a few days ago.

The passengers who were inside the train escaped unhurt.

Relief teams have been sent to the spot from Lucknow.

Train operations have been affected due to the incident.

Several states in north India have witnessed erratic weather pattern over the fortnight.

Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan have alone witnessed over 120 deaths due to thunderstormand violent winds in the first week of May.   -- ANI

Bharatiya Janata Party's chief ministerial candidate in Karnataka B S Yeddyurppa says a day after voting that his party will win more than 125-130 seats in the state.

"The Congress will not be able to cross 70 seats and the JD-S (Janata Dal-Secular) will not cross 24-25 seats. There is a silent and strong wave in favour of the BJP and public anger against (Chief Minister) Siddaramaiah and the Congress," Yeddyurappa said.

"He (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) is in touch with me and (party president) Amit Shah. Everybody is confident of winning with absolute majority. We are 100 per cent sure of forming the government on May 17," he said.

Indicating a tight race between the BJP and the Congress, most exit polls for the Karnataka assembly elections on Saturday forecast a hung assembly with the JD-S likely to play the kingmaker, but were divided on which of the two national parties will emerge as the largest in the House.  -- ANI, PTI