Pune Beat

Plaints fall directly on Bhatia's lapCitizens seems to have expressed strong faith in their crusading'' Pune Municipal Commissioner Aru...

Plaints fall directly on Bhatia’s lap
Citizens seems to have expressed strong faith in their “crusading” Pune Municipal Commissioner Arun Bhatia rather than the “system” by sending him a list of 319 complaints regarding unauthorised constructions as against the total 132 received at the divisional ward and city engineer’s office.

Bhatia had invited complaints regarding large-scale unauthorised constructions. As many as 319 complaints were directly addressed to Bhatia while 132 were received at the divisional ward and city engineer’s office last month.

City engineer Madhav Harihar said that a majority of the complaints pertained to constructions without the requisite building permission. While Bhatia recieved a whopping 225 complaints, the divisional ward offices received only around 17 complaints.

Out of the complaints received by Bhatia, 18 pertained to trespassing while five each were submitted regarding complaints against builders and construction on reserved land. A total of 29 complaints were resolved while the remaining 290 were being processed. Out of 132 complaints received at the divisional ward and city engineer’s offices a total of 20 were resolved.

Fresh look for last journey up
A spate of complaints about the sorry state of crematoria in the city prompted the Pune Municipal Corporation to undertake major repair work and renovate four prominent ones at Vishrantwadi, Vaikunth, Kailash and Yerawada.

A statement issued by Additional Municipal Commissioner Deepak Kapoor on Friday stated that the PMC had undertaken a month-long clean-up drive. The crematorium at Vishrantwadi was given a fresh coat of paint while the adjoining sheds were repaired. A water connection was provided apart from lighting up the place by installing a new pole.

New containers have been provided at Vaikunth crematorium and arrangements have been made to dispose of the garbage before 9 a.m. The supervisor has been authorised to purchase kerosene for the generators in the wake of a power failure. An estimate will be prepared for purchasing another electric crematorium at the site, the statement added.

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While it was proposed to lay new flower beds at the Kailash crematorium, a provision of Rs five lakh has been made to renovate the extremely small crematorium at Yerawada.

16-yr-old raped
A 16-year old girl was allegedly raped Thursday midnight in Bibewadi by three men after she was lured into their fruit stall.

According to the police, Santosh Mallikarjun Jagade (20), Srikant Babu Mali (17) and Raghunath Eknath Shinde (46) were known to the girl who worked as a maidservant in the area. On Thursday, Santosh asked her to come to their fruit stall. While Srikant and Raghunath stood guard, he raped her. Later Raghunath and Srikant tried to rape the girl and in the scuffle the girl managed to escape and was noticed by a police patrol. She was taken to the police station and her complaint filed. The trio has been arrested by the Sahakarnagar police.