Delhi Confidential: Zeal Over JEE 

UNION EDUCATION Minister Dharmendra Pradhan Thursday shared an incident about one of his relatives who scored 91% marks in Class 12 board exams but failed to meet the expectations of the parents. Seeing their disappointment, he said, he had to remind the parents that the two of them together wouldn’t have scored that much. Speaking at an event at DPS RK Puram, the minister had a word of advice for parents — let children become good sportsmen or good at painting if that’s their area of interest, and not push all students to appear for exams such as JEE.

The EC Way Out

ON THE eve of counting of votes in Bihar, the Election Commission on Thursday appealed to all, particularly to “TV channels and internet media channels” to refer to its results portal for verified updates and not fall for hearsay or unofficial sources. This advice, it is learnt, was included in the pre-counting press statement this time as early “trends” are reported based on counting of postal ballots, before counting of EVMs starts.

Farmers’ Festival

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to release the August–November installment of the PM-Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme on November 19. The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare has decided to mark the occasion as a grand farmers’ festival — ‘Kisan Utsav’. It is learnt that Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has written to his colleagues in the Union Council of Ministers, urging them to actively participate in the nationwide events. These celebrations will be organised at various institutes of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research across India.

Dogged By Pleas

On August 12, a day after the Supreme Court directed authorities in the Capital to shift stray dogs to shelters, the top court’s official email was flooded with messages from dog lovers opposing the decision. Sources say more than one lakh emails jammed the inbox and the court had to take the help of technical experts to make it accessible again.