Venkat Raghav

Regional movies, cricket and tennis keep me ticking

[Ashwin 🇮🇳 @ashwinravi99]

Wow the bowlers are having a say after getting beaten black and blue over the last 3-4 months.🤩🤩

The ball is talking and it sets up for great viewing.#engvnz

For all cricket fans talking of test cricket being boring, have a designated test summer like Australia & England, also ensure specific test centres and see how the crowds turn up.

Test cricket, you beauty.

🤞 for your long life and health.

[Venkat Raghav @raghavitis]

@krishnabgowda please have a look

[Venkat Raghav @raghavitis]

Waiting for self-appointed ambassadors of Bengaluru to point out this is a handle operated from Bangladesh

[Karnataka Portfolio @karnatakaportf]

This is one of the worst stretches in Bengaluru, and unfortunately, this is not the first time it has been waterlogged. Year after year, every time heavy rain hits the city, this underpass turns into a lake, causing severe inconvenience to commuters, damaging vehicles, and putting lives at risk. Despite repeated incidents and countless complaints from citizens, nothing seems to have changed. The most frustrating part is that this problem is entirely predictable. Authorities know exactly what happens here during every monsoon, yet there appears to be no permanent solution or effective drainage system in place. Instead, residents and daily commuters are forced to suffer the same ordeal repeatedly while promises of infrastructure improvements remain on paper. Citizens pay taxes expecting better roads, proper stormwater management, and safe public infrastructure. However, situations like this raise serious questions about planning, accountability, and maintenance. How many more years will people have to endure the same issue before meaningful action is taken? A city aspiring to be a global technology hub cannot afford to have critical roads and underpasses flooded after every spell of rain. Public issues deserve attention, and citizens deserve better than the same recurring problem year after year.
#bangalore #bengaluru #panathur #bengalururains #bangalorerains @GBAChiefComm @GBA_office @bbmpcommr @DKShivakumar @BlrCityPolice @blrcitytraffic @CPBlr @alokkumar6994 @DgpKarnataka @KarnatakaCops @Lolita_TNIE @ChristinMP_

[Venkat Raghav @raghavitis]

Don’t even know what to say about this. It’s not even PC Balram sirs duty. What in the world are the honchos of GBA doing ?

[WHITEFIELD TRAFFIC PS BTP @wftrps]

🚨 During heavy rain, PC Balram promptly cleared water stagnation on the roadway, ensuring smooth and safe movement of traffic at Forum Value Mall WF
His timely action helped prevent congestion and enhanced commuter safety. 02.06.2026 Tue

#WhitefieldTrafficPS
#WeCare

[Venkat Raghav @raghavitis]

Of what use is being the 3rd largest economy in the world if a kid has to eat like this

[TVR Media 🚩🚩🚩 @Tvr_Media7]

నీళ్ల లో అద్దుకొని తింటున్నాడు .

[Gagan🇮🇳 @1no_aalsi_]

RCB refused to hold a trophy parade but the Kurnool Police did not disappoint they held a parade with RCB fans 😭

[Venkat Raghav @raghavitis]

Happy Birthday Steve Waugh, Mark Waugh and Steve Smith

[OG Reddy 🧡 @Orangereddy287]

woke up to this abaaa 🥵🥵🔥
Hyd Police won toss and choose to Bat 🥵🔥

[Mention Cricket @MentionCricket]

🚨Vaibhav Suryavanshi and this kid are friends 😂❤️

The kid revealed that Vaibhav had messaged him after his podcast and they still stay in touch. After Vaibhav's century, he congratulated him again.

He also said that whenever he talks to Vaibhav, Vaibhav ends up scoring a century, calling himself Vaibhav’s lucky charm.

And then came the ultimate praise: “If Vaibhav gets two chances to bat like in street/test cricket, he might score 500 runs.” 😭❤️

[Venkat Raghav @raghavitis]

The people of this town might have endured a tough time for that duration and the effort needed to clean up after it passed

[Tarun Gautam @TARUNspeakss]

This is neither CGI nor AI. This is as real as it can get.

Keep cutting Aravali down and it will worsen in few years or a decade.

[Malay Krishna @Malay4Product]

This is an unbelievable piece of work by Sarthak and something that requires amplification.

Let me explain what he found, in simple terms.

Sarthak is a Class 12 student from the 2025-26 batch, one of the 17 lakh students whose answer sheets went through CBSE's new On-Screen Marking system.

He spent days reading through CBSE's evaluation tenders, scraped all 576 tenders CBSE has issued, and tracked how the rules changed across three versions of the same tender.

The core finding is that the company that won the contract to scan and grade 17 lakh students' answer sheets is Coempt Eduteck.

Coempt used to be called Globarena Technologies. Globarena was the company behind the 2019 Telangana intermediate exam disaster, where software failures led to 3.8 lakh students getting wrong or missing marks, and 23 students died by suicide.

A government committee found systemic failure and negligence. Six months later, Globarena rebranded to Coempt Eduteck.

So a company with that track record won a contract to handle 17 lakh CBSE students. Sarthak's investigation is about how the rules were rewritten to let that happen.

The tender was issued three times.

> First tender, February 2025. It existed, then disappeared from the public GeM portal. Sarthak scraped all 576 CBSE tenders and this one was missing from the archive entirely.

> Second tender, May 2025. Four companies applied including TCS and Coempt. All four failed the technical evaluation. Cancelled.

> Third tender, August 2025. Coempt won. Between the second and third tender, a series of rule changes happened, and every single one made it easier for Coempt to qualify.

Here is what changed, one by one.

01. The old rules disqualified any company with a history of abandoning work, failing to complete contracts, or financial weakness. The new rules deleted this clause entirely. Coempt's Telangana history stopped being a barrier.

02. The old rules disqualified any company that was "blacklisted earlier." The new rules changed this to "currently blacklisted." Because Globarena rebranded after Telangana, removing the word "earlier" effectively erased their past.

03. The rules required Rs 50 crore average turnover over three years. Coempt's exact average came to Rs 50.86 crore. They cleared the bar by less than 1%. Earlier, a smaller company had asked CBSE to lower the bar to Rs 30 crore for fairer competition. CBSE refused. So the bar was kept high enough to block small players, but sat exactly low enough for Coempt to scrape through.

04. Software maturity is measured on the CMMI scale, 1 to 5. The old rules required Level 5. The new rules dropped it to Level 3. Coempt is a Level 3 company.

05. The cooling-off period for engaging retired CBSE officials was cut from two years to one. This makes it easier to use recently retired insiders to influence the process.

06. The old rules required experience with large projects of at least 5 lakh students each. The new rules removed the student count and counted cumulative answer-book volume across small projects instead. Coempt has many small fragmented university contracts. This helped Coempt and hurt TCS.

07. The old rules required bidders to own their own data centre and disaster recovery centre on Indian soil. The new rules allowed third-party MeitY-empanelled cloud hosting. Coempt runs on AWS and Azure. This helped Coempt and hurt TCS, which owns its own data centres. It also means student data is no longer on sovereign, Indian infrastructure.

08. The old rules required the bidder to own or control the complete source code of its software. The new rules deleted this. Coempt's platform runs on Microsoft's proprietary IIS, which they don't own.

09. A last-minute corrigendum, issued right before bid submission, removed CBSE's own power to blacklist the firm if its software failed catastrophically. So even a Telangana-scale failure couldn't get Coempt banned from future government tenders.

10. The penalty structure shifted from punishing mistakes to punishing delays. The old rules fined the vendor for wrong scanning, merged pages, and unscanned books. The new rules dropped those and instead levied Rs 50,000 per day for delays. This incentivises rushed scanning over accurate scanning.

11. The old rules had a hard accuracy threshold, error rate not to exceed 0.5%. The new rules removed this number entirely.

12. The old rules specified proper book and robotics scanners. The new rules just say "sufficient scanners." The definition was vague enough that, as Sarthak notes, the scanning could be done with a phone on a stand.

13. On the security side, the contract required a VAPT (vulnerability and penetration test) certified by CERT-In before go-live, and a restricted beta phase before launch. The system clearly wasn't restricted, because the other researcher, Nisarga, was able to access it and find vulnerabilities four days before go-live. So the mandatory security audit appears to have been bypassed.

These are more than a dozen rule changes, all between the failed tender and the winning tender, all pushing in the same direction, all benefiting the one company with the worst track record in the field.

The security holes Nisarga found last week now have an explanation. The system was built by a vendor that was specifically allowed to skip the security certification, the source code ownership, the data sovereignty, and the quality thresholds the original rules demanded.

Following things need to happen immediately;

1. An immediate CAG audit of the tender process.
2. A parliamentary debate on the topic.
3. An independent investigation into
> Why the first tender vanished?
> Why the disqualification clauses were deleted?
> Why the turnover bar was held exactly where it was?
> Why the security level was dropped?
> Why the blacklisting power was removed at the last moment?

Sarthak, this is genuinely exceptional investigative work. Far better than most journalists with full resources ever manage. Take a bow. :)

[Venkat Raghav @raghavitis]

@HemantBrar_ Sachin ka fave.

[Lalith Kalidas @lal__kal]

Foot on the front, weight on the back. Bowlers scrambling, no answers. Decoding why Vaibhav #Sooryavanshi stands a notch above all in six-hitting across lengths and vs pace. The faster you bowl, the easier it gets for him..
#IPL2026

Read: https://t.co/QYt9J6unz3

[Venkat Raghav @raghavitis]

Looks like the real estate market in Bangalore is going to see a change in the short term

[Devanahalli Rising-North Bengaluru @DevanahalliBLR]

🚨 My Home Group | OMR High- Rise

BDA’s 52-acre land at Konadasapura, OMR, acquired by Hyderabad-based My Home Group & proposed a high-rise mixed-use township.

• Residential :
23 Towers | 3B+G+46 Floors | 152m

• Commercial :
2 Towers | 4B+G+34 Floors | 152m

[ರವಿ ಕೀರ್ತಿ ಗೌಡ @ravikeerthi22]

MG Road Bengaluru: BWSSB Digs Up Resurfaced Stretch https://t.co/8ucMt7yTRG

[Venkat Raghav @raghavitis]

@Bangalorereal1 @jimmakeBelieve Sir, haagidhre allalasandra athra bagmane sierra bage thiliisthira?

[Venkat Raghav @raghavitis]

Next to storm water drain and a perpetually marshy land on one side of the project.

[Bangalore real estate @Bangalorereal1]

Century Immencity, Jakkur, North Bengaluru

Has the potential to be one of the best mix use townships in the country. The Renders at the end look spectacular!

[Venky @Amerikannadiga]

No flashy PR. No dove. Quietly serving good food to its customers since the last 100 years in the Basavanagudi neighborhood.

Happy 100th, Mahalakshmi.

[Vineeta Singh 🇮🇳 @biharigurl]

A Blinkit delivery partner. A cricket bat. And one silent gesture kissing the bat before leaving for work. That moment stayed with us. Because passion doesn’t ask where you come from, what you wear, or what your job title is.