MANGALURU l saturday l april 27, 2024 l `9.00 l PAGES 14 l CITY EDITION CBSE starts work to hold Board exams twice a year from 2025 The Ministry of Education has asked the CBSE to work out logistics for conducting board exams twice a year from the 2025-26 academic session There will be No semester system Move to help students perform well However, no semester system will be introduced, officials said. The education ministry and the CBSE will hold consultations with school principals next month for conducting board exams twice a year. CBSE will have to restructure its academic calendar to accommodate another set of board exams without impacting the undergraduate admission schedule ■ The ministry’s initial plan was to introduce biannual board exams from the 2024-25 academic session; it has now been pushed back by a year ■ Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had said earlier that appearing for board exams twice a year won’t be mandatory for students ■ Students can appear for subjects they are ready and retain the best score NCF The reform is based on the suggestions in the National Curriculum framework CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOgGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI EVMs get vote of confidence from Supreme Court Petitions seeking 100% cross-verification of votes rejected; bench issues two directives stituency by a team of engineers @ New Delhi after the results are out. An EVM comprises three The Supreme Court on Friday units — ballot unit, control unit rejected all petitions seeking and the VVPAT. All three are 100% cross-verification of votes embedded with microcontrolcast on electronic voting ma- lers, which have a burnt memochines (EVMs) with a Voter Ver- ry from the manufacturer. ifiable Paper Audit Trail The request to verify the mi(VVPAT), saying suspicions of crocontrollers can be made by tampering were unfounded. It candidates who stand second or also turned down third in the elecpleas to revive pations. A written reper ballots. quest has to be A bench of jusmade within seven tices Sanjiv Khandays after the rena and Dipankar sults are anDutta delivered two nounced. Those separate but conwho make the recurring verdicts. quest would foot Return to ballot “While maintainthe verification paper unsound ing a balanced perbill. But if an EVM spective is crucial is found tampered, “We must reject as in evaluating sys- foible and unsound the the money would tems or institu- submission to return to be refunded. tions, blindly disBesides, the the ballot paper trusting any aspect bench suggested system. The weakness of the system can that the ECI examof the ballot paper breed unwarranted ine the possibility system is well known scepticism,” the of machine countand documented,” the court said, adding bench said in its verdict ing of the VVPAT democracy is all paper slips and see about striving to if it could add a bar build harmony and trust be- code for each party along with tween all institutions. the party symbol in the slips. Justice Khanna in his verdict Justice Dipankar Datta in his issued two directions. One, seal- separate judgment said there ing and storing the Symbol seems to be a concerted effort to Loading Unit after completing discredit, diminish and weaken the symbol loading process for India’s progress on every possiat least 45 days. And two, check- ble frontier and any such ating the burnt memory in the mi- tempt has to be “nipped in the crocontrollers of 5% of EVMs bud”. He added that EVMs have for tampering per assembly con- stood the test of time. S u c h i t r a K a lya n M o h a n t y Gandhi buzz in Amethi, Rae Bareli N a m i ta B a j pa i @ Lucknow From left: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his son Yathindra cast their vote at Siddaramanahundi in Mysuru on Friday. Leader of Opposition in Assembly R Ashoka and his wife after exercising their franchise in Bengaluru. An elderly woman waits for her turn at a booth in Bantwal taluk of Dakshina Kannada constituency | Express Polling peaceful, 14 constituencies in K’taka record 69.23% turnout Woman suffers cardiac arrest, doc saves her B o s k y K h a nn a @ Bengaluru E x p r e s s N e w s Se r v i c e @ Bengaluru A woman in her fifties, who suffered a cardiac arrest in a polling booth in the city on Friday was saved by a doctor , who was waiting in a queue there to exercise his franchise. The incident occurred at the gover nment school in Jumbo Savari Dinne, JP Nagar, 8th Phase. The woman c o l l ap s e d i n f ro n t o f D r Ganesh Srinivasa Prasad in the booth (No 210) around 9am. Dr Prasad immediately resorted to Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and saved her life. Dr Prasad, 36, hails from Anantapur in Andhra Pradesh. He works as a nephrologist at Narayana Health Centre in Bommasandra. The woman collapsed while taking water from a can at the booth. “I checked her pulse but did not feel it. She was gasping for breath and I immediately resorted to CPR till her condition improved,” Dr Prasad told TNIE. Fourteen constituencies in south and coastal Karnataka went to polls on Friday in Phase-2 of 2024 Lok Sabha elections, recording a polling percentage of 69.23 at 9.45 pm — m u ch b e t t e r t h a n 6 8 . 8 0 recorded in 28 constituencies in 2019. Phase-3 polling for the rest of the 14 constituencies will be held on May 7. In 2019, the same 14 constituencies, which went to polls on Friday, recorded an average poll percentage of 68.96. It was 67.73 in 2014. Karnataka polling percentage, so far, is better than the national average of 67.40. Chief Electoral Officer of Karnataka Manoj Kumar Meena told TNIE that the rise in voter turnout is because of the increased awareness among people. The highest voting percentage of 81.48 was recorded in Mandya, followed by Kolar 78.07. The lowest percentage of 52.81 was recorded in Ban- Villagers vandalise booth near MM Hills, burn EVMs Furniture at a poll booth damaged by villagers in Indiganatha village in Hanur taluk of Chamarajanagar district on Friday | Express express read Two terrorists killed in J&K Small arms, foreign-made pistols seized in Sandeshkhali Srinagar: Two terrorists were killed while as many Army personnel got injured on Friday as a gunbattle between the militants and security forces continued for the second day in Jammu and Kashmir’s Baramulla district. The encounter began on Thursday at Check Mohalla Nowpora in the Sopore area of north Kashmir. After the night’s lull, a fresh exchange of firing took place on Friday morning. New Delhi: New Delhi: A day after registering an FIR against five accused in a case linked to the land grab and assault on women, the CBI on Friday conducted raids at multiple locations in Sandeshkhali and recovered foreign-made weapons and a large cache of ammunition. Friday’s raids were conducted as part of probe into the attack on an Enforcement Directorate team by a mob. common cause P5 Congress leader Rahul Gandhi greets Chief Minister Siddaramaiah during an election rally in Vijayapura district on Friday | PTI Indian-origin student arrested in US over pro-Palestine protests New York: An Indian-origin female student studying at the prestigious Princeton University is among two students who have been arrested and barred from the campus for staging pro-Palestine protests on the campus. Achinthya Sivalingan, born in Coimbatore and raised in Columbus, now faces disciplinary action, the varsity said. Over 65% voter turnout in 2nd phase of polls PR E E THA N AIR @ New Delhi in a relatively improved showing, the second phase of the Lok Sabha elections recorded over 65% voter turnout covering 88 seats across 13 states. According to election officials, the highest voting percentage was recorded in Tripura at 78.53% while the lowest polling was in Uttar Pradesh at 54.85%. In the second phase, Kerala, Karnataka and Rajasthan accounted for more than half seats. While elections to 14 seats were held in Karnataka, 13 seats in the desert state of Rajasthan, 8 seats each in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, 6 seats in Madhya Pradesh, 5 seats each in Assam and Bihar, 3 seats each in Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, and 1 seat each in Manipur, Tripura and Jammu and Kashmir. All eyes are on the high stakes battle in Kerala, where the BJP has been aggressively working to open its account. The contests in Wayanad, where former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi is contesting, and Thiruvananthapuram where Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar is pitted against sitting MP Shashi Tharoor, are keenly watched. Other top guns in the fray included actor-turned-politician Arun Govil in Meerut, Karnataka deputy CM D K Shivakumar’s brother D K Suresh in Bangalore Rural, and former Karnataka chief minister H D Kumaraswamy (JDS) in Mandya. Meanwhile BJP’s Hema Malini, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat are seeking a hat-trick of wins from UP’s Mathura, Rajasthan’s Kota and J o d h p u r, respectively . The second phase is crucial for the BJP-led Young voters after casting their votes at Purameri, Kozhikode | E Gokul Brisk polling in Tripura, low turnout in U.P. State Tripura Manipur Chhattisgarh West Bengal Voting 79.46% 77.32% 73.05% 71.84% galore Central, while the largest constituency in Karnataka, Bangalore North, recorded 54.42. The four constituencies in Bengaluru — Bangalore Rural, Bangalore North, Bangalore South and Bangalore Central — recorded an average polling percentage of 56.91 — marginally poorer than the poll percentage of 56.94 recorded in 2019. But the figure is likely to marginally improve as the final percentage is taken into account. P4 J&K 71.21% Assam 71.11% Kerala 70.35% Karnataka 68.30% Rajasthan 62.46% NDA as it is seeking a third time under Narendra Modi’s leadership. The party’s performance in Rajasthan, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Bihar will greatly influence its plan to increase its tally from the 303 seats in 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Maharasthra 58.57% Madhya Pradesh 55.77% Bihar 55.08% Uttar Pradesh 54.83% (Source: ECI) 8 die of heat stroke In Kerala, eight persons died of possible heat stroke or other heat-related issues, amidst polling, in various constituencies, including Palakkad, Alappuzha and Malappuram. There is no official confirmation on the cause of these deaths Mysuru: Tension prevailed at Indiganatha village in Male Mahadeshwara Wildlife Sanctuary on Friday when people set fire to electronic voting machines (EVMs) in a polling booth there and attacked election officials for “forcing” them to exercise their franchise. The agitators had decided to boycott polling in protest against lack of basic amenities | P4 With the second phase of the general elections done and dusted — where Rahul Gandhi was a candidate in Wayanad — all eyes are on Saturday’s Congress Election Committee meeting, which is expected to take its call on Rae Bareli and Amethi, the two bastions of G a n d h i f a m i ly i n U t t a r Pradesh. The meeting comes amid intense speculation on the party fielding Rahul from Amethi and party leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra from Rae Bareli. Highly-placed sources said both Priyanka and Rahul are likely to visit Ayodhya for a darshan of Ram Lalla before heading to Amethi and Rae Bareli. The buzz around Rahul’s candidature from Amethi picked up momentum from the fact that besides the renovation of the Congress office there, the guest house on the premises was also white washed. The process of filing nomination papers for both Amethi and Rae Bareli began on Friday and will continue till May 3. Sources claim that after the formal announcement of his candidature, Rahul may file his nomination papers from Amethi on May 1 or 2. However, there is no official word on it. A senior Congress leader hinted at the possibility of backto-back filing of nomination papers by both Rahul and Priyanka during the narrow window between May 1 and May 3. However, the possibility of Robert Vadra, Priyanka’s husband, getting the Amethi ticket cannot be ruled out. Vadra had earlier gone vocal, claiming that the people of Amethi wanted him to represent them.
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