After partially opening the State’s economy on Thursday, Karnataka is awaiting for next set of guidelines, which is likely to be revealed after Prime Minister’s interaction with all state chief ministers on April 27.

“Today, as per the Central Government’s guidelines, we have relaxed and allowed partial lifting of few services. As states are hard-pressed to raise resources, we are waiting for some clues or directions from PM’s interaction on resource mobilisation,” S Suresh Kumar, Karnataka Primary and Secondary Education Minister, told reporters.

Karnataka’s Chief Minister, BS Yediyurappa, on Thursday held a detailed four-hour marathon meeting with all department heads. “Today’s meeting mainly took stock of the State’s position during the lock-down period and an exercise to get ‘out-of-the-box’ ideas for revenue mobilisation by cutting down on unnecessary expenditure,” said Suresh Kumar.

He added, “Few ‘out-of-the-box’ ideas have come in. Now we need to collate all of them and implement which are feasible.”

The Minister said, “At the meeting, price crash in agriculture and horticulture crops was discussed extensively and it was found out that due to non availability of transport, goods were perishing. For this, all Deputy Commissioners (DCs) were instructed to facilitate transport of goods to the required markets.”

Due to poor export demand and fall in prices, the government has decided to buy the goods, store them by hiring warehouses and cold storages. Later sell, the plan is to sell them when the prices are right to recover the cost.

Chief Minister has also directed DCs in drought-affected districts and taluks to make arrangements to provide drinking water on priority. Where dams and reservoirs have adequate water, instructions were given provide drinking water on priority. “Chief Minister also instructed DCs that Covid-19 districts should not neglect supply of water, but attend to it on priority basis,” said Suresh Kumar.

Taluk Task Force

DCs were also instructed to form task force at taluk level to solve agricultural and horticulture crop issues – both marketing and preparedness for next sowing season.

For resuming the agriculture activity during pre- and post-monsoon, Chief Minister took stock of the State’s fertiliser needs and held an extensive discussion with Union Minister Sadananda Gowda to place the State’s needs.

18 new cases

Meanwhile, 18 new cases were confirmed in the State with Bengaluru topping the list with 10 new cases, followed by BS Yediyurappa and Mandya with two cases each, and Kalaburgi and Dakshina Kannada one each.

With Thursday’s new cases, the total number of cases in the State is 445, which includes 17 deaths and 145 discharges. Out of the 283 cases, 278 positive cases are in isolation wards in hospitals and five are in ICU.

The State government has issued an order to chemist/druggist to maintain the list of customers with names, address and contact number of those who purchase paracetamol, cold, cough and fever medicines in a bid to check Covid-19 spread.

The State government, following the Centre’s guidelines, has issued Ordinance to amend the Epidemic Diseases Act 1897, ‘Act of Violence’ which includes ‘punishment for a term which shall not be less than three months, but which may be extended to five years and with fine, which shall not be less than ₹50,000, but which may extend to ₹2 lakh for any harassment, harm, injury, hurt, intimidation or danger to the life of Health Care Service” personnel in the State.

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