Digitisation of Nomination Forms

One Nation, One Election is dud. If Modi Govt and @ECISVEEP is so keen to do electoral reforms, we have decided to share our suggestions with very simple and highly impactful changes in our Electoral System.

We will start with a simple one to begin with. The digitisation of Nomination Forms.

The current nomination form, Form-26, consists of an extensive list of fields to be filled, a minimum of 515 fields in total, which often result in unnecessary burden, time consumption, and financial strain on candidates. We propose a digitized alternative that streamlines the process, reduces errors, and enhances efficiency.

Basic Background

The current Form-26 mandates candidates to fill numerous fields, totalling 515, which often result in unnecessary burden, time consumption, and financial strain on candidates. For instance, a candidate who is single, without any cases against him, and with some movable and immovable property would typically need to fill less than 50 fields in total. However, candidates are forced to meticulously fill 460+ columns with "Not Applicable", "NIL" or "No" entries.

This process is time-consuming and prone to errors, as even a single unfilled field can lead to disqualification by the returning officer. Moreover, candidates often spend significant time and money on vetting the form via lawyers and submitting multiple copies for safety. The manual scrutiny of these forms by returning officers is also prone to errors, as they must sift through numerous fields filled with "Not Applicable" entries.

At present, returning officers are primarily occupied with scrutinizing nominations for clerical errors, often resulting from human oversight given the extensive number of fields to be completed. Unfortunately, even minor mistakes can lead to disqualification, diverting attention from more critical issues. Meanwhile, significant discrepancies in asset and criminal antecedent disclosures are sometimes overlooked. This focus on minor errors detracts from addressing more substantial concerns, emphasizing the need for reform in the nomination process. We are missing the forest for the trees! (1/5) Civil Society organizations save time & money

Civil society organizations currently invest significant effort in digitizing handwritten forms submitted by candidates to gather information about assets, criminal cases, and other pertinent details. However, candidates often fill these forms in handwriting and sometimes in local languages to evade detailed public scrutiny. Digitizing the nomination process would alleviate this burden and make it easier for the public to analyze candidate disclosures without the need for manual processing of handwritten forms. (2/5)

Shri Rahul Gandhi's statements in his speech in Lok Sabha today and the facts that support them. 🧵

“You talked about the internship program in the budget, and maybe this is a joke, because you said that this internship program will be only in the 500 biggest companies of India. And 99% of our youth have nothing to do with this internship program, they are not going to get any benefit from it.”

Top 500 companies only employ 1% of the workforce: These companies currently employ ~70 lakh, out of India’s workforce of 56.5 crore.

● Companies with 70 lakh employees cannot hire 1 crore interns
● Completely ignores the real jobs problem:
- 10.3 crore youth have completely given up looking for jobs.
- The informal sector employs 90% of people but is struggling.
- ~72% of students do not pursue higher education,5 and even half of degree holders are unemployable. (1/6) “Paper leak, let me tell you, in 10 years, 70 papers have been leaked…”

● There have been over 70 paper leaks over the past seven years
● These leaks disrupted the schedules of 1.7 crore applicants (2/6)

THE GOBAR THREAD | Can Gobar save you from harmful radiations?

In this funny video, Arun Shourie talks about a man who used cow dung to protect himself from the harmful radiation of a cell phone.

We have all had a hearty laugh at him. But what is the truth? Are cell phone radiations harmful to humans? Can cow dung protect you from them? Let's find a logical answer to this today. (1/n) Mobile phones communicate using radio waves. Radio waves span from low frequencies to ultra-high frequencies, used for different applications, as shown in the image below.

Our smartphones use a band (4G) in the range of 600-2500 MHz. Assume for a moment that radio waves can cause cancer. Let's then look at other electromagnetic waves that can cause cancer, which will make it simple and clear. (2/n)

EV-GRID DISASTER PART-3 | Last week we gave an overview of how India's mindless all-electric policy is going to be a disaster. Our argument is based on the fact that the additional energy demand is going to be fulfilled with Coal power plants, which will nearly triple the carbon emissions and require the grid capacity to be increased by double or more.

We received a lot of counterarguments using the data from the US about the energy mix. Today we will dissect the argument in more detail using simple fundamentals and will try to prove that citing US data will not work in the Indian context.

To begin with, let's take a look at the Electrical Energy mix of US and India. First of all, the US consumes 13 times more Electricity with 33 Cr population. A whopping 76% of our Electricity comes from Coal, whereas it is only 16.2% for the United States. They generate 775 GWh (18.5%) from Nuclear, whereas we generate only a minuscule 8.8 GWh from Nuclear which is the cleanest form of energy. (1/6) What is more important is their use of Natural Gas. 43.1% of their Electricity is generated from Natural Gas (Methane), which is much more energy-dense and the power plants are more efficient than Coal-based thermal power plants.

There are two types of Gas based power plants. Single Cycle Gas Turbine (SCGT), which has a thermal efficiency of only 35% and Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT), which gives a thermal efficiency of 60% by reusing the steam. Watch the video to understand how they achieve this in CCGT.

In India, we barely use natural Gas to produce Electricity. It is a paltry 2.8%. Also in the US, around 58% of the Natural Gas based electricity comes from more efficient CCGT plants, which makes the emissions much lower. (2/6)

We've compiled the Coal production and import data from the last 20 years. During the Dr. Manmohan Singh Government, we produced 4889 MT of coal. 758 MT was imported and the share of imports was 13.43%.

During the Modi era, the production grew only by 52% to 7425 MT, but the imports nearly tripled to 2228 MT. The share of imports was 23.09% for the last 10 years when compared to 13.43% during the UPA years.

UPA delivered much better despite a CAG report engineered by Mr. Vinod Rai & Co. resulting in the cancellation of 214 coal blocks allocated since 1993. The decision had an estimated impact of around Rs 2.85 lakh crore worth of investments linked to the 214 coal blocks and their end-use plants. Vinod Rai was later rewarded by Modi for his engineering excellence with a plum post in BCCI. (1/4) You might ask this question. Last three years our coal production has improved a lot. Still, why are we importing so much coal, and with a record 268 MT imports in the last year alone?

Look at the share of coal imports from Indonesia and Australia. Adani owns coal mines in these two countries. Do you need any more explanation? (2/4)

NTA and its shady chairman 🧵 Meet Dr. Pradeep Kumar Joshi, the serial offender who has no taste of merit but repeatedly secures coveted appointments by just being a loyal RSS man. His career is as phenomenal as any chamcha could dream of. Let's go through his biodata. (1/n) Dr. Joshi has no remarkable research, achievements, neither represented India in coveted academic forums at home or abroad nor was never a fixture of any academic event worth its name. He was an ordinary faculty member at Rani Durgawati College, Jabalpur. (2/n)

EV-GRID DISASTER | How our thoughtless EV policy is going to endanger India's future

A few days ago Transport Minister @nitin_gadkari said that Central Govt is planning to eliminate Petrol and Diesel vehicles by 2034 and replace them mostly with Electric Vehicles.

But if they are really serious about it, it is going to be a disaster-in-the-making for the country. Why do we say so? (1/n) What is the main objective of this move?

The stated objective of this move is to reduce Carbon (CO2) emissions and meet our climate goals. In plain sight, EVs don't emit Carbon Dioxide. But the electrical energy required for charging the batteries generates a lot of carbon dioxide.

Let's assume that we’re adding multiple coal-based power plants to meet the electricity demand for charging these new EVs. Later, we will explain why we made this assumption.

We’ll compare emissions between an EV and a Petrol/Diesel car using the Tata Nexon as a benchmark. The Tata Nexon comes in Petrol, Diesel, and EV variants with similar specifications. Based on reviews, the Tata Nexon EV Max has a range of 276 km on a full charge with its 40.5 kWh battery. It needs 11.66 Kg Petrol or 10.62 Kg Diesel to cover the same distance.

How much coal will be required to fully charge the battery? Let's find out.

The charging efficiency of an EV is around 80%. This means you need 50 units (KWh) of electricity to fully charge a 40 KWh battery.

The energy density of good-quality Coal is 24 MJ/kg (about half that of Petrol or Diesel). The efficiency of a Coal power plant is around 33%, so we can produce only 2.2 units (KWh) of electricity from 1 kg of Coal. Besides, there is approximately 15% transmission loss on the grid as the electricity reaches your home from a Coal Power Plant in Chhattisgarh.

To summarize, to fully charge the Tata Nexon EV Max, we need approximately 26.7 kg of Coal. This is nearly 2.5 times the amount of Petrol/Diesel needed for the same distance, resulting in approximately 2.5x carbon emissions.

We don't always use the best quality coal. We use Anthracite, Bituminous Coal, Lignite and Peat for power production. Lignite has nearly half the energy density as Anthracite coal. So, when we migrate to EVs fully, we will end up tripling the carbon emissions. (2/n)

This is the marks card of Anitha, a Dalit girl from Tamil Nadu's Ariyalur district who got 1176/1200 (98%) in her 12th standard but committed suicide after her fight against NEET failed after the Supreme Court dismissed her pleas.

Today, when you see candidates who failed in Physics and Chemistry score 705/720 in NEET, you realise how unfair and one-sided the system is. Anitha is a martyr in this fight. Read her story below (1/4) Anitha was a brilliant girl from a very poor family. She was the little sister of four elder brothers and her father was a daily wage earner. Her mother died when Anitha was studying in 2nd standard as she didn't get timely medical help.

Anitha was determined to become a doctor from childhood and always stood first in her school till 12th. Before the introduction of NEET in 2017, medical admissions in Tamil Nadu were determined based on 12th Standard marks, and she scored very high marks of 1176/1200!

When the results came out, she didn't clear it. She was at the forefront of the fight against NEET by students from Tamil Nadu with activists like Prince Gajendra Babu leading the agitation. (2/4)

NEET SCAM DEBUNKED | The NEET-2024 scam, how it was orchestrated and the methods used.

Widespread manipulation happened in NEET 2024 exams and the results bear testimony to the allegations made by students soon after the exam. Many people didn't understand the details of the fraud happened and therefore we decided to analyse it from basics.

This Government has put the life of lakhs of children who studied day and night for fulfilling their dream of becoming a doctor and serve the society. Many poor parents have taken loans to fulfil their children's aspirations. Several Children committed suicide after the results came out.

This gross crime needs to be investigated, punish the culprits, provide remedy for the aggrieved children as soon as possible. (1/n) NEET medical entrance is a nationwide medical entrance exam conducted by National Testing Agency (NTA) established in 2017.

The exam Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) covering four subjects Physics, Chemistry, Zoology and Botany. There are 50 questions in each subject and maximum 45 questions will be considered for valuation. Each right answer will get four marks and a wrong answer carry one negative mark. Maximum marks possible is 720.

The students mark the correct answer in an OMR sheet, which will be evaluated by a Computer avoiding human intervention.

The exam is conducted in English as well as in 12 regional languages for vernacular medium students. The students will have to answer 180 questions in 3 hrs 20 mins time. (2/n)

MOTHER OF ALL THREADS | How Modi Created a Bogus 'Black Money Narrative' and Exploited It

During the 2014 General Elections campaign, Modi claimed that there would be ₹15-20 lakhs worth of black money for every Indian stashed abroad. He also promised to bring back every penny if he is given power.

If you apply this ₹15 lakh figure to a population of 120 crore, it amounts to around $30 trillion. India's GDP back then was $2.04 trillion, and the world GDP was $79 trillion.

Let's analyze how they arrived at this astronomical figure, what was wrong with it, and how they fooled all of us, including his Khattar Bhakts (1/n) Let's examine the origins of these kinds of figures. When the alleged 2G scandal broke out, the then-CAG Vinod Rai estimated that 2G spectrum allocations resulted in a loss of ₹1.76 lakh crore for the nation. He arrived at this figure by multiplying the 3G spectrum price for Delhi and Mumbai circles and then applying it to the 2G spectrum for all 22 telecom circles across the country.

Dr. Manmohan Singh had the vision to provide 2G spectrum at a cheaper price to increase mobile telephony penetration across the country. The result of which was that there 21 telecom companies giving mobile services across the country. This led to an era of one-paisa calling, and the era of expensive STD calls disappeared.

CAG Rai's logic was like taking today's gold price (3G) and applying it to silver (2G). Hell broke loose and everyone alleged that there was a huge scandal and Congress and DMK leaders made a lot of money out of this. Everyone pitched in, including today's Godi journalists like Arnab Goswami and others. Dr. Manmohan Singh ordered investigations, and the case went to the Supreme Court, which cancelled the 2G licenses granted to companies. (2/n)

Why is Papa hurriedly selling govt land for a pittance just before retiring?🧵Read on!

Last week, the Telecom Secretary issued a notification that 600 land parcels and buildings of BSNL and MTNL are being put up for outright sale as part of asset monetization.

While these properties are initially offered for sale to government departments and other PSUs, they will eventually be auctioned to private entities. Most of these are prime properties, particularly those held by MTNL, which only owns properties in Mumbai and Delhi. (1/n) BSNL owns 10,568 acres, and MTNL owns 334.36 acres of land, all in prime locations in Mumbai and Delhi. The government's estimated value for BSNL's land is ₹1.26 lakh crore, while MTNL's land is valued at ₹12,000 crore.

It's challenging to assess these numbers at a glance, so let's convert them to average per square foot values for better relatability. (2/n)

EXPOSED | Did Modi Govt Import Cheaper Oil from Russia for Reducing Fuel Prices? 🧵

A few weeks ago, @saurabhtop of Lallantop asked @DrSJaishankar about the brief given to him by Modi regarding the decision to import crude oil from Russia during the Russia-Ukraine war, which began in February 2022.

Mr. Jaishankar said, "We've to keep the petrol price as low as possible. Petrol is the most inflationary. If it goes up, everything else becomes expensive. The objective was that India's consumers should pay less."

Listen to him fully before reading the rest of the thread. It gives the impression that Modi's single-point focus was to provide the benefit of cheaper Russian crude to Indian consumers. (1/n) The price of petrol and diesel before the war began in January 2022 was ₹95.41 and ₹86.67 respectively. It went up to ₹105.41 and ₹96.67 in April after the war started. It came back to ₹96.72 and ₹89.62 in May. It remained the same just before the elections were announced, with a two-rupee cut in March. We deserve such little mercies, isn't it?

Does this mean that India didn't get any benefit from cheaper crude imports from Russia? No. (2/n)

Mumbai - Ahmedabad Bullet Train: A disaster in the making 🧵

Ten years ago, Modi announced a Bullet Train project connecting Mumbai and Ahmedabad by 2022. This was hailed as Modi's ultimate vision, and everyone blamed Congress for not bringing Bullet Trains to India.

Ten years later, it is only 30% complete, and the revised deadline is now 2028. Let's not debate whether we need a bullet train or not. Instead, let's analyze the financials of the project and see how it is going to be the biggest liability for the country once launched, if and when that happens. (1/n) The initial cost estimation for the project was ₹1.08 Lakh Crore for constructing 508 KM with 12 stops.

The cost was later revised to ₹1.65 Lakh Crore, but it is expected to cost ₹2 Lakh Crore when completed, as reported by RSS mouthpiece @SwarajyaMag. That's a whopping ₹398 Crore per km!

The project was supposed to be 80:20 funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which is a loan with a tenure of 50 years and an interest of 0.1%.

So, ₹1,60,000 Crore will come from Japan, and NSHRCL has to raise ₹40,000 Crore if the cost stays at ₹2 Lakh Crore. It can go beyond that. (2/n)

swarajyamag.com/infrastructure…

Dear Modi Fans,

Can you imagine an Indian paying Pakistani extremists to abuse India on Television? What will you call such a person? We will call him Desh Drohi or Gaddar!

Watch this video and tell me how much contempt they have for you and your intellect. While you were glued to Arnab's WWE-like drama, feeling all patriotic, Tariq Pirzada, a defense analyst and media panelist from Pakistan, was busy abusing India left-right-centre. (1/4) Why were they doing this? It all boils down to money. Arnab was paying Pirzada in American dollars, sent to his Dubai account. This info came out in a blog post by none other than @sardesairajdeep.

And what did Arnab gain from this? Your viewership, your enthusiasm, your likes and shares—all of which add up to BARC ratings, YouTube views, and ultimately, tons of money.

What a huge profit, all at your expense! You were investing your precious time only to be taken for a ride by people you once considered trustworthy.

On screen, they looked like enemies, but behind the scenes, they were buddies, laughing all the way to the bank! (2/4)

Have you heard about 374 people missing their flight on a single day in Bengaluru and many had to walk to the airport?

A 7 KM drive on Airport Road from Hebbal to MG Road takes between 45 mins to 1 hr. Many have missed their flights stuck in mad traffic and many would have died in ambulances.

Who is responsible for this? Let's find out (1/n) When Bengaluru's new airport construction was about to be completed in 2008, Yeddyurappa Govt took over.

To create a signal-free corridor from MG Road to Hebbal, BJP govt came up with stupid solutions like narrow precast underpasses, which created the whole problem. (2/n)

URGENT ATTN | We've accessed the petition regarding the False Affidavit filed by Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

The complaint was filed to @ECISVEEP @collectortvpm and EC Observer. Rajeev has declared assets of only 36 Cr. The whole world knows that he is a billionaire (8000 Cr) (1/n)



There are glaring mistakes in his affidavit itself, where he has shown his shares/bonds/debentures holding as a liability (negative) and manipulated the data to show a low figure of 36 Cr.

He has written two different figures of 9 Cr and 13 Cr for in two different places. (2/n)

MODI-THE MOST CUNNING POLITICIAN EVER!🧵

Read @ShekharGupta's letter to Modi in 2013 to fully understand the real Modi. Let's start with some backstory.

India & Bangladesh had enclaves (71 & 102) that are pockets of land in each other's territory. (1/n)
theprint.in/sg-national-in…
It is like a small island of land belonging to India in Bangladesh, and vice versa. This happened because of a game/agreement between two kingdoms before the British Era.

During partition one king chose East Pakistan and the other chose India and these enclaves continued(2/n)

Kachaitheevu is just a 1.1 km2 uninhabited Island disputed during British Time. Indira Gandhi Govt decided to give away this as a goodwill gesture to deepen ties with Srilanka in 1974.

Now let's look at the contributions of various Prime Ministers to our land area (1/n) It was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who added the maximum land area to India. During his tenure, India's land area increased by 3.47 lakh sq. km, which is roughly the area of Germany today.

Indira Gandhi also added territory to India, whereas Vajpayee and Modi lost territory. (2/n)

How many of you have been to Forum Mall in Koramangala, Bengaluru?

Then you might remember the Big Bazaar building next to an Indian Oil Petrol Pump. The 2-acre property has Salarpuria Towers, Indian Oil Pump, and so on. (1/4) This was the Benami property of Gali Janardhan Reddy, the Bellari mining baron. The properties were worth 500 Cr, and constructed on Government land. This property was giving him a monthly rental of 6 Cr. (2/4)

DID YOU KNOW? | In Kerala there is a candidate who doesn't have his own house!!

He has been an MP for 18 years but doesn't own a House or a Car. He lives on rent. He still uses an old two-wheeler. Any guesses? Any guess which party he belongs to? (1/n) You would have guessed it already. We are talking about Rajeev Chandrasekhar, BJP candidate from Thiruvananthapuram. Rajeev doesn't have his own house according to his 2018 Rajya Sabha affidavit. He lives on rent of just 3.78 Cr. (2/n)

Want to know about the secret love affair of BJP and Chinese Communist Party?

On 2018 Independence Day, while Modi was addressing the nation, BJP's Ram Madhav was in Beijing with Song Tao, Minister of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee. (1/9)

A year back, in 2017, he met Guo Yezhou, Vice-minister of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee.

What was this meeting really about Mr. @rammadhavbjp?

You owe the nation an explanation. (2/9)