DU starts admission drill today

NEW DELHI: Delhi University will start giving out its prospectus for admission to undergraduate courses from Saturday. The first Open Day as well as the registration of SC/ST and differently abled candidates will also begin on the same day. 

From this year, there will be no pre-admission forms for applying to colleges for the general and OBC categories except for the courses which require an entrance exam. 

The university will admit at least 54,000 students across 60 colleges. Aspirants can meet the faculty and current students at the 12 Open Day sessions to be held from Saturday to June 8. The first Open Day will be organized at the Conference Centre on North Campus where DU officials and students will give presentations on courses and colleges, eligibility criteria and admission process. They will also take questions and offer counseling. 

The university has also started e-open days and web chat to guide students during the admission process. Besides the helpdesk set up at the office of the dean of students' welfare (DSW), the university has also created an email ID - - for students to mail their grievances and suggestions to the vice-chancellor directly. DU will also launch a Facebook page on Saturday. 

The registration for differently abled students will be held at the DSW office near the vice-chancellor's office on North Campus. DU's equal opportunity cell (EOC) will provide a free pick-up service to aspirants with special needs from Vishvavidyalya Metro station to the DSW office. The buses will ply every half an hour from 9am. For SC/ST registration, aspirants need to go to the faculty of arts. 

Saturday is also the last day for the sale and submission of forms for the Combined Admission Test for English (CATE). This year, 21 colleges will admit students to BA (honours) English through CATE.

Mumbai University may introduce robotics in engineering courses

The University of Mumbai (MU) is working on an ambitious project to introduce robotics as a subject in engineering courses. The project, called ‘E Yantra’, is being developed with the help of experts from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay.

The university administration has called a meeting of principals from top 15 engineering colleges and faculty from the computer science department on May 13 to discuss how the project can be implemented in colleges. Experts from IIT will also be present.

The MU project aims to create a robotic revolution in the educational domain by conducting workshops, hosting competitions, deploying homegrown low-cost educational robotic platform hardware at colleges with the aim of creating quality content for teaching robotics. The idea of the project is to reach the faculty at engineering colleges through a series of workshops.

Dr Rajpal Hande, director, Board of College and University Development at MU, said: “In modern times, there is a need to use robotic tools in the educational field. Most of the developed countries have already started using robotics in teaching. Through the E Yantra project, we will also lay down a plan to use robotics for teaching in our engineering colleges. The intention is to create a hub-and-spoke model for the delivery pf content and expertise to college. We will first train faculty of the hub institutes in the use of our robots and our content.” The robotics course will be for students who have graduated in mechanical, electrical, instrumentation or computer engineering with an interest in robotics and artificial intelligence.

According to sources, candidates with a masters degree in robotics will be able to work in space research organisations and in companies that manufacture microchips. Job opportunities also exist in IIT for conducting extensive research in artificial intelligence.

Delhi University have set out to make life easy for freshers

Ready for a new start!!

NEW DELHI: Six old and existing students of Delhi University have set out to make life easy for freshers through 'jugaad'. This group of "practising jugaadus" can get you anything from an accommodation and academic information to a heavy discount in an eatery and even a maid's number. They address issues and solve queries through their web portal called dujugaad.in and a special 'Jugaad Club' that offers amazing discounts to students at a variety of places, be it the roadside omellete-wala or a high-end salon in Kamala Nagar. 

They are now gearing up for the admission season when the newcomers look for a good college, while the parents of many of them scout around for a suitable accommodation. "I was once sitting with friends. They were discussing how students who were new to Delhi had to face many problems. They had no clue about the right place to stay, flat rents, popular haunts, etc. That's when I thought there should be a facility that can tell students about everything that made sense on the campus," said Kumar Ashish from Bokaro Steel City who studies mathematics in Kirori Mal College. 

The portal was Ashish's brainchild. But it took shape only in June last year when five others - who were friends and friends of friends - came together with ideas and enthusiasm. So while Ashish and old student Sanjeev Kumar are responsible for the technical developments, Miranda House alumnus Smiti Rastogi and Sidhant Ghai, who graduated from Rajdhani College last year, take care of the marketing of 'jugaad'. Hindu College student Surabhi Sehgal and Gautam Bisht, English literature student from Hans Raj College, provide the content. "We named our initiative 'jugaad' because it means finding a way out. We often saw that new students were exploited and charged more many a time. We want to stop that by getting them discounts. We tell the PG owners, shopkeepers and eatery-owners to promise us discounts and we will get them a strong customer-base," said Surabhi. 

No wonder, a student taking up an accommodation through their portal can get up to Rs 500 off every month in the rent. Members of their club can also avail themselves of a discount of 10% to as much as 50%. "Seats in the college hostels are not enough and the PGs outside have hiked the rent. But we have enlisted around 22 PGs on the portal which should be suitable for the freshers. We visited each one of them to check their quality and standard. We chatted with the students already living there and also talked to the owners about discounts. Many of them agreed," said Surabhi. She added that for the club, students just have to pay Rs 200 for an entire year and they get a photo-identity card in return. "Students can just flash this card to get discounts. As for us, we only recover the operational costs." 

Many volunteers also work with the group to make networks, develop contacts and feel the pulse of the campus in return for a free lunch or dinner and even a movie at times. "They are all friends who want to be a part of this idea. We need their help because we need to gather details as minute as which bank branch in which college has an ATM. They also get us numbers of the maids and cooks," said Ashish. The group spends at least three to four hours every day fine-tuning and updating portal. A more user-friendly version of the portal with added features was launched last week. These 'jugaadus' now also plan to start the facility of auctioning goods. Surabhi said, "Many students who graduate and leave find it difficult to dispose of their furniture or TV and fridge. We will find a jugaad for them too." 

After Delhi University, online admissions in Mumbai University

Scorching heat, running from one counter to other, serpentine queues to submit applications, loss of documents, bouncing cheques are only some of the problems students face during admission time.

However, students can now heave a sigh of relief, with the Mumbai University in collaboration with the Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited planning to conduct online admissions. The project, which is still in its preliminary stage, shall be first applied to the Institute of Distance Learning Department of the university for the academic year 2011- 2012.

A panel of authorities from the Mumbai University visited the MKCL officials in Pune last week to discuss the project and its application. Explaining the design of the project Harichandran, Director of IDOL said, " Two months back we received a proposal from the MKCL regarding online admission procedures on which a meeting was held between university officials and officials from MKCL. Authorities of MKCL gave us a detailed presentation on the functioning of the online admission procedure. We shall now submit a detailed report to the advisory committee in two weeks after which it will be placed before the management council for a final approval." He further stated that, " Online admission is applicable in a place where there are numerous students studying different subjects.

The introduction of online admission will help in speedy administration procedures thereby saving maximum time." Approximately 80,000 students' currently study through the medium of distance education. Since, manual admission procedures are lax and time consuming; the introduction of online admission has surely acted as a ray of hope for students. Currently, officials are planning on partially going online and partially seeking documents through post.

A separate office shall be framed within IDOL. After the form passes through each step students shall receive messages as well as emails regarding the progress of their form. Withholding of admission because of documentation shall also be reported to students.

DU admission schedule for 2011-12 announced

NEW DELHI: The admission process of the undergraduate courses for 2011-12 at Delhi University (DU) will start from June 15 with the notification of the first cut-off list. The admission schedule for the academic session 2011-12 has been approved by the advisory committee for admission on Thursday. The admission window for general candidate will be of 39 days with the last date for admission and payment of fees being July 23, excluding the admission with condonation by the vice chancellor. 

What will be unique to the admission process this year is that there will be no pre-admission registration of any kind, barring for those courses whose admissions will be based on entrance tests and interviews. Moreover, the registration for admission in sports and extra curricular activities (ECA) categories will commence only after the declaration of the second cut-off lists. Moreover, the university is yet to decide whether to continue with the centralized admission mode introduced last year for the sports quota. 

Unlike in the past, DU will announce five cut-off lists this year starting with the first on June 15 followed by June 21, June 27, July 2 and July 8 respectively. Also the aspirants will get four days for admission and payment of fees between two cut-off lists. 

As per the admission policy of 2011-12, out of the total number of 54,000 seats, reservation of seats will be 27% for OBC candidates, 15% for SC candidates, 7.5% for ST candidates and the remaining for general category. Colleges will simultaneously bring out a separate cut-off for the OBC category and the differential merit between the general category and OBC cut-offs shall not be more than 10%. Colleges have to declare the vacant OBC seats by July 15 and these will be filled up by other eligible candidates by July 23.

AI says 'no work, no pay' principle as strike continues

Air India on Tuesday announced 'no work, no pay' principle will be implemented to counter the pilots' strike that continued to disrupt its flights for the seventh day, as the Delhi High Court rapped both sides for their adamant attitude and failure to resolve the crisis.

"We are implementing 'no work, no pay' against all those who are not reporting for duty. Their April salary will not be processed if they do not join work", an Air India officer said.

The officer, who requested anonymity, said the company was making efforts to garner resources to pay the salaries to the rest of the employees. Bank loans were also being organised, he said.

The flight operations of the national carrier continued to be disrupted for the seventh day today with the striking pilots refusing to budge saying they would call off the stir as soon as the management assured the Delhi High Court that their demands would be considered within a time-frame.

The court rapped both the airline management and the pilots' union, Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA), for their rigid attitude and appointed an amicus curiae to assist it in resolving the stand off.

"It seems that you are also not interested in getting the strike called off," a division bench headed by Justice B D Ahmed told Lalit Bhasin, the counsel for the Air India management.

The two-judge bench also appointed senior lawyer Siddharth Luthra as amicus curaie "to assist us on the legal issues".

The ailing national carrier is flying only about 35-40 flights each day, as it has blocked domestic bookings for the past five days.

According to official estimates, private carriers were flying about 15,000-16,000 of passengers of AI, which is offering only about 9,000 seats each day. The airline has drastically slashed its domestic services by nearly 90 per cent operating only 40 of its 320 daily flights.

"We will await the High Court's order on the contempt proceedings and abide by it. .... I have already stated that there will be no talks with the pilots till they are on strike," Civil Aviation Minister Vayalar Ravi has said.

He has been regularly briefing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the daily developments relating to the situation arising out of the pilots strike and the high court proceedings.

ICPA leaders have made it clear to the court that they would call off the strike as soon as the management gave an undertaking to consider their demands within a given time- frame.

They have said that the Chief Labour Commissioner, in its closure report on the last round of tripartite talks, had blamed the management for not making any efforts to resolve the issues.

They quoted the CLC''s closure report on the conciliation proceedings as saying that the management had shown "an insincere and superficial attitude towards reaching an amicable solution".

The pilots, who struck work from midnight last Tuesday, have been demanding pay parity with their colleagues of erstwhile Air India, better working conditions and CBI inquiry into alleged withdrawal of flights from profitable routes, aircraft purchase and other issues.

Worst feared as Arunachal Pradesh chief minister goes missing after copter crash

ITANAGAR/GUWAHATI: A helicopter carrying Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Dorjee Khandu and four others, including two crew, went missing over the densely forested hills near Tawang on Saturday. Authorities said there was no trace of the aircraft until nightfall.

The Eurocopter B-3, operated by Pawan Hans, was carrying Khandu, his security officer deputy superintendent of police Yeshi Choddak, Yeshi Lamu, the sister of Tawang MLA Tsewang Dhondup, and the two pilots, Captain B S Babbar and Captain K S Malick, from Tawang to Itanagar. There was no report of bad weather and the chopper lost radio contact soon after it took off at 9.56am. It was last sighted about 20 minutes later over Sela Pass and was scheduled to land at Naharlagun helipad at 11.30am.

"The chief minister is still missing and the chopper is truceless," Kiren Rijiju, the CM's adviser, said in Itanagar. He added that earlier in the day, there was information from some villagers in Bhutan that they have seen a chopper landing in Teporche area close to Tawang on the east. But Bhutan denied it.

Neither the government nor IAF rescue teams, which went out in two Cheetah helicopters, confirmed there had been a crash. But many officials feared the worst.

If the chopper has crashed, it would be the second such disaster in Arunachal this month. On April 9, another Pawan Hans helicopter, flying from Guwahati to Itanagar, went down, killing 17 persons. If Khandu (56) doesn't survive, it would make him the second CM in recent times to become a fatality in a chopper crash. On September 2, 2009, then Andhra chief minister Y S Rajashekara Reddy was killed when his helicopter flew into a hillside in blinding rain.

Pawan Hans chairman R K Tyagi held out hope that the helicopter would soon be found. The choppers were fitted with emergency locator transmitters that operate on two frequencies and can be tracked by satellites, he said. These were powered by batteries that lasted for two days.

But aviation sources said flying in the area was extremely dangerous because of sudden weather changes that affected visibility and made it difficult for pilots to see the hills. Also, Pawan Hans helicopters were under a safety review after the recent crash near Tawang.

Meanwhile, authorities have sought ISRO's help to locate the missing helicopter. There was day-long confusion after Khandu's helicopter went missing. About three hours after the helicopter was reported missing, authorities said contact had been established with the Bhutanese government and Khandu was safe. But within hours, Bhutan denied sending any report of a landing and the search and rescue teams of the air force were pressed into action. No results were available till nightfall when the search was called off.

DIG Robin Hibu told TOI that a new search, involving the police, air force and army, will be launched at daybreak on Sunday.

"The state government is in constant touch with the Centre and the government of Bhutan," said Jarbam Gamlin, Arunachal power minister. "We only hope and pray the CM and the team are safe." Congress chief Sonia Gandhi expressed concern over the reported crash and shared the agony with the kin of the missing chief minister.

Bhutan ordered an extensive search across six districts, officials said.

"There is confusion. There is no official and authentic report on the chief minister's whereabouts. I have called up the external affairs secretary and the defence minister twice and requested for pressing IAF choppers into a search and rescue operation," said Arunachal MP Takam Sanjay.

AIEEE paper leaked !!

New Delhi: The All India Engineering Entrance Examination question paper has been leaked, following which the exam was delayed by three hours on Sunday.

The examination which was scheduled for 9:30 am on Sunday was rescheduled to begin at 12 noon on the same day. Sources say that the question paper was being sold in the open market in Lucknow.

The Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force has arrested one person in connection with the paper leak and are looking for further leads in the case.

Vijay Prakash of STF Lucknow said, "We are trying to trace down two people who leaked the paper. We have the paper with us since last night."

Special Director General of Police Brij Lal, "We got the news through sources that some people were selling AIEEE paper in the market for Rs 6 lakh. We recovered the paper. We got some information that people from Kanpur and Bihar leaked the paper."

Meanwhile, the Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC) examination which was rescheduled for 2:30 pm was held at 4:30 pm on Sunday. For the students appearing in both AIEEE and AFMC examinations, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) said, "Students who are appearing in AFMC Examination and also appearing in AIEEE can appear in AFMC as per schedule. For such students the CBSE will conduct another examination on May 8 at 9:30 am at the same centre with same Roll No."