Unmarried daughter who is above 18 can claim maintenance from father: HC

times of India 08.04.2018

Mumbai: An unmarried daughter is entitled to claim maintenance from her father even after attaining the age of 18 if her parents are divorced or estranged, the Bombay HC has ruled.

Also, a woman can file an application on behalf of her major daughter to seek maintenance, Justice Bharti Dangre ruled on Friday.

The court was hearing a petition filed by a city-based woman challenging the family court’s order dismissing her application seeking maintenance from her estranged husband for the couple’s 19-year-old daughter. The couple, which got married in 1988, got separated in 1997. Their three children — two boys and one girl — lived with the mother.

Till the time the kids were minors, their father paid a monthly maintenance for each child to their mother. However, after the daughter crossed 18 years of age, the father refused to pay maintenance for her. Her mother, in her petition, claimed that though her daughter had attained majority, she was still financially dependent on her. PTI

200 COLLEGES HAVE APPLIED FOR CLOSURE

Engineering seats to go down by 80k this year

Manash.Gohain@timesgroup.com  08.04.2018

New Delhi: There will be around 80,000 less seats in engineering this year. This will lead to around 3.1 lakh seats less in four years, including in the 2018-19 academic session. Don’t get alarmed. Because actual enrolment has been on the decline since 2012-13, coming down by 1.86 lakh.

According to the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), nearly 200 ‘substandard’ engineering colleges have applied for closure. Though these colleges will not enrol new students, they will continue to function till the current batches graduate. However, for elite institutions like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) or the National Institutes of Technology (NIT), there has been an increase in intake.

Now, AICTE has also decided that by 2022, at least 50% of all the programmes in technical institutions have to get their accreditation from the National Board of Accreditation (NBA). At present, around 10% of the programmes are accredited in India.

Since 2016, the number of engineering seats has been declining every year. According to AICTE, the decline is around 75,000 annually. In 2016-17, total intake capacity at undergraduate level was 15,71,220, of which total enrolment was 7,87,127, which is just around 50.1%. In 2015-16, the total intake was 16,47,155, of which enrolment was 8,60,357, which was 52.2%.

“This year too there will be round 80,000 seats less. Around 200 colleges have applied for closure as they were having very low admissions in the recent past,” said Anil Sahasrabudhe, chairman, AICTE.

“So, effectively, these colleges will seize to function as engineering institutions from about three-four years from now,” said Sahasrabudhe.

While the intake capacity decline started since 2014-15, enrolment has been on the decline since 2012-13, reaching 7.87 lakh in 2016-17 from that of 9.73 lakh in 2012-13.

Based on 2016-17 AICTE data, in India there are 3,415 institutions which offer architecture and engineering courses at the undergraduate level. During this period, around 50 institutions had closed down.

The decline in seats won’t affect the demand-supply equation for engineering and architecture programmes, as per AICTE and ministry of human resource development (HRD). According to a senior HRD official, a majority of the institutions which are going to face closure or have applied for closure have less than 20% enrolment in the last three years. “Many of those, in fact, recorded nil admissions. So, even aspirants don’t prefer these institutions as they are sub-standard. On the other hand, IITs and NITs have increased their seats and there will be more opportunities there as the new IITs shift to their own campuses. Right now, they are functioning with a capacity of 300-400 students,” the official said.

Many institutions that will continue to function may need to cut down on the number of courses they offer as majority of the programmes that they offer are yet to be accredited.

“Just around 15% of engineering programmes offered in the country are accredited by the NBA. AICTE, as part of its various quality-control initiatives, has decided that by 2022, a majority of the courses will have to be accredited by NBA,” said Sahasrabudhe.

Man fakes poverty to get son seat at Delhi school

TIMES NEWS NETWORK  08.04.2018

New Delhi: In a case of life imitating art, a businessman posed as a slum-dweller — like the Walled City couple in the film, ‘Hindi Medium’ — to get his son admitted to Sanskriti School in Chanakyapuri in the quota for economically weaker sections. This, however, happened four years ago and apparently no one got the wind of it.

The man, Gaurav Goel, showed his address as Sanjay Camp, a slum near Chanakyapuri, for his elder son’s admission in 2013. He put down his annual income as ₹67,000 by allegedly forging his income documents. The voter cards and birth certificates too were forged. He had told the school that he was working at an MRI centre.

Considering the fact that neither the demeanour of the child, nor interaction with the parents — which must have happened several times over the years — gave away their real identity, it was a perfect plot.

The story began to unravel when this year Goel pushed for the admission of his second child under the sibling quota. He realised his overconfidence had made him overreach.

While verifying the antecedents of the elder child, the school authorities found major discrepancies and went to the cops. Goel was arrested from his home in Jawahar Nagar, near Kamla Nagar in north Delhi. DCP (New Delhi) Madhur Verma said they were trying to find out who had helped Goel forge the documents.

The cops found that Goel owns an MRI lab and a wholesale business of selling pulses and has travelled to 20 countries. What made the school suspicious, according to a police officer, was when he told them that they could shift his elder son from EWS to the general category because his economic condition had improved over the years.

When he mentioned an apartment at Safdarjung Enclave as his residence, the school’s suspicion got strengthened. A complaint was registered at the Chanakyapuri police station.

The police had checked MCD, FRRO and IT records which establish that Goel was earning a hefty amount from his businesses. The staff of some government departments are under the scanner as the cops feel they may have helped Goel in procuring the forged documents. Even the address proof he furnished for the admission of the second child was found to be forged.

When contacted by TOI, the principal of Sanskriti School refused to comment.

Goel was produced in court and has been taken on a two-day remand to identify people who helped him get the documents. Police officers say that they have informed the education department about the case and that they are carrying out their own inquiry to find out if there could be others using the EWS quota by providing fake certificates.

The school authorities have informed the cops that the child has been removed from the school.

CBSE Class XII economics paper leak: 3 from HP held

08.04.2018
New Delhi: A week after the first breakthrough in the CBSE question paper leak case, the special investigation team of Delhi Police busted another group that had leaked the Class XII economics paper from Una in Himachal Pradesh. Rakesh Kumar, appointed by the education board as an exam co-ordinator, was discovered to have circulated handwritten copies of the question paper among his students and a relative in Chandigarh. Two employees of DAV Public School were also apprehended.

Special commissioner (crime) R P Upadhyay confirmed the developments to TOI and said the accused were produced in a court and taken on remand for two days of questioning. More arrests are likely with at least a dozen people being interrogated. The role of other teachers in the school is also being probed. A case of criminal breach of trust (Section 406 of IPC), cheating (420) and criminal conspiracy (120B) has been registered against the three men.

The paper that Kumar leaked was eventually circulated in 40 Whatsapp groups. The commerce and economics teacher had been put in charge of overseeing the exams for three other schools at an exam centre there. He took the help of clerk Amit Sharma and peon Ashok to access the question paper to give to students who came to him for tuitions and to a woman relative whose son was appearing for the examination.

“Since Kumar had earlier worked as a co-ordinator with CBSE, his principal again recommended his name for this task in February. He was given access to the bank vault where the paper was stored,” said Alok Kumar, joint commissioner (crime). TNN

Trichy college caught hiding details to obtain NIRF rank

Sambath.Kumar@timesgroup.com 08.04.2018

Trichy: Bishop Heber College (BHC) Trichy, ranked third in the country among arts and science colleges in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2018 rankings released by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), is facing flak for keeping their self-financing programmes away from the ambit of the ranking process.

The college has managed to be among the top five arts and science colleges in the country for the second year in a row. However, some of the city colleges have taken strong exception to BHC’s action of not submitting details of their self-financing programmes. TOI accessed the data submitted by BHC though NIRF website and found that it had given the total student strength as 2,086 — UG and PG put together — for 2016-17. However, the college has a total student strength of 9,088 as per its internal quality assurance report for 2016-17.

“Unlike other colleges, BHC has not submitted details of its self-financing programmes including student and faculty strength, which has helped the institution gain advantage and eventually the top rank,” said the principal of a city arts and science college who didn’t want to be named.

Most of the staff of the selffinancing courses did not have PhD or have cleared NET or SLET which was mandatory as per the University Grants Commission. Hiding such details certainly gave an advantage to the college, said another principal who has written to the NIRF over the incident.

Speaking to TOI over phone, Surendra Prasad, chairman, National Board of Accreditation (NBA) — the ranking agency for NIRFsaid that the college may be barred from taking part in the NIRF ranking process for a couple of years. “The institution has to furnish complete details of all programmes, aided and self-financing, it offers,” he said. The chairman added that they knew that some private institutions faked data on certain occasions but it was not possible to verify each and every bit of information.

Responding to the controversy, Paul Dhayabaran, principal of Bishop Heber College, agreed that they hadn’t submitted details of self-financing programmes for NIRF. However, he justified the move saying that they chose not to submit the data since they were not getting funds for the self-financing courses from the government.

West Bengal University of health sciences convocation 2018

Vadapalani murder: Husband told of wife’s death after 2 days

TIMES NEWS NETWORK  08.04.2018

Chennai : Investigators are struggling to make headway in tracking the suspects who murdered 23-year-old P Gnanapriya and left her husabnd Prabhu injured at their Vadapalani residence three days ago.

Three sets of fingerprints lifted from a safe at the residence have been sent to the forensic laboratory where experts will see if they matching with those of previous offenders. The investigators have also sent the fingerprints of Prabhu, a temple priest, for examination.

Special teams are again scanning the footage taken from five CCTV cameras in the area. A police officer said, “The footage hasn’t shown up any suspicious movement in the neighbourhood that night but we are scouring it again. We are not ruling out Prabhu’s name from the suspects list.”

On Friday, Prabhu who said he blacked out after being struck two hard blows on the head and regained consciouness only on Thursday night. He broke down in the police vehicle on the way to the site in Kancheepuram where the remains of his wife, Gnanapriya, were cremated.

Police officers, acting on the advice of doctors against revealing to him about his wife’s death as there was a danger of him relapsing into unconsciouness, had taken him to Kancheepuram saying Gnanapriya had been shifted there from a city facility. All along the way, Prabhu kept asking the police personnel questions about his wife’s health and if she was okay. And, when the revelation came, he couldn’t take it, a police officer said In his statement to the police, Prabhu said he was hit with a thick rod-like material and that he remembered little else about the attack or the assailants.

The suspects apparently tore a towel found in the house into long strips and tied up his hands, feet and also gagged him, the officer said. They seemed to have used the same material to tie up Gnanapriya too.