NEWS

New Delhi: Thirty-two of India's top universities and institutions of higher learning, including IITs, IIMs, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Delhi University, have together filled up barely 16% of the minimum quota for people with disabilities, according to a survey.

Exposing the appalling failure of the government in implementing the 1995 Disability Act — which fixed a minimum 3% quota — the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP) found that these institutions had just 1,614 disabled people out of a student population of 3.33 lakh, which is just 0.48% of the total.

New Delhi: The Centre’s Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) has approved interest-free loan of over Rs 2,000 crore for research projects proposed by five Indian Institutes of Technology and a National Institute of Technology.

"HEFA Board approves Rs 2,066.73 cr interest-free loan to 6 institutions. Today is a historic day for financing needs and promotion of research and innovation beyond budgetary allocations," Union HRD Minister PrakashJavadekar tweeted.

The institutions are IIT Bombay, Delhi, Madras, Kharagpur, Kanpur and NITSuratkal.

New Delhi: The CPM-led government in Kerala has backed NIA probe into instances of 'love jihad' and informed the Supreme Court that it was "grappling with the problem".

While the Marxist-led government had earlier opposed the probe by National Investigation Agency, it asked the Supreme Court to take into account the report prepared by the central agency before taking a view on the allegation Hindu women were being lured into marriages with Muslims as part of a larger plot to organise religious conversions.

New Delhi: In Maharashtra, all three convicts in the Kopardi rape and murder case in Ahmednagar District have been sentenced to death.

The Special District and Sessions Judge Suvarna Yewale pronounced the quantum of punishment against the three convicts Jitendra Shinde, Santosh Bhaval and Nitin Bhailume on Wednesday. Their conviction was pronounced on 18th of this month.

On July 13, last year, a 9th standard girl from Kopardi village in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra was raped and murdered by the convicts when she was returning home on a bicycle from her grandparents’ house in the evening.