NEWS

Indian Railways’ connectivity boost in Northeast: The first Janshatabdi express train connecting the northeastern states of Manipur and Tripura via Assam was flagged off recently. With the introduction of the Jiribam – Agartala – Jiribam Express, the long-standing demand of the people of Manipur, Tripura and South Assam was fulfilled. According to the Railway Ministry, starting from 10 January 2022, the tri-weekly service of Train Number 12097/12098 Agartala – Jiribam – Agartala Janshatabdi Express will be operated on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The Janshatabdi Express will leave from Agartala railway station at 06:00 AM and reach Jiribam railway station at 12:00 PM. The train, in the return direction, will leave from Jiribam railway station at 04:00 PM and reach Agartala railway station at 10:00 PM. Following are some of the benefits of the train service:

GMR Infrastructure Ltd (GIL), which operates Delhi and Hyderabad airports and is constructing several others, on Tuesday became India’s first pure play airports listed company. The infra major has de-merged its other non-airport verticals like power from GMR Infra as GMR Power and Urban Infrastructure Limited (GPUIL).

“The existing shareholders of GMR Infra will receive one equity share of Rs 5 (face value) each of GMR Power and Urban Infra Limited for holding 10 equity shares of Re 1(face value) share of each GMR Infra Ltd. The demerger happened through a vertical split and resulted in listed companies – GIL and GPUIL and mirror shareholding of the both. All the existing shareholders of GIL will become shareholders of GPUIL in the same proportion. GPUIL shares will start trading independently on the stock exchange in February 2022 after approvals from SEBI/stock exchanges,” GMR Grup said in a statement.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Tuesday hinted that the state government will take stringent measures to curb Covid-19 spread if the situation in the state deteriorates.

The chief minister, however, added that Covid-19 cases in the state are rising, but the overall situation in the state is under control and the state government has no plan to impose lockdown-like restrictions as of now.

"I think Assam will see 12,000-14,000 Covid-19 cases per day in this wave, which will be double compared to last year's highest number of cases. We hope that the third wave will be over in the next 45 days. As of now, the Covid-19 situation in the state is under control, but we don't know what will happen tomorrow. Earlier, the Covid-19 situation in Delhi was similar to Assam, but when detection of Covid-19 cases has been increasing, they are imposing stringent restrictions. We are not going at that stage, because our hospitalisation rate is still low. When the occupancy of hospital beds will increase and other problems arise, we will have to take stringent measures," CM Himanta Biswa Sarma said.

Directors for Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in Delhi, Madras, Mandi and Indore were appointed on Monday, according to officials.

While IIT-Bombay professor Rangan Banerjee has been appointed as the next director of IIT-Delhi, IIT-Madras professor V Kamakoti has been appointed as director of IIT-Madras, they said.

Kamakoti designed India’s first indigenously-developed microprocessor ‘SHAKTI’.

Laxmidhar Behera, electrical engineering professor at IIT-Kanpur, has been appointed the director of IIT-Mandi and Suhas Joshi, mechanical engineering professor and the dean of alumni and corporate relations at IIT-Bombay, has been appointed the next director of IIT-Indore, the officials said.