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indianexpress:  Politics has gained the upper hand over academics with the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education deciding to postpone the dates for the board examinations, making way for the Zilla Parishad elections on March 11.

The SSC examinations, slated to begin on March 8 stands postponed to March 13 while the HSC examinations, that began on February 21, will get a four-day break, from March 8 to 12.

The move has invoked the ire of the academic community, who feel that politics should not interfere with education. “The board examinations are always held in the February-March. The ZP elections should have been planned accordingly. Now the entire study schedule of the students will be disrupted, and it will add to the burden of the teachers, who will have to double up for election duty,” said Abhinava Vidyalaya Principal Jayashree Pai.

As many as 56.37 lakh SSC students will be appearing for the four written papers between March 8 and 12, while 1.38 lakh HSC students will sit for the four papers from March 14 to 17.

The SSC examinations scheduled from March 8 to 23, will now be pushed forward by five days. The written papers will now begin on March 13 with Science (paper II) / Home Science, and will conclude on March 29 instead of March 23. The subject papers for March 8, 9, 10 and 12 will be postponed to March 24, 26, 28 and 29 respectively. Otherwise, the earlier timetable of March 13 to 23 holds good.

In the case of the HSC examinations, the written papers on March 8, 9, 10 and 12 have been postponed to March 14, 15, 16, and 17 respectively. The Information Technology (IT) online examinations which were to be held on March 14, 15, and 16 will accordingly be postponed to March 20, 21, and 22.

“The postponed dates for the SSC practical examination held separately for approximately 400 disabled students will also be declared by Thursday,” said State Board Director Vasant Kalpande.

The decision to postpone the examinations was conveyed on Tuesday by the Aurangabad Bench of the Bombay High Court, which disposed of a writ petition, which demanded that the Election Commission should postpone the dates for the Zilla Parishad elections.

indianexpress: WITH only 30 days to go in this fiscal, it took the Pune Municipal Corporation’s standing committee just two hours to approve projects worth Rs 100 crore on Tuesday. In the past 11 months, the civic body had approved projects worth Rs 210 crore. A majority of the current proposals were brought up for approval at the last minute and many were not even discussed.

From the Wi-Fi project to the land allotment to Symbiosis Society and from appointing a consultant to strengthening of civic administration to construction of roads, the panel approved them all. The largest tender which okayed was the Rs 40.15 crore tender for construction of the 115 MLD Naidu sewage treatment plant (STP).

Other important tenders that got the nod include construction of 45 MLD STP at Mundhwa (Rs 30.88 crore), construction of a barrage on Bund Garden on Mula-Mutha river (Rs 9.95 crore), completing the construction of Wadgaon water works (Rs 2.69 crore), laying of a pipeline from Taljai-Katraj water tank to Katraj sumpwell (Rs 2.08 crore), construction of a retaining wall from Dengle bridge to Sangam bride on Mula-Mutha river (Rs 1.34 crore).

In addition, the committee okayed payment to the road contractors as per price variation of construction materials and appointment of a consultant for building the river-side roads from Mhatre bridge to Sangamwadi. It has also diverted funds allotted for construction of 24 roads which were mired in land acquisition problems for repairing and resurfacing of existing roads.

indianexpress: A year after unfolding ‘Unwire Pune’, the PMC will give an easy, seamless Internet connectivity solution to citizens, businesses and academic institutions in a 20 km radius of Shivajinagar, Deccan Gymkhana, Aundh and Baner from July. This wireless communication network infrastructure will cover the entire 400 sq kms of Pune city in phases.

Intel India had been selected as the chief technology and programme management consultant. The project will be implemented by Microsense company and users will have to pay Rs 250 for 100 hours of internet connectivity .

The project, in which the PMC will not make any financial investments, will be implemented by Microsense free for ten years. Earlier, PMC had allotted Rs 7 crore for the project in the budget. Now, it will give the revenue earned to Microsense. Over one lakh PMC school students will benefit from the free internet services while the PMC building will also get 2 MBPS capacity internet service.

The Wi-Fi project had got a poor response from service providers. Last year, the PMC had signed a contract with Dish-Net but could not implement the project as the Wi-Max policy was to be finalised. However, a letter on February 23 from Microsense wanting to implement the project on its own is a shot for the PMC.