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TOI : PUNE: Rising incidents of violence against doctors has brought all the medical practitioners on one platform demanding immediate action on part of the government to formulate a law which protects them against verbal and physical abuse. A meeting has been organised to discuss the issue at Shivsmarak Samiti Sabhagriha in Dhanakwadi on June 5 at 9 pm.

Addressing a press conference on Monday, Dileep Ghule, President of NCP’s doctors’ cell, said that MP Supriya Sule would be present for the meeting. The doctors want that violence against them should be made a non-bailable offence. Doctors representing different branches of medicine like allopathy, homoeopathy, ayurveda and other allied fields will participate in the meeting.
Over 500 doctors from the district are expected to be present for the meeting. Besides over 10,000 doctors from the city will sign a petition to press for immediate passing of the law, Ghule said.

Emphasising the need for the law, Avinash Bhondwe, President of Indian Medical Association’s (IMA), Pune branch, said that doctors work under tremendous stress and pressure while treating patients in critical condition. “Added insecurity due to these assualts affect not only quality of work we do but makes us hesitant to accept emergency cases,” he said. He added that the sanctity of doctor-patient relationship is being eroded due to these incidences.

Ghule said that often the persons who attack the doctors are neither patients’ relatives nor friends. “Certain anti-social elements influence others to commit such violent acts,” he said. Rajendra Jagtap of West Pune Doctors’ Association said that their association is also undertaking training sessions to educate doctors on ways to strengthen their bond with the patients. Similar law has been enacted in Andhra Pradesh. …More

TOI : PUNE: The state criminal investigation department (CID), Pune, has landed in trouble over the investigations into the Urban Land Ceiling (ULC) scam cases.

The CID’s investigations in all the ULC scam cases involving influential builders and government officials have now come to a stand still mainly because of a mistake made by it in registering three cases without seeking permission from the state government.

The cases were registered after a new offence was unearthed while investigating a similar scam case registered with the Swargate police station (crime register no. 444/2005). This case was taken over by the CID following a government order which was issued during the tenure of the former additional director general of police Jayant Umranikar, who is now the Pune police commissioner.

The CID, which has now realised its folly, has made a representation to the government to grant them ‘post facto’ permission for going ahead with the investigations in the scam cases registered with the Swargate, Deccan Gymkhana and Pimpri police stations between 2006 and 2007.
Till the government does not give any clearance to the goof up done by the agency’s economic offences wing (EOW), the investigations cannot proceed further, said a CID official on Wednesday.
The CID officials are in a fix as the investigations cannot be kept pending for a considerable time if the government is to delay making a decision on the representation made by them, despite several reminders.
Speaking to TOI, CID officials on Wednesday explained that there was no specific provision in the CID manual as to what steps should be taken if a new offence was unearthed.
CID officials admit that if a new offence was unearthed, the registration of a case against the concerned suspects was important as no crime should go unpunished. But, the issue which has remained unanswered is that who will investigate the case…More

TOI : PUNE: Even as the prices of petrol and diesel are all set to make a hole in the common man’s pocket, there is some relief for Puneites. Prices of essential commodities in the city are set to drop with the state government approving the Pune Municipal Corporation’s (PMC) new octroi rules wherein octroi rates on 99 commodities have been slashed.

Addressing a press conference, octroi department head K.C. Karkar said that the state has approved the new rules. “The new rules will be implemented with effect from Friday. The rates on petrol and diesel have been slashed to 2 per cent from existing 4 per cent and the octroi on kerosene will be 1 per cent,” Karkar said. He added that octroi on LPG cylinders for domestic use has been abolished and consumers would get a relief of up to Rs 8-9 per cylinder.

Octroi on essential commodities like bajra, jowar, rice grains, wheat, jaggery, tamarind, sugar, tea, coffee, pulses and domestic gas have been waived off for an entire year in view of the skyrocketing prices. Rates on computers, electronic items and certain imported items, except luxury goods, have also been slashed and brought down to the rates of local goods.

The civic General Body had recently approved the octroi rules after inviting suggestions and objections from citizens. This was then sent to the state government for final approval.

The new rates are expect to reduce PMC’s Octroi revenue by around Rs 225 crore.

Octroi on bicycle, newsprint and chemicals has been abolished while octroi on vehicles has been raised to 2 per cent from the existing 1 pre cent. …More

TOI : PUNE: Providing just the right fillip to ‘World Environment Day’ on Thursday, two young city-based architects are shunning bricks, steel and mortar almost completely in their construction activity.

Instead, Sourabh Phadke (23) and Pooja Joshi (23) have made use of earth bags, discarded barbed wire, bamboo sticks and sheets to build a 700 sq.ft. activity centre called ‘Kaleidoscope’ at the newly constituted Aman Setu school for children at Wagholi, 20 km from Pune.

In this manner, the two architects have brought down the cost of construction to just Rs 90,000, one-fourth the original estimate of Rs 4 lakh using conventional material.

With a burning desire to reduce their carbon footprint and design an eco-friendly structure, the two architects purchased 800 discarded cement bags at a nominal 80 paise per bag, filled it up with a wet mix of construction rubble from neighbouring sites, local soil, sand and just 5 per cent of cement. These bags now constitute the walls of the structure. Discarded PVC pipes have also been inserted in between the bags to form little windows for the children.

Later, about 40 kg of discarded barbed wire was purchased from Juna Bazaar and used as the binding material for the rows of earth bags. The barbed wire has replaced the conventional cement mortar and keeps the earth bags together. …More

TOI :
PUNE: A paltry 2.4 per cent of the 21,000 candidates have cleared the State Eligibility Test (SET) held in February 2008. The results were declared on Wednesday by the University of Pune, which is the official agency for the conduct of SET in Maharashtra and Goa.

In terms of numbers, the pass percentage translates into a measly 504 successful candidates across the two states.

What makes the SET critical to scores of post-graduate (PG) students is that the test is the “minimum qualifying benchmark” for landing a permanent lecturer’s job at the 11 state universities or the colleges affiliated to these varsities.

Since it’s inception in 1994, the SET success rate has hovered between 1.8 to 2.7 per cent, with the odd exception of the pass percentage touching a ‘high’ of 3.8 per cent once. This was confirmed by N.N. Godbole, convenor of SET Exam Centre at the UoP, while speaking to TOI.

Looking at the large number of students, who appear in the exam, the performance is a “sad reflection” of the PG education at universities and colleges.

Senior UoP officials conceded that what was being taught at the PG departments or colleges was “not in tune” with what is required for highly competitive exams like SET. …More