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TOI : PUNE: The courts that have seen P Gopi Chand win the 1997 national title and Prakash Padukone the first ever Open prize money tournament in India (Indian Masters in 1981) haven’t seen flying birds for around three weeks now.

The WIE complex, where major renovation work has been undertaken, is caught in legal hassles and it’s unclear how soon shuttles will take flight again.

The Progressive Education Society (PES), which owns the premises, had asked the Poona District Metropolitan Badminton Association (PDMBA) to stop the work on the courts until both reached an agreement.

The PES has sought court’s intervention in the renovation and other works on the premises. “We only want the PDMBA to take necessary permissions before carrying out any work,” said PES trustee Chintamani Ghate. “We want badminton to resume. But the ball is in their court. Despite sending initial draft of the agreement and our subsequent attempts to sit together and sort out the issue, the badminton officials have not responded.”

Girish Natu, city’s prominent badminton official, refused to divulge any information to TOI on the progress of agreement vis-à-vis renovation work.

However, Ghate said: “We have filed a case in civil court and notice has already been issued. The matter is expected to be heard in the first week of May.”

He claimed that the PDMBA didn’t seek permission from the PSE before starting the renovation work. “They wrote a letter saying they are carrying out the work. Though we expressed our reservation, they simply went ahead with the renovation work.”

According to Ghate, the original tripartite agreement between WIE, PES and PDMBA in 1982 and the subsequent draft in 1986 was not perfectly legal. “The document, which had some blank spaces, was not even notarised,” he said.

“Now, the WIE doesn’t exist. Hence, the remaining two parties…More

TOI : PUNE: Although 360 children work as rag-pickers in the city, the government machinery finds itself helpless as proving them child labourers is “not possible”.

Deputy commissioner at the labour department, Anil Lakaswar, expressed his helplessness in dealing with such cases as proving them as child labourers was not possible on technical grounds.

“A person can be called a child labourer only if he or she is proved to be below 14 years of age. Even the employee-employer relation has to be proved. It is only after these things are proved that we can take action,” he said.

“Children working as garbage collectors or as shoe-shine boys are self-employed. Proving employee-employer re-lationship here is not possible.”

Shabana Diler of Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat said, “We have conducted a survey, under which we found that more than 360 children are working as garbage collectors in the city. Some of them are even working in the PMC’s garbage depot at Urali Devachi.”

She said the age of these children is between four years and 16 years.

The survey was carried out with the help of some educational institutes in September-October 2007. The report will be handed over to the PMC and other bodies soon.

Manish Shrof of the Action for Rights of Child, an NGO, said steps were being taken to counsel these children and their parents.

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TOI : PUNE: The marriage season is on, but Rashmi is struggling to find a groom. She is nearing forty and is frustrated that her dreams of getting married will remain unfulfilled even this season. Her only fault, if it can be termed that, is that she is well-educated and, therefore, unable to find a suitable match from within her community — the Other Backward Class (OBC).

Hundreds of women from among the backward classes (BCs) and OBCs are as despairing as Rashmi for the same reason. Education, indeed, has become a disadvantage for them in the marriage market.

“I did my BAMS (Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery) and work in a clinic. Since the last five years, my parents have been searching for a suitable boy, but in vain. I am worried for my younger sisters, as they are well-educated too,” says Rashmi, who hails from the OBC Patharvat community, which has a low level of education among boys as compared to other communities.

Anuja, a commerce graduate from the Dhangar community, has already given up hope of finding a match.

“I have crossed forty. I was working with the Pune Municipal Corporation, but now I don’t feel like doing anything,” she says.

Anuja’s parents insist that she should marry a boy from the community, but she is unable to find someone who can match her education. The parents are averse to an inter-caste marriage because they feel it could create problems for her younger sister. Incidentally, the younger girl dropped out of school after her eighth standard.

Shyam Sahani, who has been running a marriage bureau for the last 20 years, admits that the mismatch in education has turned out to be a major problem when it comes to tying the knot. “Many girls and their parents, after failing to get suitable educated boys from their…More

TOI : PUNE: Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) will soon develop two mechanised car parking lots to solve the parking problem at its main office building premises.

Speaking to TOI on Wednesday, Subhash Dumbre, additional municipal commissioner, said the mechanised car parking facility will be the first of its kind in the Pimpri-Chinchwad Township. It may be noted that the Pune Municipal Corporation has built a mechanised parking lot at Sambhaji Park on J.M. road, at an approximate cost of Rs 2 crore, which has been lying unused.

The PCMC main office building is located along the Pune-Mumbai highway in Pimpri. Due to increasing vehicles in the township, parking space in the premises has become inadequate. Moreover, since the civic body is extending the main office building, the available open space has reduced considerably. Consequently, civic officials and visitors have
to park their vehicles along the compound wall on the highway.

A PCMC engineering department official said one mechanised car parking lot will be in the building premises itself.

This one will be built at a cost of Rs 3.33 crore and will accommodate 116 cars. The second parking lot, to be developed outside the building premises, will be on a reserved plot on the other side of the highway. Four towers will be built in the parking lot, each with a capacity to park 34 cars. After the construction, the parking lot will be given out to a private contractor, for a period of five years, to operate and maintain.

The official added that tenders are being invited for both the parking lots and the whole process will take two months. The facility is expected to be operational in a year’s time.

Moreover, the space that is used for parking corporators’ cars, in the main office building premises, will be developed into a two-wheeler parking lot with a…More

TOI : PUNE: In a bid to provide the latest statistics and information about the registration of properties, the state government plans to build an advanced data centre in the city. All available data on the registration of properties and flats across the state will be available here.

A place has already been identified while the process of building the centre and installing the required software will begin soon. The government is to start work on the project in the next six months.

Ramrao Shingare, inspector-general of registration and controller of stamps told TOI , “It is been observed that, across the state, thousands of properties are registered every month. With the increasing registration figures, each registration office in the state generates a large volume of data every month. The proposed data centre will compile and store all the data generated at various places in the state.”

“With this, the search for registration of any property in the state will be possible at the click of a mouse. It will prove helpful to the government as well as builders, agents and the real estate sector. The data centre will be a unique step in consolidating information,” he added.

“The state is witnessing a growth in the registration of properties every year. For the year ended March 31, 2008, the state registered about 18, 47,000 properties and flats. Pune, Mumbai and Thane accounted for more than 80 per cent of the total registrations. These cities have about 25,000 registrations every month. Other cities in the state are also witnessing aggressive growth in this area,” Shingare said.

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