250 buses to bring back UP students from Kota
I was missing my family as I was alone here in Kota so it is a delightful feeling that we are now going back to our homes
SUMAN SAHNI, student
nKOTA:THE Uttar Pradesh government dispatched 250 buses to Kota on Friday to bring back over 7,000 students from the state who are enrolled in the Rajasthan city’s many coaching centres and have been stranded because of the lockdown for the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).
A #sendusbackhome campaign launched on social media by the students, who are preparing for competitive examinations to qualify for admission to engineering and other courses, spurred the decision by the Yogi Adityanath government.
“Uttar Pradesh state government has sent around 250 buses from UP which will reach Kota tonight (17 April),” Kota’s divisional Commissioner LN Soni told HT, adding that the buses will depart from Kota for Uttar Pradesh on Saturday morning.
He said the students will be screened for Covid-19 before they set off for their home state to prevent the spread of the infection..
The students cheered their imminent return. Eighteen-yearold Ritik Babu, who is preparing for the joint entrance examination to qualify for a seat in the Indian Institutes of Technology, said: “Finally now I will be able to meet my family”
Suman Sahni, 19, said: “My course got completed a month ago but I decided to stay in Kota for further preparation. Suddenly, the lockdown occurred and I could not return home”.
“I was missing my family as I was alone here in Kota so it is a delightful feeling that we are now going back to our homes”, he said.
Around 10,000 students have already returned to their states from Kota, which is famous for the coaching centres that prepare students for admission to professional colleges.
Other than Uttar Pradesh, no state has made an attempt to bring students stuck in Kota. Naveen Maheshwari, director of the Allen Career Institute, said that apart from the 7,000 students of UP, around 6,500 students from Bihar, 4,000 students from Madhya Pradesh, 3,000 from Jharkhand, 2,000 students each from Haryana and Maharashtra , and 1,000 each from the Northeast and West Bengal were enrolled in Kota coaching centres.
nBHUBANESWAR: Three days after Odisha’s second Covid-19 positive patient — a 19-year-old youth studying in the United Kingdom — was admitted to AIIMS Bhubaneswar, Sanjay Dehury got a call from his boss.
The 21-year-old used to drive vehicles in marriage processions till he joined a company that outsourced workers for cleaning assignments. In October 2019, he began to work at AIIMS Bhubaneshwar as part of the hospital’s 250-member housekeeping staff.
On March 23, shortly after Odisha had gone into lockdown to prevent the spread of coronavirus, Manoj Sahoo, facility manager of Golden Hospitality Limited — the company hired to clean the hospital — gave him a new task to do. He requested Dehury to collect biomedical waste (blood, cotton swabs, beddings, needles and syringes) and drive it to the disposal centre inside the hospital complex. Sahoo made a similar request to 18 other employees; 10 said yes initially, but in the end, only two agreed to