RGIA immigration staff sniff out ‘dubious’ travellers
The Hindu
Fraudulent travel agents from across the country have made Hyderabad their main base to traffic people
The immigration staff of Rajiv Gandhi International Airport have become too familiar in differentiating between passengers who genuinely travel to their destinations and those who adopt dubious methods of travel.
A woman wearing bare essentials with a turmeric-laced cotton thread (pasupu thadu) around her neck as a symbol of her married status and also clad in a simple/old saree, and a man wearing old clothes and a pair of rubber slippers, are a sure-shot find to catch persons travelling on suspected documents.
People travelling to West Asian countries on forged visas has been significant and continuously worrisome, a senior immigration official said.
Several principals of government and private schools in Delhi on Tuesday said the Directorate of Education (DoE) circular from a day earlier, directing schools to conduct classes in ‘hybrid’ mode, had caused confusion regarding day-to-day operations as they did not know how many students would return to school from Wednesday and how would teachers instruct in two modes — online and in person — at once. The DoE circular on Monday had also stated that the option to “exercise online mode of education, wherever available, shall vest with the students and their guardians”. Several schoolteachers also expressed confusion regarding the DoE order. A government schoolteacher said he was unsure of how to cope with the resumption of physical classes, given that the order directing government offices to ensure that 50% of the employees work from home is still in place. On Monday, the Commission for Air Quality Management in the National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas (CAQM) had, on the orders of the Supreme Court, directed schools in Delhi-NCR to shift classes to the hybrid mode, following which the DoE had issued the circular. The court had urged the Centre’s pollution watchdog to consider restarting physical classes due to many students missing out on the mid-day meals and lacking the necessary means to attend classes online. The CAQM had, on November 20, asked schools in Delhi-NCR to shift to the online mode of teaching.