NAGAPATTINAM l sunday l may 18, 2025 l `12.00 l PAGES 24 l CITY EDITION CBSE asks schools to set up ‘sugar boards’ to check intake The CBSE has directed affiliated schools to establish “sugar boards” to monitor and reduce sugar intake of children, according to officials move follows rise in type 2 diabetes in kids The move follows a significant increase in Type 2 diabetes among kids, a condition once primarily seen in adults, over the past decade. Several studies indicate that sugar constitutes 13 per cent of daily calorie intake for children aged four to 10 years, and 15 per cent for those aged 11 to 18 years, substantially exceeding the recommended limit of 5 per cent 13% sugary snacks, processed foods culprits ■ “The proliferation of sugary snacks, beverages, and processed foods, often readily available in school environments, contributes significantly to this excessive intake,” CBSE said in a circular ■ The direction was issued after a nudge by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights to ensure kids are safe from diabetes of daily calorie intake among children comes from sugar 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 Tharoor on govt’s global India turns the outreach team, Cong sore screws on imports tit-for-tat diplomacy Wasn’t recommended by party; govt names 7 heads of delegations Will not be found wanting: Cong MP P r ee t h a N a i r @ New Delhi Five killed in bus-van crash on Karur NH E x p r ess Ne w s S e r v i ce @ Karur Five people, including two minors, were killed after a private bus tail-ended a truck going in the front, in which the truck turned and crossed lanes in the impact, and collided head-on with a tourist van coming from the opposite direction on Salem-Karur National Highway near Athur in Karur district early on Saturday . At least 27 others who sustained injury in the accident are undergoing treatment at hospitals. According to police, the deceased have been identified as van driver D Sasikumar (52), and tourists K Arun Thiruppathi (45) and his son A Kamatchi Aswin (10) and their relatives S Ezhil Thakshna (12) and P Hema Varshini (20), all from Virudhunagar district. According to sources, the private bus was going to Nagercoil from Bengaluru, while the tourists from Kovilpatti were on their way to Yercaud for summer holidays when the vehicles crashed near Karur.  P5 Five drown as van falls into well in Sathankulam Thoothukudi: Five people, including a one-and-a-half-year old baby, drowned after a van fell into a 55-foot-deep farm well at Meerankulam near Sathankulam on Saturday | P4 WITH THIS ISSUE Sultan of Subversion PLUS 12 PAGES The rift between the Congress leadership and Shashi Tharoor deepened on Saturday after the Centre picked him to lead one of the seven multi-party delegations for its diplomatic outreach against Pakistan’s crossborder terror despite the party not recommending his name. Apart from Tharoor, BJP MPs Ravi Shankar Prasad and Baijayant Panda, JD(U)’s Sanjay Jha, DMK’s Kanimozhi, NCP (SP)’s Supriya Sule, and Shiv Sena’s Shrikant Shinde will head the other delegations. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said the party had submitted four names for the mission and was surprised to see ‘a different name’, Shashi Tharoor, in the official list. The party had suggested the names of Anand Sharma, Gaurav Gogoi, Syed Naseer Hussain and Amrinder Singh Raja Warring for the delegations. Significantly, the party distanced itself from Tharoor’s comments endorsing the Modi government’s handling of the India-Pak conflict and US President Trump’s intervention in announcing the ceasefire. “I am honoured by the invitation to lead an all-party delegation to five key capitals, to present our nation’s point of view on recent events... When national interest is involved, and my services are required, I will not be found wanting. Jai Hind!” Tharoor said “We were asked for names. We expected that the names we had given would be included. But when we saw the press release of PIB, we were surprised. I cannot say what will happen now. Asking four names, giving four names, and announcing another name is dishonest on t h e g ove r n m e n t ’s p a r t , ” Ramesh told the media. “The government cannot include names of MPs in delegations without consulting the party he said. ,” This paper reported on Saturday that the PMO had prepared the list of names and conveyed them to the respective political parties. When asked about Tharoor’s inclusion as a representative of the Congress in the list, Ramesh said that ‘there is a difference between being in the Congress and being of the Congress’. “In a democratic system, when individual MPs are sent as part of an official delegation, MPs must seek the concurrence of the party. If the government wants to send him as part of a delegation, the MP should be asking the party, he said. “The ball is in the government’s court now,” he added. Accusing the government of being ‘dishonest’ in its approach, the leader asserted that the party would not change the four proposed names for the delegation. Ramesh added that Rahul Gandhi has written to Union Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Kiren Rijiju on this. P7 from Bangladesh d i pa k m o n d a l @ New Delhi IN what seems like another ‘retaliatory’ move, the Indian government has imposed restrictions on imports of certain goods from its eastern neighbour Bangladesh. In a directive issued on Saturday by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the import of all kinds of readymade gar ments from Bangladesh through land ports has been prohibited. These goods will only be allowed to be imported through the seaports of Nhava Sheva and Kolkata. A wider range of goods— including fruit and fruit-flavoured carbonated drinks, processed food items, cotton and cotton yarn waste, plastic and PVC finished goods (excluding essential industrial inputs such as pigments, dyes, plasticisers, and granules), and wooden furniture — will face more stringent port restrictions. These items will not be allowed entry through northeastern states of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, and Mizoram. The restriction also extends to Changrabandha and Fulbari in West Bengal. However, the DGFT clarified that these restrictions do not apply to essential imports such as fish, LPG, edible oil, and crushed stone. The DGFT notification clarified that these port restrictions would not be applicable to Bangladeshi goods transiting through India but destined for Nepal and Bhutan. Though the government has not disclosed the reasons for the move, it is likely that it came in the wake of Bangladesh restricting land imports of cotton yarn from India to protect local industries from cheaper imports. India’s total annual trade with Bangladesh is around $13 billion. Court stays NEET result over power cut at exam centre, seeks NTA’s reply E x p r ess Ne w s S e r v i ce @ Chennai The Madras High Court has temporarily stayed release of the results of the National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (NEET)-2025 for admission to the undergraduate (UG) courses in medicine. Justice V Lakshminarayanan passed the interim order on Friday while hearing a petition seeking re-examination. The petition, filed by 13 aggrieved students, claimed power outage at the exam centre which “de prived them of equal opportunity and a fair environment”. The 13 affected students had taken the exam at PM Shri Kendriya Vidyalaya CRPF School in Avadi on May 4, 2025. Directing the respondent authorities, including the National Medical Commission (NMC) and the National Testing Agency (NTA), to file reply to the petition by June 2, the judge, accordingly, adjour ned the hearing. Advocate T Saikrishnan, representing the petitioners, submitted that 464 candidates appeared for the examination at the centre where the electricity supply was disconnected (approximately from 3 pm to 4.15 pm) due to gusty winds and heavy rain. The rainwater also entered the exam hall forcing them to be shifted to other halls, he said. The candidates suffered due to poor lighting facilities as the school did not have power backup or generator, causing them to take the exam under extremely uncomfortable situations, thus affecting the performance of the petitioners and other candidates, the counsel said. The students’ request for extra time was tur ned down and so they could not fully complete the exam, leaving them in a disadvantaged position compared to other candidates, he added. A representation was sent to the NTA on the day of the exam itself through e-mail requesting re-examination, but so far, no response has been received, the petition stated. It noted that even a minor disturbance would have serious implications on a candidate’s performance and future as the power outage caused mental distress, heat exhaustion and created grossly unequal conditions. Guj minister’s son held for `71-cr scam D i l i p S i n g h k s h at r i ya @ Ahmedabad A `71-crore scam under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has been unearthed in Gujarat, implicating the family of state panchayat and agriculture minister Bachu Khabad. His elder son, Balwant Khabad, has been arrested, while his younger son, K i r a n K h ab a d , i s u n d e r scrutiny . The scam surfaced after B M Patel, director of DRDA, flagged irregularities in project execution in Devgadh Baria and Dhanpur taluks. The scam involved fake infrastructure projects, with funds meant for tribal employment siphoned off to agencies linked to the minister’s sons Gujarat minister through fabri- Bachu Khabad cated invoices. An audit revealed that Raj Construction and Raj Traders, run by Balwant and Kiran Khabad, were involved in the fraud. Between 2021 and 2025, villages like Kuva, Redhana, and Simamoi were falsely marked as beneficiaries of completed MGNREGA projects. On the ground, there was little to no work—only forged completion reports and a trail of diverted payments. A Special Investigation Team (SIT) has been formed. The minister did not respond to questions from this newspaper. vlogger from haryana held for spying bittersweet An elephant calf, distressed by its mother’s worsening health leans over her to offer protective cover, preventing forest officials from offering treatment to the mammoth at the foothills of Maruthamalai in Coimbatore on Saturday | s senbagapandiyan Jyoti Malhotra, who runs a YouTube channel ‘Travel with JO’ was allegedly in contact with a Pakistani staffer working at the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi | P8 ED raid continues; Tasmac MD questioned for 10 hrs E x p r ess Ne w s S e r v i ce @ Chennai The Enforcement Directorate’s search operation at 10 locations in Chennai in the alleged `1,000 crore Tasmac bribery scam that began on Friday continued for the second day on Saturday . Tasmac Managing Director S Visakan was once again taken to the Enforcement Directorate’s office in Nungambakkam for questioning, where he was interrogated for at least 10 hours. Sources said that Deva, a prominent hotel owner, was also summoned to the agency’s office for questioning. ED is conducting the searches to collect evidence on alleged money laundering in the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) case registered by it. The agency has booked the case based on 41 FIRs registered by the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) regarding corruption in the state-owned liquor marketing company . The first set of searches was conducted in the first week of March at Tasmac’s office in Egmore and at the offices of various distilleries and bottling units that supply liquor to the government firm. Apart from Visakan’s home in Manapakkam, the ED searched the properties linked to film producer Akash Bhaskaran of Dawn Pictures; AP Keshav Selvi of KS Smart Solutions, a tech firm which had won contracts of various state government departments.  P5 DVAC raids properties of ex-AIADMK min and former MLA in DA cases Chennai: The DVAC on Saturday searched properties of former AIADMK minister and party’s Arani MLA Sevoor S Ramachandran in Tiruvannamalai and former AIADMK MLA Neethipathi at Usilampatti. The agency had booked Ramachandran for amassing `8.03 crore worth of disproportionate assets, and Neethipathi for amassing assets worth `1.83 crore | P4 k o h l i t r i b ute e x p r ess r e a d Men in Whites dwarf Red and Gold at Chinnaswamy TN to move SC over delay of edu funds G o m es h S @ Bengaluru IT had been brewing since Virat Kohli announced his retirement from Tests last Monday. What started as a social media campaign on Tuesday hours af, ter Kohli’s social media post, became a reality on Saturday as thousands of fans came dressed wearing Kohli’s replica Test jersey . “Virat,” the back of the white jersey read “18”. There were some pockets with a lot of Red and Gold, something very com- mon at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium. But a lot of the ticketholders had turned a Red wall into a lot of White as they paid tribute to the man who has called this ground home for more than two months every year since 2008. In many ways, Saturday was significant even before Kohli’s sudden announcement. For starters, it marked the resumption of the Indian Premier League after an eight-day break following the escalation of hostilities between India and Paki- Photo: Vinod kumar T stan. For the fans, however, it was about giving their cricketing hero a fitting on-field trib- ute. It did not matter that this wasn’t even an international game. Kohli, as many fans out- side the stadium put it, was, is and will be an emotion to them. They wanted to give a fitting salute to their beloved star. Some fans, when they realised they would not be getting the tickets, decided to shell out money from their own pockets to print white replica jerseys in the name of Kohli and sell them outside the ground. Talamika, an IT professional, said: “We wanted to give a tribute to Kohli. We couldn’t get tickets that is why we are selling the jerseys.” Chennai: Chief Minister M K Stalin on Saturday said the state will soon approach the Supreme Court challenging non-release of education funds by the BJP-led union government. Addressing a book release event, Stalin said since TN has not agreed to threelanguage policy, the centre has not released `2,152 crore. The CM expressed hope for a favorable verdict, similar to the one secured last month in the case against governor | P4 ‘Putin-Zelenskyy meet only after deal’ Kyiv: The Kremlin on Saturday said a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would be possible only after both sides reach a deal, a day after Moscow and Kyiv held their first direct talks, which did not result in a truce. Kremlin said both sides need to present their visions for a ceasefire before the next round of talks | P9