
Haryana: Sirsa MP demands probe into tablet distribution ‘scam'
Demanding an 'impartial investigation' into what she called the 'tablet scam' and seeking strict action against the guilty officials, Selja said that every section of society is suffering due to the wrong policies of the BJP government.
Following the Covid-19 pandemic, the Haryana government in 2022 implemented a ₹620 crore tablet-based digital learning programme called e-Adhigam. Over 5 lakh students of government schools of Class 10 and 12 were provided tablets loaded with PAL software and enabled with free internet services through data SIM cards.
In a statement Selja said that these tablets internet access, are now non-functional and hanging indefinitely.
'No one knows when they will start working,' the Sirsa MP said, adding that though this scheme was launched during the tenure of then-chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, the current government has completely derailed it.
'Instead of benefiting students, it has caused them more harm. The curriculum was only loaded for three years, and though the government planned to update the data, even that task was left incomplete,' she said, accusing the government of blindly implementing schemes by relying solely on officials and without assessing whether they are beneficial or harmful.
She said that the academic session of April 2025–26 has already begun and tablets have not been distributed.
'They are probably lying in some corner and gathering dust.'
The entire scheme of distributing computers, tablets, and Edusets without proper planning reeks of corruption, she said, demanding that if the tablets are faulty, they should be repaired and distributed to children along with SIM and internet facilities, as they were purchased keeping students' interests in mind. 'Or else, the government should openly admit that ₹700 crore has gone down the drain,' she said.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles

New Indian Express
a minute ago
- New Indian Express
CPI(M) leader raises alarm over honour killings, slams Modi govt's policies and ECI bias
"The foreign policy of the Narendra Modi-led government has failed. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not spoken out against the imposition of 25% tariff on Indian goods. So far, there has been no debate even in the Parliament. This move could severely impact many MSMEs and small-scale industries across the country," Balakrishnan said. Citing the row over the Special Intensive Revision of electoral lists in Bihar, Balakrishnan said, "The ECI has effectively been turned into a subservient wing of the BJP. In Bihar 69 lakh voters have been removed from the voters' list. Our basic "Right to Vote' is under threat. There are also rumours that many voters will be removed from West Bengal, Assam, and Tamil Nadu too. The minorities, especially Muslims and others, will be denied their voting rights. The ECI is even opposing the Supreme Court's advice. The INDIA bloc will conduct a protest on August 8 and the CPI(M) will hold a protest on August 12." Speaking about the NDA alliance in Tamil Nadu, he said, "Edappadi K Palaniswami has repeatedly stated that an NDA government will form in Tamil Nadu. The NDA is crumbling. O Panneerselvam has already announced that he is not with the BJP alliance. It is a good thing for Tamil Nadu."

Business Standard
a minute ago
- Business Standard
Trump says June jobs data 'rigged', Wall Street and economists disagree
The monthly jobs report is already closely-watched on Wall Street and in Washington but has taken on a new importance after President Donald Trump on Friday fired the official who oversees it. Trump claimed that June's employment figures were "RIGGED" to make him and other Republicans "look bad". Yet he provided no evidence and even the official Trump had appointed in his first term to oversee the report, William Beach, condemned the firing of Erika McEntarfer, the director of the Bureau of Labour Statistics appointed by former President Joe Biden. The firing followed Friday's jobs report that showed hiring was weak in July and had come to nearly a standstill in May and June, right after Trump rolled out sweeping tariffs. Economists and Wall Street investors have long considered the job figures reliable, with share prices and bond yields often reacting sharply when they are released. Yet Friday's revisions were unusually large -- the largest, outside of a recession, in five decades. And the surveys used to compile the report are facing challenges from declining response rates, particularly since COVID, as fewer companies complete the surveys. Nonetheless, that has not led most economists to doubt them. "The bottom line for me is, I would not take the low collection rate as any evidence that the numbers are less reliable," Omair Sharif, founder and chief economist at Inflation Insights, a consulting firm, said. Many academics, statisticians and economists have warned for some time that declining budgets were straining the government's ability to gather economic data. There were several government commissions studying ways to improve things like survey response rates, but the Trump administration disbanded them earlier this year. Heather Boushey, a top economic adviser in the Biden White House, noted that without Trump's firing of McEntarfer, there would be more focus on last week's data, which points to a slowing economy. "We are having this conversation about made-up issues to distract us from what the data is showing," Boushey said. "Revisions of this magnitude in a negative direction may indicate bad things to come for the labour market." Here are some things to know about the jobs report: Economists and Wall Street trust the data Most economists say that the Bureau of Labour Statistics is a nonpolitical agency staffed by people obsessed with getting the numbers right. The only political appointee is the commissioner, who does not see the data until it is finalised, two days before it is issued to the public. Erica Groshen, the BLS commissioner from 2013 to 2017, said she suggested different language in the report to "liven it up", but was shot down. She was told that if asked to describe a cup as half-empty or half-full, BLS says "it is an eight ounce cup with four ounces of liquid". The revised jobs data that has attracted Trump's ire is actually more in line with other figures than before the revision. For example, payroll processor ADP uses data from its millions of clients to calculate its own jobs report, and it showed a sharp hiring slowdown in May and June that is closer to the revised BLS data. Trump and his White House have a long track record of celebrating the jobs numbers -- when they are good. These are the figures Trump is attacking Trump has focussed on the revisions to the May and June data, which on Friday were revised lower, with job gains in May reduced to 19,000 from 144,000, and for June to just 14,000 from 147,000. Every month's jobs data is revised in the following two months. Trump also repeated a largely inaccurate attack from the campaign about an annual revision last August, which reduced total employment in the United States by 818,000, or about 0.5 per cent. The government also revises employment figures every year. Trump charged that the annual revision was released before the 2024 presidential election to "boost" Vice President Kamala Harris's "chances of Victory", yet it was two months before the election and widely reported at the time that the revision lowered hiring during the Biden-Harris administration and pointed to a weaker economy. Here's why the government revises the data The monthly revisions occur because many companies that respond to the government's surveys send their data in late, or correct the figures they have already submitted. The proportion of companies sending in their data later has risen in the past decade. Every year, the BLS does an additional revision based on actual job counts that are derived from state unemployment insurance records. Those figures cover 95 per cent of US businesses and are not derived from a survey but are not available in real time. These are the factors that cause revisions Figuring out how many new jobs have been added or lost each month is more complicated than it may sound. For example, if one person takes a second job, should you focus on the number of jobs, which has increased, or the number of employed people, which has not? (The government measures both: The unemployment rate is based on how many people either have or do not have jobs, while the number of jobs added or lost is counted separately). Each month, the government surveys about 121,000 businesses and government agencies at over 630,000 locations -- including multiple locations for the same business -- covering about one-third of all workers. Still, the government also has to make estimates: What if a company goes out of business? It likely will not fill out any forms showing the jobs lost. And what about new businesses? They can take a while to get on the government's radar. The BLS seeks to capture these trends by estimating their impact on employment. Those estimates can be wrong, of course, until they are fixed by the annual revisions. The revisions are often larger around turning points in the economy. For example, when the economy is growing, there may be more startups than the government expects, so revisions will be higher. If the economy is slowing or slipping into a recession, the revisions may be larger on the downside. Here's why the May and June revisions may have been so large Ernie Tedeschi, an economic adviser to the Biden administration, points to the current dynamics of the labour market: Both hiring and firing have sharply declined, and fewer Americans are quitting their jobs to take other work. As a result, most of the job gains or losses each month are probably occurring at new companies, or those going out of business. And those are the ones the government uses models to estimate, which can make them more volatile. Groshen also points out that since the pandemic, there has been a surge of new start-up companies, after many Americans lost their jobs or sought more independence. Yet they may not have created as many jobs as startups did pre-COVID, which throws off the government's models. Revisions seem to be getting bigger The revisions to May and June's job totals, which reduced hiring by a total of 258,000, were the largest -- outside recessions -- since 1967, according to economists at Goldman Sachs. Kevin Hassett, Trump's top economic adviser, went on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday and said, "What we have seen over the last few years is massive revisions to the jobs numbers." Hassett blamed a sharp drop in response rates to the government's surveys during and after the pandemic: "When COVID happened, because response rates went down a lot, then revision rates skyrocketed." Yet calculations by Tedeschi show that while revisions spiked after the pandemic, they have since declined and are much smaller than in the 1960s and 1970s. Other concerns about the government's data Many economists and statisticians have sounded the alarm about things like declining response rates for years. A decade ago, about 60 per cent of companies surveyed by BLS responded. Now, only about 40 per cent do. The decline has been an international phenomenon, particularly since COVID. The United Kingdom has even suspended publication of an official unemployment rate because of falling responses. And earlier this year, the BLS said that it was cutting back on its collection of inflation data because of the Trump administration's hiring freeze, raising concerns about the robustness of price data just as economists are trying to gauge the impact of tariffs on inflation. US government statistical agencies have seen an inflation-adjusted 16-per cent drop in funding since 2009, according to a July report from the American Statistical Association. "We are at an inflection point," the report said. "To meet current and future challenges requires thoughtful, well-planned investment ... In contrast, what we have observed is uncoordinated and unplanned reductions with no visible plan for the future. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)


Hans India
a minute ago
- Hans India
Kaleshwaram report trimmed down to sully KCR's image, says Niranjan
Hyderabad: Stating that the 665-page Kaleshwaram report was shortened only to defame BRS President K Chandrashekar Rao, party's senior leader S Niranjan Reddy on Monday said that the Kaleshwaram report can be challenged in the court. Addressing a press conference here at Telangana Bhavan, Niranjan Reddy said that Kaleswaram was constructed to quench the thirst of Telangana. It is ridiculous for Congress to talk about changing the site. The Congress party has a history of permanently betraying Telangana by changing the site of Nagarjuna Sagar with malicious intent and malice. Because of the Congress' sin, water was cut off from the Telangana region. The retired engineers' forum has submitted a report on why the site was changed. No matter how much mud is thrown by blocking the media, the truth will be before the people in the future, said Niranjan Reddy. The BRS leader said that no permissions were given for any reservoirs constructed in undivided Andhra Pradesh state during the rule of Chandrababu Naidu and YS Rajashekhara Reddy. They are spewing poison on Kaleswaram, which was built with all the permits. They were unable to bear to see Telangana which is turning green. Every person in Telangana knows Chandrababu Naidu has raised objections to the project and lodged complaints, said Reddy alleging a section of the media was constantly trying to portray Telangana's successes as failures. The BRS leader asked why the Ghosh Commission report was not disclosed as it is. It should also be known that the report given by the Commission is not final and can be taken to court, as stated in the Commission of Inquiries Act. The 665-page Ghosh Commission report was being shortened to 60 pages to blame KCR. Minister Uttam Kumar Reddy was working by begging the media. Telangana society has been struggling for water for four decades. He alleged that the Congress party did great injustice to Telangana. The former minister said that out of 85 pillars in Medigadda, two were partially damaged and there were 66 pillars in Annaram and 74 in Sundilla. Except for three, all the others fine? The remaining pumping stations, the rest were fine, right? Why did the construction company come forward and say that they will repair it and bear the cost of Rs. 400 crore, he asked. He further asked why the government was releasing the report of the officials instead of releasing the Ghose Commission report. BRS leaders Ch Rakesh Kumar and Abhilash Rangineni were also present.