Maradu native wins Onam bumper lottery

Maradu native wins Onam bumper lottery

Sivadas Verma TNN

Tripunithura:21.09.2021

After a daylong suspense and rumours over the winner of the Onam bumper Kerala lottery worth Rs 12 crore, the real winner was found at Maradu in Kochi on Monday evening. Jayapalan P R, who resides at Pooppanaparambil House, Maradu, was the winner.

Jayapalan, who is fondly called Kannan, stays near Kottaaram Bhagavathy temple and is an auto-driver at the Ambedkar Junction auto stand at Maradu.

Jayapalan, a self-made man, hails from a poor family. He has been looking after his family, which includes his 95-year-old mother Lakshmi Bhai, wife Mani and two sons, Vyshakh, who is an electrician and Vishnu, a homeo doctor. His wife Mani is working as a sweeper in Chottanikkara homeo hospital.

“I bought the prize-winning ticket from Meenakshi lotteries near Statue Junction on September 10 as I felt that it was a fancy number,” Jayapalan said.

He said that he sat silent even as rumours spread about the ‘winner’ as he had the real ticket with him. Perhaps because of his grounded experiences as a hard-working auto driver, Jayapalan was found so cool and peaceful even after this great fortune and said the lottery has come as a great blessing to him.

“I have vehicle and housing loans to be repaid and I will utilize the rest of the amount productively after discussing with my family,” he said.

Speculations were rife since Sunday afternoon, when the draw was done, about the winner of the Onam bumper. Initially, the rumour was that the ticket was jointly taken by three youths from Panackal. Then on Monday TV channels started to air a story that Saithalavi from Panamaram in Wayanad has claimed the ownership of the ticket from Dubai as his friend had bought the ticket for him from Kozhikode. All these rumours were put to rest by evening as Jayapalan revealed that he was the real winner.

Emirates told to pay ₹55k to flyer for missing bag

Emirates told to pay ₹55k to flyer for missing bag

Nirupa.Vatyam@timesgroup.com

Hyderabad:21.09.2021

A district consumer forum directed Emirates airlines to pay ₹55,000 to a flyer from city for a missing bag at her destination Copenhagen.

The flyer, Sagarika M, had taken Emirates flight from Hyderabad-Dubai-Copenhagen on May 18, 2018. In her complaint, she said that one of her bags containing clothes and valuables went missing when she arrived in Copenhagen. She said that she stayed in Copenhagen until May 29 on which date she returned to Hyderabad, but the bag was never found.The complainant filed a complaint with the consumer body after the airlines refused to compensate her.

The airlines submitted that the complainant’s bag was handed over to it as check-in luggage on the flight. But they claimed the bag might have been taken by some other passenger or the complainant herself and was now claiming compensation on false pretences. “The contention of the opposite parties that the bag might have been taken by other passengers or by the complainant does not sustain. The bag is missing and it was not traced and handed over to the complainant,” the bench said.

Post-grad sweeper gets job upgrade in GHMC wing

Post-grad sweeper gets job upgrade in GHMC wing

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Hyderabad:21.09.2021 

A post-graduate in organic chemistry and a PhD aspirant, Ambi Rajani, who was forced to work as a contract sweeper in GHMC, as she had neither the power nor resources to obtain a better job, was offered a job in GHMC’s entomology wing on Monday.

Her ordeal came to an end after her story caught the attention of minister for Municipal administration and urban development KT Rama Rao, whom she met in his office, along with principal secretary Arvind Kumar. She was handed over appointment orders as assistant entomologist on an outsourcing basis. “Though my parents paid the fee, I had to earn for books and my commute to college. I am extremely happy, and am forever indebted to KTR sir,” said Rajani, who was the sole breadwinner for a family of five.

Hailing from the socially disadvantaged Yerukala community of Ramakrishnapuram village in Warangal district, Rajani had taken taken up the job of a sweeper on a contract basis in GHMC for a salary of ₹10,000.

Backdoor Entries In Educational Institutions Should Stop:

Backdoor Entries In Educational Institutions Should Stop:

Delhi High Court Dismisses Plea Of 5 Medical Aspirants Granted Admission Sans Counselling

Nupur Thapliyal20 Sep 2021 7:00 PM

The Delhi High Court has recently observed that permitting backdoor entries to educational institutions would be grossly unfair to the students who are denied admission in such institutions despite being more meritorious.

Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Jasmeet Singh said:

"It is high time that such backdoor entries in educational institutions, including Medical Colleges, should stop. Lakhs of students all over the country work hard and toil to secure admissions to educational institutions on the basis of their merit."

"To permit any backdoor entry to any educational institution would be grossly unfair to those who are denied admission, despite being more meritorious, on account of the seats being taken and blocked by such backdoor entrants."

The Court upheld the order of Medical Council of India, discharging five students who were granted admission in 2016 by L.N. Medical College Hospital without undergoing centralized counselling conducted by the Department of Medical Education (DME).

Discharge letters were issued to the students by MCI however, the Medical College continued to treat them as their students, allowed them to attend the course and appear in examinations.

The petitioners had then filed the petition seeking quashing of the discharge communications issued by the MCI and further directing that they be permitted to continue their studies as regular medical students.

A single judge vide order dated August 7, 2019 dismissed their petition.

In appeal filed by the students, the Division Bench noted,

"The petitioners have only themselves to blame for the mess that they find themselves in. Had they acted in terms of the discharge letter dated 26.04.2017, they would have saved four years of their lives. But they did not, and acted recklessly. Despite not having any interim orders in their favour in their writ petition, they continued to attend the course – obviously, at their own peril."

The students had argued that no one higher in merit in the NEET examination has been denied admission at the respondent Medical College due to grant of admission to the petitioners.

However, the Court noted,

"if the respondent Medical College had informed the vacancy position to the DME on time, the DME would have conducted further counselling and sent names on merit on the basis of the NEET examination conducted in 2016. It is quite possible that the names of other candidates, more meritorious then the five petitioners, may have been sent. Since the respondent Medical College does not appear to have informed the DME of the vacancy position, and they proceeded to grant admissions to the five petitioners much before the close of the date of admission on 07.10.2016, the other meritorious students, obviously, remained unaware that they could stake a claim against a seat in the respondent Medical College on the basis of their merit."

It added that the admissions granted to the petitioners were outside the centralised counselling conducted by the DME. If the vacancies position had been communicated to the DME by the respondent Medical College on, or before 07.10.2016, the DME could have sent the names of candidates post counselling. However, it appears that was not done by the respondent Medical College, which proceeded to grant admission to the five petitioners much earlier, i.e. between 04.09.2016 and 28.09.2016.

The bench was also of the view that grant of such admissions were in the teeth of Supreme Court's decision in Modern Dental College & Research Centre case which held that admissions to all Government and Private Medical Colleges in the county would be held throughout the centralized counselling system on the basis of the result of the NEET examination.

"The conduct of the petitioners and the respondent Medical College is, in fact, in gross contempt of not only the judgment in Modern Dental College & Research Centre, but also the order dated 22.09.2016 in Jainarayan Chaouksey," the Court observed.

Case Title: DEEPANSHU BHADORIYA & ORS v. MEDICAL COUNCIL OF INDIA & ORS

Terminated nurses seek job extension, pending salary

Terminated nurses seek job extension, pending salary

A total of 44 nurses were recruited by the hospital as contract workers in May. However, they were all terminated after three months and their salary is yet to be settled.

Published: 21st September 2021 05:38 AM 

By Express News Service

KARUR: Nurses, who were appointed on a temporary basis at the Karur Government Medical College Hospital during the second wave of Covid-19, submitted a petition at the Collectorate on Monday, seeking job extension and settlement of pending salary.A total of 44 nurses were recruited by the hospital as contract workers in May. However, they were all terminated after three months and their salary is yet to be settled.

One of the nurses, Hemalatha, told TNIE, “The Deputy Director of Health Services recruited us on a 3-month contract. We worked very hard braving risks, but were terminated on August 15. Nobody is bothered about us . Despite approaching the Deputy Director of Health and the hospital Dean, we received no proper response. We are yet to get our salary too. Meanwhile, the officials are now looking to recruit 75 nurses to tackle a probable third wave.”

Teen flags bug in IRCTC’s system

Teen flags bug in IRCTC’s system

Hacker could have accessed details of passengers

21/09/2021

P. Renganathan

S. Vijay Kumar CHENNAI

A city school student has helped the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) fix a bug on its online ticketing platform that could have exposed private information of millions of passengers.

Acting on his alert, the Computer Emergency Response Team, India, conveyed the vulnerability to the IRCTC that fixed the glitch, preventing a possible hacking of the largest online ticketing portal in the country.

According to P. Renganathan, 17, a Class XII student of a private school in Tambaram here, he was booking a train ticket by logging into the IRCTC portal a few days ago when he found certain vulnerabilities that could compromise the security of the site. The critical Insecure Object Direct References (IDOR) vulnerability on the website enabled him to access the journey details of other passengers such as name, gender, age, PNR number, train details, departure station and date of journey.

“Since the back-end code is the same, a hacker would have been able to order food, change the boarding station and even cancel the ticket without the knowledge of the bonafide passenger. Other services like domestic/international tourism, bus tickets and hotel bookings would have been possible in the user profile of other passengers. Most importantly, there was a risk of a huge database of millions of passengers getting leaked,” Renganathan said.

Issue resolved

On August 30, 2021, he reported the vulnerability to the CERT, India, which raised a ticket within minutes. Five days later, the bug was fixed and acknowledged by the IRCTC, says Renganathan.

The teenager says he has got acknowledgements from LinkedIn, United Nations, Nike and Lenovo among others for reporting security vulnerabilities on their web applications.

Renganathan wants to pursue a career in Computer Science, while continuing independent research on security of web applications.

SC not to interfere in reopening of schools

SC not to interfere in reopening of schools

21/09/2021

“The situation may vary according to factors like the size of the State to density of population. It’s the decision of each State to see the areas where there is a spike in cases and act accordingly. Ultimately, it’s best to leave it to the governments to decide. We cannot take over governance,” he noted.

Justice Nagarathna pointed out that teachers had to be vaccinated and children had not been vaccinated yet.

“The government is ultimately responsible to bring children back to school. We cannot direct them to open up in a time-bound manner. We have just come out of the second wave. There may be a third wave, though it may not be as devastating,” Justice Chandrachud remarked. The issue of whether to send children to school for physical classes or not and when to do that concerned the “complexities of governance which makes it eminently a case on which the court should not interfere”.

Advocate Ravi Prakash Mehrotra, for the petitioner, said the plea was not meant to be “publicity seeking”. Instead, it focused on the psychological and physical damage children were being subject to by not going to school. Many thousands of children also depended on schools for their midday meal. Justice Chandrachud agreed that there was a need to balance the need to keep children safe from the virus with the requirement to keep them physical and mentally healthy.