Where girls fear to turn up to school every day
The Hindu
Absence of proper toilet facility forces students to keep off school
Except this year, the PR Government School for Girls in Kakinada had never witnessed the record enrolment of students in six decades of its existence. Recently, 50 students joined the school by quitting private schools.
The teachers who persuaded the parents deserve the credit for their feat — the increase of the student strength from 150 in 2019-20 to 233 now (Class VI-X).
A few weeks after the reopening of the school, there was no cheer on the face of any stakeholder — students, teachers, and parents. The prime factor — absence of a safe toilet facility, privacy, and drainage system on the campus that gets inundated even after a single spell of rain.

In , the grape capital of India and host of the Simhastha Kumbh Mela every 12 years, environmental concerns over a plan to cut 1,800 trees for the proposed Sadhugram project in the historic Tapovan area have sharpened political fault lines ahead of local body elections. The issue has pitted both Sena factions against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which leads the ruling Mahayuti alliance in Maharashtra. While Eknath Shinde, Deputy Chief Minister and Shiv Sena chief, and Uddhav Thackeray, chief of the Shiv Sena (UBT), remain political rivals, their parties have found rare common ground in Tapovan, where authorities propose clearing trees across 34 acres to build Sadhugram and a MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions) hub, as part of a ₹300-crore infrastructure push linked to the pilgrimage.












