Pune News Blog
A blog about life in Pune and various news in Pune city

To encourage the planting seeds, the department of social forestry is planning to distribute tree seeds like neem, jamun, karanji, bamboo etc among the warkaris at Drive Ghat. The warkaris can plant these seeds in their farms or other places.

Joint director of social forestry department Meyipokyim said addressing to press conference that the seeds of karanji, neem, bamboo and tamarind will be provided to warkaris by 150 students of the green corps after packing it in 10,000 eco-friendly packets.

There will be another similar drive after entering the Palkhi in Satara and Solapur district during pilgrimage to Pandharpur from Dehu-Alandi. Green corps members will provide all the information regarding to seed plantation to warkaries and will ask them to plant some of the seeds on the forest land near Wadki nullah.

Another drive of tree plantation will be near Dive Ghat at Katoba high school. The street plays on the environment have been organized by the department on the way from Hadpsar to Wadki nullah. The schools including Lonkar Vidyalay (Mundhwa), Sadhna Vidyalay (Hadpsar), New English School (Phursungi), Bhekarimata Vidyalaya (Hadpsar), Nutan Madhyamik Vidyalay and Samta Vidyalay (Urali-Devachi) will be the participating schools.

To detect power theft, the Pune Zone of the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution company Ltd (MSEDCL) has launched a 15 day drive in Shivajinagar division. On first day they succeeded to detect about 25 theft cases valuing Rs 12.35 lakh on first day. The drives will be taken on regular basis now.

According to sources at MSEDCL the drive will be in action from Monday with the instructions by managing director Ajay Mehata. The areas under detection will be traders, hotels, dhabas, industries, farm houses, domestic consumers and the temporary connections given to the construction sites.
In Pune the drive has been started in Pune urban circle, Pune rural circle and Baramati circle.

On first day, about 21 theft cases were come into focus and were registered under section of the Electricity Act 2003. These 21 theft values of Rs 10.41 lakh and another four cases detected under section 135 valuing Rs 1.94 lakh.

Some unidentified people and Nationalist Congress Party leader has beat Atul Gaikwad, the head clerk of the Bhor tehsil office on Tuesday. To protest against the alleged attack the Pune district department employees’ organization called a one day dharna on Wednesday.

Laximikant Pancharane, the organization’s district president said that they demanded for the immediate arrest of the attackers. The complaint has been registered with the local police. According to him the revenue employees will not work on Wednesday to protest this incident.

The protection for revenue employees has also demanded for the same incident happened last year. The police are looking to begin strong action to prevent such incidents in future.

The contractors have been provided with the land for their offices, hotmix plants, godowns and for any other related work. The Pimpari-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation has suggested levying rent on these lands to increase the increase.

There may be earning around Rs 50 lakh for the municipal corporation per year. The special committee which stood to provide various ways to increase the benefit has given the suggestion.

According to Subhas Machre, head of the land and estates departments, PCMC the lands are given to contractor without any rent but now will be decided by the deputy collector of the town planning department as per proposal.

The deputy director of the town planning department will decide the rent for the land as per the proposal. However on the second year the rent will be increased by 12.5 per cent.

Devrai an organization is going to conduct tree plantation in association with the Dehu Road military station from Dehu village to Nigdi.

According to Girish Kher, founder of Devrai, around 2,000 to 2,500 saplings are being planted along the route. He said that the project will be completed before the beginning of Sant Tukaram palkhi. The defense is going to dig the pits on both side of the road from COD to Sant Tukaram gate and along Pune-Mumbai highway till Nigadi. Devrai will provide saplings.

The president of Dehu Road Cantonment board and station commander, Brig R S Rathore said that the army will be responsible for watering the plants and they will use tankers for watering the plants.

The native varieties of trees such as Peepal, Shirish, Jamun, Karanji, Chordia and Spatodia will be planted and the drive will be completed by June.

The Pune Municipal Corporation declared that the meetings held by school board are open for common citizens. The citizens groups demanded for this. According to school board the citizen may get all the details on website of the Pune Municipal Corporation regarding to school and meetings to be held every month.

The school board has sent a letter to activist Vijay Kumbhar and asked for the permission to attend the meetings as per the Mumbai primary education rules. They also demanded for providing dates of the meetings with the use of notice board.

The construction of Paud road is still going on but about 23 acquisition cases, which are creating problems in the concretization work of Paud road. According to Pune Municipal Corporation the construction of road will be completed by January 2010.

Vinay Deshpande of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) road works who is on a special duty for JNNURM said that there were acquisition issues at about 23 spots including eight temples. They also added that there are around 150 small and big trees in the way that need to be cut and for that they are waiting for court permission.

Despande further said that some elected members have taken allegation regarding to quality of work being done, however according to him PMC has taken advanced technologies in the work. The overlay method is used for around 1,100 meters for construction in which strong base is used and over that the concrete layers are directly laid over it.

He admitted that some work at the Vanaj Factory on 200 meters had been done very fast or hasty that the PMC held back the payments of the contractor responsible for this construction. The surfing is also not done properly but the contractor has promised to repair it.

Except this problem, all work is being done properly and the road will be ready to use by 2010.

A 30 years contact is signed for the development and maintenance of landfill at Urali Devachi by the Civic Administration Limited.

The proposal will be discussed during the standing committee meeting on Tuesday. The civic administration expect from Selco to process 500-tonne garbage daily. Rs 34 crore has been sanctioned by the Union government for this proposal of waste processing in Pune including Pimpari Chinchawad and Cantonments.

However the civic body has already accepted the proposal to sign the agreement with Hanjer Biotech Private Limited for 30 years to improve the waste processing plant at Urali Devachi. Now the Selco will process the garbage at Urali Devachi with the help of Hanjer Biotech.

The municipal corporation expects increase in the capacity of treatment plant to 500-tonne per day by September and they asked for it to Hanjer. According to Municipal commissioner Mahesh Zagade the PMC is observing all the steps taken by the company regarding to garbage process.

Selco plant needs sufficient electricity supply and the PMC is going to ask for the electricity supply to the Maharashtra State distribution company Limited officials.

According to Sudhir Gandhi, manager of Sant Dyneshwar Devsthan the wari will start from June 16 this year where around two lakh warkaris expected to participate in annual pilgrimage that will be held from Alandi to Pandharpur.

Currently there are thousand of warkaris who has moved to temple town of Alandi and more than are expected to come to this pilgrimage which is known as “Pandharpurachi Wari” and is thousand years old.

The warkaris makes journey of about 250km for every year and is the time for spiritual realization for them. The warkaris use to travel in groups and sings songs on the way of Pandharpur such as “Gyanba Tukaram” and “Vitthal Vitthal, Jai Hari Vitthal”.

To welcome the warkaris the local municipal has worked a lot to maintain greenery and to keep the city clean. The arrangement of drinking water is also done for the warkaris. The president of the Alandi municipal council, Nanasaheb Garud said that they want help from Pimpri-Chinchwad Muncipal Corporation (PCMC) to clean the town.

According to Vice –president Rohidas Tapkir, about 200 mobile toilets are constructed by town authorities and 50 workers has been appointed to keeping it clean. He added that the cleaning of the rivers has taken on emergency level. The lodging arrangement is also available for the people.

According to Sudhir Gandhi, dindis from the other states are also going to participate in the procession this year. The other dindis will be Bhakti dindi from Karnataka, the Kattya Samaj Dindi from Andra Pradesh and other two new dindis from Tamil Nadu. About 350 dindis takes part in procession for every year and this year there are 15 new dindis that are going to participate in this procession. Gandhi further said that the Silver chariots will be the major attraction for this year.

Pune’s lad Sarthak Chandra got selected for 5th International junior Science Olympiad that is going to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan from December 2 to 12 for this year. Sarthak will represent India.

The program is specially meant to identify the talented students in the age group of 14 to 17 who are interested in science. Sarthak had earlier brought a silver medal in the Astronomy Olympiad for India.

The selection for this Olympiad has done on the basis of a series of nation-wide examinations. The department of atomic energy, department of space and the ministry of human resource development and department of Science and Technology will sponsor and fund the program.

The announcement of the selection of Sarthak for the Olympiad was done on June 6 at the valedictory function of the Indian National Junior Science Olympiad at the Homi Baba Centre for Science Education in Mumbai. Astha Agarwal (Jaipur), Aayush Singhal (Jaipur), Neel Rakholia (Rajkot), Rahul Gurmani (Jaipur) and Harshvardhan (Agra) are the other members of the team.