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indianexpress:  Can the Pune Captive Power model be sustained so that city will continue to have no load shedding this year as well? This is what the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC) has asked the MSEDCL to find out by the end of this month. While MSEDCL officers say that the city will not face load shedding, they admit that the increased real estate activity in the city is going to spur on the power shortage.

A slew of new realty projects have come up everywhere in the city including Hadapsar Road, (townships like Amanora and Magarpatta coming up on over 400 acres), Solapur Road, Dhanori, Pimple Saudagar, Kharadi, and suburbs. At Hinjewadi, there is already a power crunch because villagers at Mann have resisted the erection of a 100 MW substation.

And new residential-cum commercial townships have been announced in Hinjewadi by Paranjape developers, Shobha Developers, Kumar builders besides the expansion plans of IT companies that already have a foothold at the Rajiv Gandhi Information Technology Park.

“We hope to overcome these problems at Mann as soon as the substation is cleared,” said Ramesh Gautam, chief engineer of the Pune zone, MSEDCL.

Since the principle of captive power project was introduced some 15 months ago — when some 42 companies voluntarily agreed to use diesel generators and not draw power from the central grid - the load shortage for the city has increased from 90 MW to 150 MW.

indianexpress: Tension prevailed in parts of the city on Thursday morning following sporadic incidents of road blocking, stoning and arson by mobs protesting the demolition of illegal portions of Gani Baba Dargah in Gultekdi area by Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) past Wednesday midnight.

At least six policemen were injured during the action that lasted over three hours. The Swargate police arrested Allaudin Naim Shaikh (22), Munna Yakub Sheikh (19) and Nazir Kader Patel (22), all residents of Gultekdi, in the incident and booked around 100-150 people for rioting and arson reported from Salisbury Park and Swargate areas.

Meanwhile, fire brigade officials said a private bus parked inside a garage in Gultekdi industrial area was burnt.

Municipal commissioner Praveensinh Pardeshi said PMC had acted upon the directives of the Bombay High Court that had set November 22 as the deadline for removal of illegal structures at the dargah site. “The issue was discussed with the trustees of the dargah. They had removed some illegal portions earlier but reconstructed them again,” he told the PMC general body meeting on Thursday.

Earlier, the issue was raised in the meeting by NCP corporator Arif Bagwan, who alleged that the civic action was targeted towards religious structures of a particular community. Mayor Rajlaxmi Bhosale intervened in the discussion and said: “The civic administration’s action was as per the HC directive and should not be misunderstood.”

indianexpress: THE Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) general body on Thursday came down heavily on the civic administration over the poor supply of drinking water in various parts of the city even as the civic officers attributed delay in execution of various water works project to the objections raised by environmentalists.

Corporators from all the political parties said the civic administration was providing insufficient water to the citizens in various places and at some places the water supply was done at odd timings during midnight adding to the problems of citizens.

Leader of House Anil Bhosale pointed out that the civic administration has failed to completed the various water supply projects in time and have been giving false assurance.

In his reply, PMC water works department head V G Kulkarni said the civic administration is working on improving the water supply in various parts of the city.

“The water supply during odd times in parts of the city will continue for some days till the development work is completed,” he added.

Leader of Opposition Vikas Mathkari said few of the environmentalists were creating unnecessary hurdles in the replacement of water pipeline from SNDT water tank to Senapati Bapat Road

indianexpress: THE ongoing controvert over the alleged irregularities conducted by the Pune Cantonment Board (PCB) during the recently-held demarcation exercise for the forthcoming elections as per the new Cantonment Act, 2006 took a new turn today with Cantonment-based civic activist advocate Asif Shaikh alleging that the board had suppressed the directives for conducting elections issued by the Director General of Defence Estates, New Delhi on August 22.

Shaikh, in a specially convened media meeting, pointed out that the PCB did not make the directives public during the delimitation/division of wards it carried out for conducting elections recently.

Quoting from the original copy of the directives sought under an RTI requisition by a city journalist and RTI activist, Shaikh argued that though the directives made it clear that the residential blocks should not be disturbed while carrying out the demarcation exercise, the PCB did not bother to adhere to the rule and went ahead with its own whims and fancies.

Commenting further, Shaikh lambasted the PCB for not seeking information on the population count in Pune Cantonment area from the State Government though the directives had asked the boards to contact the directorate of census of the respective states for census purposes.

On the ward reservation issue, directions have been given that the area of the highest concentration of SCs and STs should be accommodated in one ward which should be reserved.

indianexpress:  With cold northerly winds blowing and moisture content in the air dropping, the mercury on Thursday morning dipped to 8.5 degree Celsius in the city. It was the lowest temperature for November so far, said India Meteorological Department (IMD) officials.

They have forecast colder days ahead. Director (Weather Central) SB Gaonkar said Thursday morning’s temperature was the lowest for the month of November. With winter having set in a week ago, weather officials said temperatures would further fall to 8 degree Celsius.

IMD records say the temperature in November 1993 had touched 8 degree Celsius.

The all-time low for Pune was on November 27,1964 when the temperature fell to 4.6 degree Celsius.

indianexpress:  For the common man, who needs to undergo angioplasty, the State-run Sassoon General Hospital is the best bet. The hospital’s department of cardiology performs angioplasties on patients under the government’s Jeevandayi Yojana. However, in the last three months almost no angioplasty has been done.

Reason: There is no stock of stents in the 1,296-bed hospital because the rate contract through which the government buys stents expired in March, said a senior professor.

When contacted, Dr A D Katdhere, head of the department of cardiology, BJMC agreed that the rate contract had expired in March.

This has led to rejection of patients and stretching the waiting list of heart patients.

Consider this. At least 15 angioplasties are done every month at Sassoon Hospital. But this year’s figures speak differently.

At the cath lab which was started in January 2001, 554 angiographies were done in 2006, while only 61 angioplasties were done this year.

indianexpress: Did you know that the National Film Archive of India (NFAI) houses the probably largest collection of objectionable material in the country? And that too with official sanction.

This dubious distinction is courtesy a huge collection of the censored portions of Indian films that have found a resting place in the vaults of the NFAI over the years. At last count, the number of censored cuts from films preserved at NFAI was around 15,000.

While everyone knows about the country’s famous censor board and its infamous cuts, few know that scenes do not end up ignominious dust bins after being chopped off, but are taken in by the NFAI, to be carefully documented and preserved in its vaults.

“The censored portions have as much historical and cultural importance as the final film itself. What if a student of sociology wants to study why some films or their portions were objected to or how the definition of morality has changed over the years? There is definite value attached to these portions,’’ says K Sasidharan, Director, NFAI.

“Though I am absolutely against film censorship, I think it’s quite fascinating that the NFAI has preserved the censored bits from the films over the years. The collection is definitely material for research and in fact even I would love to make a documentary on the subject,” says Somnath Sen, film director and faculty member at FTII.

Also the censor board did not know what to do with the portions they had snipped off. Hence their preservation was taken up by the NFAI, which is also in accordance with its aim of preserving all kinds of film history for posterity. The cuts from the eight censor boards in the country have thus been reaching NFAI ever since it was set up in 1965.

techtree: Cyberstar Infocom has announced that it is all set to introduce Hitachi’s most energy-efficient desktop hard disk drive (HDD), the Deskstar P7K500.

Designed for commercial- and consumer- PCs in capacities ranging from 250GB to 500GB, the Hitachi Deskstar P7K500 is claimed to be 59 percent more power efficient than comparable (250GB) hard drives in its class.

The reason being Hitachi has implemented a set of power-saving technologies to reduce P7K500’s active- and idle- power consumption. As such, the P7K500 delivers significant power savings both- on its one-disk model and two-disk model.

The Deskstar P7K500, available in 250GB, 320GB, 400GB, and 500GB capacities, with 185 billion bits per square inch maximum areal density; comes with an 8MB (one-disk), and an 8MB and 16MB (two-disk) data buffer. Both models sport a 7200 rpm performance and a Serial ATA interface.

Besides, the Deskstar P7K500 features Hitachi’s patented load/unload technology to allow for additional power reduction. And, it offers industry-leading power specifications that support Green initiatives aimed at producing environment-friendly PCs.

In addition, the P7K500 incorporates Hitachi’s second generation perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) heads and disks that enable 250 GB per platter areal density, plus a high level of reliability.

techtree: IDLDPL has launched the Pentax Optio M40 compact digicam in the Indian market.

An ultra-slim and lightweight 8.0 mega pixels point-and-shoot camera, the Pentax Optio M40 features a 3X optical zoom and a 4X digital zoom for a maximum of about 12X magnification, plus a 2.5-inches LCD screen.

With 18mm of depth, the Optio M40 comes encased in a stylish Aluminium cover. It features digital shake reduction and face recognition technologies (AF and AE) to make it stand apart from other cameras in its class.

M40 is called ‘intelligent’ as it has 16 shooting modes, including the new ‘natural skin tone’, ‘pet’, and ‘food’ modes.

Whereas, the Exif Print, Print Image Matching III, and Auto Picture modes automatically determine best settings as per shooting conditions.

Other salient features of the Optio M40 include: an equivalent focal length of 36 to 108mm and a 21.9 megabytes internal memory. Besides, it is compatible with PictBridge and DPOF functions.

The Pentax Optio M40, priced at Rs 15,490 with MOP Rs 12,990, is available pan-India through IDLDPL and all mobile stores. The product comes with a special carry case.

techtree: Genius has added to its digital photo frame portfolio with the DPF-151, which is a 1.5-inches digital photo frame with alarm clock.

Genius claims that while most digital photo frames are just that — digital photo frames, it has integrated alarm clock functionality into the product.

The compact DPF-151 saves desk space, and makes downloading of pictures from users’ PCs easier. Besides displaying real time clock, it provides calendar and temperature display.

Key features of the DPF-151 include: manual- or auto- slide show photo, photo compression software, real time clock, calendar, and temperature display alarm. The package bundles a CD-ROM with photo compression software and a multi-language manual.