Delhi Confidential: Homework for SIR

Yadav does not want to take any chances with the voters’ list ahead of the 2027 UP Assembly polls

Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav

WITH THE Election Commission announcing the second phase of SIR of electoral rolls in 12 states, including Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav has decided to appoint senior party workers as “SIR PDA prahri” to keep a watch on the exercise and ensure that genuine voters from “pichhda, Dalit and minority communities” in Uttar Pradesh prevail in the final voters’ list after exercise in every Assembly constituency, sources said. Yadav does not want to take any chances with the voters’ list ahead of the 2027 UP Assembly polls.

Reading The ‘Science’

MANY SCIENTISTS who were selected for the 2025 Vigyan Awards were caught unawares when the announcement was made Saturday. This is because the winners’ list was delayed this year. There was a set timeline for the awards — nominations to be accepted between January 14 and February 28, which is the National Science Day, award announcement on May 11 or the National Technology Day, and award ceremony on August 23 or the National Space Day — but the selection panel missed all the deadlines. This delay, it is learnt, was owing to a higher level of scrutiny in the selection process following the controversy over the inaugural Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar last year. Some scientists had claimed that their names were dropped from the final list as they were critical of the government.

Conditions Apply

Four days after announcing that Bharat International Rice Conference 2025 will be held at Bharat Mandapam on October 30–31, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry issued a clarification Monday that government departments are providing only “non-financial support” to the event. The clarification followed reports that Prem Garg, national president of Indian Rice Exporters’ Federation — one of the event’s organisers — had been named in a CBI case in 2021. Incidentally, the announcement was made at a press conference at Vanijya Bhawan on October 24, which was attended by Garg, along with officials of Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority, and was facilitated and moderated by senior officials of the Press Information Bureau.