Here are the big stories from Karnataka today

Karnataka Today newsletter: Key political takeaways from the State, a 2024 capsule

As 2024 draws to a close, Decode Karnataka’s year-ender episode does a deep-dive into the major events and developments that defined the State’s political landscape and dominated the headlines for days, weeks and, sometimes, months on end. The State’s political calendar was marked by two elections – Lok Sabha polls in May and Assembly bypolls in November.

The year was also chock-a-block with multiple scams and controversies that led to political slugfest as well as public outrage. This includes the MUDA scam and CM Siddaramaiah’s case, the Maharshi Valmiki ST Development Corporation crisis, Waqf land row, Prajwal Revanna sexual abuse horror, POCSO case against B.S. Yediyurappa as well as the Michael D’Cunha commission report. 

Karnataka was also at the mercy of weather vagaries, resulting in crop loss and agricultural distress. Meanwhile, the maternal deaths in Ballari was a reminder of the poor state of public healthcare in the State.  We discuss each of these incidents and reflect on the kind of political rhetoric and engagement we are likely to see in 2025, with Karnataka bureau’s Resident Editor, Bageshree S.

The rising graph of children in conflict with law in Karnataka has become a matter of serious concern. According to statistics provided by the State Crime Records Bureau (SCRB) to an RTI query posed by Odanadi Seva Samsthe, a Mysuru-based NGO, the number of children below 18 years of age finding themselves on the wrong side of law, booked for petty as well as serious offences, appears to be only increasing over the last four years.

Parashuram M.L., a founder-director of Odanadi Seva Samsthe, which is engaged in the rescue and rehabilitation of sexually-exploited women and children, sought to highlight the menace of drug addiction among children, who are not only joining gangs, but are also themselves forming gangs that prey on other children vulnerable to drug addiction. The data shared by the SCRB reveals that urban areas like Bengaluru City and Mysuru reported a high number of cases involving children in conflict with law.

Bengaluru has emerged as the leading pet travel hub for Akasa Air. On December 18, the airline announced a milestone of flying its 5,000th pet since the launch of its pet-travel service in November 2022 with Bengaluru contributing 31% of all pets flown, followed by Delhi and Mumbai.

According to the airline, the most popular routes for pet travel were Bengaluru-Delhi, Delhi-Bengaluru and Mumbai-Delhi. Of the 5,000 furry travellers, 66% pets were dogs and 34% were cats. Pets-on-Akasa allows customers to travel on domestic flights across 22 cities with their cats and dogs in the cabin or cargo, based on their weight.