New Delhi:

 Veteran BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani was admitted to the AIIMS here late on Wednesday night, sources said.

“He is stable and under observation,” a source said.

The 96-year-old former deputy prime minister has been admitted in the old private ward of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and is learnt to being treated by doctors from the Department of Urology.

However, there was no immediate clarity on his ailment.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

The high-level committee announced by Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Thursday to look into ways to improve the functioning of the National Testing Agency has now been constituted, and consists of some well-known academicians and technocrats.

The agency and the government have been under fire over the alleged irregularities in the NEET exam and the cancellation of the UGC-NET test. Over 30 lakh students appeared for the two important exams. 

Dr K Radhakrishnan, a former ISRO chief and the current chairperson of the board of governors of IIT Kanpur will head the seven-member committee. Some of the others on the panel are Dr Randeep Guleria, the former director of AIIMS in Delhi, BJ Rao, the vice-chancellor of the Central University of Hyderabad, Aditya Mittal, the dean of student affairs at IIT Delhi and Ramamurthy K, a former professor in the civil engineering department of IIT Madras.

Govind Jaiswal, joint secretary of the Ministry of Education, and Pankaj Bansal, co-founder of People Strong and board member of Karmayogi Bharat, make up the remaining two members, the Union government said on Saturday. 

On Thursday, Mr Pradhan had said, “The government is also setting up a high-level committee. It will give recommendations on improving NTA’s structure, its functioning, examination process, transparency and data, and security protocol. We are committed to zero-error exams.” 

When he was asked about the composition of the panel, he had said it would have technocrats, scientists, education administrators and academicians.

The Exam Mess

Nearly 24 lakh students had appeared for the NEET-UG 2024 for undergraduate medical courses, which is conducted by the National Testing Agency, on May 5. The results were announced on June 4, 10 days before schedule, but allegations of question paper leaks and grace marks to over 1,500 students triggered protests. Cases were also filed in courts, including the Supreme Court, which has rapped the NTA. 

On Wednesday, the Education Ministry had cancelled the UGC-NET exam, also conducted by the NTA, just a day after it was held. Over 9 lakh candidates had appeared for the exam, which is held for Assistant Professor posts in universities and colleges and to determine eligibility for junior research fellowships. Mr Pradhan had said the UGC chairman had received information from the cyber crime team in the Home Ministry about questions being on the darknet.

The opposition, strengthened after its much-improved showing in the Lok Sabha polls, has attacked the government. The Congress has held nationwide protests and the INDIA alliance is likely to look to corner the government on the issue when the Parliament session begins on Monday. 

New Delhi:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here to constitute a medical board to ascertain the physical condition of a woman and her 25-week foetus she wants aborted citing financial constraints.

A vacation bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Satish Chandra Sharma ordered the medical board to furnish its report by May 27.

The bench passed the order on a plea of the woman, who claimed that she came to know about her pregnancy on May 17.

“She has come all the way from Dubai and is currently staying in a hotel here. She is not that financially strong,” the counsel said and urged the bench to allow her to terminate her pregnancy.

The bench said it will list the matter for next Monday.

Under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act, aborting a foetus that is more than 24 weeks old can be allowed only in cases of substantial foetal abnormality as diagnosed by a medical board or if an opinion is formed in good faith for the purpose of saving the life of the pregnant woman.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Bhubaneswar:

A team of doctors of AIIMS Bhubaneswar successfully conducted a rare scalp tumour operation on a 51-year-old man from neighbouring West Bengal, officials said on Tuesday.

The executive director of AIIMS Bhubaneswar, Ashutosh Biswas, said the patient had gone to several medical colleges and hospitals for treatment before finally reaching the Department of Plastic Surgery at the institute.

@AIIMSBhubaneswr achieved a remarkable feat by successfully conducting a rare scalp #tumor operation, only the second of its kind in India. The surgery, performed on a 51-year-old man from West Bengal, involved the removal of a massive 7kg #SynovialSarcoma tumor.@MoHFW_INDIApic.twitter.com/GLDIT71k4v

— AIIMS Bhubaneswar (@AIIMSBhubaneswr) May 7, 2024

A multidisciplinary team from the AIIMS, comprising experts in interventional radiology, surgical oncology, neurosurgery, plastic surgery, anesthesiology, and pathology, meticulously crafted a treatment strategy under the guidance of Sanjay Kumar Giri, head of the department of burns and plastic surgery, Mr Biswas said.

The surgery is the second of its kind in India, he claimed.

The patient, Rabindra Bishui, underwent the complex procedure to address a longstanding scalp swelling that had plagued him for over two decades, the AIIMS official said.

The growth, later diagnosed as a 7 kg synovial sarcoma tumour, posed a formidable challenge to conventional treatment methods.

The doctors took around 7 hours to conduct the surgery.

The procedure was intricate, necessitating the ligation of the left external carotid artery and posterolateral neck dissection, culminating in the successful removal of the tumour.

After the successful surgery, the patient received intensive care for 24 hours before being transitioned to the ward for further observation and recovery, the official said. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was on Monday night administered insulin at Tihar jail after his blood sugar level soared, reaching 320. The AAP chief yesterday accused the Tihar jail administration of not providing him with insulin despite repeated requests. 

Mr Kejriwal’s accusations were met with a rebuttal from the Tihar jail administration, which claimed that during a video consultation with specialists from AIIMS, neither the issue of insulin nor its necessity was raised. 

“Today it is clear that the Chief Minister was right, he needed insulin. But the officials under the BJP’s central government were deliberately not treating him. Tell me BJP people! If insulin is not needed then why are you giving it now? Because the whole world is cursing them,” Delhi Minister and AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj said in a statement. 

A city court had directed AIIMS to form a medical board to assess Mr Kejriwal’s medical needs, particularly regarding insulin. The court highlighted discrepancies between the Delhi Chief Minister’s dietary regimen which consisted of home-cooked food and doctor-prescribed diet.

In a letter to the Tihar jail superintendent on Monday, Mr Kejriwal rejected the jail administration’s claim that the issue of insulin was never raised by him in his consultations with the doctors. Mr Kejriwal insists that he had raised the issue of insulin demand persistently over the course of 10 days.

The AAP has alleged that the Tihar administration withheld insulin from Mr Kejriwal, alleging a conspiracy to harm him.

Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva has claimed that AAP leaders aimed to generate public sympathy for Mr Kejriwal’s health during the Lok Sabha elections.

“No doubt Arvind Kejriwal is a diabetic but his sugar is under control in jail as he didn’t raise demand for insulin in the video consultation with the doctors of AIIMS,” Mr Sachdeva said. 

The Enforcement Directorate accused Mr Kejriwal of consuming sugary foods regularly, insinuating an attempt to exploit his health for legal advantage. Mr Kejriwal swiftly dismissed these accusations as petty and accused the agency of politicising the issue.

“I showed my high sugar levels to every doctor who came to see me. I showed them that there were three peaks in the sugar level every day — between 250-320,” Mr Kejriwal said in his letter.

“I also showed them that my fasting sugar level was in the range of 160-200 every day. Almost every day, I demanded insulin. Then how could you make such a statement that I never raised the issue of insulin?”

The Delhi Chief Minister was arrested on March 21 by the ED in connection with a money-laundering case linked to the Delhi government’s now-scrapped excise policy and has been lodged in Tihar jail since April 1. The Delhi High Court will hear Mr Kejriwal’s petition challenging the summonses issued to him by the probe agency on May 15. 
 

The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed AIIMS to set up a medical board to examine the health condition of NewsClick founder Prabir Purkayastha, currently lodged in Tihar Jail in a case registered against him under the anti-terror law Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

A bench of Justices B R Gavai and Sandeep Mehta asked the director of AIIMS to constitute the board and submit a report in two weeks.

“Taking into consideration all this, it will be appropriate that the medical condition is examined by a board appointed by the AIIMS director. The board shall also consider the jail records and complete medical history of petitioner,” it said.

The direction came after senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Purkayastha, submitted that the report filed by the prison authorities about his client’s medical condition was not correct.

The Delhi High Court had on October 13 dismissed the pleas filed by Purkayastha and the news portal’s human resources department head Amit Chakravarty against their arrest and subsequent police remand in the case.

Both were arrested by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police on October 3.

According to the FIR lodged in the case, huge funds came to the news portal allegedly from China to “disrupt the sovereignty of India” and cause disaffection against the country.

It also alleged that Purkayastha conspired with a group — People’s Alliance for Democracy and Secularism (PADS) — to sabotage the electoral process during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)