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Sunday, August 23, 2026

2 festivals, 2 long weekends send airfares soaring

Times News Network

2 festivals, 2 long weekends send airfares soaring

Navi Mum Airport Offers Some Respite; Goa, Mumbai Among Top Travel Picks

Mumbai: Two long weekends, two festivals and now two airports; Mumbai travellers have plenty of reasons to plan a short getaway this August. With Raksha Bandhan and Janmashtami falling on Fridays a week apart, demand for air travel has gone up, but fares vary sharply depending on the destination. While the addition of Navi Mumbai airport has brought some relief on popular routes such as Goa, travellers flying to destinations with fewer frequencies, including pilgrimage centres, are facing steep fares.

For instance, return airfare to Ayodhya for travel midweek starts at Rs 15,000, but for Raksha Bandhan weekend, the cheapest return fare is Rs 24,000 on flights via Delhi. Airfares to Agra are sky high already, though Janmashtami is about 12 days away.

To most destinations, airfares to/from Navi Mumbai airport are cheaper by a few thousand rupees than those from Mumbai airport. However, the high cost of road transport to and from the new airport would make it unattractive, especially to solo travellers.

The usual warning stays; most travel portals throw up Navi Mumbai (NMI) flight ticket options as well, even when the “BOM” option is selected, so travellers need to be careful when booking tickets. For Onam too, the new airport has added capacity on Kerala routes, helping keep fares from rising as sharply as in previous years. Pallavi Saxena of Cleartrip said that Bengaluru is the biggest source market for Kerala for both bus and air travel, followed by Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad. Within Kerala, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram were the most booked destinations via flights.

As for Raksha Bandhan, Lucknow recorded a 96% YoY rise in air bookings, followed by Bhopal at 86%, Indore at 82%, Raipur at 75% and Patna at 58%, said Saxena. While these indicated people travelling to their hometowns, there was also a parallel leisure trend with Delhi and Udaipur recording an 83% YoY rise in hotel bookings, while in the South, Hyderabad and Bengaluru remained the most booked hotel destinations, both recording triple-digit YoY growth.

A spokesperson for the online travel portal, Agoda, said, for the Rakshabandhan long weekend, Goa, Mumbai and Puri emerged as the top three most searched domestic destinations. “Beyond the top three, Ooty, Munnar, Lonavala and Varanasi also feature in the domestic top 15, spanning traveller interest across monsoon-friendly hill escapes and spiritual ghats,” the spokesperson said, adding the results were based on accommodation searches made between May 1 and July 31, 2026, for the coming two long weekends. For the Janmashtami long weekend, Goa again led, but it was followed by Udaipur and Mumbai. The wider domestic top 15 included destinations like Puducherry, Chennai, Jaipur and Leh.

Soon, no need for physical boarding cards at immigration

23.08.2026

New Delhi: Starting Sept 1, people flying in and out of India will no longer be required to provide a physical boarding card at the immigration counter. Travellers can show their e boarding cards instead. This major change by Bureau of Immigration could pave the way for more seamless international travel once e-passports become more common.

Senior FRRO (Delhi) Deepak Yadav’s communication says after immigration cleara-nce, the boarding pass is stamped by the immigration officer. “It has, however, been observed that this process causes inconvenience to passengers, and instances of errors in reading boarding passes due to improper or incorrect stamping, have also been reported,” he said. The new measure will come into effect from Sept 1. “Physical boarding passes will continue to be accepted at the Immigration counters, however, these will not be stamped,” Yadav’s circular adds. Junior Union minister for external affairs KV Singh told Parliament this month, “The authentication of e-chip passport and its integration with IVFRT (immigration, visa, foreigners’ registration and tracking) application for utilisation across immigration posts at international airports in India is under process.” To the extent possible, India is trying to make international seamless too. It recently introduced the fast track immigration - trusted traveller programme which allows passengers to quickly use biometrics for immigration check while flying from and to the country. tnn

Professor used an endoscopic camera to leak question paper in Chhattisgarh, say police

Shubhomoy Sikdar

RAIPUR 23.08.2026

A professor at a private college in Chhattisgarh’s Durg district and five students from the same institution were arrested for their alleged roles in the leak of an Indira Gandhi Krishi Vishwavidyalaya (IGKV) entomology question paper, police said on Saturday.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime and Cyber) Smruthik Rajanala told The Hindu that 38-year-old Yogesh Sonkesariya, a professor at Bharti Agriculture College in Durg, had allegedly used an endoscopic camera to capture images of the question papers that he received in a sealed envelope and then shared them with his fellow accused before the exam, which was scheduled to be held on August 20.

The officer alleged that the accused were also involved in leaking the question paper of another examination that was scheduled for August 7.

On August 20, an agricultural entomology exam — AENT 221 [Pest Management in crops and stored grains-I(Rabi Crops)] — for second-year students of B.Sc. (Agriculture), was cancelled after it was alleged that the question paper had been leaked. The exam was written by 1,500 students enrolled in different colleges affiliated with IGKV, a government-run university here.

The Deputy Commissioner said Mr. Sonkesariya had received the set of question papers in a sealed envelope on August 17.

“He then inserted an endoscopic camera into the envelope through a tiny hole and captured the contents… The question paper was a one-page document with all the content printed on the same side. He then used glue to cover the opening through which the camera was inserted,” said Mr Rajanala.

After the examination was cancelled, the university administration filed a police complaint, saying that the Agriculture College and Research Centre at Kawardha received an email at 8.41 a.m., in which it was claimed that the paper had leaked. Other officials received the email at 8.54 a.m.

The complaint added that students and their representatives also informed the university through WhatsApp that some purported questions from the paper were circulating.

Based on the complaint, a case was registered against unidentified persons under the Chhattisgarh Public Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2008, and Section 316 (criminal breach of trust) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023.

A team of more than 100 police personnel, including members of the Anti-Crime and Cyber Unit as well as personnel from the Telibandha police station, was formed to probe the paper leak.

Endoscopic camera used to copy paper in sealed packet CM orders probe

23.08.2026

Raipur: A tiny endoscopic camera was allegedly slipped through a pinhole in a sealed question paper envelope to film a BSc agriculture entomology paper without opening the packet, exposing a startling loophole in exam security at Indira Gandhi Krishi Vishwavidyalaya (IGKV) in Raipur, Chhattisgarh police said Saturday, reports Rashmi Drolia.

The paper leak surfaced on Aug 20, shortly before the exam. The test was cancelled and rescheduled for the first week of Sept. About 1,200 students from 27 agriculture colleges were to take it. Six people have been arrested, including Yogesh Sonkesariya, a professor at a private college in Durg, and five students who allegedly paid Rs 12,000 each for the leaked paper, DCP Smritik Rajnala said Saturday.

C’garh police searching for two more suspects, CM orders probe

Raipur police are searching for two more suspects and are probing if the group was part of a wider network. Sonkesariya allegedly took the sealed entomology paper home, pierced its envelope with a needle and another pointed tool, inserted an endoscopy camera costing about Rs 2,500 and filmed the contents through the tiny opening. The camera, normally used to inspect narrow and hard-to-reach areas inside the human body, allowed him to access the paper without visibly opening the packet. Police said Sonkesariya allegedly reconstructed the questions from the video, sold the paper and passed it to a student network that circulated images through WhatsApp about two hours before the exam. When university officials compared the paper being distributed at exam centres with the viral copy, the questions matched. Police said an FIR was registered under Chhattisgarh Public Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2008 and BNS sections. CM Vishnu Deo Sai has ordered an impartial probe, while the university formed a five-member panel.