From the Newsroom: BBMP presents annual Budget

In your evening news brief, clinical trials of Covid-19 vaccine Covovax have begun in India; Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) presents its annual Budget for the financial year 2021-22 with an outlay of Rs 9,287.81 crore and Bangladesh braces for violence a day after protests against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit.

Hi, this is Ahmed Shariff and you are listening to, From The Newsroom — your daily evening news catch-up show from Deccan Herald.

Here is the top news of March 27, 2021:

Serum Institute of India (SII) CEO Adar Poonawalla on Saturday said clinical trials of Covid-19 vaccine Covovax have begun in India and the company hopes to launch it by September this year. In August 2020, American vaccine company Novavax, Inc had announced a licence agreement with SII for the development and commercialisation of NVX-CoV2373, its Covid-19 vaccine candidate, in low and middle-income countries and India.

Focusing on the greater devolution of authority and achieving financial discipline, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) on Saturday presented its annual Budget for the financial year 2021-22 with an outlay of Rs 9,287.81 crore. This is the first Budget since the enactment of new BBMP Act 2020 to govern Bengaluru.

Paving way for active involvement of citizens in the administration process for the first time, BBMP has proposed to devolve about Rs 2,000 crore to the zones for disbursement in lieu of various citizen services and works undertaken at the zonal level. This would be accompanied with adequate budgetary controls.

Management of solid waste being the key area, the BBMP has allocated a whopping Rs 1,622.23 crore, the highest allocation for any services in the Budget. This apart, about Rs 1,000 crore has been set aside for restoration of 291 roads that were dug up for BWSSB’s water and sanitary line works. Similarly, an allocation of Rs 546.89 crore has been made to take up various social welfare activities.

Hundreds of people demonstrated outside a key mosque in the Bangladesh capital Saturday, as the country braces for violence a day after deadly protests by hardline Islamists against a visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The clashes, which began Friday at the main mosque in the capital Dhaka, spread to several key districts in the Muslim majority nation of 168 million, leaving five people dead and scores injured.

Facebook has been restricted in the country, a company spokesman said, after users complained they could not access the site since late Friday afternoon as images and reports of the violence were shared in social media.

Source: DHNS/ PTI/ AFP