Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Sunday announced that National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET)-post-graduate (PG) counselling for medical admissions will start from January 12.
“As assured by the Ministry of Health to residential doctors, NEET-PG counselling will be started by Medical Counselling Committee from January 12, 2022, following the order of the Supreme Court,” Mandaviya tweeted.
“This will give more strength to the country’s fight against Coronavirus. My best wishes to all the candidates,” he added.
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the validity of the Other Backward Class (OBC) reservation in the All-India Quota (AIQ) seats in NEET-PG and NEET-UG.
The apex court also issued directions to commence the counselling.
This comes after months of protest by resident doctors across the nation against the delay in NEET-PG counseling. (ANI)
Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) of Delhi Police Special Cell has arrested the mastermind behind the “Sulli Deal” app case from Madhya Pradesh’s Indore on Sunday, informed Police.
“Aumkareshwar Thakur, Sulli Deals app creator, and mastermind arrested from Indore. He was the member of Trad-Group on Twitter made to troll Muslim women,” said DCP KPS Malhotra, Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO), Delhi Police Special Cell.
The person was detained on the basis of inputs received during “Bulli Bai” app creator Niraj Bishnoi’s interrogation.
In both Sulli Deal and Bulli Bai applications, photos of women were allegedly uploaded without their consent and inappropriate remarks were passed against them. Both the apps used the hosting platform ‘GITHUB’ to auction the stolen photos. ‘Sulli deal” is a year-old case whereas “Bulli Bai” surfaced last month.
Other than Bishnoi, three other accused have also been arrested in the Bulli Bai app case. (ANI)
Soon after 402 staff of Parliament were tested COVID-19 positive ahead of the budget session of the Parliament, Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu has reviewed the situation and directed that necessary measures be taken to contain the spread of the virus among the Secretariat officials and staff, sources said.
Naidu also directed all officials and staff that 1300 staff be tested for COVID-19. The recovery of the infected shall be closely monitored. Assistance in hospitalisation and treatment will also be provided if needed. Rajya Sabha Secretariat has reimposed restrictions on the attendance of officials and staff.
50 per cent of the officials and staff below the rank of under secretary or executive officers are required to work from home till the end of this month. They constitute about 65 per cent of the total employees.
According to sources, those with disabilities and pregnant women are exempted from attending office. Starting and closing timings of the Secretariat are also staggered to avoid crowding. All official meetings will be held virtually.
According to sources, 65 of Rajya sabha Secretariat, 200 of Lok sabha Secretariat and 133 of allied services have tested corona positive during 4-8 January. Naidu will review the situation every week.
Meanwhile, India reported 1,59,632 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking the daily positivity rate in the country to 10.21 per cent, said the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Sunday. (ANI)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday announced that starting this year, December 26 will be marked as ‘Veer Baal Diwas’ as a tribute to the courage of Sahibzades (Guru Gobind Singh’s sons) and their quest for justice.
“Today, on the auspicious occasion of the Parkash Purab of Sri Guru Gobind Singh Ji, I am honoured to share that starting this year, 26th December shall be marked as ‘Veer Baal Diwas.’ This is a fitting tribute to the courage of the Sahibzades and their quest for justice,” PM Modi tweeted.
“Veer Baal Diwas will be on the same day Sahibzada Zorawar Singh Ji and Sahibzada Fateh Singh Ji attained martyrdom after being sealed alive in a wall. These two greats preferred death instead of deviating from the noble principles of Dharma,” he tweeted.
“The bravery and ideals of Mata Gujri, Sri Guru Gobind Singh Ji, and the 4 Sahibzades give strength to millions of people. They never bowed to injustice. They envisioned a world that is inclusive and harmonious. It is the need of the hour for more people to know about them,” read another tweet.
Earlier today, extended his greetings on the occasion of Guru Gobind Singh’s Jayanti, the birth anniversary of the 10th Sikh Guru, and said that the Guru’s life message gives strength to millions of people.
The Prakash Parv of Guru Gobind Singh is being celebrated on January 9 this year.
Born Gobind Rai at Patna Sahib in Bihar, Guru Gobind Singh was the 10th and last of Sikh gurus in human form. He was enthroned at the ‘Guru Gaddi’ at the age of nine, following the martyrdom of his father, the ninth Guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji.
Meanwhile, in view of Guru Gobind Singh Jayanti, the District Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) has given relaxation to the devotees during the weekend curfew in Delhi, allowing them to offer prayers at Gurudwaras on Sunday. (ANI)
Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Saturday said that over two crore youngsters between 15-18 age group have received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in less than a week of vaccination drive for children.
Lauding the efforts of children, Mandaviya said, “Great going, my young friends.” “Great Going, my Young Friends. Over 2 crore youngsters between the 15-18 age group have received their first dose of COVID19 vaccine in less than a week of vaccination drive for children,” Union Health Minister said while noting that the drive has been progressing rapidly.
The COVID-19 vaccination program for children aged between 15 and 18 years has been started on January 3, 2022.
This comes a day after India achieved a milestone in its COVID-19 vaccination drive as the cumulative vaccine doses administered in the country surpassed the 150 crore mark on Friday.
So far, 90 per cent of our adult population was vaccinated with the COVID-19 vaccine dose.
With the administration of more than 90 lakh vaccine doses in the last 24 hours, India’s COVID-19 vaccination coverage has exceeded 150.61 crores till 7 am on Saturday.
According to the Union Ministry of health release, India executed 90,59,360 doses in the past 24 hours. (ANI)
A total of 18.34 crore electors including service voters will take part in the upcoming Assembly elections in Goa, Punjab, Manipur, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh, the Election Commission of India (ECI) informed on Saturday.
While addressing a press conference here Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sushil Chandra said, “A total of 18.34 crore electors including service voters will take part in this election out of which 8.55 crore are women electors.” “24.9 lakh first-time electors are registered in the five poll-bound states,” Chandra said.
“ECI has mandated that at least one polling station managed exclusively by women shall be set up in every Assembly constituency. Our officers have identified much more than that. There are 690 Assembly seats but we are setting up 1620 such polling booths,” the CEC said.
Amid the spike in COVID-19 cases, the ECI has informed that senior citizens above 80 years of age, persons with disabilities and COVID-19 patients can vote by postal ballots.
Goa, Punjab, Manipur, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh are slated to go for Assembly elections this year. 403 Assembly seats are slated to go to polls in Uttar Pradesh, 70 seats are up for grabs in Uttarakhand, 117 seats in Punjab, 40 seats in Goa and 60 seats in Manipur.
Out of these 5 poll-bound states, the BJP is in power in 4 states including Goa, Manipur, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh. Leaders from all the political parties are campaigning aggressively for months to register their win in the upcoming polls. (ANI)
The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Saturday announced seven-phase election to Uttar Pradesh assembly from February 10 to March 7.
The counting of votes will take place on March 10 along with other four states for which poll dates were announced. The polling in Uttar Pradesh will be held on February 10, 14, 20, 23, 27 and March 3 and 7 in seven phases.
The poll dates were announced by CEC Sushil Chandra at a press conference in New Delhi.
The polling in Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa will be held on February 14 and in Manipur in two phases on February 27 and March 6.
In 2017 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had won 312 out of 403 seats.
The Samajwadi Party and the Congress had sealed an alliance with the former contesting on 298 seats and the latter on the remaining 105 seats. The SP could manage to win only 47 seats and Congress won seven seats. Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) had won 19 seats. (ANI)
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday announced that 100 new Sainik schools will be set up in the country to provide an opportunity for girls to join the armed forces and contribute to national security.
While chairing a webinar on Sainik Schools, Singh said, “The setting up of 100 new Sainik schools will provide an opportunity to girls to join the Armed Forces and contribute to national security.”
He said that the Government believes in increasing the role of women in the Armed Forces and a series of steps have been taken in that direction, including clearing the way for admission of girls in Sainik Schools and providing Permanent Commission to women officers.
He exuded confidence the decision to establish new Sainik schools will encourage girls to realise their dreams of serving the country.
The Defence Minister described the announcement of the expansion of Sainik Schools as one of the many important decisions taken by the government in the last six-seven years to improve the quality of basic education of children and ensure the holistic development of the country.
He hoped that the amalgamation of Raksha and Shikshain Sainik schools will play an important role in nation-building in the times to come.
“While ‘Sainik’ signifies unity, discipline and devotion, ‘School’ is the centre of education, therefore, Sainik schools are playing a pivotal role in making children capable citizens,” he said.
He further said that the Government is focussing on providing quality education to the youth of the country as it lays a solid foundation for the all-around development of society.
“Quality education is the fourth of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations. There are several other goals under ‘quality education’. It has been our strong political commitment to achieve these goals. Several schemes like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan are being run. Setting up of 100 new Sainik Schools is another important step in that direction,” he added.
He lauded the Sainik School Society for implementing the ideals of visionaries such as Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi, Dr BR Ambedkar and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan who had emphasised the physical, mental, moral and spiritual development of children along with academic education.
He appreciated the fact that Sainik schools have contributed to the recruitment of more than 7,000 officers in the Armed Forces so far and have given the country officers like former Chiefs of the Army Staff General Deepak Kapoor (Retd) and General Dalbir Singh Suhag (Retd), besides Nagaland Chief Minister Shri Neiphiu Rio; former RBI Governor D Subbarao and Film Director Rakesh Roshan.
Singh termed education as a key sector which plays a part in the development of all other areas, exhorting the private sector to join hands with the Government to achieve ‘Aatmanirbharta’ in the field and ensure holistic development of children.
“Today, our country is moving fast in the path of self-reliance in every field. It is touching newer heights in fields like defence, health, communication, industry and transport due to the synergy between public and private sectors. There is a need for a revolution in the education sector and the holistic development of children. This is only possible if there is a strong collaboration of defence, education and the private sector. This webinar is a foundation stone of this partnership,” he said, urging the private sector to join the Government’s initiative of expansion of Sainik schools.
He further suggested Department of Defence and Sainik School Society devise a mechanism for ranking all Sainik schools on the basis of their performance and audit.
“Along with the curriculum, children should be exposed to patriotism and loyalty towards the Nation as it will help in building their character and benefit the country,” he added.
The webinar was organised to have stakeholder consultations to evolve a sound Qualifying Requirement (QR), Affiliation bye-laws, Memorandum of Association (MoA) and Additional Curriculum to ensure smooth implementation of the initiative.
Chief of the Army Staff General MM Naravane, Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhari, Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral R Hari Kumar and Secretary Department of School Education and Literacy Smt Anita Karwal were among those who attended the seminar virtually. (ANI)
Voting for Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa assembly elections will be held in a single phase on February 14, the Election Commission said on Saturday.
Addressing a press conference here today, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sushil Chandra said, “Voting for Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa assembly elections will be held in a single phase on February 14.”
The Election results for all poll bound states namely Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh will be declared on March 10.
“Uttar Pradesh to go to poll in seven phases from February 10 to March 7. Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa to vote on February 14 and Manipur to vote on February 27 and March 3. Counting of votes on March 10,” said Chandra.
A total of 18.34 crore electors including service voters will take part in the upcoming Assembly elections in Goa, Punjab, Manipur, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh, the Election Commission of India (ECI) informed on Saturday.
Chandra further said, “A total of 18.34 crore electors including service voters will take part in this election out of which 8.55 crore are women electors.”
“24.9 lakh first-time electors are registered in the five poll-bound states,” Chandra said.
“ECI has mandated that at least one polling station managed exclusively by women shall be set up in every Assembly constituency. Our officers have identified much more than that. There are 690 Assembly seats but we are setting up 1620 such polling booths,” said the CEC.
Amid the spike in COVID-19 cases, the Election Commission of India (ECI) informed that senior citizens above 80 years of age, persons with disabilities and COVID-19 patients can vote by postal ballots.
Goa, Punjab, Manipur, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh are slated to go for Assembly elections this year. 403 Assembly seats are slated to go to polls in Uttar Pradesh, 70 seats are up for grabs in Uttarakhand, 117 seats in Punjab, 40 seats in Goa and 60 seats in Manipur.
Out of these 5 poll-bound states, the BJP is in power in 4 states including Goa, Manipur, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh. Leaders from all the political parties are campaigning aggressively for months to register their win in the upcoming polls. (ANI)
Google the word ‘branding’ in India and you learn of commercial marketing of various products – till you find, somewhere down the line, that this term also refers to deliberate scalding of an ailing person, mostly an under-ten minor. Meant to be a cure, it only makes for greater pain and longer treatment than the original ailment.
Unbelievable, but true, in this modern age, parents, often untouched by modern medicine, or scared and dissuaded from it by ‘branders’, use this mediaeval custom and practice as a vaccine at child birth, in many poor countries across Asia and Africa.
It is between the ‘brander’ and the hapless ‘branded’. The authorities take little notice. The clinics and hospitals are content with treating them as burn cases without touching branding as the cause. And the politicians do not want to prevent an age-old practice that could disturb their potential voter.
A red-hot iron rod is the means for ‘cure’, though not the only one. Heated nails, wires and incense sticks are also used. An iron ring or even a burnt rope is used. Rod is pressed on the chest of the child for pneumonia, on the left side of abdomen for malaria and on the right side if it jaundice. For brain fever, it is pressed right on the forehead. The list is long.
For the uninitiated city-bred, branding would be unknown or be confined to stories. It is a traditional practice whereby third degree burns are inflicted on the skin with a hot iron rod or metallic object, burning ropes and metal rings, to treat various conditions. In several Asian and African societies where traditional medicine is still widely prevalent, branding is used. These ancient methods are crude and inhuman, causing the treatment to be more unbearable than the original complaint, and carry the risk of complications. Despite advances in medicine, crude and harmful methods of healing like Branding are still prevalent all over, especially among illiterate and poor people.
It can cause acute infection, allergic reactions and sequelae arising from third-degree burns. Indian constitution provides immunity to our children by any ‘Hurt’ under the Juvenile Justice ‘Care and Protection of Children’ Act, says a report in Indian Paediatrics, journal of the Indian Paediatrics Association. It demands “stringent action to prevent these hazardous practises to protect our children.”
The mediaeval custom it seems has its roots in the treatment of domestic animals like cows and buffaloes, which are cured of their septic boils or wounds by wielding of red hot iron rods. But gradually, the practice also started among human beings and especially children. It attained a kind of religious sanctity among the illiterate village folks mainly from the backward communities.
A sliver line has emerged, in a small way, in the rural areas of Kutchh, India’s western-most district in Gujarat. No case of branding has been reported in 2021, thanks to the untiring efforts of a child specialist.
It took him 19 years for Dr Rajesh Maheshwari Jeswani to convince the loving but ignorant parents in village after village of the district’s Vagad region that when a child is branded as a cure to various ailments, it grows with not just burn marks, but also psychological trauma.
Dr Rajesh Maheshwari Jeswani
Although Vagad region extends from southern Rajasthan to northern parts of Saurashtra in Gujarat, this is the story of two Talukas, Rapar and Bhachau. A large populace of Kolis, Rabaris, Bharwad, Dalits and Muslims – mostly farmers and shepherds, but also landless labour – in a remote region that is backwaters of this “Little Rann”, the desert region.
For want of a paediatrician or otherwise, they used to follow this practice that, over a period, has also acquired religious overtones. It was the norm till Dr Jeswani persevered, rendering mostly unwanted advice to parents.
He recalls that while training as a child specialist, he was told by his peers that since the ‘case’ before him is silent’, being too small to express pain and its cause, the doctor should also be its advocate. This meant persuading tradition-embracing parents.
After much opposition and boycott, the effort has borne results. He would know, having traversed the region for long years. His hospital in Gandhidham town of the district would receive 5-6 such cases every month. The number used to be high since other doctors also received such cases.
It was not easy. For the ignorant villagers who would go to the illiterate branders, the situation was precarious as the warning that the patient would die if he is taken to a doctor. In some cases, they would be told not to approach a doctor till the brand marks heal.
The practice was rampant in many pockets of Gujarat in the early 19th century but it was eradicated in most parts as awareness in modern medical science grew. Now people of Vagad in Kutchh have joined in, and with that they have joined the modern world.
When you visit any web site, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Control your personal Cookie Services here.
These cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around the website and use its features. Without these cookies basic services cannot be provided.
Cookie generated by applications based on the PHP language. This is a general purpose identifier used to maintain user session variables. It is normally a random generated number, how it is used can be specific to the site, but a good example is maintaining a logged-in status for a user between pages.
In order to use this website we use the following technically required cookies
wordpress_test_cookie
wordpress_logged_in_
wordpress_sec
These cookies allow the website to remember choices you make (such as your user name, language or the region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personal features. These cookies can also be used to remember changes you have made to text size, fonts and other parts of web pages that you can customize. They may also be used to provide services you have asked for such as watching a video or commenting on a blog. The information these cookies collect may be anonymized and they cannot track your browsing activity on other websites.
Cookie associated with sites using CloudFlare, used to speed up page load times. According to CloudFlare it is used to override any security restrictions based on the IP address the visitor is coming from. It does not contain any user identification information.
Cookie associated with sites using CloudFlare, used to identify trusted web traffic.
__cfruid
These cookies collect information about how visitors use a website, for instance which pages visitors go to most often, and if they get error messages from web pages. These cookies don’t collect information that identifies a visitor. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. It is only used to improve how a website works.
This cookie name is associated with Google Universal Analytics - which is a significant update to Google's more commonly used analytics service. This cookie is used to distinguish unique users by assigning a randomly generated number as a client identifier. It is included in each page request in a site and used to calculate visitor, session and campaign data for the sites analytics reports. By default it is set to expire after 2 years, although this is customisable by website owners.
This cookie name is associated with Google Universal Analytics, according to documentation it is used to throttle the request rate - limiting the collection of data on high traffic sites. It expires after 10 minutes.
This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the website is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages visited in an anonymous form.
These cookies are used by Youtube, Google, Twitter, and Facebook to deliver adverts that are relevant to you and your interests. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement as well as help measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaign.
This cookie is usually associated with the ShareThis social sharing widget placed in a site to enable sharing of content across various social networks. It counts clicks and shares of a page.
