Reporter’s Notebook

Rival praise

The factional fight in the BJP city unit over the appointment of the city unit chief has turned into a hot topic of discussion. The appointment of Vikas Mathkari,a staunch supporter of Nitin Gadkari,as city unit president led to protests from Yogesh Gogawale who had found himself as a more suitable candidate. Gogawale,who is close to Gopinath Munde,has been chalking out and unveiling plans to take the battle ahead. But it appears Mathkari-supporters stole a march on the Gogawale camp as advertisements in dailies and hoardings across the city congratulating Mathkari had photographs of even those challenging his appointment. Who says bitter opponents cannot be appreciated?

Here,UID crawls

Even as the state is making efforts to meet expectations in the Unique Identification Number exercise,officers on duty for the drive in the district are often left speechless when asked specific questions on UID. The state government has been aiming at meeting the 2012 March deadline to cover the whole population. The pace at which the drive is being carried out,it seems,does not match. An officer was very candid about it and said. “Look,the UID just started now. It will take time madam,we cannot keep such deadlines,with plenty of practical problems such as non-functioning of machines.” Though Maharashtra has achieved the 1 million mark,the district is way behind in the drive.

Monsoon too soon

Monsoon means slippery roads but on Friday,there was pre-monsoon slip of the tongue by an officer from the met department when a journalist asked him about thundershowers that had lashed the city on Thursday. Perhaps answering queries on the onset of monsoon and its advance to Maharashtra for the last few days made the duty officer say “monsoon” had hit Pune. He corrected himself immediately fearing some journalists may report that monsoon had hit the city earlier than the predicted date of June 10. “Let me correct myself. What I was trying to say is that pre-monsoon showers are what the city has been experiencing and not actual monsoon,’’ said the officer,lest it be wrongly reported in the media.

Traffic SMS slips

Following the heavy pre-monsoon thundershowers on Thursday,the Pune traffic police swung into action sending out SMS alerts to citizens to take precautions against slippery roads and waterlogging and prevent accidents. The caution message,however,itself slipped on grammar and spellings. The message read: “Due to heavy rains,‘sleepery’ roads & water logging in city. Be cautious & avoid an accidents By Pune Traf Police.”

(Contributed by Pranav Kulkarni,Nisha Nambiar,Ajay Khape and Pupul Chatterjee)