HYDERABAD  WEDNESDAY  FEBRUARY 21, 2024  `9.00  PAGES 18  LATE CITY EDITION NEURALINK PATIENT CAN CONTROL MOUSE THROUGH THOUGHT: MUSK Neuralink’s first human patient with a brain chip is able to control a computer mouse using thoughts, founder Elon Musk said on Tuesday PATIENT RECOVERS WITH NO ILL EFFECTS AIM TO RESTORE CAPABILITIES IN PATIENTS “Progress is good, and the patient seems to have made a full recovery, with no ill effects that we are aware of,” Musk said in a Space event on X. “Patient is able to move a mouse around the screen by just thinking,” he added. Last month, Neuralink’s implant was given to the first human patient and initial results showed promising neuron spike detection ■ ■ Neuralink’s implant is designed to help humans use their neural signals to control external technologies and its longterm vision is to restore lost capabilities such as vision, motor function, and speech Neuralink uses a robot to surgically place a brain-computer interface implant in a region of the brain that controls the intention to move $5 bn WAS THE VALUATION OF NEURALINK IN JUNE 2023 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 PROTEST TO RESUME TODAY; COURT SAYS TRACTOR TROLLEYS CAN’T RUN ON HIGHWAYS AS PER MV ACT Farmer build-up begins; HC says ‘no’ to tractors H A R P R E E T B A J W A @ Chandigarh BATTLE lines were drawn along the Punjab-Haryana border with farmers bringing in heavy machinery including hy, draulic cranes and earth movers, to break the police barricades as they resume their Dilli Chalo march on Wednesday, a day after they rejected a formula floated by the Centre. In a new twist later in the day, the Punjab and Haryana High Court said tractor trolleys cannot run on highways as per the Motor Vehicles Act. It advised farmers to use buses or public transport to go to Delhi instead. A bench of Acting Chief Justice G S Sandhawalia and Justice Lapita Banerji also orally directed the Punjab government to ensure that farmers do not gather in large numbers. Briefing the media on the talks with the Centre, farmer leaders said they had suggested a special session of Parliament to pass a legislation on legal guarantees to the minimum support price (MSP) mechanism for crops. Sarwan Singh Pandher, general secretary of the Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee, said: “We have three major demands: legal guarantee on MSP for all crops; the implementation of the C2+50% formula as recommended by the Swaminathan Commission; and loan waiver.’’ He said as per government reports, farmers have a total debt of `18.5 lakh crore. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi could make a pre-poll announcement that all farm loans would be waived; a mechanism to do so could be worked out later,” he suggested. At the Shambhu inter-state border, sources said the number of agitators is swelling. There is heavy police deployment in and around Rajpura to manage traffic movement as hundreds of tractor trolleys are rolling towards Shambhu. EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE @ Hyderabad Farmers with an excavator modified to shield the agitators from police rubber bullets, at the Punjab-Haryana Shambhu border in Patiala district on Tuesday. Their Dilli Chalo agitation will resume on Wednesday | PTI 1 FOOD FOR THOUGHT Proposal: Farmers demand guaranteed MSP for all 23 crops; implementation of C2+50% formula as recommended by the Swaminathan panel; and loan waiver estimated at `18.5 lakh cr 3 2 Counter-proposal: Govt offers MSP guarantee on 5 crops — tur, urad, masoor, cotton and maize — for five years. Farmers reject it Cost of guaranteed MSP to all crops: Govt will get in only when mandi price is below MSP. So, real cost to govt will be MSP minus mandi price, which is about `21,000 crore for marketing year 2023, as per CRISIL Market Intelligence & Analytics 4 Expert take: Govt proposal is a diversionary tactic to buy time, says Devinder Sharma. If govt can waive off `15,000 lakh crore of corporate loans, why can’t it do so for farmers, he asks Panel on Dharani ready with its report, and recommendations E X P R E S S N E W S S E R V I C E @ Hyderabad PM Narendra Modi during the foundation stone laying of development projects in Jammu. J&K L-G Manoj Sinha and Union minister Jitendra Singh are also seen | PTI Article 370 stymied J&K’s development, says Modi terests and not about the interests of people. The youth are THE BJP-led government at the bigger losers in dynastic the Centre removed Article 370 politics,” PM Modi said while because it was the biggest hur- addressing a public rally at dle to the development Maulana Azad Stadiof Jammu and Kashum in Jammu. PM starts mir, Prime Minister Modi said after ArIIT-H works Narendra Modi said ticle 370 was read on Tuesday as he down, there is widePrime Minister launched multiple despread enthusiasm Narendra Modi velopment projects about the developinaugurated the worth over `32,000 ment of Jammu and development crore related to health, Kashmir. Also, people project worth education, rail, road, `1,089 crore of the from all over the world aviation, petroleum, Indian Institute of want to visit the reand civic infrastrucgion to enjoy its sceTechnology ture sectors. nic beauty he added. , Hyderabad The PM also opened campus via video “The Gulf counthe longest transportries are willing to inconference on tation tunnel of the vest in J&K. The enTuesday | P2 country on the Udtire world is enchanted hampur-Srinagar-Baramulla by its natural beauty and eveRail Link and flagged off the rybody wants to come to Kashfirst electric train in Kashmir. mir,” he said, adding that his “J&K has suffered a lot due government will convert the to dynastic politics for decades. Valley into a tourist destinaThey are only concerned about t i o n t h a t c o u l d r i v a l their families and their own in- Switzerland. F AYA Z W A N I @ Srinagar PRESS IMPACT RELIEFOFFOR JYOTI ASSURED PIECE LAND FOR NEW HOUSE Hours after this daily reported hockey player Jyoti Chhetri’s ordeal, local government officials visited her home, which is likely to be demolished, in Rourkela & offered her a piece of land to get a new house constructed | P13 HCA CHIEF OFFERS `1 CR + BMW IF HYD TEAM LIFTS RANJI TROPHY IN 3 YRS | P13 CM-GADKARI MEET REMOVES BUMPS ON RRR CONSTRUCTION THE expert committee appointed to study the implementation of the Dharani portal — the integrated revenue records management system introduced by the previous BRS government — is likely to submit its interim report with several crucial recommendations. Sources said that these recommendations include advocating maintaining land records like Pahani manually as well as digitally , . The previous BRS government had done away with the conventional system of recording land transactions on paper and opted for a fully online system. This led to complaints of glitches and allegations of malpractice. In the run-up to the 2023 Assembly elections, TPCC Two-tiered chief A Revanth Reddy was security critical about the lack of land The revenue records offline. He expressed serious concerns recommendations of the expert about depending solely on committee include technology . advocating After the Congress stormed to power, the government maintaining land records like constituted a five-member expert committee with senior Pahani manually, as well as leader M Kodanda Reddy as digitally, say its chairperson and the CCLA sources commissioner, retired IAS officer Raymond Peter, land rights activist M Sunil Kumar and retired special grade deputy collector B Madhusudan as its members. The panel has now completed its work and has prepared an interim report, after consulting various district collectors and officials of the Revenue, Stamps and Registrations, Agriculture and other allied departments over the CONTINUED ON P6 past few days. SC overturns Chandigarh Mayoral election verdict S U C H I T R A K A LYA N M O H A N T Y @ New Delhi THE Supreme Court on Tuesday declared AAP candidate Kuldeep Kumar the winner of the Chandigarh Mayoral polls, setting aside the January 30 poll verdict on the BJP victory . A three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra found presiding officer Anil Masih guilty of defacing eight ballots cast in favour of the AAP-Congress candidate. The court considered the defaced ballots valid and transferred them to Kuldeep Kumar. The also judges ordered the prosecution of returning officer Masih for making a false statement before the court. BOTH BJP & AKALIS BLAME IT ON MANN Both the Punjab unit of the BJP and the Shiromani Akali Dal blamed Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann for breakdown of talks. Punjab BJP president Sunil Jakhar said, “Since Mann acted as the lawyer for farmers during the talks, the negotiations were destined to fail.” Senior SAD leader Prof Prem Singh Chandumajra said Mann’s double-speak during negotiations failed the farming community and forced them on the path of agitation THE obstacles to notifying the southern part of the Regional Ring Road (RRR), the 182-km stretch between Choutuppal, Amangal, Shadnagar and Sangareddy as a national highway were cleared o n T u e s d ay a f t e r Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy met Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari at his camp office in Delhi. The northern part of RRR has already been notified as a national highway by the Union government. Revanth was accompanied by Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka and R&B Minister Komatireddy Venkat Reddy The discussion . between the delegation from Telangana and Gadkari on the subject of the creation of infrastructural development lasted over three hours. Following the meeting, Gadkari directed the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to send proposals for declaring the southern part of RRR as a national highway, based on the request from Revanth. Revanth also requested the Union minister to accord permission for the upgradation of national highways. He also gave a representation enlisting the roads to be upgraded while stressing the significance of the upgrade. CONTINUED ON P6 Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, Deputy CM Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka and R&B Minister Komatireddy Venkat Reddy discuss road projects with Union Minister Nitin Gadkari