News

indianexpress: Night spots in the city will have to adhere to the 12.30 am deadline for complete closure henceforth. Pune Police Commissioner Jayant Umranikar took a tough stand on Monday in an effort to stop pubs, restaurants and bars operating in the city from violating the rule.

Umranikar made it clear that unlicenced pubs will be closed down. He said, “It’s better for unlicenced pubs to close down. The police took action against all those found violating licencing rules. All the hotels, eateries and bars should adhere to the rules and stop serving food after 11.30 pm and wind up by 12.30 am,’’ he said.
 
The police commissioner has warned of strict action against those not adhering to the rules. He added that the police will take steps to educate hoteliers and restaurant owners to abide by the timings specified by the law.

Meanwhile, restaurateurs and bar owners denied flouting the deadline. ‘’We have been following guidelines issued by the commissioner’s office which state that that 12.30 am is the deadline while 1.30 am is the closure time,” said a pub owner.

Licencing department sources said barring two five-star hotels none of the pubs in the city had the licence to operate. “Pubs are functioning under the garb of restaurants,” sources said. The licencing department has also issued a show cause notice to the owner of popular bar Lush located on Dhole Patil Road and the matter will come up for hearing next week.

indianexpress:  Residents of Salisbury Park are fed up with official apathy in dealing with the 100-odd encroachments, including hutments, commercial establishments and even toilet blocks built by the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), on the irrigation land along the Mutha canal.

Complaints to the irrigation department for over three years about the encroachments have yielded no results. P R Bhadkar, secretary, Salisbury Environmental Trust told Newsline, “We have been sending several applications and request letters to the irrigation department and the municipal corporation for the past three years, but the staff has been giving us lame excuses and nothing has been done in reality,” he said.

The 202 metres long Mutha canal extends from Khadakvasla dam and supplies drinking water to Camp and Yerawada areas.

Meanwhile, Irrigation officials said the encroachments have existed since the past two decades.

From the Apsara Bridge on Gultekdi Road to a stretch of around 400 metres, in around an acre of irrigation land, commercial establishments, and hutments alike have existed for years and plastic and other garbage have lined the 125-year-old canal, they said.

Officials even say the encroachments, along the Mutha canal on the Gultekdi Road have prevented the department from carrying out repair work along the canal.

indianexpress: Pune airport runway is safe, according to Lohegaon airport director Deepak Shastri and Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the South Western Air Command (SWAC) Air Marshal K D Singh.

“Just because the runway repair is overdue it does not mean that the runway is unsafe,” said Shastri. However,” It could become unsafe due to wear and tear,” he added.
 
“We carry the friction test to check the condition of the runway. It is safe,” Singh said, adding that there is no need to resurface the runway every 15 years.

A few months ago, a senior Air Force officer from SWAC had said an operational airbase needs to resurface its runway every 15 years which means the Lohegaon airstrip should have been resurfaced in 2002. The Indian Air Force floated tenders in the last week of March for the resurfacing and the work is scheduled to begin from September.

Over 35 flights, excluding two international flights per week to Dubai and Singapore, take off and land at the airport everyday.

Experts have also been questioning the relatively short runway—it is 8,300 feet. A minimum of 9,000 ft is required for the runway, they feel. The Air Force has been trying to extend the runway from the current 8,300 feet to 10,500 feet along with the resurfacing. However, due to unavailability of land the plan for expansion of the runway has been frozen.

Shastri, however, contested the experts’ views. “While smaller aircraft require 3,000 ft for landing, bigger aircraft require 10,000 ft of the runway. The only way to deal with the problem in Pune is to reduce the load of the aircraft or use smaller aircraft,” Shastri said.

indianexpress: Alka Dhumal’s farmer husband uses a fertilizer made in his own backyard, a skill he learnt from the do-it-yourself book housed in the modest library started in Purandar district’s Vir village, a year ago. Swati Kshirsagar, who started with a flour mill progressed to a cloth shop. These are success stories from a village that grapples with a host of problems— bad roads, a collpased bridge, poor educatin facilities.

Vir, nearly 65 km from Pune, has a population of 7,000 people and 85 self-help groups (SGHs) started with some push from city-based Helpo Foundation that has helped village women financially. The founder, visually-challenged Abdul Salam, who has already helped kickstart 2,500 SGHs in five districts of Maharashtra, has floated this venture in Vir to bring about holistic rural development.
 
Helpo Foundation works for sustainable village based development in rural Maharashtra. Key areas include microcredit, microenterprise, health, education, income generation and working for the disabled, especially women and children. Much of its activities are carried out through donations.

“Vir needs infrastructural development,” said several women at the inauguration function of Helpo Cultural Centre-India Network, voicing their problems to Salam and NABARD general manager (Maharashtra Branch) S Santhanam.

First and foremost, the women want the centre to start medical camps. “Though two doctors from hospitals in Jejuri and Pune make visits six days a week, the nearest hospital is almost 20 km away. There is no bus out of the village after 4.30 pm and in case of an emergency, villagers have to hire private jeeps and are chraged exhorbitantly,” theysaid.

indianexpress: Tired of endless traffic jams while travelling from Mumbai to Pune? In future, you will be able to cover this distance in two hours.

The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) plans to extend the 95-km Mumbai-Pune Expressway till Sion circle from Panvel, where it currently ends.

The expressway will be extended by 33 kms and converted into a 12-lane road, making it the first-of-its-kind Urban Access Control Road in India. Work is expected to start by December.

According to Anil Deshmukh, minister for Public Works and MSRDC chairman, commuters would be able to cover the distance between Mumbai and Pune in around two hours once the project gets over. Now, the journey takes between three to three-and-a-half hours.

“It takes people almost the same time to reach Mumbai from Panvel as it takes to cover the distance between Panvel and Pune due to the heavy traffic and bottlenecks. Once the expressway is extended to Sion, these woes will be done away with,” he added.

Six lanes of the prospective 12-lane stretch of expressway (three on either side) would be fenced off and barricaded, so that they can be used exclusively for the traffic travelling between the two cities. This would also help ease the pressure on intra-city traffic.

Though the Mumbai-Pune Expressway was the first Access Control Road in India, it was not an Urban Access Control road, as it passed through the ghats and not through urban areas.

indianexpress: Nearly three months after Pune rural police bust a rave party at Donje village near National Defence Academy at Khadakvasla, the 280 revellers including 29 women and 7 foreign nationals were chargesheeted on Monday. The chargesheet was filed before Special Judge R V Deshmukh who has issued summons against all 280 accused and directed them to appear on August 6.

The accused were booked under the Bombay Prohibition Act, the Bombay Police Act, section 27 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances(NDPS) Act dealing with possession, Indian Penal Code section 294 relating to obscenity and section 34 relating to group acts done with common intention.

The seven foreign nationals have been charged under section 14 of the Foreigners Act.

techtree: Chipmaker Intel and computer manufacturer HCL Infosystems have teamed-up to launch Classmate PCs in the country.

Developed by Intel as an educational tool to help students with their classroom learning, each Classmate PC features a 7-inch LCD screen, 215 to 512MB RAM with 1GB to 2GB flash memory, Intel Processor 900Mhz, and WiFi and Ethernet connectivity.

Weighing-in at about 1.4kg, each Classmate PC comes with a personal learning assistant that resembles a textbook in keeping with the age of the learners. Each PC provides 3 to 4 hours of usage time, according to Intel.

Reportedly, the plan is to retail Classmate PCs through schools, and HCL Infosystems intends to deploy nearly 3,000 to 5,000 such PCs over the next 9 months to a year.

The Classmate PCs are priced in the sub-Rs 18,000 range, and will be available to schools starting August, said Rajendra Kumar, executive vice president of HCL Infosystems.

Apparently, the cost of the PC includes costs like teachers’ training, support for connectivity infrastructure, and so on.

Intel had conducted the first pilot of it’s ‘Classmate PC Program’ in December 2006. At present, the company reportedly has two pilots running; one at Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, and the other at Padma Sheshadri Bal Bhavan.

Meanwhile, the design, prototype, and proof-of-concept of the Classmate PCs has been developed by Intel in collaboration with educational service provider, Educomp.

techtree: Western Digital (WD) has launched it’s new range of external storage products for the Indian market; namely, My Book Premium ES Edition, 250GB WD Passport Portable, and My Book Family.

The My Book Premium ES Edition external hard drive incorporates eSATA (external Serial ATA) and USB 2.0. The eSATA interface can move data to and from a PC/Mac faster than USB 2.0, which has a standard transfer rate of about 60MB/s

My Book Premium ES Edition is PC- and Mac- compatible, and includes EMC Retrospect Express HD 2.0 backup software for easy back-up and restore. It features an intelligent drive management system, SmartPower that automatically powers on/off the device, and Safe Shutdown that ensures data is saved before shutting down.

My Book Premium ES Edition (320GB) is priced at Rs 6,950 while the 500GB version costs Rs 9,450.

The pocket-sized 250GB Passport Portable Drive sports a plug-and-play capability. The WD Sync software allows consumers take desktop content by simplifying the synchronization of personal files and Microsoft Outlook data on the PC. The 128-bit encryption helps protect data. Besides, the drive features Google software, including Google Desktop Search, Picasa, and Google Toolbar.

The 250GB Passport Portable Drive comes for Rs 9,950.

WD’s third external storage product, the My Book Family, is available in capacities of 750GB and 1.5TB.

It includes: My Book World, My Book Pro, My Book Premium, and My Book Essential Editions. According to WD, the Pro, Premium, and Essential Editions are the easiest way to add extra storage to a PC or Mac for back-up and storage of important data.