Biometric fingerprints will be a must for all those who want to go Britain in future. According to the strategy, released by UK Boarder Agency recently, all visa applicants must now give electronic fingerprints. This will be applicable for online applicants too.

Apart from it, citizens of countries like South Africa, Venezuela and some other countries will have to apply for visa under the new system. However, holders of biometric passports have been exempted in this concern. “These details are checked against police as well as immigration databases, allowing us to stop those who have previously had an adverse contact with the UK Border Agency or the police, including those who have subsequently changed their biographic identity”, the new policy says.

IGNOU has told its management students to complete their programme within eight years. Failing to complete the course management students will have to get admission in the respective courses afresh.
According to Ravi Mohan, Chief PRO, IGNOU, it is difficult to maintain records of huge number of students for the university as over 3.8 lakh students have been studying different management courses for over ten or eight years.
“There was no upper limit to complete management courses till now. This limit has been implemented recently. All students exceeding the limit must complete their course by this year”, Ravi Mohan told fachcha.com.
There are old 3.81 lakh students of Management programmes of IGNOU and MBA(B&F) have been informed to successfully complete all the requirements for the award of Degrees/ Diploma by December 2010 term-end examination. If they fail, they will have to seek fresh admission to complete the left-over courses, he adds.
IGNOU conducts several management courses at undergraduate and post graduate level. Other courses have upper limit to complete the course.

Delhi wants three additional Special Economic Zones (SEZs) for better industrial activities and rapid growth for employment. Though it is not clear that these SEZs are related which sectors but the city government has forwarded requests to the centre in this regard.

“We have applied for three additional SEZs for Delhi apart from the existing or approved SEZs. The applications are with the Centre and their status is yet to be known as these applications are being processed”, Chetan B. Sanghi, Commissioner-cum-Secretary, Industries, Delhi told fachcha.com.

There are three SEZs in Delhi. Two out of these three belong to Delhi government while third SEZs has been developed by Delhi Metro Rail Corporation at Shashtri Park. It is important to note that two approved SEZs are related to IT and ITES or knowledge based industries while third SEZ is based on jems and jewellery industry. According to Sanghi the approved SEZs will create over one lakh direct and indirect jobs.

Though the industry department is tightlipped on the nature of the additional SEZs but it says that the additional SEZs will create additional 50000 direct jobs in the capital. The new SEZs will be based on high technology and knowledge based industry as the new industrial policy of Delhi does not support labour intensive, says an official of industry Department.

According to new Industrial Policy Delhi will be a hub of clean, high-technology and skilled economic activities by 2021 following the principles of infrastructure development, decongestion, promoting ‘walk to work’, simplifying business, industry consultation in decision making and sustainability.

Four year for Nursery is ok but the Delhi Government wants to implement the idea throughout the country. Over 80 percent students of CBSE belong to Delhi only as more than 900 schools in the city are either affiliated with Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) or follow CBSE curriculum. “We welcome the move of the Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal to raise minimum age for admission in nursery classes as it will be beneficial for both children and parents. But this should be uniformly implemented across all the states of the country”, Delhi’s Education Minister, Arvinder Singh told fachcha.com.

Reacting upon the recent proposal to raise minimum age for admission in schools, mooted by Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, the Education Minister said that nothing could better for parents and children if all the states implement the proposal but if the proposal is limited for Delhi it is not good for Delhi’s students. “We will not let our students to lag behind for one year in terms of 10+2 or graduation in comparison with students of other students”, Arvinder Singh Said adding that in most of the cases Delhi normally used to follows Centre’s norms in this regard.

It is notable that except Central schools and some other schools, affiliated with CBSE, follow centre’s regulations in this regard but schools in other states (excepts Delhi) follow the regulations of state boards. It is normally discretion of State government in this regard as education comes under the concurrent list of the constitution. And, 85% students come from states’ schools only.

“HRD Minister should also try to increase the age bar for Civil Services, IITs, IIMs and other competitive examinations too”, Arvinder Singh told fachcha.com.

“Imagine the situation if a student of other state completes graduation in just 20 years and our students complete it in 21 year it will affect our student’s competitive edge as well as their career promotion and so many things”, he adds.

The Kalinga Chair for the year 2009 has been awarded to Prof. Yashpal, Chancellor, JNU and former UGC Chairman New Delhi and Prof. Trinh X. Thuan, Department of Astronomy, USA. The awards have been given for their extra-ordinary contributions in communicating science to people, who have jointly won the International UNESCO Kalinga Prize for Science Popularization for the year 2009.
National Council for Science & Technology Communication (NCSTC), Dept. of Science and Technology (DST) announced its annual national awards for Science communication for the year 2009 to recognize the outstanding work in the field of Science communication. The awardees in different categories include Dinesh C. Sharma, DD Ozha, Manas Pratim Das, Takhellambam Robindro Singh and N. Ramadurai. The awards have been given away by Science and Technology Minister Prithvi Raj Chavan on Friday in a function.