High-speed Net link for rural students
The Yogi Adityanath government will help rural students continue with their online classes through the National Broadband Mission as 620 blocks in 45,000 gram sabhas will get high-speed internet connectivity in the next five months by March 2021, an official said. The move will reduce the hardship of students who, otherwise, would have to face problems due to poor internet connectivity.
The step will also help rural students benefit from the digital library set up by the state government during the pandemic. It will facilitate the downloading of educational content very easily, the official said. Uttar Pradesh has 16 state universities, an open university, 27 private universities and a deemed university. Besides, there are 170 government colleges, 331 aided degree colleges and 7,183 private colleges. A total of 19,69,206 boys and 22,14,786 girls are studying in these institutions.
In view of Covid-19, the University Grant Commission (UGC) has laid emphasis on online education.
State government officials say this initiative will reduce the problem being faced by students drastically. APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University (AKTU) vice chancellor Vinay Kumar Pathak said 65% students were from rural Uttar Pradesh and this initiative of the state government will help them in a big way.
Recently, deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma launched the digital library to help university and degree college students continue with their studies during the pandemic. A total of 1,700 teachers drawn from the arts, science and commerce streams developed content which has been uploaded on the website and students may download them free of cost.
Overall electricity demand may witness a negative growth in Uttar Pradesh probably for the first time during the current financial year, according to the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Ltd’s (UPPCL) annual revenue requirement discussed at the State Advisory Committee (SAC) meeting called by the UP Electricity Commission (UPERC) here on Friday.
Largely because of the fall in power requirement during the Covid-19 lockdown, the sharpest decline is expected in the industrial and commercial sectors. Total electricity requirement may decline by 1.88% during the current year over the previous financial year, the proposed ARR indicated.
UPPCL expects that against the 91,458.67 million units (MU) power it sold to all categories of consumers in 2019-20, it may sell only 89,738.10 MU power this financial year ending on March 31, 2021. The financial year 2019-20 had witnessed a 3.28% positive growth in power demand.
“This is the first time in recent times when the power requirement