Big B lends his voice
The Sammakka Sarakka jatara from February 5 to 8 will have a touch of silver screen this year.
The Shahenshah of Bollywood Amitabh Bachchan who is also an occasional playback singer has given his voice to a video released by the government on the jatara in Hindi and English. He sang a song on the high points of the jatara which has attracted viewers.
The video was described as an attempt to mount pressure on the Centre to concede national status to the jatara by publicising it at national and international levels.
Poll staff pay for poor organisation
The polling staff for elections in Tandur municipality faced a never before experience on poll day.
As authorities did not supply them printed material to be displayed on walls outside the polling stations, they got down to preparing charts with handwritten names of candidates and images of symbols allotted to them. Of course, the paper was supplied to them.
It was quite a laborious piece of work for the staff as the names had to be written in big letters and symbols drawn artistically to more or less appear as a replacement for printed material. On a separate sheet, they had to do give other descriptions relating to polling stations, including strength of voters and male-female break-up. All this in addition to their regular election work which in itself was more cumbersome till the end of poll hours.
Many early achievers in Class X
About 1,100 under age class ten students will take the Secondary School Certificate exams this year with due permissions.
As per norms, students were supposed to complete the age of 14 years as on August 31 for exams in next March. If they fell short by one-and-a-half years, children of government schools must take permission of their headmasters while those in private schools must get it from District Education Officers. In both government and private schools, children were supposed to take the permission of Director of Government Exams if they fell short by two years and more. Such permissions this year were given for 1,100.
Going ahead, the brighter lot will stop in their tracks as there is nothing as permissions for under age in admissions to MBBS even if they get good ranks in National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test. The students must have completed 17 years on December 31 of any given year for admissions to MBBS in next year.
Media draws attention
Media is at the receiving end of politicians very often these days, irrespective of the reason. The declaration of results in municipal elections was one more occasion for them to train guns on media. Reacting to the results, Congress MP A. Revanth Reddy said media in Telangana has become mostly biased against the Opposition parties and it was evident once again when a section of it put several municipalities in the TRS kitty even before the completion of counting of votes. On the other hand, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao minced no words to attack the social media and even went to the extent of terming it “anti-social media” stating that it was resorting to character assassination and personal attacks. He warned that the State government would not tolerate such media attacks on individuals and it would contemplate action against such vendetta.
(N. Rahul and B. Chandrashekhar)
