After the success of its all-women cab network ‘She-Taxi’, the Gender Park in Kerala, a state-owned autonomous institution, is now getting ready to launch ‘She-Bus’, driven and managed exclusively by women for women.

The immense success of She-Taxi, touted as the country’s first 24×7 women taxi network, had led the Park, under the state Social Justice Department, to work out a new mode of women-friendly transport system for ordinary women.

The World Bank, which recently hailed the She-Taxi project as a good model of sustainable entrepreneurship, has offered support to the proposed all-women-bus project also. Like She-Taxi, ‘She-Bus’ is also part of the government’s plans to ensure safe journey for women amidst concerns over increasing atrocities against them, State Minister for Social Justice, M K Muneer said.

“We have launched She-Taxi as a safe travel option for one or a group of women. Its success and wide acceptance has given us confidence to think about another project which may appeal to more women in the society,” he said.

Gender Park CEO Dr PTM Sunish said the project is planned to be implemented in metro cities in the initial phase. “We are planning to launch She-Bus in capital city Thiruvananthapuram for the first time. It will be rolled out in Kochi and Kozhikode in the next stages. The She-Taxi was also launched in a similar manner,” he said.

Under the plan, a set of air-conditioned low-floor buses, with women-friendly features, would be rolled out for service between selected points in the city. Besides women, children can also travel in the vehicle which will have a series of high-end features including wheelchair lifts.

“We are planning to explore the possibilities of pooling system for the operation of She-Bus which will ferry travellers between selected points in the city. The locations for service would be decided after examining the density of women passengers in various areas here,” he said.

Sunish said the fares are also planned to be people friendly as the buses would charge only reasonable amount from passengers as ordinary women are the target group. “Ticket rates will be minimum and reasonable. The commuters can travel several times in a day on the same ticket. Monthly ticket options are also under consideration,” he said.

IIT Roorkee has expelled 73 students for underperformance in first year B.Tech programme. “Seventy three students who scored lower than five cumulative grade point average (CGPA) in the second semester were expelled from the institute as per a decision of the Senate consisting of over 100 professors,” IIT Roorkee Director Pradipta Bannerjee said.

The Senate took the decision on Wednesday after considering all aspects of the issue, he said. Rule mandating expulsion of students who scored less than five CGPA for two consecutive semesters was framed last year by the premier institute to ensure quality education on the campus.

When 73 students were found scoring less than five CGPA in their second semester exam, they were issued expulsion notices by the institute. In response to the notices, the students and their parents approached the IIT authorities seeking reconsideration of the decision. However, the Senate, after a marathon discussion on the issue which went late into the night on Wednesday, decided to expel them, Bannerjee said.

During admission, the parents had signed declaration that the poor performance could lead to expulsion of the students, IIT Roorkee officials said, adding that institute had warned the students in May to pull up their socks.

HRD Ministry officials maintained silence over the episode, saying the IITs are autonomous bodies which are governed by their own rules. Ministry officials said such expulsion (though large in this particular case) was not an aberration as it had happened earlier also in IIT Kharagpur and IIT Kanpur.

A professor of an IIT also raised questions over the revamped IIT-JEE entrance test which makes it “relatively easier” for a student to crack the objective type questions if “luck favours him”.

Officials recalled receiving pleas from students directly for leniency whose CGPA was less than five.

In a major security breach, the website of Indian Space Research Organisation’s commercial arm Antrix has been hacked.

The website leads to a web page to buy sports merchandise.

“The home page of the Antrix Corporation Limited website seems to have been hacked and we have already intimated this to the officials (of Antrix) who are dealing with the problem,” a senior ISRO official said.

He said other pages of the website were fine.”Other pages are fine… however the officials at Antrix are trying to find out the problem and solve it,” he said.

Asked how much time it would require for the site to be set right, he said, “At this point I can only say that the officials are trying to fix the problem.”

This comes just two days after ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C28) launched five British satellites from the spaceport in Sriharikota. It was the heaviest ever commercial mission undertaken by ISRO.

Antrix is ISRO’s marketing arm for promotion and commercialization of space products, technical consultancy services and transfer of technologies developed by ISRO.

It provides space products and services to international customers worldwide. Its clientele includes EADS Astrium, Intelsat, Avanti Group, WorldSpace, Inmarsat, and other space institutions in Europe, Middle East and South East Asia.

We have all been taught “A for Apple, B for Ball, C for Cat and D for Dog’, but that seems to have become obsolete now, as a teacher in a government-run primary school in Chhattisgarh feels ‘D for Daaru’ and ‘P for Piyo’ is likely to make more of a dent in the minds of young students.

The teacher in question was apparently drunk as he made students recite ‘Daaru Piyo’ while teaching them. This incident was caught on video.

The act of school teacher was caught on camera.

Later, on learning that his act has been caught on camera, he confessed that he got drunk on many occasions and came to school. He also apologised and promised never to do it again.

BJP leader Subramanian Swamy has asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to prevail upon party President Amit Shah to convene a meeting of the BJP national executive on implementation of the Hindutva agenda as promised in the 2014 election manifesto.

In a letter to Modi, he said Shah has failed to reply to his letter on the issue even after four months on such a crucial issue “dear to the hearts of all our party workers and Sangh Parivar”.

Swamy said the party in particular had made a commitment that Ram temple will be built if it is possible to do so by legal measures.

In the letter, the former Union Minister also complained about the “poor judgement” of the government’s law officers in crucial matters like the deletion of controversial section in the Information Technology (IT) Act, National Judicial Appointments Commission Act and on the issue of criminal defamation.

Swamy said the government took a stand against section 66A of the IT Act which was struck down by the court.

He said the Judicial Appointments Commission as an alternative to the collegium system appears to be an arbitrarily conceived idea.

“This too has angered collectively the judiciary and in particular the Supreme Court,” he said.

Swamy said through a newspaper leak he has learnt that the government will oppose his writ petition seeking to decriminalise the defamation law.

“As in the case of Section 66A of the IT Act, the Supreme Court made disregard to the government of India and could go ahead to quash the said section as unconstitutional,” he said.