Temple burgled at Madambakkam

CHENNAI:, May 07, 2018 00:00 IST

Burglars broke into Sri Devi Karumari Amman Temple in Sudharsan Nagar, Madambakkam on Saturday night and escaped with temple jewellery.

Over 130 g of silver ornaments and 3 g of gold jewels were stolen.

The burglary was noticed by temple cleaning staff at 6 a.m. on Sunday.

The physics hurdle in the medical entrance race 

R. Sujatha 
 
CHENNAI, May 07, 2018 00:00 IST


Playing it safe:Some attempted lesser number of questions in physics and more in other sections like chemistry, fearing negative marks for wrong answers.T. Singaravelou 

‘Many would’ve found section tough’; qualifying marks could be around 150

This year’s NEET was slightly easier than the one last year. But for admission to a government medical college, a score of over 500 would be needed, experts said. They expected the qualifying score to be around 140-150 marks for the general category.

Though most questions were not time-consuming, there were similarities between the weightage of marks in this paper and the Class 12 syllabus. Though there were almost an equal number of questions from Class 11 and Class 12 chemistry and physics, the chemistry questions were said to have been easier, while physics had calculation-based questions.

“Only those who understand the concept well would have been able to attempt the questions confidently,” said S. Sree Rangapriya of Coimbatore. Violet Priscilla of Chennai said she attempted only eight questions in physics and 35 in chemistry, fearing negative marks for wrong answers. She hopes to score 400 marks. D. Srivarshini of Sirumugai, who took the test in Coimbatore, said she also followed a similar approach.

However, Franklin Jacob from Nagercoil, who took the test in Chennai, said he did better in the physics section.

Biology, a breeze

“A majority of students would have found the physics section a tad difficult as there were some good conceptual questions thrown in. Any score in excess of 525 should get the students admission in top colleges through the State quota,” said Anand Nagarajan, academic head for school division, T.I.M.E. Chennai.

The physics section was the toughest and was lengthy, with 24 questions from Class 12 and 21 from Class 11 syllabus. “The section had two difficult questions, nine moderately tough questions and 34 easy questions,” said Rajshekhar Ratrey, vice president, educational content, Toppr.com.

Most questions in chemistry were based on simple concepts. With an equal number of questions from Class 11 and Class 12 syllabi, students had to answer one difficult question, 20 moderately difficult questions and 24 easy questions.

Students found biology easier than physics and chemistry as unlike last year, it had very few application-oriented questions. There were 46 questions from Class 12 and 44 from Class 11 syllabi. The section had 9 difficult questions, 33 moderately difficult questions and 18 easy questions.

“As many as 170 questions were based on the NCERT syllabus and only 10 were tricky, interlinking two topics,” said Uday Nath Mishra, chief academic officer, BasicFirst. Of these, 110 were easy and 25 fell under the highly difficult level.

He anticipated the minimum qualifying mark to be 130-140 and 505-515 marks for admission to government colleges.

( With inputs from Karthik Madhavan in Coimbatore)

Officials play by the book; students and parents cry foul 



Special Correspondent 
 
CHENNAI, May 07, 2018 00:00 IST


Taking no chances:NEET aspirants being frisked outside an examination centre in Chennai on Sunday.M. Vedhan
Heavy frisking and strict adherence to rules mark conduct of National Eligibility cum Entrance Test; arrangements could have been better, feel many

Heavy frisking and strict adherence to the rules marked the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), the qualifying exam for admission to medical colleges that was conducted on Sunday.

A total of 1,07,480 candidates had registered for NEET from the State, including 24,720 aspirants who took the test in Tamil. As many as 3,685 candidates from Madurai, Tiruchi and Tirunelveli were allocated centres in Ernakulam.

With NEET made compulsory for admission to courses under the Indian systems of medicine from this year, a total of 25,206 more candidates had registered for the test.

Though the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), which conducts NEET, had posted instructions on its website, scores of students and parents had a tough time complying with them. In some schools, parents had to snip the sleeves of their children (only short sleeves were allowed); girls also had to remove jewellery, hair clips and duppatas. In some centres, students who arrived a few minutes late were not allowed inside the centre. Flash protests staged by a few parents were of no avail.

At Kendraiya Vidyalaya, Sowripalayam, a candidate fainted in the school towards the end of the examination and was rushed to a hospital.

At a centre in West Mambalam, a group of girls from a government girls higher secondary school in Chidambaram had come in whites. “We wore white after reading the instructions on the internet,” said M. Madhumathi. The group had attended the government-sponsored coaching at Bhuvanagiri.

Heat adds to woes

K. Sugapriya, who also took the test from the same centre, is a student of St. Philomena Higher Secondary School in Ariyalur of which Anita – who committed suicide last year to protest against NEET – was a student. Anita had approached the Supreme Court against NEET. Ms. Sugapriya said five other students from the school took the test in Chennai.

While the students took the three-hour test, parents waited outside the venue, sometimes with no shade to protect them from the scorching sun.

R. Murugan, a welder from Thirukovilur, came with his daughter to the venue at 4 a.m. as train services to Chennai had been hit.

R. Kalyanasundaram of Pudukottai, a parent who was waiting outside a test venue in Coimbatore, said the examination centres could have opened a few classrooms for parents who were forced to wait on the streets.

But D. Rajkumar, who had flown from Singapore as his daughter A. Merlin was taking the test in Coimbatore, said the arrangements were good and the instructions had been clear.

Indians among favoured migrants in UK: Survey

London: Times of India 07.05.2018

Indian migrants have a more positive image in the UK as compared to other South Asian communities, according to a recent opinion poll. In comparison, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis were in the negative territory. The YouGov poll, conducted last month among 1,668 British citizens, asked a series of questions about the kind of contribution immigrants from various parts of the world make to British life.

Immigrants from India received a strong figure of +25 on the question about making a positive contribution to British life. In comparison, other South Asian counterparts were in negative territory. Pakistanis scored a negative figure of -4 and Bangladeshis -3. Net figures are calculated by taking away the figure for “negative contribution” from the figure for “positive contribution”.

The figures come against the backdrop of a growing debate around the atmosphere for migrants in the UK.

In a House of Commons debate earlier this week, the Opposition Labour party had warned that the recent Windrush scandal engulfs immigrants from many Commonwealth countries, including “those who came from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh”.

The scandal relates to thousands of Commonwealth citizens who came to Britain many decades ago when there was little need for formal paperwork and are now legally resident in Britain but may not have all the documents to prove it. The YouGov survey concluded that overall public opinion in the UK towards immigration remains negative.

Around 63%t of people believe that immigration into Britain in the last 10 years has been too high and around 32% thinking it has been mostly bad for Britain. PTI

4TH DENIED ENTRY

3 NEET aspirants jump gates in B’luru, barred

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Bengaluru: 07.05.2018
Four students were barred from taking the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) exam at the Army Public School, Kamraj Road centre on Sunday, when they arrived after gates closed at 9.30am.

While one student was turned back at the gate, three students who scaled the gate were shooed away by police on security duty at the centre.

Drama erupted when a girl from Hassan district, who arrived three minutes past the

reporting deadline, climbed over the gate with her parents’ assistance. She was caught by police and sent out of the centre.

However, that did not deter two others — a boy from Hassan district and a girl aspirant from Anekal — who were also late by three minutes, from vaulting the gate. They too were helped over by anxious parents, but both were barred from taking the exam. The fourth candidate — a girl from Bengaluru — was not allowed to enter after they arrived late.

The CBSE had set a reporting time between 7.30am and 9.30am, a schedule that was communicated to students and displayed on the website.

The parents said that they had gotten caught up in traffic from the railway station to the centre. Other parents, who were locals, also complained of dense traffic around Shivajinagar and Commercial Street.

TAKING A LEAP
Kerala NEET candid

Question papers in Hindi rattle 110 students in Madurai

Padmini.Sivarajah@timesgroup.com

Madurai: 
 
07.05.2018
In a major gaffe by the CBSE, around 110 candidates from various districts who appeared for NEET here were issued the Hindi version of the question paper. They were made to wait till afternoon and given photocopies of the Tamil question paper but asked to answer in the OMR sheet of the Hindi question paper. Many students said their MBBS dreams were over.

The goof-up happened at Noyes Matriculation School at Narimedu which had a total of 568 students sitting for the examination. When the first batch of students came out after the exam around 1 pm, many parents couldn’t spot their wards. C Shanmugam of Theni found that his son Mahendran had come out, but not his elder son. After waiting for about half an hour, the parents gheraoed the school principal who told them that their children had been given Hindi question papers. They were waiting for the Tamil question papers to be sent from New Delhi.

“That was such a mockery as it was clear that it was impossible for question papers to be brought from Delhi today. Later we came to know that the students were given photocopies of the question paper,” said Thirumurugan of Theni. Fourteen students were made to write the examination from 12.30pm to 3.30pm and another 96 students from 3.30pm to 6pm.

A R Olivia of Rameswaram said that she was shocked to see that she was given a photocopied question paper. The invigilators took back the paper after asking them to give an undertaking that they had handed back the question paper on their own and not been forced to do so.

HUGE MESS

TN boy’s dad dies as he gives NEET in Kerala 
 
Suffers Heart Attack After Escorting Son

Vikram Vinod & Sambath Kumar TNN

Kochi/Trichy/Madurai: 07.05.2018
As Thiruvarur native Kasthuri Mahalingam left the hotel to appear for the national eligibility-cum-entrance test (NEET), he never expected it to be the last time he would see his father Krishnaswamy Srinivasan, 46, alive.

A few minutes later, as Mahalingam took the test, his father passed away after possibly suffering a cardiac arrest at a Kochi hospital where his friend V P Murugaiyan took him. Mahalingam was left undisturbed to complete his exam. It had been his father’s dream to see him become a doctor “Krishnaswamy had complained of chest pain on Saturday night but said he would be fine today. But it worsened and I had to drop his son at the examination centre," said Murugaiyan, the receptionist at Hotel Airlines where the father and son were staying. Murugaiyan was also a close friend of Srinivasan from his native town.

Murugaiyan dropped Mahalingam at the examination centre, Nalanda Public School, at 7am. When he returned, Srinivasan said he wanted to go to a hospital. “We first went to Krishna Hospital but there was no doctor there. Then I rushed him to City Hospital, where medical care was given immediately; but they couldn’t save his life,” he said. The body was shifted to the Ernakulam government hospital’s mortuary.

Meanwhile, unaware of his father’s death, Mahalingam finished the test and came out only to be greeted by officials from the Ernakulam collector’s office who took him to the government hospital. Collector K Mohammed Y Safirulla, who joined midway, told the boy that his father had been admitted to the ICU. It was only after Srinivasan’s relatives reached around 3.30 pm that Mahalingam was informed of his father’s death. The boy was inconsolable as the body was taken in an ambulance arranged by the district authorities after 4pm. Hospital staff said that Srinivasan had hypertension and diabetes and that he had not taken his medication for the past couple of days as he forgot to bring them to Ernakulam and this had probably worsened his condition.

Murugaiyan said Krishnasamy had to sit near the toilet all through his night journey on the train to Ernakulam and he said he had to face such ordeals to see his son become a doctor one day. In fact, Krishnasamy never had second thoughts when it came to helping his son realise his dreams, according to his friends in Tiruvarur.

His son Mahalingam had a similar wish to learn chess a few years ago. Krishnasamy not only encouraged him to pursue his dream but also appointed a dedicated coach for him. Tiruvarur collector L Nirmal Raj who was in constant touch with his counterpart in Ernakulam said that all arrangements had been made to escort Krishnasamy’s body to Thiruvarur at the earliest.

In another incident, a man who accompanied his daughter to the NEET venue at Pasumalai centre in Madurai fainted on the campus and was declared dead at the Government Rajaji Hospital. Police said Kannan,45, of Singampunari in Sivaganga district, ran a lorry service in his hometown. 


Kasthuri Mahalingam’s uncle Mani Varnnan consoles him after the NEET exam in Ernakulam on Sunday