UP SIR: Political parties submit 128 inclusion claims in a day, max by BJP
Lucknow (PTI): Political parties in Uttar Pradesh submitted 128 claims for inclusion of voters and no objections seeking deletion from the electoral rolls till Wednesday evening, with the maximum coming from the BJP, official data showed.
A draft electoral roll was published on Tuesday after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR). A window for claims and objections was opened thereafter for citizens who felt they were left out of the list. The window remains open till February 6.
The data issued by Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa's office covers claims and objections received between January 6 and January 7 till 5 pm.
The draft list retained over 12.44 crore voters from the previous rolls, and delisted about 2.89 crore names as booth-level officers could not collect verification forms due to reasons such as death, migration, or enrolment at another place.
According to the bulletin, a total of 5,76,611 booth-level agents (BLAs) appointed by political parties were involved in the process.
Claims for inclusion were submitted by the Bharatiya Janata Party (105), Bahujan Samaj Party (17) and Samajwadi Party (six). No party submitted any objection for exclusion during the period.
Among national parties, the BJP had the highest number of BLAs at 1,60,605, followed by the BSP with 1,53,469 and the Congress with 94,591. The Samajwadi Party accounted for 1,56,972 BLAs.
The CEO's office said that 16,18,574 Form-6 applications for inclusion were received before the publication of the draft roll, while 49,399 Form-7 applications seeking deletion were received in the same period.
The final electoral roll after completion of the SIR will be published on March 6, according to officials.
On Tuesday, Rinwa said if a voter's name does not appear in the draft roll, they must submit Form-6 to seek inclusion.
Form 6A is for overseas voters, while Form 7 is for deletion or objection, and Form 8 is for correction of details or replacement of EPIC forms, which can be submitted through BLOs, at Voter Registration Centres (VRCs) located at tehsil offices, or online via ECINet and voters.eci.gov.in.
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Ambani, Adani pledge USD 210 bn for India's AI push
New Delhi (PTI): Conglomerates run by billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani committed USD 210 billion investment to creating infrastructure that will help India emerge as an AI development hub.
At the India AI Impact Summit, Ambani announced a Rs 10 lakh crore (about USD 110 billion) investment in artificial intelligence over the next seven years in gigawatt-scale AI-ready data centres in Jamnagar, leveraging up to 10 GW of green power surplus, and a nationwide edge-compute layer integrated with telecom and digital operator Jio's networks to deliver low-latency AI across India.
"Our resolve is clear: make intelligence as ubiquitous as connectivity," he said. "When compute becomes infrastructure, innovation will become inevitable."
Adani, on the other hand, unveiled a USD 100-billion investment to develop renewable-energy-powered, hyperscale AI-ready data centres by 2035 -- one of the world's largest integrated energy-compute commitments.
The initiative is expected to catalyse an additional USD 150 billion across server manufacturing, cloud platforms, and supporting industries, creating a projected USD 250 billion AI infrastructure ecosystem in India.
India must architect its own artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure rather than rely on imports, Adani Group executive director Jeet Adani said on Thursday, warning that AI will redefine national sovereignty.
Other major investments announced at the Summit included USD 50 billion commitment by Microsoft by the end of the decade to expand artificial intelligence access across the Global South. "India, not surprisingly, is one of the largest," its vice chair and president, Brad Smith, said.
The firm had unveiled USD 17.5 billion investment in AI investments in India last year.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced a new subsea cable initiative to boost AI connectivity between India, the US and other locations, alongside partnerships for cloud infrastructure platform support to over 20 million public servants across 800 districts.
Yotta Data Services, backed by a real estate group headed by Niranjan Hiranandani, announced over USD 2 billion spend on Nvidia's latest chips in an artificial intelligence computing hub it is setting up just outside the national capital.
While Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) signed up ChatGPT parent OpenAI as its first customer for its data centre unit under the global AI infrastructure initiative Stargate, infrastructure major Larsen & Toubro announced a proposed venture with Nvidia to build AI-ready data centre infrastructure, advanced computing platforms, and ecosystem enablement required to support large-scale AI workloads.
