Pongal spl buses: 1L people leave city in 24 hours

Pongal spl buses: 1L people leave city in 24 hours

Ram.Sundaram@timesgroup.com

Chennai: 12.01.2021

Close to one lakh people on Monday left the city to their native places by government special buses to celebrate Pongal with their families.

The state transport department had announced that 16,110 buses would be operated from Chennai to various parts of the state from Monday to Thursday.

Of this, over 1,985 were operated on Monday (till 8pm) and 92,300 had travelled in them, according to official data. Another 8,000 were expected to travel late in the night.

A total of 93,000 people have already reserved tickets to travel by government buses in the next three days. Tickets can be booked can be booked at www.tnstc.in or using apps like RedBus, Paytm, makemytrip and BusIndia.

Meanwhile, private omni bus operators continued to fleece passengers this festival season too. On an average, it cost ₹800 to ₹1,000 to travel in an A/C bus to Madurai or Coimbatore from the capital city. The government has once again issued a warning as a mere formality and released helpline 1800 425 6151 to file complaints about excess fare demanded by private buses.

Though hundreds of bus operators can be seen selling tickets at exorbitant prices on online platforms, the transport department resorted to customary checks in and around Koyambedu in the eleventh hour to book a dozen operators or slightly more every time.

In Chennai, Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) has announced that it will operate 310 additional buses connecting various transit points like Koyambedu Chennai Moffusil Bus Terminus (CMBT), Tambaram, Madhavaram and Poonamalle from where Pongal special buses to other districts would depart.

This included buses which ply along routes like 153 (Poonamalle-CMBT), 78 (Koyambedu-Thiruvanmiyur), 18G (Broadway-Tambaram) and 570V (Vadapalani-Kelambakkam).

These buses will run round the clock for the next three days, said an official release.

Do not push me to rethink my decision on politics, says Rajini

Do not push me to rethink my decision on politics, says Rajini

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

12.01.2021

Chennai: Actor Rajinikanth has asked his fans not to push him any further to rethink his decision on not entering electoral politics by holding rallies.

“I have made my decision. Do not cause more and more anguish by organizing such rallies and trying to pressure me to enter politics. I have clearly explained in my statement why I am not entering electoral politics,” Rajinikanth said in a statement on Monday.

Rajinikanth’s statement came a day after a section of his fans held a rally at Valluvar Kottam here to urge him to take a relook at his earlier decision not to enter electoral politics.

In a statement on December 29, 2020, Rajinikanth had said that he was unable to enter electoral politics or launch a party owing to his health condition. Though initially shocked by his decision, a majority of his fans and Rajini Makkal Mandram (RMM) members grudgingly accepted the actor’s decision, since it was made based on his health condition.

Rajinikanth also expressed his anguish that some fans along with certain expelled RMM members came together to hold a rally on Sunday. It went against the decision of RMM, said the actor, thanking its members, who did not take part in the rally.

While expressing his displeasure over attempts to hold such rallies to push him more, Rajinikanth said he was happy with the way the rally on Sunday was organized, without causing hindrance to the public.

Threat to privacy: WhatsApp group links were visible on Google, research shows

Threat to privacy: WhatsApp group links were visible on Google, research shows

Anam.Ajmal@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:12.01.2021

At least 1,700 private WhatsApp group links were visible on Google through a simple web search, according to arecent research.

Published by internet security researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia, the research claimed that the groups’ links available on the web posed a threat to WhatsApp users’ privacy. Rajaharia had shared screenshots of the WhatsApp group links on his Twitter profile on Sunday afternoon.

“Anyone who had access to these links could join these private groups, see the participants there and also have access to the group members’ phone numbers and profile photos,” he told TOIon Sunday.

On Monday, WhatsApp fixed the issue, and the links were no longer visible on Google. “Since March 2020, WhatsApp has included the “noindex” tag on all deep link pages which, according to Google, will exclude them from indexing. We have given our feedback to Google to not index these chats. As a reminder, whenever someone joins a group, everyone in that group receives a notice and the admin can revoke or change the group invite link at any time,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said in a statement.

According to Rajaharia, the issue arose because “Whatsapp allows users to generate rich preview links of group chat invites that eventually may allow search engine crawlers to identify the links and then index them for future searches”. An index is another name for the database used by a search engine.

This is the second time that WhatsApp has faced this issue. The Facebook-owned instant messaging platform had said in 2020 that it had fixed an issue that was causing phone numbers to show up on Google.

WhatsApp added that invite links are searchable only when they are posted publicly on the internet. “Links that users wish to share privately with people they know and trust should not be posted on a publicly accessible website,” the spokesperson added. However,according to Rajaharia, a “noindex” tag is not enough to stop crawlers from indexing a website page.

This is the second time that WhatsApp has faced this issue. The instant messaging platform had said in 2020 that it had fixed an issue that was causing phone numbers to show up on Google

All-pass in arrear exams: HC asks univs to explain status

All-pass in arrear exams: HC asks univs to explain status

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Chennai:12.01.2021

The Madras high court on Monday directed the universities in the state to file a report on the status of conducting arrear exams either through offline or online mode along with the schedule in three weeks.

The first bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy passed the interim order on a batch of pleas challenging the decision of the Tamil Nadu government to cancel the arrear exams.

On December 1, 2020 the court restrained the state universities from declaring all-pass in arrear exams without conducting exams either online or offline.

It was also made clear that the universities are free to conduct arrear exams despite a GO passed by the state cancelling the exams. The exams could be conducted either online or offline or a combination of both.

The orders were passed on the pleas moved by former Anna University Vice-chancellor E Balagurusamy, advocate Ramkumar Adityan and others challenging the GO cancelling arrear exams.

Responding to the pleas, UGC clarified that students who have not cleared the backlogs would not be eligible even to get a course completion certificate.

However, justifying its decision, the state government submitted that the decision was made only to alleviate distresses faced by the student community due to Covid-19. It was done to skilfully navigate the course to ensure safety and wellbeing of the students, the state department of higher education said in its affidavit.

Rejecting the argument that such an order would amount to discrimination among students, the department said, “the decision would not demoralise meritorious students as only moderated minimum pass mark is awarded to arrear students.”

“As this situation was unprecedented, students had left their belongings, textbooks, notebooks and laptops in their hostel. Therefore, they had no access to their study materials,” the department added.

Deemed univs lure aspirants for mgmt seats

Deemed univs lure aspirants for mgmt seats

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

12.01.2021

The state selection committee is conducting the last leg of the counselling with 432 management quota seats left in self-financing colleges, but deemed universities in the state are luring students to apply for 89 management seats and 146 NRI seats that were returned to the colleges as they fell vacant after three rounds of counselling including a mop-round.

Across the country, 1,092 such seats in deemed universities have been returned to colleges for counselling through offline mode. The list of eligible candidates will be forwarded to the respective institutions by the medical counselling committee (MCC) of the Directorate General of Health Services.

While colleges are advertising about the oncampus stray vacancy round, agents have been calling parents and students asking them if they were still interested in undergraduate medical programmes.

On Monday, Sridhar Srinivasan, who works as a marketing head for a manufacturing company, received a call from an agent regarding his daughter’s admission. “He told us that the state counselling will be held until 13. If my daughter does not make it to any of the colleges, she can try for admission there. But admissions are done on a first-come-first-serve basis. They will give her the seat if her name is on the MCC list,” he said.

While students and parents have been visiting several deemed universities, student counsellors are now demanding a revamp. “Meritbased admission through NEET is defeated with such stray rounds. How will colleges get candidates in two days if the MCC is not able to fill them after three rounds of counselling over several weeks,” asked Manickavel Arumugam, who has been counselling students on MBBS admissions.

NEET booster shot: Cut-offs keep rising as students shine

PROGRESS REPORT

NEET booster shot: Cut-offs keep rising as students shine

Many Retake Exam To Enter Better Institutes; High Scores Up Competition For Seats In Govt Colleges

Pushpa.Narayan@timesgroup.com

12.01.2021

For four years, almost all parties in the state have been protesting National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET) as the sole eligibility for admissions to medical and dental colleges. But with every passing year since 2017 — when the state first adopted NEET — students have been raising the bar.

On Monday, data released by the state selection committee, a day after it closed MBBS admissions under the state quota, showed that the last student to enter medical college this year under the state quota scored 281 in NEET compared to 140 in 2017. The committee allots students the college of choice based on merit in NEET and 69% rule of reservation.

“It is not just cut-offs that have gone up in the past four years. The top scores in NEET have also increased,” said director of medical education Dr R Narayanababu. This year, seven students had marks above 700 compared to none last year. There were 205 students who scored more than 650 compared to 12 students last year. “Many students attempt NEET more than once so they get better colleges. In fact, most of the toppers are students who have repeated the exam for the second or third time,” he said.

This crowding at the top has made entrance to top city colleges such as Madras Medical College or Stanley Medical Colleges for the state tougher. For instance, the cut-off for open category students to join the Madras Medical College was 660 and the last student who entered the college had scored 511 marks.

Meritorious students opt for seats in government colleges, where annual tuition fee is ₹13,600. Up to 50% of seats in self-financing medical colleges are categorised as state quota seats. The annual tuition fee for students admitted under the state quota is between ₹3.85 lakh and ₹4.15 lakh compared to ₹12.5 lakh for students under the management quota and ₹23.5 lakh for NRI.

Eligible students, who don’t make it under the state quota, apply for management quota seats in self-financing colleges. Experts say more students in TN may make it to state quota if toppers make “smarter” choices.

Many toppers in the state are still apprehensive about applying for the online counselling held by the medical counselling committee (MCC) of the directorate general of health services. The MCC conducts counselling for the central government institutions and the 15% of seats surrendered by states from government colleges for admission under the all-India quota, besides deemed universities.

While some toppers apply to Jipmer in Puducherry, not many students try for intuitions such as AIIMS or Armed Forces Medical College. Many students with score about 600 told TOI that they were not aware of the centralised counselling, while some others said they decided to stay in TN. “Earlier, students did not apply because they had to write separate tests. But this year, the process for admissions to all colleges was similar,” said R Sathish Kumar, student counsellor. “We hope that their impression towards studying in colleges outside the state will change,” he said.

‘AIADMK has Rs 246.9 cr fixed deposits’

‘AIADMK has Rs 246.9 cr fixed deposits’

Panneerselvam also gave details of the amount spent for various purposes like Covid relief, helping cadre from poor economic background, 

Published: 10th January 2021 07:31 AM 

Aiadmk functionaries at general council meeting in Vanagaram | Ashwin Prasath

By Express News Service

CHENNAI: Submitting the income-expenditure accounts for the period between November 25, 2019, and January 8, 2021, AIADMK coordinator and treasurer O Panneerselvam recalled that he has been submitting the party’s income-expenditure accounts for the past 14 years since 2007. The party has fixed deposits to the tune of Rs 246.90 crore. Panneerselvam also gave details of the amount spent for various purposes like Covid relief, helping cadre from poor economic background, etc. 

EPS takes a dig at Udhaya

Referring to former minister B Valarmathi’s remarks on a recent statement of DMK youth wing secretary Udhayanidhi Stalin, Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami said, “Udhayanidhi has made remarks insulting women. You (Udhayanidhi) exhibit precociousness by your remarks because you were brought up like that.”

‘Respect grassroots level cadre’ 

Deputy coordinator R Vaithilingam said that despite many trials and tribulations, the AIADMK stands tall due to unstinted loyalty of grassroots level cadre and their sacrifices. “AIADMK is a cadre-based party. The cadre can become the leader and vice versa. So respect them. If we fail to respect cadre, time will trample on us.”