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TOI : PUNE: A recent survey highlighted the problems faced by the disabled at the court and public premises.

The survey on the lawyers’ chambers, libraries, toilets, canteens and parking areas of the different courts in the city was conducted by students Nikhil Baji, who is suffering from cerebral palsy, Siddhesh who is blind and Sanjay Jadhav, a social worker and member of the Sahyog Trust’s Human Rights and Law Defenders (HRLD).

Baji, a law student at the Gujrat National Law University, said, “The survey was a revelation in itself. I use a crutch to walk around, but it will be even more difficult for people who need a wheel chair in these areas. Though there are a lot of provisions in the Disabilities Act 1995, their is zero implementation,” he said.

“Facilities to enable the disabled to enter court premises and lifts should be looked into. Rams should be installed everywhere. And auditory instructions for the blind is also necessary,” said Baji.

Special amendment in the act is needed. It should have penalty clauses and the new townships and offices that are coming up should also look into the matter, he added.

“The accessibility to courts for the differently able should not be an issue at all and the authorities should take an affirmative action.” Sarode said, adding “We need a right approach and correct infrastructure for them. Problems like moving around without assistance in public places is their right which should not be violated.”

“Implementation of the act is a problem and the government should solve the problems faced by the disabled. It is high time that the matter is looked into seriously,” said Dr W N Tungar, a social activist who have been working for the rights of the disabled.

What the Act says:

The section 46 of the Disabilities Act 1995 states that in order to create a physical…More

TOI : PUNE: The city-based Sajag Nagrik Manch (SNM) on Tuesday demanded that the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd (MSEDCL) should suo motu declare the facts and figures that prompted it to select a load-shedding protocol suitable for power shortfall of 4,600 MW to 5,000 MW. The information is being sought under section four of the Right to Information Act.

The power utility on Monday announced the new load-shedding protocol after the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (Merc) rejected the petition seeking increase in load-shedding hours on Friday.

In a letter to MSEDCL managing director Ajay Bhushan Pandey and chief engineer of power purchase, Manch founder Vivek Velankar said that the current protocol circular 23 issued by the MSEDCL was based on scenario five in Merc’s order wherein demand supply gap is between 4600-5000 MW.

“I would like to draw your attention to the fact that since the last 15 days the demand supply gap crossed the 4,200-MW figure just two days for a couple of hours and has never crossed the figure of 4,600 MW . This has happened in spite of two generation sets at Dabhol not working and reduction in the Mahagenco thermal power generation due to shortage of coal,” Velankar stated.

He said that in this background, the load-shedding protocol should have been ideally based on scenario three (suited for shortfall of 3,700 MW to 4,200 MW) if not at least safely on scenario four ( shortfall of 4,200 MW to 4,600 MW). “Considering the fact that there is an industrial slowdown, the demand is not likely to go up in the near future and, as it is winter the use of air-conditioners and fans will definitely go down the demand is not likely to go up,” he added.

Velankar pointed out that the improvement in coal supply and resumption of Dabhol generation sets can improve supply in the next couple of…More

TOI : PUNE: The Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd (MSEDCL) on Tuesday suspended three engineers from the Kolhapur circle for not implementing the load-shedding protocol.

The suspension orders were issued by MSEDCL managing director Ajay Bhushan Pandey after a review meeting to check whether the load-shedding schedules were being followed strictly in Kolhapur circle.

A statement released by the MSEDCL here said the power company had received several complaints about load-shedding schedules not being followed strictly prompting Pandey to take circle-wise review of the implementation. A review meeting of the Kolhapur circle comprising Kolhapur, Sangli, Satara and Solapur districts was held in Mumbai on Tuesday, which was attended by superintending and executive engineers.

The meeting was informed that the load-shedding schedules were not being followed in Barshi and Islampur divisions and Natepute sub-division of Akluj division. Pandey ordered suspension of Barshi’s executive engineer A K Sohoni, Islampur’s executive engineer D R Savani and Natepute sub-division’s assistant engineer S B Karande.

The statement added that similar review meetings will be held in within five-six days to take stock of the situation in other circles.

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TOI : PUNE: The cyber crime cell of the Pune police has arrested three people for allegedly misappropriating over Rs 60,000 from the bank account of noted actor and director Amol Palekar.

The suspects, Hassan Iqbal Shaikh (33) of Vasai and Ross (28) and Naznine Pereira (25) of Mira road in Mumbai, were arrested after their names came up during investigations.

Assistant police inspector Krantikumar Patil said Rs 53,500, a laptop and data card and diary containing several credit card n umbers were found in their possession.

The suspects had booked online flight tickets from Mumbai to Bangalore and Mumbai to Goa, together worth Rs 60,258 in November 2007.

The amount was debited from Palekar’s account at the Bank of India, Mumbai. The incident came to light after Palekar received the bank statement in December 2007. He had registered a case with the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Pune police.

Judicial magistrate first class G G Itkalkar on Tuesday remanded the suspects to police custody till Wednesday.

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TOI : PUNE: Two months after its announcement, the share-a-rickshaw and pre-paid auto schemes have failed to deliver in the city.

The share-a-rickshaw plan has almost come to a standstill. Rickshaws are not plying on the identified routes, since the first step of setting up stands has not been completed. Meanwhile, the pre-paid system never took off, despite November being the declared time of its commencement.

According to sources the pre-paid system will start in January. Regional Transport Authority (RTA) member Baba Shinde said the fare chart for the system has not been finalised yet. More than 1,800 stops have been identified across the city for the scheme. Another reason for the delay is the poor response in bidding for pre-paid booth tenders. “The pre-paid fare will be the same as normal fares,” he said.

The share-a-rickshaw plan was inaugurated in September. It was implemented at five spots in the city and on all the roads connected to these locations. The routes identified for the first phase were Pune station to Swargate, Swargate to Shivajinagar, Shivajinagar to Pune station, Karve road corner to Shivaji statue and Kothrud depot to Vimalabai Garware school. However, the system came to standstill within two months, with commuters complaining of lack of facilities. Meanwhile, there are plans to initiate a similar scheme on Sinhagad road and Satara road in the second phase.

The Regional Transport Authority (RTA), Pune, had come up with the idea to offer prompt rickshaw service to commuters as an effective public transport option. This was to counter the inability of the public bus transport system to meet the demands of the growing population and, moreover, this system would have proved economical for daily commuters. In fact, a separate fare structure was also fixed and the autos were to ply out of dedicated stands.

On visiting the stands at Swargate, Shivajinagar and Karve road on Tuesday, a TOI…More

TOI : PUNE: The Faraskhana police on Tuesday registered a case against Balasaheb Saswade, proprietor of Yuvraj general stores, 266, Ganesh Peth, from where an unidentified person had faxed a letter to the city police control room threatening to blow up 40 vital installations in Pune on Monday afternoon.

Joint commissioner of police Rajendra Sonawane (law and order) told TOI that Saswade was prosecuted under section 188 of the Indian Penal Code for not maintaining a record of the people making use of the telephones and fax machines in his shop.

Sonawane said that Saswade had breached the order issued by the police commissioner under section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, directing telephone operators to compulsorily maintain a register as per the format issued by the police.

Sonawane claimed that the law and order situation in the city was peaceful as the police had not received any bomb hoax calls on Tuesday.

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TOI : PUNE: Taking stock of the practical difficulties in searching extraterrestrial life, eminent astrophysicist and emeritus professor of the Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Jayant Narlikar, emphasised on finding primitive life forms like micro-organisms with live cells high above the atmosphere of the earth.

“Though these microbes are not the little green men from Mars that we have been waiting for, the discovery is enormous and brings new challenges in the directions of panspermia: the theory that life exists and is distributed throughout the universe in the form of germs or microbes that develop in right environment,” Narlikar said.

The proposal is modest and may not be as exciting as detecting alien super-civilisations from outer spaces, but it is a momentous research, which has been on for the last seven years, he added.

Narlikar was delivering a lecture on Searches for life in the universe’ at the 14th Sir J C Bose memorial lecture organised by the Pune chapter of the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers (IETE) at the Yeshwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration (YASHDA) here on Friday.

Earlier, scientists believed only hydrogen atoms are found high above the earth’s atmosphere. Later, millimetre-wave technology revealed the existence of molecules in space, he said. “Thus, circumstantial evidence exist to support the idea of life beyond the earth.”

Narlikar said the theory of bacterial cells in space, ideally at an altitude of 41 kms from the earth surface, is not new and was revived by astronomers Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe in the mid-1970s. “Wickramasinghe-Hoyle hypothesis suggests that all planets have been seeded for life by microbes from outer space.”

Elaborating on the progress made so far, Narlikar said a payload attached to a balloon was launched in January 2001 from the balloon facility of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research at Hyderabad. Another balloon flight for gathering the presence of…More

TOI : PUNE: Businessman Arun Sharma, whose son, Ankit, died on November 7, allegedly due to a drug overdose at a friend’s house on Mula road, has registered a case of murder against seven of Ankit’s friends.

Senior inspector Ashok Shejal of the Khadki police station told TOI, “On November 28 Arun Sharma came from Delhi and filed a complaint in which he said that his son had been murdered by his friends. We registered his complaint and booked seven suspects in this connection,” Shejal said.

The suspects have been identified as Mohit Grover, Harsh Verma, Hrishabh Sachdeo, Chinmay Rendaniya, Siddharth Rao and two others.

Ankit was a third-year student of Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) at Wadia college. According to Shejal, “On November 7 Ankit had gone to his friend Mohit Grover’s house for a party as their exams were over. His roommate, Hrishabh, and other friends were also at the party. They had liquor and smoked cigarettes. Later, they had dinner and slept at the flat. On Saturday everyone except Ankit woke up around 12.30 pm. They tried to wake Ankit up but could not. They immediately rushed him to a nearby hospital where he was declared dead on arrival,” Shejal said.

“When we searched the house, we recovered two syringes and burnt silver foil, which were used to consume drugs.”

According to Shejal, “Ankit died due to a drug overdose. We have sent the viscera for chemical analysis and are expecting the results in a week. After receiving the report, we know the exact cause of death. Then we will decide our plan of action.”

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TOI : PUNE: A civil engineer was killed and five construction workers injured, one of them seriously, when the slab of an eleven storied under-construction building, Diva’, at Magarpatta road caved in on Tuesday morning.

The deceased was Sachin Anandrao Bhise (29) of Keshavnagar in Mundhwa. Centering contractor Ujwal Halgar, who was seriously injured in the mishap, is admitted in the intensive care unit of the Noble hospital near Magarpatta. The other injured workers are Netai Vishwas (55) of Kolkata; Puran Mukhiya (23) and Damodar Jadhav (35), both from Bihar, and Mallappa Yellappa Walia (48) of Karnataka. They have been admitted to the Sai hospital in Mundhwa.

Police inspector (crime) Devidas Patil of the Hadapsar police station said that Bhise was employed with city-based Marvel Realtors, which is constructing the building. He was inspecting the 11th floor of the building on Tuesday morning, to check whether the rains on Monday evening had affected the construction process.

Patil said the labourers present were fixing cement on the ceiling of the 11th floor, when the wooden sticks erected from the 10th floor to support the slab work on the upper floor collapsed. This resulted in the 11th-floor slab caving in. “The injured were rushed to the nearby Noble hospital, where Bhise died due to severe head injuries,” he said.

The labourers working at a construction site adjacent to the Diva project alerted the police, said Patil, adding that the deceased and the injured were wearing helmets at the time of the incident.

Sub inspector G S Katke of the Magarpatta police chowky, who is investigating the case, said that out of the 18 workers, 12 were discharged after first-aid. “Five were admitted to the hospital, while Bhise succumbed to his injuries.”

Katke said the police have arrested labour contractor Mahadeo Desai and have booked deceased Bhise and centering contractor Ujwal Halgar under sections 304 (a) (causing death…More

TOI : PUNE: Twenty-two-year-old engineering student Rahul Arvind Jadhav allegedly jumped to death from the eighth floor of a hospital at Erandwane around 9 am on Tuesday.

The deceased was a resident of Sidhhi society, Mhada colony, Karvenagar and was a third year student of production engineering at a city college.

Sub-inspector Ashok Pisal of Kothrud police station said, “Jadhav allegedly jumped into the lobby from the eighth floor of the Deenanath Mangeshkar hospital and fell behind the reception counter. We don’t know the exact reason as to why he took the step. No one from the hospital knows how he reached the eighth floor.”

Pisal added, “Jadhav’s semester examinations were underway and he appeared for a paper on Monday. On Tuesday morning he decided that he would not appear for the paper and left the house saying that he was going out.”

Pisal said that hospital authorities found some phone numbers with Jadhav and informed his relatives about the incident. “We have filed a case of accidental death,” he added.

An employee, who was working at the reception of the hospital at the time of the incident, told TOI on conditions of anonymity: “I had just started my work around 9 am. Within a few seconds I heard a loud thud behind me. When I looked back I saw a young man lying in a pool of blood. He had died on the spot.”

Speaking to TOI, Jadhav’s uncle, a resident of Vishrantwadi, said: “Today around 9.15 am I received a call from Deenanath Mangeshkar hospital authorities asking about Rahul Jadhav. I told them that he is my nephew and gave them the telephone number of his home. The person who was calling from the hospital didn’t tell me about what happened. Later, I came to know about it.”

He added that Jadhav was doing his third year production engineering and was a…More