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indianexpress: The Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd’s (MAHADISCOM) Krishi Swabhiman Yojana which was launched to ensure bill repayment from those farmers with electric water meters, will serve to cause many more farmers suicides owing to the high fines being levied, said the Akhil Bharatiya Grahak Panchayat which launched a satyagraha movement as a means of protest in Pune district on Friday.

The Yojana, which was implemented from September 1 to 30, focussed on those farmlands which have electric water pumps and imposed fines on the farmers, if their pumps were found to have exceeded the Horse Power (HP) limit, as provided by the Government quotation. According to the Yojana, every additional HP warranted an annual fee of Rs 4,320, service charges as well as a Rs 500 as an HP security deposit. “Often, as the pumps located on a slope pulls more power as compared to the meter on level ground. So if such five-HP meter pulls six HP of electricity, it is termed as a theft and we are charged for the excess despite not tampering with the meter,” said Valaso Aawti, the panchayat president, Pune district.

Alleging that these fines are applied only to the farmers using pumps, the panchayat complained that the fines for theft under the Electricity Act, 2003 is lesser as compared to the fines that the Yojana levied. ‘Extend the Yojana till December 31, hike the quotation, reduce the fine amount’ were the panchayat’s demands. “There are 30,000 meter users who have filled out quotations and haven’t received connections,” said Aawti. “Provide an efficient service and then levy the punishment in case of default.”

indianexpress: Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) on Friday suspended assistant engineer B K Godse for failing to take action against the construction of a multi-storeyed building at Wanvadi built on the basis of the controversial Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) obtained for the Kothrud garden plot despite the civic body’s stop work order.

“The preliminary inquiry has revealed that the assistant engineer was guilty of lack of supervision and irresponsible in performing his duty in the case related to a building constructed using the Kothrud TDR. Thus, the officer has been suspended with immediate effect,” a senior PMC officer said.

Departmental inquiry against the other three officers of the building construction department is on. The officers include deputy city engineer D I Pharate and junior engineers Prakash Pawar and Konkane

Initial inquiry has revealed that there was negligence by the officers in performing their duties by allowing construction of the building using the TDR revoked by the PMC after it was established that it was procured by producing false documents.

In October 2005, the civic body admitted that it had been duped in the Kothrud TDR case where PMC had paid Rs 21,25,826 in cash as compensation to the landowners in 1979.

Then, in 1981, the PMC granted TDR of 36,000 sq meters to the owner for the same land. The TDR for this land is estimated to be around Rs 14 crore as per the prevailing market rate.

indianexpress: The official malaria cases in Pimpri-Chinchwad since January 1 has crossed 500. By 3.30 pm on Friday, the health department of Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) has recorded 502 malaria cases.
On the other hand, the dengue cases have reached 171. Four deaths due to dengue and three of malaria have been recorded in last nine months.

Unofficially, malaria cases are said to be nearly 1,000 and dengue cases are over 400.

“Figures available with us are only from PCMC-run hospitals and dispensaries,” senior PCMC health officials said. PCMC runs eight hospitals and 13 dispensaries.

In contrast, there are as many as 264 private registered hospitals in Pimpri-Chinchwad. “The figure of patients in dispensaries is not maintained by us. They could be in the range of nearly 500,” officials said.

These hospitals and dispensaries, the officials added, were not keeping the civic body updated with malaria and dengue patients treated by them.

Last week, the PCMC had warned private hospitals about stringent action if they failed to provide details about malaria and dengue patients undergoing treatment.

“Only 15 to 20 per cent of sick patients come to PCMC hospitals. Nearly 80 per cent get themselves treated at private hospitals and clinics,” said officials.

indianexpress:  From students to academicians, Infochangeindia.org has been a popular online resource base for content on social justice and sustainable development issues. The brainchild of a group of six Pune-based journalists and development analysts, the six-year-old website was awarded the Digital Empowerment Foundation’s Manthan Award for India’s best e-content for development, in New Delhi on September 22.

Manthan is an initiative of the Digital Empowerment Foundation, in association with the Government of India’s Department of Information Technology, Centre for E-Governance, America India Foundation, UNDP, NASSCOM and others.

“Infochangeindia.org was created as an alternative space to highlight those development and social justice issues which were being overshadowed in the glare of ‘rising and shining India’ idea proposed a few years back,” said senior journalist Hutokshi Doctor, one of the creators of the website. “Managed by the Centre for Communication and Development Studies (CCDS), a Pune-based social change resource centre, the website is essentially a virtual network that was intended at providing information which will serve to initiate change.”

indianexpress:  The model for benchmarking Excellence in Public Service Delivery (Sevottam) by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances was discussed by senior officers from the State and the centre on Thursday at the Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration.

The discussion was part of a two-day regional conference of western region on effective public service delivery. The model provides a framework to organisations to assess and improve the quality of service delivery for the citizens. The model was formulated to guide government departments to identify the services to be delivered, to set service norms, to align delivery capability with expectations of citizens, to gauge the quality of service delivery through an objective assessment and to improve quality using interventions like business process redesign and information technology.

These conferences are being organised by the department along with the State government in different parts of the country in pursuance of the action plan adopted in the Chief Ministers’ Conference on responsive administration held in May 1997 to provide accountable, transparent and citizen-friendly government to the country. With four being planned by the department, this is the second such conference.

indianexpress: The anti-extortion cell of Pune Police arrested three youth who kidnapped three MBBS students from Bharati Vidyapeeth College and demanded a ransom of Rs 1.5 lakh on Friday evening.

Acting on a complaint filed by Dheeraj Bharat Krishna Sharma (23), a friend of one of the victims, the officials of the cell arrested Mrunal Sinha(23) of Ranchi and a final year law student of Sinhagad Institute residing on NIBM Road, Kondhwa, Ankur Rajvir Saini (20) of Gurgaon pursuing his second year in Fergusson College and Ankit Chaudhry (20) of Gurgaon in his third year of engineering at Bharati Vidyapeeth.

The trio had plotted and kidnapped Ankit Karana Singh Shekhawat (20) of Vasantkunj, New Delhi, Shivendra Surendra Chaudhry (19) of Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh and Vijay Omprakash Bharadwaj (20),who hails from Muzzafarnagar, Bihar on early Thursday.

Sharma, a final year law student from Bharati Vidyapeeth College received a call from Shekhawat at around 8.30 on Friday morning telling him about the kidnapping and pleading with him to come to Pune station with the ransom. Sharma immediately filed a complaint with Chatuhshrungi police who referred the case to the cell. After the cell was hoodwinked at the railway station, they were able to nab the accused who were in a car near Orchard Palace on NIBM Road.

indianexpress:  With the monsoon retreating, October is turning out to be a hot, hide-your-head month with maximum temperatures hovering around 32-33 degree Celsius and India Meteorological Department (IMD) forecasting that it would remain hot for another two days.

On Friday, the maximum temperature recorded for Pune was 33.5 degree Celsius and according to IMD officials this was 3 degrees above normal. The officials also forecast a few spells of rain or thundershowers in some parts of the city . “With the monsoon withdrawing, there is hardly any cloud formation. The moisture content is very low and hence it is hot,” said IMD (director) weather central Medha Kolhe.

techtree: Logitech has unveiled two new wireless streaming music systems, including the uber cool ‘Logitech Squeezebox’, and the ‘Logitech Wireless DJ’.

With the ‘Wireless DJ’, users can store music in one place, and play it in another.

The ‘Wireless DJ’ is capable of streaming music stored on the PC onto the stereo. The play lists on the PC can be controlled from anywhere in the home with the help of a large clear LCD screen, and an intuitive scroll-wheel interface.

Meanwhile, ‘Squeezebox’ is also capable of transmitting music from the PC to the stereo through Wi-Fi or cables, along with superior-quality sound.

The system features a screen that displays the list of music tracks, and allows users to browse through them by genre, artist, play list, and more.

Users have a wide range of options other than their own music collection, including Internet radio stations or the MP3 tunes online music locker. In addition, by using Wi-Fi, users can access Internet radio, even when the PC is switched-off.

Moreover, users can upload their entire music collection from PC to a storage space on the Internet, which can be accessed from any ‘Squeezebox’.

beta: It isn’t really a new version of WordPerfect, and in more than one way, that fact is starting to show. But for the product that still purports to be the world’s #2 commercial word processor, just behind Microsoft by about 85 points give or take a few, even the smallest change may as well be a monumental shift. This week, Corel released to selected beta testers an updated version of its WordPerfect Office X3 suite, which still features the Quattro Pro spreadsheet, and which now places the OpenDocument Format on an equal standing with Microsoft Word formats.

“At the end of the day, customers don’t care about formats – they shouldn’t have to,” remarked Corel’s director of product management Jason Larock in an interview with BetaNews. “I think for a consumer or small business customer, I don’t want him thinking, ‘Should I be ODF or should I be OOXML or WordPerfect format?’ I just want him to work with his documents, work with them correctly.”

For the last few editions, knowing full well a good chunk of its customer base would already be skilled in Microsoft Word, Corel engineered its word processor’s user interface to optionally resemble Word 2003 (which it still refers to as “Word 2002″) or Word 97.

In an interview in January 2006 when its Office X3 edition was first released, Corel’s representatives actually appeared comfortable letting WordPerfect take a backseat role in the market. No longer the standard bearer, the burden was off its shoulders, and its people openly said they were happy with letting customers decide which way the word processing winds should blow. If they should continue to blow in Microsoft’s direction, then WordPerfect would follow.