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indianexpress: The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has decided to crack down on city builders for octroi evasion on cement and steel through inspection of these building materials at construction sites.
The civic body suspects there is large scale evasion in the rapidly growing construction industry.

“There is a boom in the construction industry and lot of development work is going on all over the city. However, the octroi collection for cement and steel does not reflect the extent of construction work that is going on in the city,” PMC octroi chief K C Karkar told The Indian Express on Monday.

He said the present octroi collection from cement and steel is Rs 2.5 crore and Rs 7 crore per month, a collection that has not seen any major increase in the last few months.

A proposal to check octroi evasion on cement and steel by builders has been submitted to municipal commissioner Praveensinh Pardeshi for approval, Karkar said. “PMC will ask builders to pay octroi charges on material found on construction sites without octroi receipts. We may even issue stay orders on the construction,” he added.

PBAP president Lalitkumar Jain said the PMC move would be a harassment to builders. “There is no truth in the PMC’s claim that builders are evading octroi on steel and cement used in construction work. If the site checks begin, it will only encourage corruption,” he said, adding, “the PMC will have to tighten its grip on the department if they feel octroi is being evaded.”

indianexpress: With the Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress engaging in argument with Nationalist Congress Party and Shiv Sena, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) general body on Monday witnessed pandemonium on the proposal to allot Rs 10 crore every year to the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) for the payment of construction of various flyovers constructed in its jurisdiction.

The proposal was passed with 57 votes in favour against the 39 votes of opposition on the condition that the state corporation will start new proposed development work.

Opposing the civic administration’s proposal, leader of opposition Vikas Mathkari said it was wrong to pay the MSRDC from the PMC coffers when the State Government has failed to pay PMC back the 10 per cent of vehicle tax collected from the city as per rules.

“To pay the MSRDC for the fly over construction is injustice on Puneites,” Mathkari said urging the general body to reconsider the proposal. He also said the proposal itself was illegal as the standing committee is yet to reconsider the proposal as demanded by BJP corporator Ujjwal Keskar.

The Shiv Sena-BJP alliance, while in power, had proposed to construct the flyovers in the city on build-operate- transfer basis with no burden on the PMC, Mathkari said adding, “The ruling Congress-NCP alliance in the state should not take money from PMC for the road development projects carried out in the city.”

indianexpress: The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) general body on Monday unanimously passed a resolution urging the State government to reconsider its decision banning vehicular traffic on the PMC road passing through Bharati Vidyapeeth (BV) campus.

The resolution was tabled by all corporators residing in the area and said it was affecting over one lakh residents in Dhankawdi and Katraj.

The city police, along with the civic administration, had last month started executing the State government’s decision to ban vehicular traffic on the road passing through the BV campus despite opposition from local residents and corporators.

The order to ban vehicular traffic on the road came after the university urged the State government that the traffic was becoming dangerous to students and was disturbing the educational environment.

Protesting the decision, the corporators and residents had staged demonstrations on the road urging the varsity to open the road for vehicular traffic.

Corporators and Congress legislator Balasaheb Shivarkar had met Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and guardian minister Ajit Pawar urging him to withdraw the decision.

indianexpress: Even as the Pune Municipal Corporation has succeeded in notching up second place after Mumbai in the October progress card that keeps track of the physical progress of JNNURM — an initiative of the Urban Development Department (UDD) — the civic body has a job in hand ahead of the Commonwealth Youth Games (CYG) as “tough targets” of completing major JNNURM projects are staring it in the face.

Speaking to The Indian Express on Monday, UDD principal secretary T C Benjamin said Mumbai leads the October progress card as it achieved 100 per cent target bagging the overall rating of A+. It was followed by Pune which has achieved the target up to 96 per cent, drawing A+ rating.

PMC which secured top rank in July in the premier edition of the progress card, slipped to third position in the very next month. In September, the PMC climbed to second position by implementing 97 per cent projects and getting A+ grade.

In October progress card, the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation has dropped down to fifth position, getting C grade ( 70 per cent), only ahead of Nanded with E grade ( 50 per cent) and Thane which is in failed category with ( 26 per cent).

“PMC is keeping soft and achievable targets. But before the CYG, PMC will have to compete some of the major development projects that includes road works. That would be testing period for the civic body,” said an official of JNNURM department.

indianexpress: Three city-based lawyers —Mihir Raje, Murtaza Chherawala and Hussain Nalwala—- have decided to spread awareness about Persons With Disability Act (PWD Act) by starting a free legal aid cell called Horizon on December 3, which is World Disability Day.

All three are members of a law firm and will help those who want legal aid for employment or any other provisions under the Persons with Disabilities Act, Mental Health Act and National Trust Act. The lawyers want to commit themselves to “safeguard and enforce the rights of persons with disability including minors and mentally challenged.”

According to Raje,”The disabled have many issues. Through a helpline we can counsel them on the phone and meet them in person every Saturday between 4 and 7 pm.” The trio have already worked with several organisations in the disability sector and are aware of the problems faced by the disabled.

“Though the Indian Constitution under Article 15 prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, or place of birth, there is no provision which protects disabled persons. The law is there but disabled people are not yet aware of the provisions,’’ said Raje.

Horizon would help facilitate the realisation of equal opportunities, protection of rights and full participation of persons with disability. The helpline number— -020-263336—4 - will go operational from December 3.

Queries can be e-mailed on horizon.chherawala@gmail.com

techtree: Vertu has launched the Ascent Ti in the country.

A quad-band 3G handset with a 3 mega pixels camera with flash, the Ascent Ti is positioned as a very high-end phone.

The Ascent series is characterized by the influence of the power, energy, and sheer precision of a beautiful car. Ascent Ti, made in England, takes this to the next level with greater design detail, better materials, improved peformance, etc.

The way a sleek car might epitomize the ‘boys and their toys’ maxim, the exterior and interior of the Ascent Ti reminds you of the same.

The ‘Ti’ stands for Titanium, a non-corrosive metal with the highest strength-to-weight ratio, plus the ability to withstand extreme temperatures.

The Ascent Ti comes in three colors: Black- or Red- leather with a Black ceramic pillow, or Brown with a Silver ceramic pillow. The phone has a scratch-resistant Sapphire crystal face made of the same material that is used for the camera lens.

The phone has a S40 interface, and applications including ‘Vertu Fortress’ technology that allows remote synchronization of contacts, calendar, notes, etc, and backs-up all stored data to a high security server maintained in an ex-military bunker at a secure location in the English countryside

techtree: Texas Instruments (TI) will showcase Gen-Next sensors and building management sytems powered by its Digital Signal Processor (DSP) technology at the ‘TI Developer Conference’ or TIDC being held at Bangalore on November 29th and 30th.

The mainstay of TI’s DSP technology is that it can dramatically reduce emission of carbon dioxide from industrial- and commercial- buildings, thus helping fight global warming. This assumes immense importance given that daily, millions of tons of Carbon Dioxide are getting pumped into the atmosphere.

TI seeks to address this challenge by way of its Digital Signal Processors that enable next generation ‘intelligent occupancy sensors’ to be more efficient and accurate. In turn directly contributing to a reduction in Carbon Dioxide emission from industrial- and commercial- buildings.

While conventional occupancy sensors may give inaccurate detections, not so the ‘intelligent occupancy sensors’, which, based on TI’s DSP technology, improve upon existing occupancy technology, and make for better data collection for a more effective and efficient use of resources.

How an ‘intelligent occupancy sensor’ works is when video information enters the sensor, it is processed on a TI chip, providing real time occupancy data for a variety of upstream applications.

techtree: ’Computer and TV unites’ — a technological vision that has been perceived, and turned into reality by Hyderabad-based Ichip India that has developed an integrated device named ‘@Box’ to couple the features of a computer and a TV.

The device ‘@Box’ has been designed to provide computer utility, along with Internet surfing cum entertainment on the TV. From a technological point of view, ‘@Box’ works on the Linux operating system, and comes with a remote keyboard, mouse, and joystick interfaces. Users can also access 3D games, videoconferencing, IPTV, and VoIP services with this device. The ‘@Box’ offers digital video recorder (DVR) or personal video recorder (PVR) services besides Conditional Access (CA) and Digital Rights Management (DRM) support.

The ‘@Box’ is free from the routine of booting, does not need any storage devices, yet works equally as any normal computer. Ichip India has developed hardware as well as software for this device.

The device would be available at a price of $ 100 to consumers, and is expected to hit Indian markets next year. Kota Bhaskar, Ichip India s President and CTO, believes that with the affordable price and user-friendly nature of the ‘@Box’, it will be popular amongst Indian consumers.

Ichip India has invested nearly 10 crores towards technological developments, and awaits four patents in its name. The company plans to incorporate ‘@Box’ with new TV sets, and is looking to establish partnerships with telcos and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to offer various services through the new device.

bbc: A new scanner has been unveiled which can produce 3D body images of unprecedented clarity while reducing radiation by as much as 80%.
The new 256-slice CT machine takes large numbers of X-ray pictures, and combines them using computer technology to produce the final detailed images.

It also generates images in a fraction of the time of other scanners: a full body scan takes less than a minute.

The Philips machine was unveiled at the Radiological Society of North America.

Because the images are 3D they can be rotated and viewed from different directions - giving doctors the greatest possible help in looking for signs of abnormalities or disease.

All images also can be accessed on any computer in a hospital or by colleagues and researchers remotely, to make it easier for the whole team to share information.

The scan is much quicker than current technology, as the machine’s X-ray emitting gantry - the giant ring-shaped part that surrounds the patient - can rotate four times in a single second - 22% faster than current systems.

The cost of the equipment - known as the Brilliance CT - is unclear.

At present, it is only being used in one hospital: the Metro Health medical centre in Cleveland, Ohio, which has been using it for the past month.