Category: National

The apex court upholds UGCs decision to hold final year exams.

The Supreme Court on Friday said the decision taken by some States like Delhi and Maharashtra under the Disaster Management Act to cancel the final-year UGC exam before September 30 due to COVID-19 will prevail.

States can apply to the UGC for an extension of the exam deadline. Their request will be considered by the UGC at the earliest.

Besides Maharashtra and Delhi, other States that have cancelled the UGC exams include Odisha, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana.

A Bench led by Justice Ashok Bhushan held that States’ Disaster Management authorities acted beyond their jurisdiction to promote final-year students without exams.

“States and universities cannot promote students without holding exams,” Justice Bhushan read from the judgment.

The court, however, did not quash the UGC’s July 6 directive to hold exams before September 30. This case only referred to States that had unilaterally cancelled the UGC exams by using their powers under the Disaster Management Act.

The UGC, in the last hearing, had argued that though its July 6 directive to conduct final-year exams by the end of September was not a “diktat”, States could not unilaterally cancel the exams, citing the pandemic.

“If the State governments had an issue, they cannot change the exam schedule on their own. They should meet with the Centre and consult with the UGC about their apprehensions,” Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, for UGC, had submitted.

Mr. Mehta said the guidelines for conducting the exams involve multiple options for students. “They can take the exams online, offline or hybrid (partly online and partly in the physical format),” Mr. Mehta had said.

The Solicitor General had also said if a student was unable to appear for the exams in September, he could opt for a later date.

UGC had questioned the logic of cancelling the final-term exams for fear of COVID-19, but at the same time opening up universities and educational institutions for the next academic session.

The court was hearing a batch of petitions filed by over 30 students, represented by advocate Alakh Alok Srivastava, questioning the validity of the UGC’s directive.

With inputs from The Hindu

(This story has not been edited by Kashmir Today staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

PTI

New Delhi: The water level of the Yamuna in Delhi rose to 204.30 meters on Friday morning, precariously close to the warning mark of 204.50 meters, officials said.

“The water level was recorded at 204.30 meters at the Old Railway Bridge at 9 am. It was 203.77 metres at 10 am on Thursday,” an official of the irrigation and flood control department said.

The water level rose because more water was released from the Hathnikund barrage on Tuesday. The flow rate was 36,557 cusec at 5 pm on Tuesday, the highest in the last three days, he said.

The water discharged from the barrage which provides drinking water to Delhi normally takes two-three days to reach the capital.

Water was being released into the Yamuna at the rate of 11,055 cusec at 8 am on Friday.

“The flow rate has remained between 10,000 cusec to 25,000 cusec over the last two days, which is not very high. Therefore, the water level of the river is expected to recede,” the official said.

One cusec is equivalent to 28.32 litre per second.

The river had swelled to 204.38 meters on Monday, which was just a metre below the danger mark of 205.33 meters.

Normally, the flow rate at the Hathnikund barrage is 352 cusec, but the discharge is increased after heavy rainfall in catchment areas.

Last year, the flow rate had peaked to 8.28 lakh cusec on August 18-19, and the water level of the Yamuna had hit the 206.60 meter-mark, breaching the danger mark of 205.33 meters.

The Delhi government had to launch evacuation and relief operations after the overflowing river submerged many low-lying areas.

In 1978, the river had swelled to the all-time record water level of 207.49 meters.

In 2013, it had risen to 207.32 metres.

Delhi’s Water Minister Satyendar Jain had Monday said the government was ready to deal with any flood-like situation.

PTI

New Delhi: A record single-day spike of 77,266 COVID-19 cases pushed India’s virus tally to 33,87,500, while the recoveries surged to 25,83,948 on Friday, according to the Union Health Ministry data.

The death toll climbed to 61,529 with 1,057 people succumbing to the diseases in a span of 24 hours, the data updated at 8 am showed.

The recovery rate was recorded at 76.28 per cent, while the COVID-19 case fatality rate has further declined to 1.82 per cent.

There are 7,42,023 active cases of coronavirus infection in the country which comprises 21.90 per cent of the total caseload, the data stated.

India’s COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7 and went past 30 lakh on August 23.

According to the ICMR, a cumulative total of 3,94,77,848 samples have been tested up to August 27 with 9,01,338 samples being tested on Thursday.

PTI

New Delhi: COVID-19 can affect almost all organs besides the lungs and the initial symptoms may be totally unrelated to chest complaints, according to experts at AIIMS here.

They stressed that classification of cases into mild, moderate and severe categories based just on respiratory symptoms should be relooked to include other organ involvement.

Experts from the institute, including its director Dr Randeep Guleria, Dr MV Padma Srivastava, head of department of Neurology, Dr Ambuj Roy, Professor of Cardiology and Dr Neeraj Nischal, Associate Professor in the department of Medicine during their weekly ‘National Clinical Grand Rounds’ organised in collaboration with NITI Aayog discussed various possible extra-pulmonary complications of COVID-19.

Dr Guleria said eight months into COVID-19, a lot has been learnt and accordingly strategies are being changed from time to time.

From what we thought of as a viral pneumonia has a lot of other manifestations which are beyond the lungs, he said.

“As we have known more and more about COVID-19, we have realised it causes many extra pulmonary manifestations. This is basically of the fact that this virus enters into cell through ACE2 receptors which although are present abundantly in upper airways and lungs, they are also present in many organs and thus other organs are also affected.

“We have seen many patients who presented with features which are not been predominantly pulmonary but extra pulmonary manifestations,” Dr Guleria said.

He said though pulmonary manifestations continue to dominate as far as majority of COVID-19 cases are concerned, there is a significant number of patients who would present with manifestations which may be along with pulmonary manifestations or may be without pulmonary manifestations.

“We as clinicians need to have a high index of suspicion during this pandemic — when to suspect, treat and isolate these patients so that we can provide them good quality care,” he stressed.

The experts in the programme presented a number of cases in which the patients were labelled as asymptomatic or mild COVID but had serious life-threatening extra-pulmonary manifestations like stroke and heart blocks.

“What started off as a viral pneumonia is now a multi-systemic disease. However, the jury is out whether SARS-COV2 is the culprit in these extra pulmonary manifestations or just an innocent bystander which happens to be at the wrong place at a wrong time,” Dr Nischal said.

“So the classification of COVID-19 into mild, moderate and severe cases based only on respiratory symptoms should be relooked into to incorporate other organ involvement,” he said.

Dr Nischal further underlined that management of such patients with other organ involvement should be as per existing guidelines of that particular complication.

The doctor from the Medicine Department also highlighted the case of a 35-year old man who had headache and was vomiting but was found to have life threatening cortical vein thrombosis.

When tested, he was found positive for COVID-19. He was asymptomatic for COVID-19 as per existing severity guidelines, Dr Nischal said.

“There is a big spectrum of neurological manifestations which have been linked to COVID-19. In some patients, brain is involved and it may lead to clotting, resulting in stroke or can cause infection and lead to encephalitis or other complications which have nothing to do with lungs,” Dr Padma said.

Dr Ambuj’s team presented the case of a patient who came with a very low pulse rate, detected COVID-19 positive and required initial support with some medicines to improve heart rate.

“Normally pacemaker is put in such patients to improve their heart rate but based on experiences documented in literature, we realised some of these could be due to COVID-19, so a pacemaker was not put and her heart rate gradually improved with supportive treatment.

“Sometimes, the electrical pulse system of the heart which gives rise to heart beat can be affected in COVID-19 and it is self-limiting and improves with time. So these patients who would otherwise normally require pacemaker may not ever need it.

“However, more evidence is needed to be definitive about this as it is a new disease and limited information and experience regarding it is available as of now,” Dr Roy said.

PTI

New Delhi: India’s novel coronavirus tally rose to 32.34 lakh on Wednesday with 67,151 more people testing positive for the infection, while the recoveries have surged to 24,67,758, the Health Ministry said.

The death toll from the pathogen climbed to 59,449 with 1,059 more fatalities. The recovery rate rose to 76.30 per cent with 63,173 more people having recuperated, while the case fatality rate has declined to 1.84 per cent, the ministry said.

There are 7,07,267 active cases of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), comprising 21.87 per cent of the total 32,34,474 infections, the ministry data stated.

According to the ICMR, 3,76,51,512 tests have been conducted so far, including 8,23,992 samples on Tuesday.

Of the 1,059 more deaths, 329 are from Maharashtra, 148 from Karnataka, 107 from Tamil Nadu, 92 from Andhra Pradesh and 72 from Uttar Pradesh. Fifty-eight people succumbed to the infection in West Bengal, 49 in Punjab, 20 in Gujarat, 19 in Madhya Pradesh, and 17 each in Delhi and Jharkhand.

There were 15 more fatalities in Chhattisgarh, 14 in Jammu and Kashmir and 13 in Rajasthan, while 10 people each died due to the contagion in Telangana, Kerala and Haryana.

Goa and Odisha registered nine deaths each, followed by eight each in Assam and Puducherry, six in Uttarakhand, and five each from Tripura and Bihar. There were three more deaths in Chandigarh, two each in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Manipur, and one each in Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh.

Of the total 59,449 deaths, Maharashtra has reported the maximum of 22,794 followed by 6,721 in Tamil Nadu, 4,958 in Karnataka, 4,330 in Delhi, 3,460 in Andhra Pradesh and 3,059 in Uttar Pradesh.

Gujarat registered 2,928 fatalities, followed by 2,909 in West Bengal, 1,265 in Madhya Pradesh. A total of 1,178 people have died in Punjab, 980 in Rajasthan, 780 in Telangana, 638 in Jammu and Kashmir and 623 in Haryana.

There were 519 coronavirus deaths in Bihar, 428 in Odisha, 347 in Jharkhand, 260 in Assam and 244 in Kerala. Chhattisgarh reported 221 fatalities, followed by 213 in Uttarakhand, 172 in Puducherry, 157 in Goa and 83 in Tripura.

Forty people died from the pathogen in Chandigarh, 37 in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 30 in Himachal Pradesh, 24 each in Ladakh and Manipur. Nagaland registered nine deaths, followed by eight in Meghalaya, five in Arunachal Pradesh, three in Sikkim and two in Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.

The ministry stressed that more than 70 per cent of the deaths occurred due to comorbidities.

“Our figures are being reconciled with the Indian Council of Medical Research,” the ministry said, adding that statewise distribution of figures was subject to further verification and reconciliation.

PTI

New Delhi: Priceless pieces of Urdu poetry and books on art, literature and history confined to dark corners of private homes and public libraries have found a new home all 1,00,000 of them digitised and ready to access for students, researchers and bibliophiles.

The world’s largest repository of Urdu books is the brainchild of Sanjiv Saraf, the man behind India’s first and largest Urdu festival Jashn-e-Rekhta, who took it upon himself to collect and digitise books that were otherwise destined to be lost forever in the ruins of time.

Childhood memories of listening to ghazals on vinyl records kindled love for the language. And then, as he grew up, the strong urge to read the masters of Urdu poetry in the original script inspired Saraf to start learning the rasm ul-khat’ (Urdu script).

But to his dismay there were virtually no resources available on the internet. Saraf told PTI.

That was eight years ago.

The mission that began in 2012 with the love for Urdu poetry culminated in July with the Rekhta Foundation digitising a colossal 1,00,000 books.

Saraf, who is based in Delhi and comes from a business family of Rajasthani origin, did all that was expected of an heir-apparent he did his schooling from the Scindia School in Gwalior, graduated from IIT Kharagpur in 1980, joined the family business in 1984, and later established Polyplex Corporation, a multinational business in polyester films.

But the old love of listening to ghazals, courtesy his father’s fondness for Urdu shayari’, tugged at him.

Later, when business got established and was growing well, I stepped back from business to focus on learning Urdu. In the process, I realised there wasn’t enough content or resources available on the Internet and what was available was incomplete, non credible and mostly in Urdu script. The younger generation, attracted to the eloquence, beauty and versatility of the language had no easy recourse, Saraf said in an email interview.

The initiative began small and soon mushroomed into a massive project that covered not just rare books but also all other forms, including recent books, manuscripts and periodicals that were digitised with the aim of preserving them for posterity.

Teams of enthusiastic volunteers were sent to public and private libraries all over the country to look for books and found entire Urdu collections lying forgotten and often neglected.

…as we progressed and as students, scholars and others started benefitting through e-books, whether for study, research or simple reading, we started receiving a welcoming response from the libraries/individuals that we contacted, and they started coming forward to share their holdings, said the businessman-turned-Urdu connoisseur.

Terming the initiative extraordinary , Urdu scholar C M Naim said he used the website (www.rekhta.com) almost on a daily basis for one reason or another.

I regularly check to see what is new. I’m sure the same is done by many enthusiasts of Urdu, in academia or outside, across the world. I have recently been working on crime fiction in Urdu, and was happy to see that the Rekhta archive has managed to find a fair number of these otherwise hard to find books, Naim said.

He added that while Rekhta wasn’t the first to take up this initiative, it was the one to do it with respect to old books and journals.

Naim, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, remembered Carnegie Mellon’s 2007 Million Book project which also covered Hyderabad and said, Regretfully, it was done in a criminal fashion.

…they freely unbound books in order to scan the pages and then paid little attention to their being rebound properly. The Rekhta project was respectful of the material, and used only the most appropriate ways to achieve their goal. It made their progress slow but they also did not leave behind hundreds of unbound Urdu books lying on the floor as I saw in Hyderabad, Naim recalled.

A dedicated team of 53 members works on the ebooks project — 30 high-end machines in 16 libraries across the country scan and add 2,500 books a month to the digital collection.

This unique e-library comprises books on science, arts, religion, history in its different genres, literary journals issued by various institutions and organisations, apart from contemporary books, and classical books that can be searched and sorted by genre, period and author.

The collection, running into nearly 19 million pages, includes the lost treasures of Munshi Naval Kishore Press, the complete works of classical poets Mir Taqi Mir and Mirza Ghalib, all 46 volumes of Persian epic Daastan-e-Amir Hamza , the works of 11th century Persian philosopher Imam Mohammad Ghazali, and 13th century Sufi poet Amir Khusrau as well as the works of obscure poets and scholars.

If one wants to read the entire 19 million-page Rekhta stack – without blinking and at a statistical 65 pages an hour rate – it would take 33 years and 36 days! Saraf said.

Over 25,000 people visit the e-book section at the Rekhta Foundation website every day, he said.

It would be ideal if there could be a public-private coordinated effort and cooperation for digitisation of our literary heritage. However, this is easier said than done. There are a large number of agencies involved and getting everyone on the same page is a herculean effort, he said.

In 2015, the Rekhta Foundation started Jashn-e-Rekhta, a festival of the letters and the arts to popularise Urdu. In 2017, it launched Aamozish, an e-learning platform, where over 60,000 people have learnt the language till date.

The Rekhta Foundation also launched Sufinama, an online collection of Sufi poetry, in 2019 and Hindwi, a website dedicated to Hindi literature, in July this year.

Primarily funded through Polyplex Corporation Ltd’s CSR commitments and Saraf’s personal funds, Rekhta Foundation also receives donations from corporations and friends of Rekhta.

However, to be sustainable in the coming years, Rekhta Foundation has been working on models which will make itself self-sustaining through content syndication services, book sales through its marketplace and host of other self-sustaining models without impacting users and their engagement with Rekhta platforms, Saraf added.

PTI

New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday attacked the government over the state of the economy and said it needs to give money to the poor to restart the economy through consumption

Gandhi said “distractions” through media won’t help the poor or make the “economic disaster disappear”

His attack on the government came after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said on Tuesday that demand in the economy will take quite some time to mend and that an assessment of aggregate demand during the year so far suggests that the shock to consumption is severe

“RBI has now confirmed what I have been warning for months. Govt needs to: spend more, not lend more,” Gandhi said

“Give money to the poor, not tax cuts to industrialists. Restart economy by consumption,” the former Congress chief tweeted

In its latest annual report, the RBI said “deep-seats and wide-ranging” reforms are needed to regain losses and return to the path of sustainable economic growth.

PTI

Guwahati: The Assam government on Tuesday said it has extended the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA) in the state for six more months with effect from August 28.

The state has been declared a “disturbed area” on account of recent insurgent attacks on security forces in the Northeast and recovery of illegal arms and ammunition from different areas of Assam, an official statement said.

Many civil society groups and activists have been demanding the withdrawal of the draconian law from the state.

The AFSPA, which empowers security forces to conduct operations, arrest anyone anywhere without prior notice, has been continuing in Assam since November 1990. It is renewed every six months.

PTI

New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday attacked the government over alleged rise in unemployment.

In a tweet, he also tagged a media report which claimed that about seven lakh people registered for employment in a week on a government portal, but only 691 got jobs.

Attacking the government, Gandhi said in his tweet in Hindi, “1 job, 1,000 unemployed. What has been done to the country.”

The former Congress president has been critical of the Modi government in the handling of the economy over the past few years.

ANI

• The talks between the two sides have been going on for the last three months but have failed to yield any results, so far
• India and China are engaged in a standoff since April-May over the transgressions by the Chinese Army in multiple areas

New Delhi: Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat on Monday stated that India has “military options” to deal with the Chinese on the issue of transgressions if talks between both the countries at the military and diplomatic level don’t yield any results.

“The military option to deal with transgressions by the Chinese Army in Ladakh are on but it will be exercised only if talks at the military and the diplomatic level fail,” Rawat said here on the ongoing dispute between India and China in Eastern Ladakh.

India and China are engaged in a standoff since April-May over the transgressions by the Chinese Army in multiple areas including Finger area, Galwan valley, Hot springs and Kongrung nala.

The talks between the two sides have been going on for the last three months including five Lieutenant General-level talks but have failed to yield any results, so far.

The CDS, however, refused to discuss in detail the military options that India could exercise to push back the transgressions by the Chinese Army in Ladakh sector.

The Chinese Army has refused to withdraw or disengage completely from the Finger area and seems to be buying time to delay its disengagement from there.

While efforts are underway to resolve the ongoing border dispute, India has rejected the Chinese suggestion to disengage equidistantly from the Finger area in Eastern Ladakh.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Kashmir Today staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)