Series: IIJNM-Citizen Matters partnership

500 Tibetans from Bengaluru held a candle light vigil at Gandhi Square on February 4th evening to protest the media speculation about Karmapa, and hurting the sentiments of all the Buddhists. Tibetan students in Bangalore light candles to say Karmapa lama is not a Chinese spy "Last week, the police raid found a few million rupees in the form of dollar, Yuan and two other dozens of currencies from the transit residence of H.H. the 17th Karmapa, at Sidharpur in Dharamashala, and the Indian government is suspecting him as a Chinese spy, and even the national media reported Karmapa, a…

Dalai Lama, the Noble peace prize laureate is scheduled to visit St. Joseph college of Arts and Science, Bangalore this coming Sunday. Source: Wikimedia Commons. (Jamling_with_HH_Dalai_Lama.jpg) "H.H. the Dalai Lama has been invited to attend S Nijalingappa memorial function at Chitradurga, 500 km from Bangalore on coming Saturday", said Tashi Phuntsok, the chief representative of Central Tibetan Administration in South India (CTA). Nijalingappa was the first Karnataka chief minister, and the one who initially welcomed the Tibetan refugees into Karnataka state. The address at the college will be followed by a public talk on “Finding Happiness in Troubled Times,” organized…

Residents of MICO Layout have not been able to use the playground for over a decade now because the seized vehicles have been dumped there by the Police. seized vehicles in BTM IInd stage The Mico layout police station was previously located near the Self Financed Housing Scheme (SFHS) colony in BTM Layout 2nd stage. Due to lack of space within the police station compound, they dumped the seizedvehicles in the neighbouring playground. Though the police station has been moved to 16th Main a few months ago, the vehicles continue to languish at the playground. As per rules, these vehicles…

Between Jan 1 and Sept 4 this year, BMTC buses were involved in 81 deaths, 12 major accidents and 318 minor accidents.  Last year, the BMTC Accidents Division recorded 28 deaths, 20 major accidents and 126 minor accidents. File pic. According to the records, Yelahanka recorded the most accidents, 16, from Jan 2010 to Apr 2010. In the previous year, for the same period, it was Subhashnagar with most accidents. Records show 18 accidents. More than 3,000 buses crisscross the city out of 36 bus depots, says Nithin Hegade, a division traffic officer. 31 thousand drivers operate these buses. Hegade…

The Bangalore Metropolitan Transportation Corporation has for years allowed hundreds of drivers to get back behind the wheel after causing bus accidents that killed pedestrians, cyclists—and in some cases their own passengers, an IIJNM investigation has found. Watch the story here.   Records and interviews show the massive agency fires a small percentage of the drivers it concludes were fully “at fault” for the fatal wrecks. Most are put back to work, in some cases with punishments no greater than if they had been involved in fender benders. And in a number of cases, the pattern of leniency backfired: drivers…

Ashraff Unnissa of Alahalli vanished two years ago. So did Shanthamma, who was last seen in and around rural Yediyur. Then there's Geetha HR, who has clean vanished from her place of employment in Kodihalli. Pic courtesy: IIJNM All three are members of an elite yet dubious Karnataka club: Bangalore government school teachers with some of the worst absenteeism records in the state. They are gone, forcing their colleagues to pick up their long-forgotten class load. Never gone But in the twisted logic of the educational bureaucracy, they are not forgotten. Since their bosses in the district offices haven't purged…