Bad vibrations
Swine flu spreads
Swine flu hits various parts of India in 2009. Soon after the outbreak of H1N1 virus in the United States and Mexico in March, the government of India started screening people coming from the affected countries at airports for swine flu symptoms. The rate of transmission of the flu increased in the beginning of August and with the first death due to swine flu in India in Pune, panic began to spread. As of August 14, 2009, 1193 cases of swine flu has been confirmed and 719 people have been discharged with 20 deaths.
Err...Did I say that?
Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal let the cat loose among the IIT aspirant pigeons when he said the cut-off marks for the IIT entrance test should be increased. He said, "The present criterion is that students need to secure 60 per cent in Class XII for appearing in IIT-JEE (IIT-Joint Entrance Examination). This is not acceptable. The minimum marks required for IIT-JEE could be raised to 80 to 85 per cent (in the Class XII board examinations).
A day later, he changed tack altogether and said the proposal was his "personal view". He said, "The govt has no role to play. The eligibility criteria to appear in the JEE is decided by the IITs themselves."
Kalam frisked at IGI Airport
An FIR was filed against the staff of Continental Airlines as they frisked former president Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who was boarding a carrier for Newark, US, for breach of protocol.
Faced with criticism the airline apologised to Kalam and said it did not intend to offend the former President or the sentiments of the people of the country.
CAT fails the test
Authorities remain clueless about the glitch in the online Common Admission Test (CAT). The computer crash prevented about 2,000 students from taking the test meant for admissions to the country's leading management institutions. Twenty-four of the 104 CAT centres had reported systems failure.
Manu Sharma's parole
Manu Sharma, the convict in the 1999 murder case of model Jessica Lall, was granted 30-day parole from jail, on the grounds that Sharma needed to attend to his ailing mother. Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit came under criticism for granting parole to Manu Sharma after media reports of him visiting night clubs in Delhi emerged. As a result of strong public reaction to Manu Sharma's parole, Delhi Government had to cancel his parole and on November 10, Manu returned to Tihar Jail after violation of his parole was confirmed.
Aarushi murder case
The Central Forensic Laboratory in Hyderabad released an information that Aarushi Talwar's vaginal samples were substituted with those of an unknown woman. The correct samples could have helped to establish the killer of the teenager and whether she was sexually assaulted before being stabbed in May, 2008.
Delhi Police also recovered the missing mobile phone of Aarushi from Bulandshahr.
Goonda Raj...
The Raj Thackeray-led MNS remained in news for all the wrong reasons in 2009. On October 2, 2009, MNS workers disrupted the screening of the film Wake Up Sid on its release in a few Pune and Mumbai theatres, after a rabble-rousing Raj objected to the city being referred to as 'Bombay' instead of Mumbai.
On November 9, 2009, during the Oath taking ceremony of the Maharashtra State Legislative Assembly, MLAs from MNS started a physical confrontation with Samajwadi Party MLA Abu Asim Azmi after he began his oath in Hindi instead of Marathi.