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indianexpress: After launching an extensive anti-encroachment drive in the city in last few months, the civic administration on Wednesday will table the much awaited hawkers’ policy in the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) Standing Committee .

“The first of its’ kind policy in the country on the directives of the Supreme court will help in decongestion of the city roads and footpath occupied by the hawkers. It will provide for a permanent solution to the hawkers issue,” Municipal Commissioner Praveen Pardeshi said in the proposal.

He said the policy focuses on rehabilitating all the hawkers causing obstructing to traffic flow on city roads. It aims at providing an alternative space to these hawkers in the city while helping in beautification of the city.

A total of 30 main city roads have been declared as no hawker-zone in the policy. There are 7422 licensed hawkers while 20,000 illegal hawkers in the PMC jurisdiction. The PMC will provide 5 ft by 6 ft stalls to the licensed hawkers in the hawker rehabilitation project.

Around 70 places have been identified for the rehabilitation project and work on developing 10 of these places will be undertaken soon.

“This will also provide permanent source of revenue for PMC as the stalls will be either rented or allotted on contract basis to hawkers,” he said.

punetimes: A Pakistan spy who was recently released from the Yerwada jail — having already served his punishment as an undertrial — has been forced by circumstances to stay in the premises of the police station even after being freed. The reason: he has no visa, passport and other documents to fly back to Karachi, his hometown.

Sayeed Ahmed alias Mohammed Desai has been forced to stay at the Sahakarnagar police station since his release on October 26.

Desai, who pleaded guilty to being an Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) agency spy, was sentenced to seven years rigorous imprisonment with a fine of Rs 50,000 by Pune’s chief judicial magistrate Yashwant Chaware on October 4.

He paid the fine and was discharged from Yerwada Central Prison on October 26 as he had already served his punishment as an undertrial.

Desai was caught by city police in June 1999. It was during the Kargil conflict, and Desai was spying on various military establishments situated in Khadki. It was the first case in which an ISI agent had been held in the city.
Desai’s counsel Vidyadhar Koshe told TOI that ideally Desai should have been sent back to Pakistan immediately after his release from jail.

punetimes: The civic administration has finally admitted that the design of its Khadakwasla-Parvati pipeline project — popularly known as the ‘Band-Nal Yojana’ — is faulty.

This admission shockingly comes seven years after the Rs 57-crore pipeline was commissioned in July 2000 and after a whopping Rs 14 crore has been spent on buying additional water from the Mutha open canal.

The administration now plans to rectify the design faults and has called official bids for appointing technical consultants for the rectification. During these seven years, the civic body has consistently defended the design of the pipeline and has instead alleged that the pipeline was forced to carry less water as the irrigation department was not maintaining the required water levels in the Khadakwasla dam.

The pipeline was designed to draw 11.5 thousand million cubic (TMC) feet of untreated water per year from the dam. However, the actual water drawn has always been around 8.5 TMC. The remaining 2.5 to 3 TMC was being taken from the Mutha open canal, for which the civic body was paying the irrigation department thrice the normal water lifting charges, amounting to over Rs 14 crore till now.

The 11.5-km-long and 3,030-diameter pipeline was laid to draw water from the Khadakwasla dam to the Parvati water works (PWW) on Sinhagad road. It is still considered the biggest water supply project executed by the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) in Pune city as it assures uninterrupted supply of raw water from the dam to the city. The dam water is treated at the PWW before being pumped to the city for drinking purposes.

punetimes: Having grown up in hardship after fleeing Germans in Zanzibar during the First World War, as a kid, Framroz Barashaw Engineer made it his principle never to run away from any adversity. Not even from every hard working man’s nightmare — taxes.

Engineer, who will turn 100 on November 26 and possibly the oldest tax-payer in the country, received a letter of appreciation from finance minister P. Chidambaram a couple of months ago for filing his tax returns along with payment of dues.

Living in Pune since 1987 with his daughter Zurie Mody, Engineer fled Zanzibar with his parents in 1914. The family settled in Bombay where Engineer’s father taught himself dentistry and set up a practice. Engineer studied automobile engineering, and, after serving as vice-principal in an engineering college in Surat for 10 years, started an automobile business in Secunderabad in the 1940s.

“Big deal,” says Engineer on being asked about the rare distinction of being among the oldest tax payers in the country. “No matter what I earn, whatever is due to be paid I shall pay,” he insisted. “My father has never been wealthy, but he is extremely upright and principled,” said Zurie.

“Even at this age, he insists on getting work done himself — be it ordering for the gas or fixing the bathroom flush or a door stopper,” she beamed. “Or making ice-creams,” said friend and investment consultant Anand Sathe.

According to Sathe, Engineer is not only “very clean and straightforward about his money, his knowledge of tax laws is astounding.”

punetimes:  Close on the heels of the arrest of two models for their alleged involvement in the flesh trade last month, the city crime branch on Tuesday arrested three women, who were working as female escorts, under the Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act.

The women are television serial actress Sapna Raj Tiwari (22) of Goregaon, Mumbai; Zarina alias Rani Mohammed Mirza (20) of Jogeshwari, Mumbai, and Puja Sopoun Songar (20) of West Bengal.

The three were working as female escorts under the banner of a website chamadi.com, an online portal providing female escort services.

punetimes: The multi-storied ‘Minerva’ parking lot near Mandai, with a capacity to accommodate 300 cars or 2,000 two-wheelers was inaugurated by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) general-secretary Gopinath Munde on Monday.

The 4.55-crore parking lot project includes a ground plus five stories and is constructed on a 10,000 sq m plot.A six metre-wide ramp has been constructed for vehicles to pass through to upper levels and provision has been made for installing lifts in the future.

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Munde stressed the need for a long-term policy to address the growing traffic congestion problem in Pune. He said that the government should look into the traffic problem and provide funds.

punetimes:  An expert committee formed by the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) to look into the tree cover in the city has recommended new standards for tree plantation on development plots to help increase tree density.

The committee, comprising tree experts, architects and officials from the PMC city engineer’s office, has made the recommendations for stabilising and supporting tree proliferation and conservation considering the large-scale constructions going on in the city.

One of the most important recommendations are the new standards for tree plantation, which include: one tree per 100 sq. m. for plots measuring less than 500 sq. m.; one tree per 60 sq. m. for plots measuring more than 500 sq. m. and upto 2,000 sq. m. and one tree per 80 sq. m. for plots measuring more than 2,000 sq. m.

Currently, the rules is that one tree should be planted on 100 sq. m. in a developed plot. However, the rule is applied to all sizes of plots. No bifurcation is made even if the size of the plots are bigger.

Speaking to TOI, municipal commissioner Pravinsinh Pardeshi said that the recommendations have been accepted by the PMC and also have been deliberated with members of Promoters and Builders Association of Poona (PBAP).

“The builders have accepted the recommendations and have agreed that tree cover in the city needs to be increased. We will be implementing the recommendations by making them as one of the conditions while giving building permissions,” Pardeshi said.

techtree: A Global Positioning System (GPS) based in-car navigation device, christened “MapmyIndia Navigator”, has been launched by MapmyIndia, a leading navigable map data provider.

The sleek smart gadget uses satellites to determine a user’s current location anywhere within the country. It guides people, turn by turn, with visual map instructions supported by voice prompts. The gizmo can either be mounted on the windshield or dashboard while driving, or hand carried while sitting in the backseat of the car.

Says Rakesh Verma, managing director of CE Info Systems (promoters of MapmyIndia): with GPS technology, and accurate MapmyIndia maps telling you exactly where to take your next turn, unnamed roads or unclear road signs are no longer an issue.

“MapmyIndia Navigator” is currently available in two hardware models: Delphi Nav 200 and AMAX 06GP5A. The devices come with built-in GPS (SirfStar III), a 3.5-inches color touch-screen, Samsung 400 MHz processor, and additional multimedia features to play movies, music, photos, and games.

“MapmyIndia Navigator” deploys comprehensive and accurate India maps provided by CE Info Systems. CE Info Systems claims the maps have been created, and are continually updated, by a strong team of map data specialists plus 200 surveyors who’ve been walking and driving across the length and breadth of the country for many years now.

techtree: Plustek has announced availability of its new scanner, OpticPro A320, for large format scanning and management. The scanner is especially targeted at graphic designers, publishing companies, libraries, schools, small office/home office (SOHO) users, etc.

The new scanner is capable of scanning A3 size documents with resolution as high as 1,600 dpi, and scanning area as large as 12-inches x 17-inches in about 11.2 seconds, claims Plustek. And, the scanner doubles as a flatbed scanner.

The OpticPro A320 features seven one-touch buttons for performing pre-set functions such as scan, file, copy, OCR, PDF conversion, and email. It offers a user interface (UI) in multiple languages, and comes bundled with image processing and document management software. It provides for fast and secure PDF conversion, accurate optical character recognition (OCR), and easy sharing of files over a network.

The technical specifications of OpticPro A320 include: a USB 2.0 interface, Stagger CCD color image sensor (RGB) technology, scan resolution of up to 1600 dpi x 1600 dpi, and scanning speed of 11.2 seconds for maximum scanning area A3 size color/gray scale/Black and White at 300dpi.

techtree: Epson has launched its Stylus C110 single-function printer, an inkjet printer targeted at business users who need high print speed along with crisp quality text typically associated with laser printers.

The C110 is housed in an elegant Black and Silver case, and sports print speeds of 25 pages per minute (ppm) for Black and White text, and 11 ppm for color text (A4 prints). It is capable of printing at resolutions of up to 5,760 dpi (dots per inch), which is comparable to that of dedicated photo printers.

The printer boasts the ability to load two black ink cartridges for a combined five ink cartridge configuration, i.e. two black and three color ink cartridges. For heavy black text printing, users can choose high capacity black ink cartridges.

Besides, use of DuraBrite Ultra inks ensures sharp text quality prints that are claimed to be durable enough to last a lifetime.

By virtue of being an inkjet printer, the C110 can print on a variety of media including photo paper, photo stickers, and CD sleeves unlike as in laser printers.

Also like most other Epson printers, the C110 features Epson Micro-Piezo print head system, and Variable Sized Droplet technology (VSDT).

The Stylus C110 incorporates the best about laser printers, and marries it to the affordability of inkjet printers, thereby offering the perfect value proposition for users with a medium print volume.