Offer prayers at home if some mosques can't follow covid guidelines: Mangaluru Qadhi

Bengaluru, Apr 17: The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Thursday served a show cause notice to a Kannada news channel for broadcasting a programme in which it purportedly said that the Centre would 'air drop money' to the poor, owing to the COVID-19 lockdown.

The notice said that the channel was "spreading false information, creating panic and social unrest.

" The channel had allegedly aired a show titled, "Helicopter Money" on Wednesday which claimed that the Centre would drop money from helicopters during the lockdown period.

A Twitter user took a serious note of it and complained to the Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Prakash Javadekar.

The fact check team of the Press Information Bureau, under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, refuted the claim.

In its notice to the channel, PIB said, "You are hereby directed to show cause why your channel should not be taken out of air immediately. You are instructed to send your reply in this regard within 10 days of receipt of this notice."

Reacting to the notice, the management of the news channels said, "A programme which has been seen in bits and pieces and those who have not even seen the programme appears to have complained. Notice will be replied accordingly."

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has rationalised by up to 30 per cent the syllabus for classes 9 to 12 for the academic year 2020-21 to reduce course load on students amid the COVID-19 crisis, Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' announced on Tuesday.

The curriculum has been rationalised while retaining the core elements, the Human Resource Development said.

Among the chapters dropped after the rationalisation exercise are lessons on democracy and diversity, demonetisation, nationalism, secularism, India's relations with its neighbours and growth of local governments in India, among others.

"Looking at the extraordinary situation prevailing in the country and the world, CBSE was advised to revise the curriculum and reduce course load for the students of classes 9 to 12.

"To aid the decision, a few weeks back I also invited suggestions from all educationists on the reduction of syllabus for students and I am glad to share that we received more than 1.5K suggestions. Thank you, everyone, for the overwhelming response," Nishank tweeted.

"Considering the importance of learning achievement, it has been decided to rationalise syllabus up to 30 per cent by retaining the core concepts," he added.

The Union minister said the changes made in the syllabi have been finalised by the respective course committees with the approval of the curriculum committee and the Governing Body of the Board.

"The heads of schools and teachers have been advised by the board to ensure that the topics that have been reduced are also explained to the students to the extent required to connect different topics. However, the reduced syllabus will not be part of the topics for internal assessment and year-end board examination.

"Alternative academic calendar and inputs from the NCERT on transacting the curriculum using different strategies shall also be part of the teaching pedagogy in the affiliated schools," a senior official of the HRD ministry said.

For classes 1 to 8, the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) has already notified an alternative calendar and learning outcomes.

According to the updated curriculum, among the chapters deleted from class 10 syllabus are-- democracy and diversity, gender, religion and caste, popular struggles and movement, challenges to democracy

For class 11, the deleted portions included chapters on federalism, citizenship, nationalism, secularism, growth of local governments in India.

Similarly, class 12 students will not be required to study chapters on India's relations with its neighbours, changing nature of India's economic development, social movements in India and demonetisation, among others.

Universities and schools across the country have been closed since March 16 when the central government announced a nationwide classroom shutdown as one of the measures to contain the COVID-19 outbreak.

A nationwide lockdown was announced on March 24, which came into effect the next day. While the government has eased several restrictions, schools and colleges continue to remain closed.

Bengaluru, Mar 3: Chief minister BS Yediyurappa on Monday introduced the Karnataka Municipalities and Certain Other Law (Amendment) Bill, 2020, in the assembly to give voters the opportunity to reject candidates in civic polls.

The bill, if passed, will enable election officials to offer the NOTA option in the elections to municipal corporations on the lines of assembly and Lok Sabha polls.

An amendment bill which seeks to enable the government to set up a separate university for the districts of Raichur and Yadgir was also tabled. The government said the workload of Gulbarga University necessitated creation of a separate university for the two districts, a move that will also help reduce regional imbalance in Kalyana Karnataka region.

Another amendment bill seeks to allow industrial units, which have failed to start operations on allotted land after seven years, to sell off the parcels to another unit. Bills which empower authorised agencies to regulate turf clubs and horse racing and regulate salary and pension of teachers in higher education institutions were also introduced in the assembly on Monday.