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TOI : PUNE: Stating that education is the fundamental right of every child in the country, President Pratibha Patil on Friday stressed that education should reach every girl child of every strata of society and in every town or village. She also said women and girls in the country would be empowered only after getting the best and very latest in education.

Women in India had taken a leap forward and were succeeding in every sector. For this, education had played a major role. To maintain this momentum, it was necessary for the country to take the benefits of modern education to the rural areas and the lower sections of society too, she added.

Patil was addressing a function organised by Maharshi Karve Stree Shikshan Sanstha (MKSSS) to mark the 150th birth anniversary celebration of Maharshi Dhondo Keshav Karve, the founder of the society. Governor of Maharashtra S.C. Jamir; chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh; state irrigation minister Ajit Pawar and Vinayak Dhere, president, MKSSS, were also present at the function.

Patil said that Maharshi Karve played a pivotal role in the empowerment of women in the country. His determination and work proved a stepping stone in the field of women and girl education. The work of Maharshi Karve would remain an inspiration for those working in the field of education and the empowerment of women. “Karve started his work in an era when women in society led a miserable life,” said Patil. “He not only had ideas for the empowerment of women, but implemented them in his own life. Marrying a widow was one of the brave decisions he took in his life.”

“The founding of MKSSS nearly 100 years ago was a milestone in the field of women empowerment,” she added.

Vishwas Deval, chairman, MKSSS, delivered the welcome speech and Ravindra Deshpande, secretary, MKSSS, performed the vote of thanks. Print EMail…More

TOI : PUNE: Revising its opinion about the tendering process for 24×7 water supply system, the civic legal advisory department said that it is legal to award a tender to a consortium of consultants formed at the time of bidding.

The issue of appointing consultants for the water supply system project was mired in controversy after corporators alleged irregularities in the procedure of awarding tenders. They had objected that the consortium had not purchased the tender form but still it was awarded the tender. The legal advisory department had also stated that the procedure was illegal.

Municipal commissioner Pravinsinh Pardeshi, however, had strongly defended the move and had sought a review of legal advisory department’s opinion.

On Friday, the senior legal advisor submitted a report on the reviewed opinion on the tender process. The report states that “The main objection about the tender is that the consortium has not purchased the tender form. But, going through the concept of the consortium, it can be observed that that purchase of tender form by the lead member is same as purchasing the form by their group which is same as consortium.” Thus the department gave a green signal to the process.

Speaking to TOI, Pardeshi said the report clearly stated that the procedure was legal.

“A detailed report has been submitted giving judgements. It also states that while giving the earlier opinion, the department did not have access to certain documents which clearly proved the legality of the procedure. Even the PMC’s advertisement inviting tenders states that it is permissible to award tender to consortium,” Pardeshi said.
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TOI : PUNE: The much celebrated announcement of appointing porters as gangmen has witnessed a setback in the very first month of its implementation at the Pune railway division.

With the rigorous work schedule and comparatively less monetary benefits, porters-turned-gangmen in the division wants to quit their existing jobs and go back to being porters. Except a few, most of the gangmen have come out with the same demand, while many of them have even stopped reporting to work.

The appointment of gangmen was initiated last month in the division. Around 205 porters, who had passed their medical tests making them eligible to become gangmen, had accepted the job the same month and almost 26 porters were still to accept the offer.

However, within a month, many of these men stopped coming to work and wanted to return to their old job. The reason for this growing reluctance was due to difficult work conditions, which included staying in tents, at unknown places and remaining away from home. The men also had to cook their food and were forced to live without water and electricity.

Taking note of the issue, a delegation of gangmen from the division, headed by Ashok Boeinwad, secretary of Maharashtra Pradesh of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, met the railway minister recently to request the reinstatement of these men as porters.

Boeinwad said, “Many porters have found it very difficult to work on the railway tracks. They are not mentally and physically adept at this new role. They have complained that living away from home is also forcing their family to endure hardships. Though enthusiastic about the switch earlier, as the new job had given them an opportunity to have a secure job with a permanent income, the porters are now saying that the previous work fetched them a similar income and was better.”

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TOI : PUNE: Moving quickly and efficiently, the Khadki police on Friday managed to nab a man, who had allegedly attacked and robbed an elderly woman at her residence, within eight hours of the crime.

The police also recovered 16 tolas of gold from the suspect, identified as Anil Kachru Khandare (42) an electrician of Bhima Koregaon in Shirur taluka.

According to the police, Khandare knew the woman, Asha Anant More (85) of flat no 2, Riya Apartments, Aundh road. He had been doing electrical work at her residence for the last two years.

According to deputy commissioner of police (zone IV) Jalindar Supekar, the suspect had called More on her landline number about five days ago and had asked her to invest in a plot at Wagholi. More had then accompanied Khandare to see the plot.

On Thursday evening, Khandare arrived at More’s residence and requested that she keep his bag containing electric equipment. Khandare told More that he would collect the bag later. He then pretended to leave, but hid in the apartment instead. Print EMail DiscussNew B…More

TOI : PUNE: In order to cater to the complexities of Indian languages as far as search engines are concerned, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) has come up with new software, designed in such a way that users can search and ask queries in Indian languages.

Gist-Cross Language Search Plug-ins Suite (G-Class) enhances search capabilities by providing a suite of linguistic tools. Speaking to TOI, Mahesh Kulkarni, programme co-ordinator, graphics and intelligence-based script technology (GIST), said, “Indian languages are complex and searching in them poses specific problems which the best of the existing search engines cannot resolve.”

With over two decades of cutting-edge research and development in multilingual technology, the GIST research labs have provided a peace of mind solution to the problem. Currently it is available in eight languages — Marathi, Bangla, Gujarathi, Hindi, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil and Urdu. Software for Punjabi, Kokani, Kannada and Telugu will be developed soon.

One of the special features of G-Class is its ability to identify spelling variants. “There is a possibility that a particular word is written in two different ways. The software will identify this variation. For instance, Hindi in Devnagri script can be written in two different ways. The software will identify both the variants and present it to the user,” Kulkarni said.

Interestingly, a plug-in called ’synonym net’ also provides all possible synonym searches for a particular query. For instance, if a user fires ‘Bharat’ as a query, the answer to his query will include links of ‘Hindustan’, ‘Bharatvarsh’, ‘Bharat Khand’ and also India.
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