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After the hearing in the hijab ban case came to an end for the day on Wednesday, Karnataka High Court Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi said if an educational institution has prescribed a uniform, then students must follow it. “We are making it very clear, whether it is a degree college or undergraduate, where uniform is prescribed, it has to be followed,” said Chief Justice Awasthi.

The high court was hearing petitions challenging the hijab ban. The hearing will resume on Thursday, February 24. Chief Justice Awasthi said the court’s interim proposal of not allowing any religious garment in educational institutions was only applicable to students, but they must follow a dress code where it had been prescribed.

Just days after installing one of the most powerful supercomputers, Param Pravega, the Centre is gearing up to set up nine more such facilities to boost fast-computing infrastructure in the country. “India is fast evolving as a front-runner in high-power computing with National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) with supercomputing infrastructure already installed in 10 premier institutions like IITs, IISc, IISER-Pune, JNCASR-Bengaluru, various Centres for Development of Advanced Computing, NABI-Mohali, and benefitting researchers from several other institutions too. The final stage installation work is being carried out in five more institutions,” said a statement from the department of science and technology.

As the states have begun to ease Covid restrictions and schools have begun to resume offline classes, it is safe to assume that the country is slowly returning back to normalcy. Given the consistent decline in Coronavirus infections, regular international flights are also likely to resume from March 15, government sources reportedly said on Monday. A decision on resuming scheduled international flights has almost been arrived at by the Civil Aviation Ministry following consultation with the Health Ministry, as per PTI. However, no official announcement has been made by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation so far.

The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) has also granted final approval to Biological E’s Covid-19 vaccine, Corbevax, for children between the age group of 12-18. Corbevax vaccine is India’s first indigenously developed Receptor Binding Domain (RBD) Protein sub-unit vaccine against covid-19. The Health Ministry had earlier stated that additional need for vaccination and inclusion of population for vaccination is being constantly examined by the states and Centre.

Education minister Dharmendra Pradhan has asked the central government funded institutions to adhere to reservation policy in letter and spirit. Intervening de-reservation of unfilled reserved seats in Central Education Institutions (CEIs) including IITs and NITs, the ministry of education (MoE) instructed them to stop transferring reserve category seats to open/ general category with immediate effect on Monday and have sought a compliance report at the earliest. The minister, while asking the institutions to ensure filling up of reserved seats, also asked the institutions to lower the cutoff (if needed) and provide supplementary learning/ an additional year of study.

According to a senior official with the MoE, “It has come to the notice of the ministry that some central educational institutions/ agencies have been carrying out de-reservation unfilled General-EWS and OBC (non-creamy layer) seats by transferring the same to the open/ general category during admissions. We have also received a number of written and verbal intimations of such practices in recent times.”

History and legacy are the signals flashing ahead of Round 4 of the UP elections, as the battle moves to the BJP and Congress citadels of Lucknow and Rae Bareli when nine districts of Awadh, Terai and Bundelkhand vote on Wednesday.

This phase will test the impact of the farmers’ unrest in Lakhimpur Kheri after the October violence and of government schemes and freebies such as free ration distributed among the poor during the pandemic. This cluster was a goldmine for BJP in 2017 as it won 50 of 59 seats. Samajwadi Party got four and Bahujan Samaj Party and Congress two each. BJP’s ally Apna Dal took one seat.

BJP won all four seats in Pilibhit, eight in Lakhimpur Kheri and four in Banda in 2017. It has also won eight of the nine seats in Lucknow, and five of six each in Fatehpur and Unnao. In Sitapur, BJP bagged seven of nine and three of six assembly segments in Rae Bareli — the Lok Sabha seat of Congress president Sonia Gandhi.