Pune Notebook

Believe it or not, but, currently six inquiry committees, comprising as many as 38 senior corporators, are in existence.

The Congress has appointed an eight-member committee to probe the controversial Bramha-Bajaj construction at the Raja Bahadur Mills land. Another eight member committee has been appointed by Congress to probe the administrative proposal for en-block dezoning of agricultural land.

However, all the major political parties at the PMC seem to be worried about the civic administration8217;s move to allot tenders for the Rs 1,500 crore mega water supply and sewerage augmentation plan.

The BJP has appointed a five-member committee to probe the project report prepared by Kirloskar consultants. The committee recently released an 18-page exhaustive report over the issue. The Shiv Sena followed its alliance partner by appointing a separate inquiry committee. The five-member committee of Sena has also released its report.

The ruling party at the PMC, the Pune Vikas Aghadi PVA has also appointed a four-member committee and is expected to furnish a 8220;detailed and exhaustive8221; report in a few days. The Congress has also appointed an eight-member committee.

One senior civic official sarcastically said, 8220;Had we known that they were so enthusiastic about this project, we would have handed over the work of preparing the project draft to these committees instead of Kirloskar Consultants. It would have saved us Rs 60 lakh8221;.

Fertiliser for thought
It was a surprising departure from routine procedure associated with the visit of a Union minister. There was no hype about his visit to the city, maybe because he is not much in the news for of his portfolio. Union Minister of State for Agriculture, Sompal who attended a conference on new research projects in agriculture on Saturday, delivered an enlightening speech in chaste Hindi. The speech, peppered with Sanskrit shlokas dwelt at length on the challenges faced by the Agricultural sector and how the government planned to meet them.

The minister8217;s meeting with newspersons too was by chance. It was State minister for Agriculture, Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil who was scheduled to address a press conference at the venue and the Union minister attended it. Sompal8217;s statements about the new agricultural policy to be announced by the Union government however carried more weight than the State minister8217;s briefing regarding the conference.

Buttonholed
Power tends to gravitate to focal points which exist thereafter as centres of power. And since we happen to be in the 8220;Net-age8221;, such centres of power are now often described as 8220;remote controls8221; to fit into the today8217;s lingo.

While the role of the print medium making the term tremendously popular cannot be ignored, due credit also goes to the country8217;s polity for adding new shades to what is now a household term.

Union Minister for Civil Aviation Anant Kumar, during a programme organised by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, could not restrain from employing this now widely-used term to describe his point.

Lamenting the participation of youth in anti-national activities in insurgency areas, Kumar said,8220;The politicians have corrupted the youth of the nation.8221; We do not want that the 8220;remote control8221; of the youth be given to any political party, Kumar went on to add.

8220;Seems difficult when your government itself is being remote-controlled by Jayalalitha8221;, grumbled an old gentleman sitting in the corner as the audience could not help smiling.

May the force be with you
The Pune Municipal Corporation octroi collection wing was able to mop up Rs 50 crore during the first quarter of the current financial year, thanks to the civic employees who carried out 8220;forceful8221; drives against octroi evaders.

Additional commissioner Deepak Kapoor has constituted special squads to detect octroi evasion on liquor, computer software, cloth and precious metals.

The names of these squads are quite interesting. There is one 8220;Elite Task Force8221; to detect octroi evasion on gold and silver. Then there is a 8220;Tiger Force8221; which concentrates on liquor and other items and a 8220;Lions force8221; for cloths. Kapoor has recently constituted a yet another squad named as 8220;Chetak force8221; to detect octroi evasion on computer software.

Till Kapoor 8211; the 8220;driving force8221; behind these special drives holds the charge of civic octroi wing, the number of these 8220;forces8221; would continue to grow.

Spy eyes
With the Vajpayee government annoucing big sops for the information technology industry, its Ministers also seem to have been lapped up by be strong tide of potential on the super info-highway. So much so, that their vocabulary also appears to have been bitten by the IT bug.

Union Civil Aviation Minister Anant Kumar believes that youth of the nation are a force to reckon with and that they can be used for nation-building activity.

Speaking at a function organised by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad in the city recently, the former office bearer of the students8217; organisation, sought to describe all the members as8230; guess what8230;8220;remote sensing satellites8221;!!!

8220;We, the members of the ABVP, are like a series of INSAT satellites orbiting in various fields like politics, culture, academics, industries etcetera8221;, he said.

8220;Now that the ABVP has launched these satellites youth members in different states and regions, it should continue to hold the strings8221;, the minister appealed, as members clapped with joy for jumping out of the age of 8220;ambassadors of change8221; to 8220;modern day satellites8221;.

Believe it or not
The rusted-iron-frame bureaucracy for once got down to work when the Directoratate of Sports pushed the paper fast so that Mary Philips got her pension money scantioned money within hours, a common man thought. But it was not so when one of the officials stated we usually work like this, but we were slightly faster in this case.8217;

Tailpiece
After being known as the Oxford of the East8217;, cultural capital of the State8217; and future Silicon Valley of the country8217;, guess what sobriquet the city of Pune is going to earn for itself next.

Well, the answer lies with the Police Commissioner K K Kashyap. At the Gauri Ranade Memorial Awards presentation ceremony held in the city recently, Kashyap, making use of his ability in speaking broken Marathi, expressed concern over the worsening traffic situation in the city.

If such large number of accidents continue to occur in Pune, the city will soon be known as the 8220;Accidents cha maherghar,8221; declared Kashyap.