Polytechnic student 'seeks alms' to pay for  transfer certificate in Coimbatore

By PTI  |   Published: 02nd November 2017 09:57 PM  |  

Last Updated: 02nd November 2017 10:07 PM  

COIMBATORE: A polytechnic student chose to 'seek alms' in front of the District Collectorate here today to mobilise Rs 70,000 to obtain the transfer certificate, as allegedly sought by the institution.

"Give me alms to pay to a private college, which is seeking huge amount of money for a certificate" read a placard carried by Ashok, as he stood in front of the Collectorate.

Speaking to reporters, Ashok said he had applied for the TC to pursue higher education, but that the college had demanded Rs 70,000. This amount could be more than the government prescribed fee, the student said.

Stating that he had already lodged complaints about the college with the officials concerned, Ashok said he had also met office-bearers of Adi Dravidar Welfare Association on the issue, but that no action was taken.Ashok said if there was delay in issue of the TC he would not be able to apply for another course and hence had chosen this novel protest of seeking alms from the public.

He was later was taken into custody by police for questioning.

Jayalalithaa death: DMK member urges probe panel to summon former TN governor, CM, doctors and others

Siddharth Prabhakar| TNN | Updated: Nov 2, 2017, 14:28 IST

HIGHLIGHTS

The DMK member has stated that the press bulletins issued by Apollo Hospitals were contradictory to the treatment summary.

The petitioner has raised questions about the thumb impression affixed by Jayalalithaa to allot the two leaves symbol in favour of AIADMK candidates in byelections.

He has taken exception to the statement issued by the former governor that the condition of Jayalalithaa was “progressing well.”

CHENNAI: DMK candidate in the November 19, 2016 Thiruparankundram assembly byelection P Saravanan has petitioned the Justice A Arumughaswamyprobing the death of former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa to summon former governor C Vidyasagar Rao, chief minister Edappadi K Palanisami, deputy chief minister O Panneerselvam, health secretary J Radhakrishnan, jailed AIADMK leader V K Sasikala and all doctors who treated her in Apollo Hospitals for an inquiry.

Saravanan, a doctor, stated that the press bulletins issued by Apollo Hospitals when Jayalalithaa was hospitalised were contradictory to the treatment summary issued by the hospital later.

In his petition, Saravanan has also raised questions about the thumb impression affixed by Jayalalithaa to allot the two leaves symbol in favour of AIADMK candidates in the assembly byelections as she was in an unconscious state of mind.

He has also taken exception to the statement issued by Rao -- after visiting Apollo Hospitals on October 22, 2016 -- that the condition of Jayalalithaa was "progressing well."

Jayalalithaa died on December 5, 2016 after undergoing treatment in Apollo Hospitals for over 70 days.

Officials downplay waterlogging as city takes pounding

TNN | Nov 3, 2017, 00:02 IST

Cleared

Chennai: Downplaying the effects of the heavy downpours across the city was top of the agenda for corporation officials during the northeast monsoon review meeting at the Ripon Buildings complex on Thursday.

The irony was that officials were sitting inside an air-conditioned hall claiming to have solved waterlogging issues while being completely oblivious to the pounding the city was going through outside. Over 10 cm rainfall was recorded on Thursday night, inundating the Ripon Buildings premises too. But the commissioner and special officer D Karthikeyan suggested that the situation would be back to normal by morning.

Minister S P Velumani clarified his comments from two days ago, when he equated the corporation's handling of the crisis to cities in the US and UK. "When US cities flooded recently, we saw how they struggled to solve it. We are handling our city's problem the best way we can," he said.

"In areas like SIDCO Nagar in Villivakkam, localities are secure because of the storm drains we constructed," Karthikeyan said, in response to a TOI story on Thursday highlighting how SIDCO Nagar was no better than it was during the 2015 floods.

"There will be no water in SIDCO Nagar in the morning," he added, before driving away in knee deep water that had engulfed the Ripon Buildings complex.

Government dithers, then shuts schools as Chennai braces for more rain

TNN | Nov 3, 2017, 06:33 IST



CHENNAI: After taking a battering from just four days of rainfall from Monday and left bracing for more, the city on Thursday had little assurance coming its way from the government, which has for the best part since the onset of the northeast monsoon on October 27 made inaccurate claims about its rain preparedness and dithered or made hasty decisions on issues such as declaring schools closed.

Vague weather forecasts from the Met office, to be fair, have not helped the government. A lack of clarity on how heavy the rain would be the next day left the authorities in a cleft stick for more than 12 hours on Thursday -indicating in the after noon that schools would stay open on Friday , only to declare a holiday after heavy evening showers.

Schools in Chennai, which have already lost precious time, will be shut for a fourth successive day on Friday despite the fact that rainfall on Tuesday (4.1cm) and Wednesday (4cm) was not nearly heavy enough to warrant a government-ordered closure in a knee-jerk reaction to Monday's 11.6cm of rainfall. With independent weather forecas ters, who have mostly got it right, predicting rain in the city over the next three to four days, schools remained uncertain about when they could get back to routine.

Meanwhile, torrential rains inundated many parts of Tirunelveli and wreaked havoc in other districts along the state's coastline. The Met office predicted rain across most southern districts for the next few days.

Sasikala’s husband Natarajan discharged from Chennai hospital after dual organ transplant

Pushpa Narayan| TNN | Nov 2, 2017, 17:25 IST



CHENNAI: AIADMK leader V K Sasikala's husband M Natarajan, who underwent a dual organ transplant in Gleneagles Global Health City in Chennai, was discharged on Wednesday, doctors said.

The 74-year-old chronic liver disease patient underwent a seven-and-a-half hour kidney and liver transplant surgery, which began on the night of October 3. Natarajan got organs from 19-year-old Karthik N, who was declared brain dead after a road accident in Pudukottai district.

After the transplant surgery, Natarajan had been in the intensive care unit for nearly two weeks.

Doctors did a tracheotomy - a surgical incision in the airway - to connect him to the ventilator.

"He recovered well. Two weeks ago, we moved him to the ward. He was doing well without the ventilator and was breathing normally in the ward. We discharged him on Wednesday and advised him to come for follow-ups," said Dr K Ilankumaran, director, Institute of Liver Diseases and Transplantation at Gleneagles Global Health City.

Sasikala visited him in the hospital in October, after getting a five-day parole from jail.

After suicides, college pushes teacher-student interaction

TNN | Updated: Nov 2, 2017, 11:33 IST



CHENNAI: The recent suicides of two MBBS students of the prestigious Madras Medical College has brought into the spotlight a growing trend: medicos are stressed and they need help.

In an effort to ease the pressure, MMC's administration has asked lecturers to dedicate 10 minutes of their hour-long sessions to inviting feedback from students and addressing their concerns - academic or personal. "Each classroom has 125 students. Lecturers barely have the time to interact with students beyond what they teach. This will have to change," said MMC dean Dr Narayana Babu. On Tuesday, he held a meeting with the heads of all the departments and issued a series of directives to reduce stress levels among students.

Each lecturer will now be assigned seven students to mentor. "The mentors will also mediate between the students and the administration, and hold meetings every fortnight," said the dean. In addition, two counsellors from the Institute of Mental Health, Kilpauk, will visit the campus twice a week to interact with students. "We have asked the faculty and the hostel warden to recognize signs of depression and refer the students to the counsellors," said Dr Narayana Babu. At present, MMC - one of the oldest education institutions in the city -- has only one student counsellor for nearly 1,000 undergraduates.

On Sunday night M Arun Selva, a second year student in MMC hanged himself in his hostel room. Two weeks prior to his death, P Soujanya, another second year student, had committed suicide. Both of them had shown signs of depression.

It isn't just students in government medical colleges who are struggling to cope with academic pressure coupled with the strain of meeting their families' expectation. A study published last week in the Indian Journal of Community Medicine revealed high stress levels among 750 undergraduates in a private medical college in Chennai. Researchers found that final-year students were psychologically disturbed the most. The most cited reason: vastness of curriculum and fear of failure.

Acknowledging the trend, Director of Medical Education Dr Edwin Joe said students struggled the most in the first and final years. "We've seen state toppers failing in the first year as they are unable to cope. Many of them are used rote learning," he said. Colleges, he said, have been instructed to factor in the students' psychological well-being by including more extracurricular. "We have also directed the psychiatry departments of medical colleges hold group counselling sessions regularly for students and parents," he added.

Students, however, say most of these measures taken by the administration of medical colleges are largely perfunctory. "Most of our classes are impersonal. The lecturers don't even know many of us by name," said a third year student in MMC. "It's a factory of clinicians."

Dr Lakshmi Vijayakumar, founder-psychiatrist of Chennai-based anti-suicide helpline Sneha, said they receive calls from two groups of medical students seeking help: "A section of students who have been pushed into medicine against their will, and another who don't know how to handle failure," she said. Dr Vijayakumar said the administration needs to take three immediate steps to help students. "They have to acknowledge there has been a death instead of being in denial; find the complexities of the reasons behind the death and then enabling children to talk about what has happened," she said.

Heavy rains disrupt normal life in Chennai, schools shut

Abdullah Nurullah| TNN | Updated: Nov 3, 2017, 00:21 IST

The Tamil Nadu State disaster management authority has advised citizens to stay indoors.

CHENNAI: The city received its heaviest spell of rain since the 2015 floods on Thursday evening. Weather blogger Pradeep John has predicted another spell of rain to hit the city within hours. The incoming spell of rain is going to be very intense, John said.

There was waterlogging in several areas and public transport was hit. Several commuters were stranded on the roads as rains led to traffic chaos.

So far the city has received 13.6cm of rainfall since evening. The Tamil Nadu state disaster management authority advised residents of Chennai to stay indoors.

The administration has ordered schools to remain closed on Friday.

Earlier today, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami appointed ministers to oversee rain relief work here and in neighbouring Kancheepuram.

The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has advised people living in lower areas to move to higher ground where people and animals can take shelter. People have been advised to avoid entering flood waters and if need be, use footwear. "Stay away from sewerage lines, gutters, drains, culverts,etc," NDMA tweeted.

Within a couple of hours on Thursday evening, several parts of the city including Nungambakkam, Saidapet, Neelankarai, Mogappair, Chromepet and Velachery received about more than 10cm rainfall. Northern parts of the city received relatively lesser rainfall. Weathermen have predicted more rain until the weekend.

Several arterial roads witnessed heavy traffic from 8pm, leaving commuters stranded.

Area cyclone warning centre director S Balachandran said, "A low pressure area has formed over the southwest Bay of Bengal near Sri Lanka. This will bring heavy rainfall in the some of the southern and delta districts on Friday. Chennai will get one or two spells of light showers."

Southern and delta districts received heavy showers during the 24 hours from 8.30am on Wednesday to 8.30am on Thursday. Palayamkottai (Tirunelveli district) received 13cm rainfall, Tiruchendur (Toothukudi district) 9cm, Chidambaram AWS (Cuddalore district), Kelambakkam (Kancheepuram district) and Srivaikuntam (Toothukudi district) received 8cm each, Nagapattinam (Nagapattinam district), Cheranmahadevi (Tirunelveli district) and Vedaranyam (Nagapattinam district) received 7cm each.

Since October, the city has recorded excess rainfall at Nungambakkam and Meenambakkam. In the 14 hours until 10.30pm on Thursday, the city recorded 12cm rainfall at Nungambakkam. Ennore recorded 3cm rainfall, Madhavaram 2.5cm and Meenambakkam 9cm.