News

indianexpress: THE stand-off over the closure of Bharati Vidyapeeth (BV) road is likely to continue with the university authorities defending the closure though the citizens continued their agitation. The meeting between Mayor Rajlaxmi Bhosale and State Co-operation Minister Patangrao Kadam, who is the founder-Chancellor of BV University, for settlement of the issue did not happen on Friday.

Kadam’s brother and BVU Vice Chancellor Shivajirao Kadam said the road closure was essential to ensure the safety and security of the students on campus, and went on to dub the agitation against the road closure as “politically motivated”.

The road closure, which has affected as many as one-lakh residents in Ambegaon, Dhankawadi and Katraj, has met with intense opposition, with thousands of local residents, many of them women, taking to the streets sporting black badges. Some residents even put up banners carrying the slogan ‘India’s border ends here’.

Nowhere in the state or even in the country do you have public roads passing through an educational institution. Having vehicles speeding through the campus is hazardous to the students, and we have had many deaths due to accidents on campus. Moreover, we have girls staying at the hostels. There are concerns for their security as rowdies and drunkards pass through the road,” Kadam told The Indian Express.

Kadam said that the land was earlier privately owned and was taken over by the government for development projects. Since these projects did not come through, the original owner took the matter to court, demanding that the land be handed over to him again. While the matter was still sub-judice, the government handed over the land to the BV authorities in 1984.

indianexpress:  The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) will soon introduce pay-and-park system for four-wheelers on 15 main thoroughfares across the city claiming this measure, part of its traffic policy, which will discourage people from using personal vehicles

The PMC already has similar facilities on Jangli Maharaj Road, Fergusson College Road and Tilak Road. It had recently inaugurated the mechanised parking at Jangli Maharaj Road and the parking structure at Minerva Theatre near Mahatma Phule Mandai will be inaugurated soon.

However, the PMC’s track record on developing dedicated parking plots is anything but dismal. Of the 29 plots reserved for parking in the city Development Plan (DP), only 11 have been developed, three plots are no longer marked for parking while action is yet to be initiated for developing the rest of the plots.

The introduction of pay-and-park on streets will eat into the carriagewidth but the civic administration argues the parking charges should discourage vehicle owners from bringing their personal vehicles on the road.

PMC traffic planner Srinivas Bonala told The Indian Express: “The facility will be introduced in areas already earmarked for parking by the traffic police. Hence there is no question of reducing the existing carriagewidth of the roads. Besides, the facility will discourage use of personal vehicles as the owner has to shell out money for parking.”

The parking charges will be Rs 5 per hour as in the case of existing pay-and-park facilities. But vehicle owners can opt for monthly passes. “While the contractors will be responsible for a vehicle going missing, any loss or damage to accessories will be the vehicle owners’ responsibility,” Bonala said.

indianexpress: There was a need to organise have regular follow-ups to workshops for the disabled farmers, Member of Parliament Supriya Sule said shortly after inaugurating the third workshop for disabled farmers at the Bal Kalyan Sanstha in the city on Friday. The workshop aims to empower disabled farmers with confidence besides familiarising them with the latest in farming techniques.

Organised by Yashwantrao Chavan Pratisthan Mumbai Centre (Pune), National Horticulture Board and the National Disability Finance Development Corporation (NDFDC), the workshop is focussed on training farmers in horticulture, polyhouse and new techniques in farming. This is the third workshop conducted by the organisers with the earlier ones being conducted in Aurangabad and Nagpur.

Sule said that these workshops would only encourage disabled farmers to start new initiatives. “But these workshops have to extend to regular follow-ups and how they are making use of the technology,” Sule however said. Adding to her point, R K Gaikwad, commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, said farmers across the state were totally unaware of the modern techniques. “Besides the 700 farmers being covered at Aurangabad and Nagpur, 200-350 more of them are being covered in this workshop” he said.

indianexpress: Unless BSNL’s WLL customers approach the company’s customer service centre this month end and get their instruments reprogrammed they will be unable to make or receive any call from their existing handset with effect from October 31.

“BSNL is upgrading its WLL technology and will soon be able to provide customers with newer facilities like Short Messaging Service (SMS) and high-speed Internet at 144 kbps. For this purpose, we have requested customers to get their instruments reprogrammed,” said Principal General Manager, D K Maheshwari.

This move is expected to affect around 12,000 customers of BSNL. From October 31 to November 3, during working hours the customer centres will re-programme instruments. The new upgraded technology will be Mobile Switching Centre (MSC) based. While this will help BSNL improve their maintenance work, WLL customers will get the same benefits like the GSM ones.

“Customers will not have to spare more than 15 minutes in getting the instrument reprogrammed,” said General Manager - Marketing, V K Mathur. Reprogramming will be at no extra cost but the number of the customer will change. The public can also learn about the changed WLL numbers by dialling 1951 and 1952, which are toll free.

indianexpress: Seventy doctors of B.J. Medical College and Sassoon General Hospital submitted their resignation on Friday and will join the state-wide protest on October 29 by going on mass casual leave. A meeting was organised today by the Pune unit of the Maharashtra State Medical Teachers’ Association (MSMTA) at the BJMC where the decision was taken to join 150 doctors from government hospitals and tender their resignations as post graduate teachers.

Dr Girish Bartakke, Secretary of the Pune unit of the MSMTA said that they have been demanding the government regularise all posts by giving temporary teachers a permanent cadre, time-bound promotion and a pay scale with a salary at par with other private hospitals. Around 70 teachers who belong to the association will surrender their ‘PG teachership’,” Bartakke said.

When contacted Dr Arun Jhamkar, Dean, BJMC said that services will not be affected and they will rope in doctors from the public health services.

Meanwhile there are a total of 24 posts of teachers lying vacant in various departments at BJMC. However according to reliable sources, there were ‘excess’ number of teachers in some departments while there was a shortage in others. For instance while the department of surgery has been sanctioned posts for 8 associate professors as per Medical Council of India (MCI) rules, only two have been filled up so far. On the other hand, other departments like anatomy have excess teachers, sources pointed out.

indianexpress: AFTER ten days of being stranded at the Nigdi Pradhikaran Police Chowky compound, Lakshmi the elephant has finally found a home, at least temporarily. In an order passed by Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) Ashwini Gujjar on Friday, interim custody for Lakshmi has been granted to the Jeev Daya Mahamandal (JDM), which runs an animal shelter in Lonikand.

The JDM, which is a Jain trust, works for the rescue and rehabilitation of all kinds of animals and runs a 1.5-acre shelter as well as a 6000-sq.ft animal shed at Lonikand near Wagholi. “The elephant will be given 200-sq.ft space at the shed. There is also a pond and a 100-acre land adjoining the property that can be used for walking the elephant,” said JDM founder and executive chairman Ashok Shah.

Lakshmi, who has cataract and is partially blind, has been kept at the Pradhikaran Police Chowky since October 16. Although a court order was issued to transfer her to the Rajiv Gandhi Zoological Park at Katraj, both the zoo authorities and the mahout expressed inability to facilitate the transfer, thus leaving police officials at Pradhikaran in a dilemma. Two organizations JDM and the Akkalkot Anna Chatra Mandal offered to provide shelter to the elephant, following which the court granted interim custody to JDM on Friday.

Veterinary specialist and assistant commissioner of the Pune Animal Husbandry Department’s veterinary polyclinic Dr. D.M. Aundhkar, who examined Lakshmi, said that her health was normal. Shah said that she would be provided with nearly 500 kg of fodder daily along with wheat concentrate and 120 litres of water.

indianexpress: Though the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) is known mainly for its one-of-a-kind collection of films, ironically enough little is known of another collection housed by it that in fact is far more comprehensive and exhaustive than its film collection. This is the storehouse of 43,000 film scripts that have been painstakingly obtained and preserved by the institution since its inception in 1965.
 
“Every film-maker has to submit his or her script to the archive before the film is certified. Last year 1,091 films were certified in India in various languages while the archive finally took in 250 prints. But when it comes to the archive we take in every single one spanning the 33 languages in which films are made in India. Plus we have a whole lot of foreign films scripts too. So in that sense our script collection is much more complete and wide-ranging than any other,” says K. Sasidharan, director National Film Archive of India .

While initially the scripts, many of them hard duly bound, were housed in the Jayaker bungalow, sometime back they were shifted to the defunct canteen premises on the second floor of the archive’s main building. However according to Sasidharan, even here the space is running out which has made him stock most of the South Indian film scripts at their facility in Bangalore. There are now plans to shift part of the collection to the new premises in Kothrud in the near future.

Also with the paper quality of most of the scripts being mediocre there is a real danger of them crumbling into powder over the years. For this purpose, the archive has also mooted the proposal of digitising the scripts for their continued preservation.