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TOI : PUNE: The state health department was taken by surprise on Wednesday when it learned about a standard XII girl student of a semi-residential school in Lonavla testing positive for the H1N1 influenza way back on September 3. In this case, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) had failed to inform the health department about the case.

The health department, which learned about the case through their own sources, immediately rushed a team to the school and found that 25 students had flu-like symptoms. The swabs of some of these students were sent to the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune for testing and they have been put on Tamiflu, deputy health director Uddhav Gawande said.

A total of 35 students remained absent from school on Wednesday, Gawande said. The PMC health officials, who received a rap on their knuckles from the health department, have been given instructions to be careful in future and prepare a daily report of H1N1 positive students being admitted to hospitals.

“The student who tested positive is from the Don Bosco school and junior college. She was admitted to the ICU of the KEM hospital in Pune on September 4. Her condition is stable,” he said.

According to Gawande, the student was referred to the Naidu hospital here on September 2 and she tested positive on September 3. “The girl was taken home by her parents the same day. However, she was referred to the KEM hospital on September 4.”

Gawande said the girl visited a private medical practitioner in Lonavla on August 18. “She again visited the medical practitioner on August 22 with cough and fever. As she did not recover, she was referred to the Naidu hospital,” he said.

Gawande said the KEM hospital communicated to the PMC health officials that a student was quarantined. “However, the PMC officials failed to inform us about the new case…More

TOI : SANGLI/SATARA: The situation in Sangli and Miraj is limping back to normalcy as curfew was relaxed on Wednesday from 8 am to 12 noon at Miraj and from 10 am to 2 pm in Sangli.

“The curfew in Ichalkaranji was extended by 24 hours till 5.30 pm on Thursday though not a single untoward incident was reported in the entire district,” said collector Laxmikant Deshmukh.

Communal violence erupted in these areas on September 2 over putting up a portrait depicting Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj killing Mughal warrior Afzal Khan, as part of the Ganapati festival decorations. The violence also spread to neighbouring Kolhapur especially Ichalkaranji.

Sangli district collector Shyam Vardhane hinted at the possibility of more relaxation in curfew or partial withdrawal after immersion of the remaining 86 Ganapati idols is completed. “No untoward incident was reported when curfew was relaxed and people are demanding that curfew be withdrawn. However, some untoward incidents are being reported from the rural areas where police are still brining the situation under control. Curfew cannot be lifted till the situation in the entire district gets under control,” Vardhane said.

Police sources said that two companies of the rapid action force from Hyderabad and Mumbai are camping in the affected places. A company of paramilitary forces has already arrived here and patrolling sensitive areas, sources said.

Reports of attacks on places of worship have come from rural areas since the past couple of days. As many as 24 people were injured in a riot that broke out at Manerajuri, following an attack on a place of worship. All the injured have been admitted to a government hospital.

Director general of police S S Virk and additional director general Shiv Ptarap Singh have been camping in the region since past four days and communicating with people during curfew relaxation.

Officials in Sangli, Miraj Kupwad municipal corporation told reporters that…More

TOI : AURANGABAD: The 50-year-old Ellora-based spiritual leader, Swami Shantigiriji Maharaj, has entered the political sphere again, this time by declaring his support to the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in the upcoming assembly elections.

The seer, popularly known as Babaji, said that he has also decided to campaign for the combine if it fields clean and good candidates.

Shantigiri Maharaj had unsuccessfully contested the last Lok Sabha election from the Aurangabad constituency as an Independent, finishing third with around 1.5 lakh votes. He was much ahead of two other contestants Shiv Sena’s Chandrakant Khaire (who won by a slender margin) and Congress nominee Uttamsinh Pawar in two assembly segments, Gangapur and Vaijapur.

The successor of well-known spiritual leader Janardan Swami of Ellora, Shantigiriji Maharaj broke his vow of maun’ (silence) during his Amarnath yatra about two months back. He had been observing the vow (except for special occasions and discourses) for the last 13 years.

His followers have now sought a Rajya Sabha berth for him. “It is the demand of the Jai Babaji Bhakta Pariwar (as his followers are known),” said Shantigiri Maharaj, who has been staying at his Ellora ashram on Wednesday while planning a future course of action. “I will campaign for the combine if it fields good candidates acceptable to the bhakta parivar.”

The spiritual leader wields considerable influence among the rural masses, especially in Aurangabad, Nashik, Jalgaon, Dhule, Jalna, Ahmednagar and parts of Pune district, taking the total number of his disciples to about 20 lakh, said Dadarao Adane Patil, vice-president of Shantigiri Maharaj’s trust at Ellora.

“The top Congress leadership has already agreed to the Bhakta Pariwar’s demand for a Rajya Sabha berth for Babaji,” Adane Patil, an influential farmer from Khuldabad taluka, told TOI on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Shantigiri Maharaj’s decision has created concern among the Shiv Sena rank. Aurangabad district has remained a Sena…More

TOI : PUNE: The Wadgaon-Maval police on Wednesday fished out the bodies of two boys who were drowned in the Indrayani river in Kamshet on Monday.

The police have identified the deceased as Ravi Gaikwad (18) and Ashwadeep Kamble (16) of Laxminagar in Yerawada.

Senior inspector Maruti Ingawale said that four-five boys had gone to Lonavla for picnic. While returning, they went to the river at Kamshet and decided to swim. “Two boys drowned in the river. However, due to fever, their friends fled from the scene without informing anyone.”

According to Ingawale, “The incident came to light on Monday when some villagers found the clothes of the deceased lying on the river bank about 6.30 pm.”

Ingawale further said, “The villagers found a diary with he telephone numbers of the victims’ parents from the pocket of the dress and alerted them about the incident.”

The police launched a search operation with the help of local swimmers but the bodies could not be traced. “The villagers fished out the bodies after it started floating in the river on Wednesday morning. The bodies were given to the boys’ parents after post-mortem,” Ingawale added. More Stories from this section 17 students test positive for swine flu Two nabbed for murder ‘I could do nothing to save my son’ Vulture population declining alarmingly Puneites help…More

TOI : PUNE: While the city is leading in H1N1 flu cases in the state, its position in dengue fever is also getting equally grim everyday. There is a marked increase in the number of confirmed cases from 170 registered cases till August last year to 273 up to August this year. Notably, of the 273 cases, as many as 194 cases have been registered within the limits of the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC).

Taking a dig at the failure of the PCMC in controlling the dengue cases in Pimpri-Chinchwad, R S Sharma, joint director of the National Vector-Borne Diseases Control Programme, New Delhi, said: “There is process called source reduction method’ by which any dengue outbreak can be controlled within ten days with exhaustive surveillance. In our review meeting in Pune last month, we have asked the PCMC to employ 250 field workers to arrest the growth cycle of mosquitoes to bring down the number of cases. If they had done that the dengue cases would have definitely come down.”

Admitting that the civic body has been asked to deploy 250 field workers, PCMC medical director Rajshekhar Iyer said: “At present, the PCMC has deployed 47 field workers. However, he added that the PCMC has not been given the urban malaria scheme’, under which the corporation would have a full-fledged unit for prevention and control of malaria. “Since the scheme has not been extended, we do not have the infrastructure to control vector-borne diseases like malaria and dengue.”

Meanwhile, head of the Pune Municipal Corporation’s (PMC) insect control department Sadashiv Patole said: “We have 250 workers in to check the breeding spots of dengue mosquitoes. Besides, we have a list of such breeding sites. We are taking all precautions to arrest the growth cycle of the mosquitoes. We have also given our field workers to the PCMC.”

The PMC has registered 33 dengue cases till August…More

TOI : PUNE: The city police have formed a seven-member committee to monitor television programmes being relayed by cable operators in the city.

The decision was taken at a meeting held on Wednesday. The committee formed in accordance with the provisions of the Cable Television Network Regulation Act, 1995, will look into issues like whether the cable operators were charging money for relaying free-to-air channels, whether subscription charges were being recovered as per the provisions of the Act and to check whether any of the banned programmes were being relayed.

The committee will also provide a forum at the social security cell of the crime branch where people can register their complaints against the content being aired by the cable operator.

Police commissioner Satyapal Singh is the chairman of the committee, while Rajendra Bhamare, police inspector with the social security cell, has been appointed as the nodal officer. Other members include additional police commissioner Anant Shinde (crime), district information officer Rajendra Sarag, Sushma Keskar of SNDT Arts and Commerce College, Anuradha Sahasrabuddhe, director, Dnyandevi Child Line, clinical psychologist Sanjyot Deshpande and Jagadish Chinchore, vice-principal of Modern College.

The information and broadcasting ministry recently ordered forming of such committees under the Act. The move comes following frequent complaints against cable operators and channels airing undesirable contents. The ministry has observed that enforcement of the Act was still not satisfactory in the country. Except Jammu and Kashmir, no state had constituted such committee at the state level.

The committee will review and look into the complaints received by the nodal officer or take suo moto cognizance of the violations of programmes and advertising codes.

Talking to reporters on Wednesday, Bhamare said, “All the state-owned channels, including DD1, DD News, DD Urdu, DD Sports, DD Dnyandarshan, DD Rajya Sabha, DD Lok Sabha and DD Bharati, are to be aired mandatorily by private cable operators. Besides these channels, airing…More

TOI : PUNE: City-based activists have filed a contempt of court application in the Bombay High Court against the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and the Pune Tree Authority (PTA), alleging that trees have been felled despite court orders that permission has to be sought from a panel of experts before doing so.

Pritten Killedar, advocate for the petitioners Deepak Vahikar and Vaibhav Gandhi, told TOI that the application has been filed because the PMC has felled at least 273 trees since the HC order restrained PMC from cutting trees.

It was on May 6, 2009 that the HC had first issued an order restricting the PMC’s Pune Tree Authority from giving permission for cutting trees within the municipal limits without obtaining approval of the court. The order had come during the hearing of a public interest litigation filed by Vahikar regarding felling of 1,522 trees by the civic body.

Although the PMC had appealed against the order, the HC stood its ground and issued a revised interim order on July 8 saying that the tree committee should first carry out a survey with the assistance of an expert body and submit its report to the court after which only those trees which were dangerous to life and property were to be cut.

The HC had noted that these orders were passed in the interest of maintaining the ecological balance and taking into consideration the impact it will have on the environment within and beyond Pune urban agglomeration.

The petitioners have filed an application in the court on September 3, 2009, pointing out the statistics of tree cutting based on the information received from the PMC itself in a reply to a Right to Information application filed by activist Vinod Jain.

Jain had asked the civic body how many tree cutting permissions it had given since May 6 and whether the expert body, as asked by…More

TOI : PUNE: “The Gujarat government should take action against the policemen responsible for fake encounter in which four innocent people were killed by the Ahmedabad police,” said Asif Shaikh, whose brother in- law Javed Shaikh was killed in the encounter in 2004.

Asif said, “Allah has answered our prayers as the court declared the people killed in this encounter as innocent. We are now pursuing the two petitions filed by the victim Ishrat Jahan and Shaikh’s father Govindan Pillay before the Gujarat High Court.”

“We want the high court to decide the petitions at the earliest and award compensations to the victims’ family members who were killed in the encounter,” Asif said.

Javed’s wife Sajeda was not available for comments. However, Sajeda’s lawyer and human rights activist Asim Sarode said that the fake encounter case was a fit case to take action against the policemen and seek compensation.

Sarode said, “Suspending policemen will not serve any purpose, The government should register a first information report (FIR) against them for killing four innocent people in the encounter.”"After the encounter, the Ahmedabad police and Pune police had sealed Javed’s flat at Kalas in Pune and other documents belonging to his children like birth certificate and ration card. The seal of the flat was removed after Sajeda had moved the court. The government has till date not given Javed’s death certificate and the post-mortem report to Sajeda despite she visiting Ahmedabad on three occasions,” Sarode added.

A magistrate court in Ahmedabad that inquired into the killing of collegian Ishrat Jahan of Mumbra and three others on Monday reported that the encounter was staged and the victims were not terrorists.The report also names then Ahmedabad police commissioner K R Kaushik and other top police officers of the crime branch as being party to the killings. Ishrat, 19, was a student of Guru Nanak Khalsa College in Matunga, who was…More

TOI : PUNE: Special judge P R Bora, who is hearing the fake stamp paper scam case involving high-profile police officials and politicians, has been transferred to Ratnagiri as the district and sessions judge.

The Bombay high court transferred Bora and 13 other judges during a state-wide reshuffle on Wednesday.

Bora, who is an additional sessions judge, was appointed as the special judge to exclusively conduct trial in the scam case under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (Mcoca).

As of now, it is not know who will replace Bora here. Bora had reframed the charges against the suspects in the fake stamp paper case after going through a voluminous chargesheet running into 22,500 pages.

He has examined seven witnesses, including IAS officer Nitin Kareer, who is now a secretary to the chief minister.

More Stories from this section 17 students test positive for swine flu Two nabbed for murder ‘I could do nothing to save my son’ Vulture population declining alarmingly Puneites help…More

TOI : PUNE: The Empress Garden will now be home to a specially-created five-acre palm tree park that will add to the beauty and attraction of this 159-year-old garden.

The Agri-Horticultural Society of Western India that has been managing the garden since 1890, announced its plan to create the palm park, which will have 50 varieties of the palm tree grown across the world, during a news conference on Tuesday.

Addressing the news conference, Suresh Pingale, honorary secretary of the society, said, “The palm tree is grown in various parts of the world and is considered to be one of the species that have developed and sustained since primitive times. Hence, the tree plays a significant role in various tribes and religions across geographies. This prompted us to develop a small palm park where people can see the different varieties of palm.”

“Such a park would be the first in the state and only second in the country after the Indian Botanical Garden of Howrah (West Bengal), said Shrinath Kavade,” a member of the society.

The plantation will start on Friday and will be attended by industrialist and member of the Rajya Sabha Rahul Bajaj and senior scientist S D Mahajan. “The plantation will continue continue till the end of this year,” said Pingale.

Some of the saplings have been imported from Brazil, African countries and from south-east Asia. Designed in the shape of an ellipse, the garden will add some 100 plants in the years to come, he added.

According to Pingale, the estimated expenditure that will be incurred on developing the park would be Rs 3 lakh and another Rs 5 to Rs 7 lakh on importing and maintaining the trees. “The park is being developed under the guidance of S D Mahajan and the trees will be planted there according to their height. Varieties that grow tall will be planted at the…More