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Time of India
4 days ago
- Time of India
PACS president, manager arrested for embezzlement
Bettiah: The president and manager of a Primary Agricultural Cooperative Society (PACS) in Barwa village of Mainatand block in West Champaran district were arrested by Inarwa police on Thursday in a case of embezzlement in paddy procurement, DM Dharmendra Kumar said. Arrested PACS president Kamlesh Sah and manager Vinay Kumar were sent to jail. An investigation into the matter found that 4,260 quintal paddy was missing from the Barwa PACS warehouse. Dharmendra said that after receiving a complaint of embezzlement, Narkatiaganj subdivisional magistrate Suryakant Gupta inspected the PACS centre on June 16, 2025. "It was found that 10,593 quintal of paddy was purchased, out of which 3,480 quintal was made available to the mill. Remaining 5,526 quintal should have been in the warehouse, but only 1,266 quintal of paddy was found there. After this, the senior cooperative extension officer of Mainatand lodged an FIR against both of them. Since then, both were absconding," the DM said. Stay updated with the latest local news from your city on Times of India (TOI). Check upcoming bank holidays , public holidays , and current gold rates and silver prices in your area. "Get the latest news updates on Times of India, including reviews of the movie Coolie and War 2 ."
India.com
4 days ago
- Politics
- India.com
Noida, Ghaziabad School Holiday: Four-Day Holiday Starts Today; Sparks Debate Over Learning Process
The Uttar Pradesh Basic Education Department has ordered the closure of government primary schools in Noida and Ghaziabad from August 14 to August 17, according to TOI reports. Private schools, however, remain unaffected and are expected to remain open on August 14. The announcement of the holiday has sparked concern among teachers regarding its impact on the learning process. A primary school teacher in Noida pointed out that this four-day break comes soon after schools were closed for a week due to the Kanwar Yatra. "Just a few days back, schools were closed for nearly a week due to the Kanwar Yatra. Now again there is a four-day holiday. This will hamper the teaching-learning process, especially for younger students," said a primary school teacher in Noida, TOI reported. The four-day break includes a restricted holiday for Chehlum on August 14, Independence Day celebrations on August 15, Janmashtami holiday on August 16, and Sunday on August 17. Basic Shiksha Adhikari (BSA) of Noida, Rahul Panwar, clarified that private schools can decide whether to remain open on August 14. 'Aug 14 is a restricted holiday. If any private school wants to remain open, they can,' he said. However, on Aug 15, all schools will reopen briefly for flag hoisting and Independence Day celebrations, said the official. Officials shared details of the Independence Day programme. "Majorly, Independence Day celebrations will take place in higher secondary schools on Thursday and Friday. Saturday is a holiday for Janmashtami," said Dharmendra Kumar, district inspector of schools (DIOS) of Ghaziabad, TOI reported. Kumar also mentioned the other necessary instructions to all schools regarding flag hoisting, cultural events, and safety protocols. On the other hand, another school teacher from Ghaziabad encouraged the announcement of a day break in school and said, "It's good that it's a long weekend. It gives everyone time to relax and recharge. Teachers, too, need some rest in the middle of a hectic term."
Time of India
5 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Noida and Ghaziabad schools to be shut for 4 days from Aug 14
Noida: Govt primary schools in Noida and Ghaziabad will remain closed from Aug 14 to 17, as per instructions from the Uttar Pradesh Basic Education Department. Most private schools, however, are expected to remain open on Aug 14. The announcement of yet another extended break, however, has sparked concern among teachers. "Just a few days back, schools were closed for nearly a week due to the Kanwar Yatra. Now again there is a four-day holiday. This will hamper the teaching-learning process, especially for younger students," said a primary school teacher in Noida. The four-day break includes a restricted holiday for Chehlum on Aug 14, Independence Day celebrations on Aug 15, and Janmashtami holiday on Aug 16, followed by a Sunday on Aug 17. You Can Also Check: Noida AQI | Weather in Noida | Bank Holidays in Noida | Public Holidays in Noida | Gold Rates Today in Noida | Silver Rates Today in Noida While govt schools for classes 1 to 8 will stay shut, private schools have the discretion to operate on Aug 14. "Aug 14 is a restricted holiday. If any private school wants to remain open, they can," clarified Rahul Panwar, basic shiksha adhikari (BSA), Noida. However, on Aug 15, all schools will reopen briefly for flag hoisting and Independence Day celebrations, said the official. Education officials in Ghaziabad also shared details of the Independence Day programme. "Majorly, Independence Day celebrations will take place in higher secondary schools on Thursday and Friday. Saturday is a holiday for Janmashtami," said Dharmendra Kumar, district inspector of schools (DIOS), Ghaziabad. He added that necessary instructions have been issued to all schools regarding flag hoisting, cultural events, and safety protocols. Another school teacher in Ghaziabad welcomed the break and said, "It's good that it's a long weekend. It gives everyone time to relax and recharge. Teachers, too, need some rest in the middle of a hectic term." Stay updated with the latest local news from your city on Times of India (TOI). Check upcoming bank holidays , public holidays , and current gold rates and silver prices in your area.
India Today
6 days ago
- Politics
- India Today
Why the ruckus over electoral rolls in Bihar?
(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated August 18, 2025)It is a sultry August morning in Patna, and the Sadar block office wears the quiet, composed air of a still life portrait. Three officers sit at their desks, a laptop loaded with draft electoral rolls before them, a wall pasted with printed zero visitors. Not a single elector has walked in to check their status or file a complaint. 'We'll wait,' mutters Dharmendra Kumar, one of the officials, resigned to the tedium. Five days later, his station finally sees movement. Two men walk in, saying their names are missing from the draft list. The lethargy bears no hint of the storm brewing in Bihar's polity: the state's electoral rolls have shed 6.56 million names, a staggering 8.3 per cent reduction that has shrunk the electorate from 78.9 million voters in January 2025 to 72.4 million in seven massive pruning emerged from the Election Commission of India's (ECI) special intensive revision (SIR), a month-long exercise that deployed some 84,000 booth-level officers across 90,712 polling stations, backed by 160,000 booth-level agents from 12 political parties, 3,000-odd electoral registration officers (EROs) and thousands of volunteers. The deletions appear to follow an administrative method and logic. Of the 6.56 million names, 2.23 million are classified as deceased, 3.63 million as having permanently migrated or absent/ untraceable, and 700,000 as duplicate entries across multiple locations. Only 120,000 names, a mere 1.8 per cent of the total, are stated to have been deleted for not submitting enumeration forms by the July 25 deadline. These individuals have been conferred the right to apply for reinstatement with proper documentation, potentially making their exclusion temporary. This benign picture is in stark contrast to the Opposition's narrative of mass disenfranchisement, produced by design via a hectic but chaotic bureaucratic quickie. To put this in perspective, the previous electoral roll published in January 2024 had deleted 1.6 million names while simultaneously adding 2.8 million new voters to the rolls. That exercise now appears extremely modest compared to the current purge. The sheer scale of the SIR deletions, four times larger than the previous revision, has turned it into a political flashpoint that threatens to reshape Bihar's electoral landscape just months before the state heads to polls. THE MILLIONS MORE AT RISKThe real impact of the SIR will begin with who may yet be removed. The Election Commission has celebrated the fact of 80 per cent of the 72.4 million voters included in the draft roll submitting their supporting documents alongside their enumeration forms, the verification of which has just begun. But that also leaves out a chunky 20 per cent, approximately 14.5 million voters, for whom the clock is ticking with a September 1 deadline to submit documents that prove their eligibility. Political analyst and Swaraj Abhiyan founder Yogendra Yadav warns that voters who fail to submit documents—or fail the subsequent verification—are also at risk. The fall-off could swell the overall deletions well beyond the current 6.5 controversy over acceptable documentation has emerged as the most contentious aspect of the entire exercise. The Election Commission's list of 11 acceptable documents conspicuously excludes Aadhaar, voter ID (issued by the ECI itself) and ration cards, the three most common forms of identification for Bihar's poor and marginalised populations. Instead, the ECI demands documents such as birth certificates, passports, matriculation certificates, land ownership papers, or pre-1987 government employment IDs, documents that are out of reach for many in Bihar, particularly those from rural that millions of voters lack conventional documentation, authorities have created 'vanshawalis' or family trees linking current voters to ancestors listed in the 2003 rolls. These genealogical records, authenticated by panchayats, have enabled approximately 49.6 million voters to establish their eligibility without producing birth certificates or educational documents. This creative solution illustrates the adaptability/absurdity of the entire exercise—the ECI simultaneously insists on documentary proof of citizenship while accepting village-level authentication of family Supreme Court, hearing petitions challenging the SIR, has advised the ECI to accept Aadhaar and voter ID cards as valid proof of eligibility. Yet, the commission has steadfastly refused to expand its documentary requirements, maintaining that these commonly held documents do not adequately establish citizenship. The apex court has warned that it will intervene if there is evidence of 'mass exclusion', but has not specified what threshold would trigger such intervention. This ambiguity has left millions of voters in a limbo, uncertain whether their names will survive the final cut when the electoral rolls are published on September THE SOUND OF SILENCEDespite the scale of potential disenfranchisement, the ECI's claim-and-objection process has been met with an almost eerie silence. As of August 7, 5,015 individual complaints had been filed. More remarkably, not a single claim or objection had been submitted by any of the 160,000 booth-level agents deployed by political parties. The Commission has repeatedly emphasised that no name can be deleted from the draft roll without an ERO or assistant ERO conducting an inquiry and providing the affected voter a fair hearing. Orders for deletion must be written down and reasoned out, with provisions for appeal first to the district magistrate and then to the chief electoral officer. But there are huge doubts over whether this elaborate process can handle the potential challenges to millions of names in the limited time-frame, for elections are due in Opposition press conferences, led by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress in Bihar, thunder with accusations of 'votebandi' and deliberate disenfranchisement aimed at helping the ruling NDA, particularly the BJP. They want the ECI to provide comprehensive data on deleted voters so that patterns on how the exercise unfolded across constituencies can be Opposition's predicament was apparent in a moment of political theatre when RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav brandished a voter ID card bearing the number RAB2916120, claiming his name had been struck off the rolls. The ECI's swift rebuttal, confirming that his legitimate card (RAB0456228) remained intact and that the displayed number had never been issued, not only embarrassed the leader of the Opposition in Bihar but also exposed the challenge that political parties are facing: without verified cases of wrongful deletion, their protests lack the ammunition needed to mount legal challenges or mobilise public FALSE ALARM: RJD's Tejashwi Yadav's presser in Patna after EC released the draft voters' list, Aug. 2. (Photo: ANI) MYTHS AND PARALLELSA persistent narrative surrounding the SIR is that it targets Muslim voters, particularly in the frontier districts where communal rhetoric often paints them as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. The data presents a more nuanced picture. Among the 10 districts with the highest deletion rates, five—Purnia, Kishanganj, Madhubani, Bhagalpur and Sitamarhi—do have significant Muslim populations (see Is SIR an Anti-Muslim Exercise?). Yet, this correlation is muddied on closer Bihar's only Muslim-majority district (68 per cent of the population), did indeed see deletions of 11.8 per cent, higher than the state average of 8.3 per cent. But Katihar and Araria, with Muslim populations of 44 and 43 per cent, respectively, saw deletion rates of 8.27 per cent and 7.59 per cent, below the state average. Tellingly, Gopalganj district, which recorded the highest deletion rate at 15 per cent, does not have a particularly high Muslim population. Anyway, these variations suggest that while the overlap between Muslim concentration areas and high deletions warrants investigation, other factors like migration, documentation unavailability, or even administrative efficiency may be equally significant. 'No direct correlation can be ascribed as yet,' says poll analyst Amitabh pattern shows how difficult it is to make out a narrative of targeted disenfranchisement. In 112 of Bihar's 243 assembly seats, voter deletions exceed the victory margins from the 2020 election, a statistic that suggests nearly half the state's constituencies could see their electoral outcomes altered by the revision exercise. But a deep dive shows that the NDA partners—BJP with 27 seats, Janata Dal (United) or JD(U) with 29 seats, and the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) with 1 seat—collectively hold 57 of these 112 vulnerable constituencies. This could mean the NDA's own MLAs are as exposed to the electoral impact of the SIR as their opponents. 'Without a caste-wise breakdown, particularly on whether deletions are high among Muslims and Yadavs, it's impossible to determine if the BJP stands to gain from the exercise,' says Tiwari. GIRL, DELETEDWhat the data conclusively reveals is a shocking gender disparity—women constitute 55 per cent of all deleted voters despite making up only 47.7 per cent of Bihar's electorate. In fact, in 43 of Bihar's 243 assembly constituencies, women account for 60 per cent or more of the deletions. The most extreme case is Rajpur, a constituency reserved for Scheduled Castes in Kaimur district, where 69 per cent of the deleted voters are women. The figure for Kaimur—a hilly, forested outback—as a whole is 64 per cent, followed closely by Buxar at 63 per gendered pattern of exclusion reflects the deeper structural inequalities in Bihar society. Women, particularly those in rural areas, are less likely to possess the documentary proof required by the SIR. They also migrate after marriage, often lack education certificates due to lower literacy rates, and have limited interaction with government institutions that issue official documents. The irony is particularly bitter given that women voters are credited with playing a decisive role in recent Bihar elections, forming a crucial vote bank for both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Their systematic exclusion threatens not just individual voting rights but the democratic legitimacy of any mandate emerging from the upcoming election. GRAVE CONCERNSPerhaps no aspect of the SIR has generated more controversy than the 2.23 million voters classified as deceased. Opposition parties have time and again demanded transparency about the methodology used, questioning how the ECI verified such a massive number of deaths in a state where, by the government's own admission, death registrations remain woefully opacity has fuelled speculation about arbitrary deletions, with Opposition leaders suggesting that many 'dead' voters might be very much alive but temporarily absent during the SIR drive. The fear is particularly acute among families of migrant workers, estimated at over 7.4 million, who often spend months or years in other states and may have been marked deceased simply because they weren't present when officials the ground, the SIR has also been a tragicomedy of errors at times. Booth-level officers racing against impossible deadlines have recorded fathers' names as simply 'Father', wives with the surname 'Husband'. On the flip side, in Dhanarua block of Patna district, a government clerk embroiled in a marital discord case had submitted a falsified death certificate to have his wife declared deceased and struck off the rolls. Only the diligence of an alert BLO exposed this 'electoral murder'.The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) has now moved the Supreme Court, seeking directions to the ECI to publish names and specific reasons such as death, relocation or duplication for those excluded from the draft roll. While the July 20 lists shared with booth-level agents of political parties included names, EPIC ID numbers and reasons for deletion, the August 1 lists omitted the last in a state where power cuts can spark spontaneous protests, the deletion of 6.5 million names from voter rolls has been met with an uncanny stillness. Even in districts like Gopalganj, where one in six voters has been struck off the rolls, the streets remain calm. Many analysts attribute this to Bihar's voter apathy, characterised by chronically low voter turnout, barely 60 per cent in recent elections. Which, in turn, means 40 per cent of the voters have limited investment in their electoral rights. The ECI's month-long window for filing objections has also provided a safety valve, allowing voters to believe they can reclaim their names through proper procedures. While the silence at the draft roll offices may feel deceptively serene now, democracy itself is perhaps undergoing a decisive churn in to India Today Magazine- EndsMust Watch
New Indian Express
19-07-2025
- New Indian Express
CBI arrests BSF accounts officer in Delhi for accepting Rs 40,000 bribe to clear arrears
NEW DELHI: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Saturday said it has apprehended an Assistant Accounts Officer (AAO) of the Pay and Accounts Office (PAO) within the Border Security Force (BSF) in Delhi, while accepting a bribe of Rs. 40,000 from the complainant. Official sources in the CBI said that the agency registered the case on Friday against the accused AAO, PAO Office, BSF, Delhi and other unknown persons on the basis of a complaint filed by the complainant for clearing the pay & arrears bills. The accused, Dharmendra Kumar was caught red-handed during a trap laid by the CBI following the complaint from Mahesh Singh, a pharmacist with the 16 Battalion of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) stationed in Dwarka, the officials said. In his complaint, Mahesh Singh alleged that Kumar Verma demanded a 15–20 percent cut – amounting to nearly Rs 2 lakh - from the arrears due to him, in exchange for clearing the bills, the officials said, adding that the bribe demand was allegedly made via social media on July 16, when Singh reached out to inquire about the delay in processing his arrears.
