Here are the big stories from Karnataka today

Karnataka Today newsletter: Two children killed, 55 injured as school van and bus collide in road accident in Raichur district

As many as two schoolchildren died and another 55 were injured after a school van belonging to a private school and a bus owned by Kalyana Karnataka Road Transport Corporation (KKRTC) collided head-on near Kapagal village in Manvi taluk of Raichur district on September 5, 2024. CM Siddaramaiah has announced solatium for the families of the deceased children.

The school van was carrying 40 children. While two died on their way to the hospital, 38 children suffered injuries. The two victims have been identified as Samarth (7), a student of class 1, and Srikanth (12), a student of class 7 of Kurdi village. The legs of three other children were amputated in the incident. All injured are receiving treatment at various hospitals.

In just about seven months after the launch of the online marriage registration facility, nearly 48% of the registrations under The Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, in Karnataka have been done online. While online registration in a number of districts outstripped the offline registration at sub-registrar’s offices, in some districts offline registration continues to remain popular.

The online facility to provide ease to those registering marriages based on Aadhaar authentication was introduced in February. Since then, as many as 33,059 marriages out of the total 69,456 marriages registered under the Hindu Marriage Act in Karnataka were done online, according to data from the office of the Inspector-General of Registration and Commissioner of Stamps.

If there is one tussle that is constant in Bengaluru, it is between auto rickshaw drivers and their passengers. The Bengaluru Traffic Police (BTP) reportedly get 20-25 daily calls on their hotline number with complaints about being asked for extra money by auto drivers. 

In 2024, until 31 July, BTP has booked 2,586 complaints against auto drivers for refusing to go on hire and 2,582 complaints for demanding excess fare. This is higher than the number of cases booked against these violations in the 12 months in 2022 and 2023. BTP officials attribute the increase in the number of cases in 2024 to regular drives against auto rickshaw drivers. 

Following three incidents of trees falling on auto rickshaws during this year’s monsoon and two auto drivers losing their lives due to that, the auto rickshaw unions in Bengaluru are planning to bring pressure on the Karnataka government as well as Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to regularly monitor the health of trees.