chennai l saturday l april 27, 2024 l `9.00 l PAGES 18 l late 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 Polling complete in 14 states/ Union territories 65% turnout in 2nd phase 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 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. The request to verify the micast on electronic voting machines (EVMs) with a Voter Ver- crocontrollers can be made by ifiable Paper Audit Trail candidates who stand second or third in the elections. A written (VVPAT), saying suspicions of tampering were unfounded. It request has to be made within also turned down pleas to revive seven days after the results are announced. Those paper ballots. who make the reA bench of jusquest would foot tices Sanjiv Khanthe verification na and Dipankar bill. But if an EVM Dutta delivered two is found tampered, separate but conthe money would curring verdicts. be refunded. “While maintainBesides, 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. S u c hitra Kalyan M o hanty @ New Delhi suo motu case HC orders mapping of all wetlands in TN from June R S I V A KU M A R @ Chennai The Madras High Court has ordered the Tamil Nadu government to carry out mapping of wetlands in all districts of the state from June this year on the lines of the exercise carried out in Tiruvallur district. The court has also directed the state to submit reports on the progress of the exercise periodically to the court in order to preserve these natural resources. The first bench of Chief Justice SV Gangapurwala and Justice J Sathya Narayana Prasad passed the order on Friday while hearing a suo motu case on conservation of wetlands. “The mapping of wetlands, as done in Tiruvallur district, must be undertaken. This process in all the districts has to be undertaken expeditiously and it shall commence by June 2024,” the bench said.The court said the mapping of wetlands in other districts must be carried out on the lines of the pilot project implemented in Tiruvallur. The HC had, on August 26, 2022, ordered the state to complete the mapping of wetlands in Tiruvallur based on the mapping done by amicus curiae T Mohan with the help of a technical team and do physical verification of the wetlands to compare them with 2011 data. Continued on p5 Rahul’s electoral fate sealed in Wayanad 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 69.23% 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. The highest voting percentage was recorded in Tripura at 78.53% while the lowest was in Uttar Pradesh at 54.85%. Kerala, Karnataka and Rajasthan accounted for more than half the seats. Elections to 14 seats were held in Karnataka, 13 seats in 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, T ripura 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 Cong ress 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 include 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. BJP’s Hema Malini, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat are seeking a hattrick of wins from Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura, Rajasthan’s Kota and Jodhpur, respectively . With the conclusion of the second phase, voting has been completed in 14 states/UTs. Modi factor very much 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 Red- dy, 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 frontrunner? Mahesh, who identified himself as a member of the Congress, did not hesitate to say: “It’s Modi at the Centre. I believe in Modi china not afraid of competition: Xi 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 and would vote for the BJP.” This is a view shared by several voters from Malkajgiri constituency . Dhanalakota Shravan Kumar, a traditional artiste, 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.” Eatala Rajender claims people are with PM Narendra Modi, whose 1.3-km roadshow in Malkajgiri on March 15 saw Illustration: Mandar Pardikar a massive response. 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 BJP .
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