34 STUDENTS FROM JMI COACHING ACADEMY CLEAR UPSC MAINS
Thirty-four students of Jamia Millia Islamia’s Residential Coaching Academy (RCA) have cleared the Civil Services (Main) Examination and qualified for Civil Services (interview) Examination 2020, the university announced last week. The RCA will conduct mock interviews and interactive sessions for qualified students with the help of senior/retired bureaucrats and academicians. Apart from imparting quality education, the Residential Academy of JMI also provides students with free accommodation, library access, classroom teaching, follow up tests, mock sessions, etc. Last year, 30 students of JMI RCA made it to Civil services after qualifying for the final interview. 35 students were also selected for public services on the State level including Jammu & Kashmir, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka. They were constituted to various departments including IB, CAPF, RBI and other central services between 2020 and 2021.
AMU FINDS A PLACE IN ARWU RANKING 2020 FOR THE FIRST TIME
Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) 2020, also known as Shanghai Ranking, has been announced and Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has been placed on it for the first time. ARWU ranking 2020 placed the central university located in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, in the 801-900 bracket globally. In the National list, AMU has been placed on 8-9 position, along with Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT). The other Indian institutions to be featured in the list are: Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, University of Calcutta, University of Delhi, IIT Delhi, IIT Kharagpur, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Anna University, Bharathiar University, IIT Kanpur, IIT Roorkee, and Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs). Harvard University, USA, has topped the ARWU Ranking 2020, followed by Stanford University, USA, and University of Cambridge in second and third places. On being featured in ARWU 2020, Professor Tariq Mansoor, Vice-Chancellor, AMU said it is a testament to AMU’s progress on all fronts.
THOUSANDS APPEAL FOR IMMEDIATE BAIL TO 84-YEAR OLD STAN SWAMY
More than 2500 people from across the country and world have issued the attached statement against the recent rejection of bail application of 84-year old Stan Swamy and appealed for his immediate bail. They have also appealed for repeal of UAPA, and a return to the norm where bail is the rule not the exception. The signatories include several noted academics, activists, artists, film-makers, economists, jesuits, journalists, lawyers, retired bureaucrats and writers such as Admiral Laxminarayan Ramdas, Aloka Kujur, Alpa Shah, Anand Patwardhan, Anuradha Talwar, Apoorvanand, Aruna Roy, and many more.
8 UP COPS BOOKED FOR MURDER AFTER MAN DIES IN CUSTODY
A murder case has been registered against eight policemen, including the in-charge of Ambedkar Nagar SWAT team, after a 37-year-old man allegedly died in police custody. The man has been identified as Zia-ud-din and was a native of an Azamgarh village under the Powai police station limits, a report citing police sources said on March 28. Zia-ud-din was allegedly picked up by Ambedkar Nagar SWAT team between Wednesday and Thursday when he had gone to meet his relatives. The family of the deceased has alleged that he died due to police torture. The brother claimed that when he saw Zia-ud-din’s body, there were multiple injuries on it.
NIA RAIDS RESIDENCES OF OVER 25 RIGHTS ACTIVISTS IN TELANGANA, AP
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on March 31 simultaneously raided the houses of at least 25 prominent human rights, Dalit, women and Adivasi activists in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, alleging that they had connections with Maoists. According to the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), the raids began in the afternoon and continued till the early hours of April 1. Personnel seized phones, computers, laptops, books and papers from the activists. The PUCL described the raids as a “witch hunt” against activists, and said they have a sinister design to “get activists to stop all work”.
DELHI POLICE DETAINS ROHINGYA REFUGEE FAMILIES FROM CAMPS
On the morning of 31 March, Delhi Police officials picked up four members of a Rohingya family from Delhi’s Kalindi Kunj refugee camp. A week earlier, the police similarly detained a family of six. Anwar Shah Alam, a 33-year-old community leader from the Kalindi Kunj camp, told me that both families were taken to a detention camp operated by the central government’s Foreign Regional Registration Office, in west Delhi’s Inderpuri area. Alam and other camp residents said the police refuse to reveal why the families are detained. “We went after the police, asked them why they have taken the family,” Minara, another community leader from the camp, who is also Halima’s niece, alleged, “The police said, ‘don’t interfere or you will be next.’”
MHA TELLS ASSAM GOVT TO ISSUE REJECTION SLIPS TO THOSE NOT IN NRC
Nineteen months after the final updated version of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) was published in Assam, the Ministry of Home Affairs has instructed the state government to “immediately” issue rejection slips to applicants who had failed to enter their names in the residents’ list. As per an earlier MHA notification, the time limit granted to an applicant to respond to the rejection slip was increased from 60 days to 120 days. The rejected applicant, on receiving the slips, will have to prove their case at the Foreigners’ Tribunals. The latest MHA instruction to the state government has come in the middle of a three-phase assembly election.
NUNS FORCED OFF TRAIN, RAILWAY POLICE INITIATES PROBE
The Superintendent of Police of Government Railway Police (GRP) on Thursday began a “detailed inquiry” into the incident in which four Christian women, including two nuns, were allegedly verbally harassed and forced off a train in Jhansi by GRP personnel and some fellow passengers, identified as ABVP workers. The ABVP members had allegedly falsely accused the women of engaging in forced religious conversion.
HC EXPRESSES CONCERN OVER STEALING OF AADHAAR DATA
The Madras High Court has asked the Election Commission to urgently look into allegations against the Bharatiya Janata Party that it was illegally using Aadhaar data of voters in Puducherry for making political gains in the Assembly elections in the Union Territory, Live Law reported on March 26. It also asked the poll panel not to shirk responsibility while looking into such serious allegations. “It will not do for the Election Commission to pass the buck in this case and say that the cyber crimes division is conducting an investigation,” the Bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthil Kumar Ramamoorthy observed. The plea alleged that the Puducherry BJP unit has gained unauthorised access to personal data of the residents of Union Territory from the Aadhar-Unique Identification Authority of India database, which the party was now using for its own political mileage.
DELHI COURT QUESTIONS POLICE ON RIOTS WITNESS STATEMENTS
Days after it pulled up police for arresting the complainant in a case of arson and vandalism at Madina Masjid, which was targeted by rioters during the Northeast Delhi riots, a Delhi court on Thursday said police may have recorded statements of witnesses after the last date of hearing. On February 1, the court had ordered police to register an FIR into the attack on the mosque by armed rioters and carry out a complete investigation. On March 17, it had directed DCP (Northeast) to file a status report with regard to investigation carried out and summoned SHO (Karawal Nagar) on March 25 with the case diaries. It had also observed that police arresting the complainant, Haji Hashim Ali, was “an apparent absurdity”.