UPA regime delayed Chandrayaan-2: Ex-ISRO chief Madhavan Nair
Hyderabad: Former ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair on Wednesday claimed that the Chandrayaan-2 mission could have been carried out long ago but for the "political decision" of then UPA government to push the "Mangalyaan" venture with an eye on the 2014 Lok Sabha election.
The architect of Chandrayaan-1, India's first unmanned mission to the moon launched on October 22, 2008, served as the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the secretary in the Department of Space from 2003 to 2009.
He had said in August, 2009 that Chandrayaan-2 was slated for launch towards the end of 2012. In October last year, he joined the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
On Wednesday, Nair alleged that the UPA government wanted to show "some major event" (the Mangalyaan Mars orbiter mission) before the 2014 election. "With that objective, they (UPA government) went ahead (with the Mangalyaan mission)," he said.
Though the Mangalyaan launch took place during the UPA regime (November, 2013), the spacecraft reached the Mars orbit during the Narendra Modi government (September 2014), Nair noted.
"So, it did not serve the purpose (of the then UPA regime). More of a political thing (to take up the Mars mission, ahead of Chandrayaan-2) than technical," he said.
"Almost half the work (for Chandrayaan-2) was done earlier, but all those things were diverted for the Mars mission. So, we (ISRO) had to start from the scratch. Only after this (Modi) regime came (in 2014), they reinstated the old programme (Chandrayaan-2)," Nair told PTI.
He praised the ISRO, saying the space agency thereafter took "minimum time" to ready the mission, now due for launch next month. "It is a complex mission. Lot of things had to be developed, tested and put into operation.
"To have the lander safely touch down on the surface of the moon is the real challenging job (of the Chandrayaan-2 mission)," Nair said.
India's second mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-2, would be launched on July 15, ISRO Chairman K Sivan announced on Wednesday. The launch will take place at 2.51 am on board the GSLV MK-III vehicle from the spaceport of Sriharikota.
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Over 17,000 people went missing in Delhi in 2024: NCRB
New Delhi (PTI): A total of 23,058 people, comprising 9,482 men and 13,576 women, were reported missing in Delhi in 2024, according to the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).
Of the total, 5,491 were children below the age of 18 — 1,571 boys, 3,920 girls.
The city recorded 17,567 fresh adult missing persons cases in 2024, comprising 7,911 men and 9,656 women.
According to the NCRB data, released on Wednesday, 14,637 men, 18,238 women and six transgender persons were still missing from previous years.
At the latest count, in 2024, Delhi had a total of 55,939 missing persons cases — 24,119 men, 31,814 women and six transgender persons.
In 2024, police traced or collected 28,392 missing persons, including 12,182 men, 16,208 women and two transgender persons.
Only half of the men and half of the women who went missing could be traced.
A total of 27,547 missing persons – 11,937 men, 15,606 women, four transgender persons — were yet to be untraced by the end of the year, the data showed.
The data also revealed that 5,352 children from previous years remained untraced at the beginning of 2024.
The number of still missing boys was 1,621, and the number of missing girls was 3,729. Two transgender children were yet to be found.
After adding the pending cases from previous years, the total number of missing children cases handled in 2024 rose to 10,843.
The police traced or recovered 6,762 missing children — 2,030 boys, 4,732 girls.
The recovery rate stood at 63.6 per cent for boys and 61.9 per cent for girls, while no transgender child was traced.
By the end of 2024, a total of 4,081 children remained untraced, 1,162 of them boys, 2,917 girls, and two transgender children.
