The Supreme Court will hear on Wednesday a batch of petitions challenging the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) decision to re-conduct maths exams for Class 10 after its question paper was leaked on March 28.

The bench headed by the Chief Justice Dipak Misra said on Monday decided to take up the matter after it was mentioned for an urgent hearing.

Besides challenging the re-conduct of the exam, the petitioners have sought a probe into the leak and declaration of results on the basis of exams already conducted.

The government on March 30 announced that re-examination will be held for Class 12 economics paper throughout the country on April 25 while fresh test for Class 10 maths paper will be held only in Delhi, NCR and Haryana in July.

However, the Delhi Crime Branch said that Karwal had received the e-mail a day before the mathematics exam, for which the Delhi Police had also written to Google to share details of the ID from which the CBSE chairperson got the mail.

CBSE chief Anita Karwal said that she received an email about paper leak only after the exam had started. Her statement came after the FIR that was registered in the leak of the Class X mathematics and Class XII Economics papers, mentioned that CBSE chief had received an email hours before the exam. When asked why the paper was not cancelled before students took it, Karwal told The Indian Express that she was not aware of it a day before. By the time information came, exams had already started, she said. She refused to accept that she had prior knowledge of the leak before the students sat for the exam.

However, the Delhi Crime Branch had told yesterday that the CBSE chairperson was sent a mail on the Class 10 mathematics paper being leaked. They said that Karwal had received the e-mail a day before the mathematics exam, for which the Delhi Police had also written to Google to share details of the ID from which the CBSE chairperson got the mail. The e-mail reportedly contains images of 12 pages of handwritten question papers, which were posted on several WhatsApp groups, they said.
The Crime Branch had also said that the sender in the email had stated that the mathematics paper was leaked on the messaging app and that it should be cancelled. They further said that the papers (economics and mathematics) were shared on over 10 WhatsApp groups, comprising 50-60 members. Four numbers that the CBSE mentioned in their complaints were used to circulate the Class 12 economics paper. An official privy to the probe confirmed these numbers were of tutors.

A Special Investigation Team (SIT) comprising two deputy commissioners of police, four assistant commissioners of police and five inspectors has been set up to investigate the matter. The team is being supervised by the joint commissioner of police (crime).
Meanwhile, CBSE has announced re-examination dates for Class 12 economics paper and Class 10 mathematics exam. Economics paper will be conducted on April 25, while the re-test for Class 10 mathematics is likely to be conducted in July, Education Secretary Anil Swarup said. He further said that the preliminary enquiry has revealed that the leak for Class 10 mathematics paper is restricted to Delhi and Haryana. There has been no leak outside India, hence no re-examination will be held outside the country, he said.

Latifa, along with her friend, were taken hostage in March by four unidentified men in international waters next to India’s western coast.

Dubai Princess Sheikha Latifa, ‘kidnapped’ off the coast of Goa, has been taken back to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with the help of the Indian government.

Princess Sheikha Latifa is the daughter of Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, and ruler of the Emirate of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

Latifa, along with her friend Herve Jaubert, were taken hostage earlier in March by four unidentified men in international waters next to the western coast of India.

The Indian Navy received an SOS call on March 2 about the missing Dubai Princess and jumped into action.
The Navy had spotted a suspicious sailing vessel off the coast of Goa and sources said around four people, who seemed Indian but had a completely different accent, were found in the sailing vessel in which the princess was taken ‘hostage’. The fact that a sailing vessel was drifting off the coast of Goa had initially raised suspicion for the Indian Navy.

It is also unclear how the princess landed in the sailing boat along with her captors and from which port.

The officers had information from their superiors that the boat may contain the Princess, her friend and four other men.

Indian Navy personnel then tracked the sailing vessel, and along with its Coast Guard counterparts, boarded it to rescue the princess and her friend. They were in civilian clothes in order not to raise the hackles of the kidnappers.

Two ships belong to the Coast Guard – the ICGS Samarth and Shoor — were part of the mission.

The first information about the kidnapping had come from Sheikha Latifa herself when she sent a frantic WhatsApp message on March 4 to a contact identified as Radha Stirling, who also works for a UAE help group ‘Detained in Dubai’. She alleged she and her French friend Herve Jaubert were “surrounded by men” who were firing at them.

According to The Sun, the princess told Stirling: “Radha, please help me, there are men outside,” before claiming to hear gunshots.

Stirling asked the princess to record the gunshots, but she did not get a reply.

Stirling said Latifa first got in touch with her firm ‘Detained in Dubai’ on February 26, claiming she had escaped from Dubai where she was “tortured for helping a sibling who also ran away”.

The WhatsApp video also shot by the Dubai Princess earlier said she was unsure of returning to Dubai. Sheikha Latifa said in the video, “She doesn’t have the freedom to live her own life in Dubai – and was secretly detained in prison for three years after a previous failed escape attempt as a teenager.”

According to reports, the Dubai princess claimed she was not allowed to drive, was monitored round the clock and was locked up – and even drugged – after a failed attempt to escape the country when she was 16.

Dubai Princess Sheikha Latifa was sent back to UAE by Indian forces on March 8.

Latifa, 33, said she was one of the 30 children the billionaire Dubai ruler has with six wives, and has left the strict Arab state, she claims, with the help of a former French spy. Her friend Herve Jaubert is believed to be a former French intelligence officer.

Latifa said she was the daughter of one of the lesser known wives of the Sheikh.

All India Mahila Empowerment Party’s (MEP) President, Dr. Nowhera Shaikh today met the leaders of the Dalit Sangharsh Samithi and extended support to Dalit rights.

Dr. Nowhera Shaikh said that MEP and Dalit organisations should work together to work for justice and humanity, across the country.

She said that, if all Indians, treat each other as equals, India will surely prosper.

Dr. Shaikh said that MEP is contesting elections to create an impact in people’s lives, and asked for the community’s support in the upcoming assembly elections.

Christopher Wylie, who blew the lid off the Facebook user personal data being illegally used for political purposes, on Wednesday said his former employer Cambridge Analytica had an Indian arm and conducted election research on behalf of some parties including the Janata Dal-United (JD-U), now a BJP ally, for “desired outcome”.

Wylie said SCL Group, the parent organisation of Cambridge Analytica, has its office headquartered in Indirapuram in Ghaziabad and its regional offices in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Cuttack, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Indore, Kolkata, Patna and Pune.

“I’ve been getting a lot of requests from Indian journalists. So here are some of SCL’s past projects in India. To the most frequently asked question – yes, SCL/CA works in India and has offices there. This is what modern colonialism looks like,” Wylie tweeted.

He posted two pictures of what looks like slides of a pitch presentation of SCL India explaining its national experience in the country.

It said the company has a database of over 600 districts and seven lakh villages. But it didn’t identify the source of the database or whether it was collected from any social media sites.

“Our micro-level information includes household level demographics, specifically focussing on caste data, linked to online mapping applications.”

The SCL India, according to the tweeted document, helped clients to identify and target key groups within the population “to effectively influence their behaviour to realize a desired outcome”.

It explained that SCL provided its clients the research to develop and “disseminate the right messages from the right sources using the right communication channels”.

It said in 2011, SCL India undertook a state-wide research campaign to identify voter caste by household.

“This booth level polling data formed the basis of further research into swing voter motivation and supporter mobilization strategies which were presented to individual candidates and tailored to their constituencies.”

During the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, SCL India managed the campaign of a number of Lok Sabha candidates.

“The research and campaign teams employed SCL India’s proprietary data collection methodologies to form strategies that gave the clients successful election campaigns.”

In the 2010 Bihar electons, SCL India was asked to provide electoral research and strategy for the JD-U of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

“SCL undertook a behavioural research programme targeting over 75 per cent of households to assist the client in not only identifying the correct battlegrounds but also the right audiences, messages and, most importantly, the right castes to target with their campaigns.”

In the 2007 Uttar Pradesh polls, SCL India carried out a full political survey on behalf of a “major party” which the document didn’t name.

“The research included a party audit and a state-wide census of politically active individuals using in-depth interviews to assess the satisfaction levels of party workers at booth level.”

It said SCL India also carried out a psephological study and opinion polling for a “national party to identify swing voters”.

“This was followed by more in-depth analysis of the behavioural dynamics at work in key seats which in turn informed the party’s efforts to ensure a local structure and communication strategy that matched the caste make-up and attitudinal positions of the pre-identified swing population.”

The SCL India carried out research for a “major state party” in Rajasthan in 2003. Its other projects included psephological studies and behavioural polling in Delhi and Chhattisgarh.

The document also said the company undertook research communication campaign to support a trans-national programme four countering the non-desired behaviour of recruitment into and support of “violent jihadism”.

The project was conducted in Kerala, West Bengal, Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh in 2007. However, it didn’t say for whom the project was conducted.

Wylie, 28, was the Director of Research at Cambridge Analytica. He accused the data analytics firm having influenced the result of the United Kingdom’s 2016 Brexit referendum and of the 2016 American presidential election that brought Donald Trump to the White House.

Speaking to the British MPs on Tuesday, Wylie said Cambridge Analytica worked extensively in India and that he believed the Congress was its one of the clients.