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Education1d ago

8.14 lakh children, two shifts, one bell: council school exams begin across the Varanasi division on Wednesday

From Wednesday, the council schools of the Varanasi division switch into exam mode. Children from classes 1 to 8 will sit their papers in two shifts — 8 to 10 in the morning, and 10.30 to 12.30 — which is worth knowing for any household that has to plan a school run, a tiffin or an auto pick-up around it. The scale is easy to underestimate. Across the division 8,14,717 children are due to appear, of whom 1,58,613 are in Varanasi district alone. That is a bigger number than most public events this city hosts, spread quietly across hundreds of classrooms in the four districts. The format changes with age. The youngest children are assessed orally, the middle classes through a mix of oral and written work, and classes 6 to 8 sit written papers. Assistant Director (Basic) Hemant Rao has said preparations across the division are complete. For parents, the practical bit is simple: check which shift your child is in, send them with the usual water bottle and a proper breakfast, and expect an early finish. For teachers it is the busiest stretch of the term. Either way, Wednesday morning belongs to the exam hall.

Amar Ujala — VaranasiOpen the update

News1d ago

Green building comes to the city of ghats: Kashi hosts its first Green Varanasi Conclave

Varanasi has spent the last few years adding buildings quickly — hotels, offices, transit stops, campuses. This month the city sat down to ask how those buildings should be made. The Confederation of Indian Industry and the Indian Green Building Council held the first Green Varanasi Conclave, under the theme of preserving heritage while building a sustainable future. The numbers put Kashi further along than most people would guess. The council counts 38 registered green projects in the city, together covering 5.73 million square feet — 28 of them commercial, six residential, two in industry and logistics, and two in transit infrastructure. Fifteen buildings have already been certified. Across Uttar Pradesh the registered figure runs past 1,700 projects. The conclave brought planners, builders and academics into one room, with Varanasi Municipal Commissioner Himanshu Nagpal among those present, and a panel on sustainable urban transformation that drew people from IIT (BHU), Larsen & Toubro and CREDAI Purvanchal. The most durable outcome may be the smallest one: an IGBC student chapter has been launched at IIT (BHU), Varanasi. It means the next set of engineers trained in this city will learn energy-efficient, climate-resilient design as a normal part of the job — which is how a green-building habit actually takes root in a place.

Construction WorldOpen the update

Travel1d ago

Mangala Aarti to a Banarasi breakfast: the tourism department packages three guided Kashi heritage walks

Anyone who has arrived in Kashi with one free day knows the problem: the city is too layered to improvise. The Uttar Pradesh tourism department has now packaged that day into three guided heritage walks, each running about five hours, each with a fixed route, a guide and a meal built in. Divya Kashi is the pre-dawn one, at Rs 2,200 a person. It starts in the dark for the Mangala Aarti, takes in the Annapurna, Vishalakshi and Pashupatinath temples and Manikarnika Ghat, and finishes over a Banarasi breakfast. Assi Kashi, at Rs 2,499, also begins with the Mangala Aarti but then moves down to Assi Ghat by boat and e-bus for the sunrise aarti, Tulsi Ghat and Lolark Kund. The third, Purani Kashi, is for people who cannot face a 3 am alarm. It is an evening walk through the old lanes and temples, timed for the Ganga Aarti at Lalita Ghat, with Vishwanath darshan and a round of Banarasi street food before it ends. It is also priced at Rs 2,499. Bookings are through darshan.kashi.gov.in, and QR codes for the walks are being displayed at railway stations, the airport and the ghats — so a visitor can decide on arrival rather than months ahead.

Amar Ujala — VaranasiOpen the update

Sports1d ago

Four districts, one hall at Lodhan: Kashi hosts the divisional girls' table tennis meet on Wednesday

Wednesday morning belongs to the paddles. From 11 am, the Babu R.N. Singh Indoor Sports Hall at Lodhan hosts the 70th divisional school girls' table tennis championship — a single day of play that decides which girls from the Varanasi division travel onward to the state meet. Four districts are entered: Varanasi, Jaunpur, Chandauli and Ghazipur, with players in the under-14, under-17 and under-19 age groups. That spread is what makes a divisional round worth turning up for. A fourteen-year-old from a Chandauli school can find herself across the net from a Jaunpur player she has only heard about, and the whole thing is settled in one long, loud, fast-moving day. What is at stake is a place at the state-level championship in Bareilly, scheduled for September 23 to 26. Selection is made on how the girls play here, so there is no second window later in the season — everything rests on Wednesday. Divisional sports secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh is overseeing the arrangements. For Kashi this is the second school-sport date inside the same week, after the district's open junior athletics trials. It is a good stretch for anyone who follows the city's young players: two very different disciplines, two sets of selections, and a fresh list of names heading out to carry the division's colours.

Amar Ujala — VaranasiOpen the update

Sports3d ago

One morning at Sigra decides the district team: open junior athletics trials on 18 August

If there is a runner in your house, tomorrow is the day to show up. The District Athletics Association holds an open trial for the junior athletics team on 18 August at Dr. Sampurnanand Sports Stadium in Sigra, and the team picked that morning will carry the district's name to the state championship. The trial is open across four age groups, each fixed by date of birth: under-20 for those born between 17 September 2006 and 16 September 2008, under-18 for 17 September 2008 to 16 September 2010, under-16 for 17 September 2010 to 16 September 2012, and under-14 for 17 September 2012 to 16 September 2014. The under-20 programme runs the full range — sprints and distance events from 100m to 5000m, hurdles, steeplechase, jumps, throws and race walk — with the same spread in shortened form for the younger groups. Under-14 athletes have a kids' javelin event on the compulsory list. Selection does not stop at the district. Athletes chosen at Sigra will represent Varanasi at the 61st UP State Open Junior Athletics Championship in Prayagraj from 23 to 25 August, and the best performers there go on to the North Zone championship in Dehradun from 14 to 16 September. The announcement came from the association's secretary, Ramesh Kumar Yadav.

Amar UjalaOpen the update

Travel3d ago

North Karnataka to Kashi, three days a week: the Hubballi–Varanasi train is set for more trips

Anyone who has waited for a seat on the Hubballi–Varanasi run knows how tight the booking gets in Shravan. That pressure is about to ease: Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has assured that train numbers 07323/24, which link north Karnataka with Kashi, will soon be extended to three days a week. The assurance came at a meeting in New Delhi with Union Minister Pralhad Joshi, who represents Dharwad and had taken up the demand on behalf of travellers from that region. The extra trips matter in both directions. Pilgrims from Hubballi, Dharwad and the surrounding districts make the journey to Kashi in large numbers through Shravan and the festival months, and until now the limited frequency meant long waitlists and detours through other junctions. Tourists and business travellers use the same service. More running days should mean easier confirmations and fewer people paying a premium to reach Varanasi by a roundabout route. Joshi also asked for a modernisation of Hubballi station — better parking, shopping and dining space for passengers — and the minister agreed to examine it. For now the three-day frequency is an assurance rather than a published timetable, so anyone planning travel should check the running days on the railway's own booking system before making onward arrangements in Kashi.

Mangalorean.comOpen the update

Events3d ago

Hotels, chefs and tour operators pick Kashi: the FHRAI national convention lands at Taj Ganges on 21 August

For three days this month, the people who run India's hotels and restaurants will be doing their thinking in Banaras. The Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Associations of India holds its 56th annual convention at Taj Ganges from 21 to 23 August, and it has named the gathering after the city itself — "Ananta Kashi: Leading the Future of Tourism through Spirit, Culture, Cuisine and Craft." The programme reads like a map of where Indian travel is heading, with Kashi as the case study. Sessions are planned on spiritual, wellness and experiential tourism; on weddings and destination celebrations; on MICE and events; on gastronomy and culinary tourism; on sustainable hospitality design; and on technology and AI in the trade. Senior figures from IHCL, ITC Hotels, Wyndham, Hilton, Radisson and IHG are listed among the industry participants, alongside Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and other state ministers on the government side. What makes it worth a Banarasi's attention is the second half of the itinerary. Delegates are scheduled to visit Swarved Mahamandir Dham and Kashi Vishwanath Temple and to sit for the Ganga Aarti — meaning several hundred decision-makers will leave with a first-hand impression of the city rather than a brochure. For guides, boatmen, weavers, sweet shops and small restaurants, that kind of exposure tends to show up later as bookings. The convention itself is a trade event, so it is not a public programme.

Hospitality Biz IndiaOpen the update

News4d ago

Varanasi's Agniveer window is fixed: the recruitment rally reaches the city on 2 February 2027

Young people in and around Kashi who are training for the army now have a date to train towards. Uttar Pradesh's next round of Agniveer recruitment rallies — the third such series in the state — begins on 17 August 2026 at Meerut and runs through to April 2027 across six cities, and Varanasi's turn comes from 2 to 27 February 2027. The rest of the calendar has been laid out too: Bareilly from 14 to 30 September 2026, Lucknow from 11 to 28 January 2027, and Ayodhya from 29 March to 14 April 2027. For anyone in Varanasi, Chandauli, Bhadohi, Ghazipur or Jaunpur with the rally in mind, that is roughly half a year of runway — long enough to build up running, fitness and paperwork properly rather than in a last-minute scramble, and long enough to plan travel and stay well before the crowd arrives. Preparations at the state level were reviewed by Chief Secretary S P Goyal at a meeting in Lok Bhavan, where officials were told to make sure candidates face no difficulty at the recruitment grounds. The instructions covered drinking water, sanitation and medical facilities at the venues, security and crowd management planned in advance, arrangements for candidates' travel and stay, and a traffic plan for each site — with medical services on hand for any emergency. The stated intention is that candidates coming from far-flung areas should find it easier to take part.

Prabhat KhabarOpen the update

Traffic4d ago

Walk in, one way only: Maidagin and Godowlia turn vehicle-free as Kashi heads into Sawan Monday and Nag Panchami

The queue outside Shri Kashi Vishwanath Dham ran about three kilometres on Sunday — and that was the day before. With the third Monday of Sawan and Nag Panchami arriving together, devotees from far-off districts and other states had already reached the city and were standing in line for hours, the whole temple quarter ringing with "Har Har Mahadev" and "Bol Bam". The administration has responded by changing how the lanes work. The road to the temple has been declared single-direction, so movement runs one way only, and Maidagin and Godowlia have been made no-vehicle zones. Barricading has gone up at multiple points with police deployed alongside, and a joint team from the temple administration and the district administration is moving devotees through in phases rather than letting the queue bunch up. Officials expect the crowd to grow further on the day itself, so extra arrangements for drinking water, shade and medical help have been put in place along the route. The practical upshot for anyone planning darshan: assume the last stretch is on foot, leave the car or scooter well short of Godowlia and Maidagin, carry water, and allow a good deal more time than usual. If you are simply moving around the old city on Monday for other reasons, the same two points are worth routing around entirely.

Dainik JagranOpen the update

Travel4d ago

Ten new kilometres to save twenty: a bypass towards Varanasi gets clearance in Mirzapur

Anyone who drives between Mirzapur and Varanasi knows the detour. Traffic coming off the Bhatauli bridge currently has to swing around on the Mirzapur–Aurai and Rewa–Varanasi roads, adding roughly twenty to twenty-two kilometres to a trip that ought to be short — extra time, extra fuel, and a queue at the crossings when the trucks pile up. That detour now has a fix on paper. The state government has approved a two-lane bypass of about ten kilometres running from the Bhatauli bridge to Amghat, at a cost of around seventy crore rupees. Roughly thirty-four crore of that is earmarked for buying land, felling trees, GST and allied work, with the remainder going into the road itself. The alignment is planned through Cherui Ram, Kakrahi, Bhuili, Devapur, Badauli Khurd and Devahi. Ten new kilometres, in other words, to save travellers about twenty. The public works department's executive engineer, Ashok Kumar, told reporters that the project was sent to the state and has now been cleared, and that the process of acquiring land has begun. Tree-felling follows once that is complete, and construction after that — so this is a clearance, not a ribbon-cutting, and no completion date has been announced. The stretch it should relieve, the Bhatauli–Kachhwan route, carries thousands of vehicles a day and jams when the load peaks. A separate proposal to widen that road by about four metres is still pending.

News18 Hindi (Local18)Open the update

Sports4d ago

Kashi on the shortlist: UP T20 League chairman says Varanasi could host matches in the near future

Banaras cricket has a name on the board. At the opening ceremony of the fourth season of the UP T20 League in Lucknow on 15 August, league chairman Dr Sanjay Kapoor said that matches could be hosted in Varanasi, Gorakhpur and other cities of the state in the near future. The current season is being played across two centres only — Lucknow and Kanpur — and Kapoor framed the expansion as a way of taking the tournament closer to the talent it keeps finding outside the big cities. For Kashi, the interest is not abstract. One of the six franchises in this edition carries the city's name, the Kashi Rudras, so local supporters already have a side to follow even though the fixtures are being played elsewhere. Nothing has been scheduled for Varanasi yet, and no venue or date has been announced, but this is the first time the league has publicly put the city on its list of future hosts. Kapoor also spoke about the league's grassroots scouting drive, under which selections were held free of charge for players from rural areas. Players found through that drive, he said, are now spread across all six squads in this season, and several of them drew bids running into lakhs at the auction. The ceremony was attended by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and BCCI vice-president Rajeev Shukla. If the plan holds, the next few seasons could bring top-flight T20 cricket within a rickshaw ride of the ghats.

The Hans India (IANS)Open the update

Sports6d ago

Trials on the mat in Varanasi: the division picks its sub-junior wrestlers for the state championship

The mats were busy at a Varanasi stadium this week, with young wrestlers from across the Varanasi division turning up for the selection trial for the state sub-junior wrestling championship. The state meet is scheduled at Kaushambi from August 21 to 23, and the wrestlers chosen here will carry the division's name into it. For an age-group wrestler, a trial like this is the only door into a state meet, and it swings on a few minutes at a time — one bout, in front of coaches who have watched thousands of them. Experienced coaches supervised the day's bouts, and entrants had come in from the different districts of the division rather than from the city alone, which is what makes a divisional trial worth watching: talent from a small-town akhara gets the same mat and the same three minutes as anyone else. International wrestler Bacche Lal was present at the trial, and his message to the youngsters was the unglamorous one — stay disciplined, and put in more work. For a sub-junior stepping up to this level for the first time, a trial at home is the cheapest lesson going: you learn exactly where your game stands before the state meet tells you.

Desi KhabarOpen the update

News6d ago

Rare research from across the country, gathered at Nagkoop: Kashi builds a shared shelf for Sanskrit scholarship

Nagkoop, in Jaitpura, is known in Kashi as a shastrarth address — the kind of place where a text is argued out loud rather than filed away. It is now taking on an archive's work too. Rare research papers on Sanskrit and on dharma-shastra, published in scattered corners of the country, are to be gathered and preserved in one place here. What is being collected goes well past printed papers. Manuscripts, writing on bhojpatra, and copper-plate records are part of the material that will be held and read. Specialists from different states are to examine it for its context, its language and its subject — the sort of comparative reading that is difficult when a text sits in one city and its commentary in another. The reading is also meant to travel outward: interpretation of rare manuscripts is to be broadcast as it happens, so scholars elsewhere hear the commentary at the same time as the room does. Prof Ram Narayan Dwivedi, secretary-general of the Uttar Pradesh Nagkoop Shastrarth Committee and a Sanskrit professor at BHU, put the aim plainly: bring research published across the country into a single location, and set material from different places on a shared platform. No completion date has been announced for the collection.

Amar Ujala — VaranasiOpen the update

Weather6d ago

The boats are out again: the Ganga has started falling in Kashi after a week of high water

After days of watching the water climb, Kashi is watching it go back down. The Ganga's level at Varanasi peaked at about 63.78 metres on Monday and then held steady, before dropping roughly 17 centimetres on Wednesday and another five on Thursday to around 63.56 metres. Experts put the retreat down to a quiet spell in the rain — it was the heavy early-August downpours in the hills upstream that had pushed the river up in the first place. The change everyone at the ghats was waiting for came on Thursday: boat operations, suspended while the river ran high, resumed. Boatmen speaking through the Maa Ganga Nishad Raj Seva Samiti welcomed the restart, and the samiti has asked operators to carry life jackets and rescue equipment on every trip and to stay ready to help if needed. The river is not back in its old shape yet. Several ghats are still cut off from one another, and small shrines along the bank remain under water. So if a sunrise boat ride or an evening at the aarti is on your list this week, do what Banarasis do: ask at the ghat that morning rather than the night before, check that your boat has jackets aboard, and take the steps slowly — stone that has been under the river stays slippery with silt for days after the water drops.

Amar Ujala — VaranasiOpen the update

Education6d ago

Business class on Saturdays: Varanasi's government schools add an entrepreneurship track for Class 11

Government inter colleges in Varanasi are adding something unfamiliar to the Class 11 timetable this session — a Saturday class on how to build a business. The Skill Business Challenge runs under the National Education Policy 2020, and it is open to students across all three streams: commerce, arts and science alike. The format is simple. Each school puts together a team of eleven students, and the whole team works a single business idea from first sketch to a plan that holds up. Workbooks prepared for the programme walk them through the parts that textbooks skip — communication, critical thinking, and the habit of asking why anyone would actually pay for the thing. Ideas then climb: school level, district level, state level. At the district stage the top ten teams take ₹5,000 each; at the state stage the top five take ₹20,000 each, along with a place in a state workshop and government startup support for the strongest proposals. Two master trainers are coordinating the programme in Varanasi — Dr Kanhaiya of PM Shri Rajkiya Queens Inter College and Rajesh Kumar Ray of PM Shri Rajkiya Inter College, Jakhini. The stated aim is not to produce another set of textbook toppers, but to send students out of school with something they can run themselves.

Amar Ujala — VaranasiOpen the update

Travel7d ago

A bus to Kashi every twenty minutes: roadways puts 40 extra trips on the Prayagraj run

Getting to Kashi from Prayagraj this Sawan should mean a much shorter wait at the stand. UP Roadways has stepped up the Prayagraj–Varanasi service to a bus roughly every twenty minutes between 6 in the morning and 11 at night, adding about 40 extra trips to the route. The buses leave from the Vidya Vahini ground opposite CMP Degree College in Prayagraj. After 11pm and through to about 5.30am, departures continue according to how many passengers are actually waiting — so late arrivals are not stranded, though the gaps will be longer. Regional manager Ravindra Kumar has said the number of buses and trips can be raised further if the crowds run ahead of the plan, which is the sensible way to handle a month when devotee numbers swing day to day. For most travellers heading to Sri Kashi Vishwanath Dham, the practical gain is simple: no need to plan the day around a single fixed departure. Turn up at the ground, and the next bus is usually within the half hour. It sits alongside the special trains the railways has been running on the same corridor, so there are now two workable ways to make the trip on a busy weekend. A useful reminder for anyone travelling with elderly relatives or small children in the monsoon: aim for daylight departures, keep a little slack for traffic at the city end, and carry water for the road.

The India DailyOpen the update

Sports7d ago

279 karatekas from 80 schools weigh in at Sonarpura — and the girls got the mat first

The hall at Bengal Inter College in Sonarpura has been busy since Tuesday morning, and the queue at the weighing scale told you how far school karate has travelled in this city. Two hundred and seventy-nine players from eighty schools turned up for the district secondary-school championship — and 150 of them were girls, against 129 boys. Day one belonged entirely to the girls. Bouts ran through the sub-junior, junior and senior age groups in both kata, the solo form, and kumite, the sparring event where points are won and lost in a blink. Event secretary Major Vimal Rao's summary of the day was that the girls simply kicked their way to their wins. Principal Dr Brijesh Mani Pandey opened the meet, and district karate association secretary Dilip Saini ran it with the schools' sports teachers. The boys take over on Wednesday morning, from eight to noon, across the same three age groups — and if you have ever wanted to watch kumite up close, a school hall on a weekday morning is a friendlier place to start than a stadium. A divisional championship, drawing players from Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Chandauli and Varanasi, was held the same afternoon. For a discipline that is often treated as an after-school hobby, an eighty-school turnout is a real number — and a girls' majority on the entry list is the kind of detail worth noticing in Kashi's sports calendar.

Amar Ujala — VaranasiOpen the update

News7d ago

A free deworming tablet for 18.5 lakh children: Varanasi's schools and anganwadis get ready for August 14

Thursday brings one of the district's quietest and biggest health exercises of the year. Under the National Deworming Mission, health and education staff across Varanasi will offer a free albendazole tablet to every child and young person aged one to nineteen — a target of roughly 18.50 lakh in all, about 11.10 lakh of them across the rural blocks and 7.40 lakh in the city. The tablet is handed out where children already are: schools, madrasas and anganwadi centres, so no family has to make a trip to a hospital for it. Children who are not enrolled anywhere are counted in too, with anganwadi workers meant to reach them in their own neighbourhoods. Anyone missed on the 14th gets a second chance on the mop-up day, August 18. Why the district bothers with a day like this: intestinal worms quietly drain a growing child. Chief Medical Officer Dr N P Singh explains that the infection surfaces as malnutrition and anaemia and slows physical development, and that clearing it lifts both nutrition levels and the fight against anaemia. Deputy CMO Dr Sanjay Ray has stressed that the out-of-school children matter just as much to the coverage numbers. If there are children at home, the practical bit is simple. Send them off on Thursday having eaten, mention any ongoing medicine or illness to the teacher or anganwadi worker before the dose, and if the day slips past you, ask your nearest centre about the August 18 round.

Amar Ujala — VaranasiOpen the update

Travel8d ago

Delhi to Kashi in under four hours: the bullet-train corridor that is planned to end at Manduadih

Of the seven high-speed rail corridors India has on the drawing board, the one that matters most to Banaras is also the one that has travelled furthest through the paperwork — and its last station is ours. The proposed Delhi–Varanasi corridor runs 865 km from Sarai Kale Khan–Hazrat Nizamuddin in Delhi to Manduadih, crossing 22 districts of Uttar Pradesh on the way. The route reads like a pilgrim's itinerary written by an engineer: Jewar, Mathura, Agra, Etawah, Kannauj, Lucknow, Raebareli, Prayagraj and Bhadohi, with 12 to 13 stations planned in all and a separate 135-km spur proposed from Lucknow to Ayodhya. The line is designed for a top speed of 350 kmph and commercial running of up to 320 kmph, which would put Delhi roughly three hours and fifty-five minutes from Kashi — against more than ten hours on today's fastest express. For a city whose visitors currently arrive off an overnight train or a morning flight, that is a different kind of day trip. It is worth being clear about where the project actually stands. The detailed project report went in back in October 2020 and the LiDAR surveys along the alignment are done, but no construction date or opening year has been announced, and the estimated cost sits somewhere between ₹1.21 lakh crore and ₹1.71 lakh crore. Nothing is running yet. But on paper, at least, Banaras is the end of the line — in the best sense.

Business TodayOpen the update

News8d ago

Garth and Vora bow at the Ganga Gate before every shift — meet Vishwanath Dham's two sniffer dogs

Long before the first queue forms at Kashi Vishwanath Dham, two of the temple's most reliable staff members are already at the Ganga Gate — and, by a habit their handlers have kept up, they are made to bow towards Baba before they start work. Garth is an eight-year-old Labrador. Vora is a nine-year-old German Shepherd. Between them they are the sniffer dogs who walk the Dham's corridors through the Sawan crowds. Both were bought and trained by the Uttar Pradesh Police, sourced through the Kennel Club of India in Chennai, and both can pick up explosives, narcotics, wildlife remains and concealed weapons. Two head constables work as their handlers, an attendant looks after their day-to-day care, and a police-line vehicle brings them to the campus and takes them back. Each works an eight-hour shift, so that between them the pair covers the Dham from opening to closing — a longer stretch than usual through Sawan, when the footfall multiplies. The care that goes into them is unglamorous and specific: a daily diet of mixed vegetables, roti and milk that works out to about four hundred rupees per dog. Garth already has two gold medals from the Director General of Police for his work in detecting explosives. Most pilgrims will pass the two of them without a second look, which is more or less the point — the quietest part of Kashi's Sawan security arrangement walks on four legs.

Amar Ujala — VaranasiOpen the update

Education8d ago

Sanskrit at dawn, the computer lab after: the Chiraigaon school where 170 children board free

Head north out of the city towards Chiraigaon and, in Taraya village, a seven-acre campus has been quietly building a different kind of school. Sarvaved Sanskrit Secondary School opened in April 2021 and today boards 170 students in Classes 6 to 12 — children who have come from Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh, from tribal, Dalit and general families alike. Everything is free: the teaching, the hostel room, the meals, medical care, even the uniforms. What has drawn attention is how easily the two halves of the timetable sit together. Fourteen teachers take the students through Sanskrit, the sixteen sanskars, ritual practice, Vedic texts and Indian cultural studies — and also through Hindi, English, mathematics and science. The campus has smart classrooms, science laboratories, a computer lab with eighteen machines and its own playing fields; yoga and pranayama start the day, traditional games close it. Visitors come away describing children who recite in Sanskrit and then switch into fluent English, or work a computer without hesitation. The principal, Acharya Shailendra Dwivedi, says a session is set aside every fortnight for Varanasi itself — the city's heritage, the Ganga Aarti, Indian traditions and the lives of people worth learning from. Admission is not walk-in: families apply online and children are chosen through interviews. In a district where a Sanskrit school is often assumed to be looking only backwards, Taraya is making a quieter argument — that the old syllabus and the new one can share a desk.

Amar Ujala — VaranasiOpen the update

News9d ago

356 shopkeepers and colonies have plugged their own cameras into Kashi's city network — and it is finding lost luggage

Varanasi's Smart City programme has cameras at roughly 720 locations across the city — about 2,300 of them — and the network has quietly been growing in a different way. Residents and businesses are now linking their own cameras to it, and 356 private ones have been connected so far. They belong to petrol pumps, jewellery shops and residential colonies, the kind of cameras that already point at a gate or a lane and simply had no reason to talk to anyone. The footage feeds into the Trinetra Smart City control room, which runs round the clock in shifts. More than ten police personnel work there, with a separate traffic police team, and about two dozen more staff keep the junction cameras and the technology behind them running — over a hundred people in all across the shifts. Smart City PRO Shakambhari has said the monitoring itself is done by the police, while Smart City provides the technical support. For a visitor, the most useful part is the least dramatic one. Alongside managing traffic and issuing challans for violations, the control room regularly pulls up footage to trace luggage that travellers have left behind or lost somewhere in the city. In a place where a few lakh people move through the ghats and the temple lanes on a busy Sawan day, that is a quietly reassuring thing to know exists.

Amar Ujala — VaranasiOpen the update

Events9d ago

Eight in the morning at Queen's College: a Tiranga Yatra and bike rally loops through the heart of the city on Wednesday

If you are anywhere near Maldahiya or Lahurabir early on Wednesday morning, expect tricolours, drums and a slow-moving crowd. A Tiranga Yatra and bike rally sets off from Government Queen's Inter College at 8am on August 12, organised under the 'Maa Tujhe Pranam' banner by Amar Ujala along with the Nagar Nigam and the district administration, in the run-up to Independence Day. The route makes a loop through the middle of the city: out of Queen's College, past the main gate of Sampurnanand Sanskrit University, on to Chaura Mata temple and Patel Dharamshala, then past Vinayak Plaza to the Patel statue at Maldahiya, through Lohamandi and past Kashi Anathalaya, before turning at Lahurabir crossing and coming back to Queen's College. Thousands of school and college students are expected to walk it with flags in hand, joined by social and trade bodies, a bullet-bikers team and roller-skaters who will break into stunts along the way. Vehicles playing patriotic songs lead the procession, groups along the route will welcome the marchers with flower showers, and traffic police will be posted at the junctions so the rest of the city keeps moving. Anyone who wants to join can register through the QR code the organisers have circulated for the campaign. If you are not walking, the simplest thing is to plan around it: that stretch between Sampurnanand Sanskrit University, Maldahiya and Lahurabir will be busy from about 8am until the yatra returns.

Amar Ujala — VaranasiOpen the update

Sports9d ago

A rate card for BHU's playing fields: the astroturf, the pool and the indoor stadium now come with published booking prices

Some of the best sporting surfaces in Varanasi sit inside the BHU campus, and the university has now put a clear price on using them. In reply to an RTI application filed by Santosh Tripathi, the University Sports Board has laid out booking rates for 11 sports — useful information for any school team, club or academy in the city that has been wondering what it costs to play a match on a proper ground. For a competition, the range runs from about ₹1,000 to ₹7,000. Basketball, football, volleyball and handball sit at the lower end. The hockey astroturf and the swimming pool are at the top: a hockey match is priced around ₹2,000 with a full day at ₹7,000, and a day at the pool is also ₹7,000. The Vibhuti Narayan indoor stadium is ₹6,000 for a competition, the cricket ground ₹4,000 a day, a tennis court ₹2,000 a match, the squash court ₹7,000, the JK badminton hall ₹3,000, the boxing ring ₹2,000, and athletics between ₹3,000 and ₹5,000. Purely commercial bookings cost more — roughly ₹5,000 to ₹50,000, with the pool at the top of that scale. The sports board has said a committee takes the final call on every commercial booking after looking at what the organiser stands to earn, and that the facilities will not be handed over for any non-sporting use. For the city's players, that last line matters as much as the numbers.

Amar Ujala — VaranasiOpen the update

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