BHUBANESWAR SATURDAY APRIL 27, 2024 `9.00 PAGES 14 JEYPORE EDITION CBSE STARTS WORK TO HOLD BOARD EXAMS TWICE A YEAR FROM 2025 THERE WILL BE NO SEMESTER SYSTEM 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 of Education has asked the CBSE to work out logistics for conducting board exams twice a year from the 2025-26 academic session MOVE TO HELP STUDENTS PERFORM WELL ■ 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 Over 65% voter turnout in 2nd phase of polls confidence from Supreme Court POLLING COMPLETE IN 14 STATES/UNION TERRITORIES RAHUL’S ELECTORAL FATE SEALED IN WAYANAD P R E E T H A N A I R @ New Delhi Petitions seeking 100% cross-verification of votes rejected; bench issues two directives S U C H I T R A K A LYA N M O H A N T Y An EVM comprises three units — ballot unit, control unit and the VVPAT. All three are THE Supreme Court on Friday embedded with microcontrolrejected all petitions seeking lers, which have a burnt memo100% cross-verification of votes ry from the manufacturer. cast on electronic voting maThe request to verify the michines (EVMs) with a Voter Ver- crocontrollers can be made by ifiable Paper Audit Trail candidates who stand second or (VVPAT), saying suspicions of third in the elections. A written tampering were unfounded. It request has to be made within also turned down pleas to revive seven days after the results are paper ballots. announced. Those A bench of juswho make the retices Sanjiv Khanquest would foot na and Dipankar the verification Dutta delivered two bill. But if an EVM separate but conis found tampered, curring verdicts. the money would “While maintainbe refunded. Besides, the ing a balanced perReturn to ballot bench suggested spective is crucial paper unsound that the ECI examin evaluating sys“We must reject as ine the possibility tems or institutions, blindly dis- foible and unsound the of machine counttrusting any aspect submission to return to ing of the VVPAT the ballot paper paper slips and see of the system can system. The weakness if it could add a bar breed unwarranted of the ballot paper code for each party scepticism,” the system is well known along with the party court said, adding and documented,” the symbol in the slips. democracy is all Justice Dipankar about striving to bench said in its verdict Datta in his sepabuild harmony and rate judgment said there seems trust between all institutions. Justice Khanna in his verdict to be a concerted effort to disissued two directions. One, seal- credit, diminish and weaken Ining and storing the Symbol dia’s progress on every possible Loading Unit after completing frontier and any such attempt the symbol loading process for has to be “nipped in the bud”. at least 45 days. And two, check- He added that EVMs have stood ing the burnt memory in the mi- the test of time and the incrocontrollers of 5% of EVMs creased voting percentage was for tampering per assembly con- sufficient reason to hold that stituency by a team of engineers the voters have reposed faith in the current system. after the results are out. @ New Delhi 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% J&K 71.21% Assam 71.11% Kerala 70.35% Karnataka 68.30% Rajasthan 62.46% Maharasthra 58.57% Madhya Pradesh 55.77% Bihar 55.08% Uttar Pradesh 54.83% (Source: ECI) 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, E X P R E S S N E W S S E R V I C E @ Cuttack THE Orissa High Court has expressed concern over rise in false cases being filed under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act while quashing criminal prosecution against the accused in five separate cases of sexual offences under the Act. In all the cases the accused had sought quashing of the respective criminal cases on the ground that the parties have settled their disputes and they no longer desire to pursue the trial. The order said that except in one case, where the genesis of sexual relationship between the accused and the victim can be said to be forcible, unilateral While the stringent provisions of the POCSO Act have contributed positively to reducing instances of sexual violence against children, they have also led to an increase in vindictive litigation, with false cases being filed Justice SS Mishra act by the accused, in all the four other cases, the sexual act was consensual, voluntary though uncontrolled and impulsive indiscretions out of mutual love and affection. Four of the cases had ended N A M I TA B A J PA I @ Lucknow CHINA President Xi Jinping told visiting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that China is not afraid of competition as the latter raised concerns about Beijing’s support for Russia in the Ukraine war | P11 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 Gandhi family in Uttar 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 candida- in marriage between accused and the victim at different stages of proceedings after FIR was registered and chargesheet was filed. The parties are purportedly leading happily married conjugal lives and had approached jointly praying for q u a s h i n g t h e re s p e c t ive proceedings. “In view of the fact that the victims are not desirous of pursuing the matter further, the possibility of securing a conviction is not only remote but it may adversely affect the mental, emotional, and educational well-being of the victim and the happy conjugal and family life they are leading with perhaps one ture 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 back-to-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 in Lok Sabha this time. Rahul was defeated by BJP’s Smriti Irani in Amethi in 2019. Rae Bareli has been a Congress stronghold since decades. His mother Sonia represented it since 2004. Modi factor in play in ‘mini-India’ Malkajgiri SW ET H AV I M A L A M & M A N DA R A V I N D E R R E D D Y @ Hyderabad THE three-cornered contest in Telangana’s Malkajgiri constituency , which elected the state’s current Chief Minister Revanth Reddy as a Congress MP in 2019, may be a foregone conclusion. The Congress has fielded a recent entrant from BRS, Patnam Suneetha Mahender Reddy, while the BRS candidate is a turncoat from the Congress, Ragidi Laxma Reddy The BJP candidate Eatala . Rajender was a minister in the KCR government and switched over from the BRS in 2021. Who is the front-runner? A 45-year-old businessman from Kukatpally, Mahesh, who identified himself as a member of the Con- 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 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 HC voices concern over false cases under POCSO Act Gandhi buzz in Amethi, Rae Bareli NOT AFRAID OF COMPETITION: XI 8 die of heat stroke gress, did not hesitate for a moment when asked who he would support this time. “It’s Modi at the Centre. I believe in Modi and would vote for the BJP he said. ,” Mahesh is not alone in rooting for the saffron party Several vot. ers from Malkajgiri constituency said they would vote for the BJP . Dhanalakota Shravan Kumar, a traditional artiste from Quthbullapur — one of the seven suburban Assembly se gments making up the Malkajgiri LS seat — reasoned: “If I vote for Congress, my vote would be wasted as the party might not come to power at the Centre. As for the BRS, they have lost power in Telangana.” Most of Shravan’s neighbours shared similar views. Though all seven segments of the Malkajgiri constituency voted for the BRS in the November 2023 Assembly elections, it appears that the saffron party has an edge in the LS polls. Eatala Rajender claims people ILLUSTRATION: MANDAR PARDIKAR are with PM Narendra Modi, whose 1.3-km roadshow in Malkajgiri on March 15 saw a massive response. Rajendar, who quit BRS after an acrimonious fallout with former CM K Chandrasekhar Rao, told this paper recently during Hyderabad Dialogues that the party can win 12 out of the 17 seats in the state, including Malkajgiri. The constituency established in , 2009 following delimitation, has 37.47 lakh voters, with over 90% belonging to urban and suburban areas. With a sizable population of migrant settlers from other states including Tamil Nadu due to the presence of Central government institutions, Malkajgiri is deemed ‘Mini India’. Since the seat came into being in 2009, the Congress has won twice and the TDP once — in 2014, when it was in alliance with the CONTINUED ON: P5 BJP . or more children born out of such union,” the single judge bench of Justice Sibo Sankar Mishra observed in the April 22 order. Justice Mishra said, “In this view of the matter, continuing the proceedings for prosecuting and punishing the accused will have the undesired and self-defeating effect of punishing the victim as well which will go against the avowed objective and purpose of the Act itself.” As per the Act, a child below the age of 18 years is incapable of giving consent for sexual relations. Thus, any sexual relationship with a child below the age of 18 years would lead to an offence under the POCSO Act. CONTINUED ON: P5 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 Jodhpur, respectively . The second phase is crucial for the BJP-led 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. EXPRESS READ Harsh weather to aggravate in Odisha: IMD Bhubaneswar: Even as Odisha continues to be in the grip of a severe heatwave, Angul recorded 44.6 degree Celsius becoming the fourth hottest place in Asia on Friday. The day temperature in the district was above normal by 4.4 degree C. At least 32 places recorded 40 degree C or more with Angul reporting the maxiumum temperature in the state | P2
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