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Centre pulls up state

11 February 2011

poor infrastructure at CRPF camps 

statesman news service
KOLKATA, 11 Feb: The state government may be keen to get more Central forces but it has been accused of dragging its feet over providing infrastructure at the CRPF camps. The ministry of home affairs (MHA) has once again pulled up the state government for failing to provide infrastructure facilities at the camps of Central forces and  also because it could not set a deadline for completion of the work.
 Earlier the Union home minister, Mr P Chidambaram, had written to the chief minister in May last year complaining about the poor infrastructure in the CRPF camps while reminding that it was the task of the state government to make proper arrangements for the jawans.
 This time the joint secretary of MHA has written that in a recent stock taking meeting between the Union home minister and the heads of all the Central paramilitary forces, there were complaints about the poor progress of work relating to infrastructure in the camps in the Maoist-hit areas of West Bengal. They have also complained that no deadline was set for completion of work.
 The state government is finding it hard to get land for setting up battalion headquarters for the CRPF, particularly in West Midnapore. This is because most of the plots are tied up with various departments and inter-departmental transfer process is taking time. The CRPF is also handicapped by the absence of firing ranges and other training facilities. The district administration found it difficult to get 20 acres of vested land in the areas which CRPF has earmarked for battalion headquarters. Moreover. most of the plots are forest land for which it is quite difficult to get clearance. The earmarked spots include Tangrasole, Jhargram, Belpahari and Bhadutala in West Midnapore district.  The MHA now wants the state government to regularly send reports for the progress of work in infrastructure facilities.

EC observers likely to visit Darjeeling soon

11 February 2011

KOLKATA, 11 FEB: A team of observers appointed by the Election Commission (EC) may visit Darjeeling within the next few days to take stock of the law and order situation prevailing in the Hills that witnessed massive violence following the death of two Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha (GJMM) supporters in police firing at Sipchu on Tuesday.
“We may visit Darjeeling,” Mr Sudhir Kumar Rakesh, the leader of the EC delegation which arrived in the city yesterday, told reporters this afternoon following a video conference with district magistrates and superintendents of police of seven districts held at the office of the state Chief Electoral Officer (CEO). Mr Rakesh, CEO of Bihar, has also maintained that the EC has received some specific complaints. Though he did not comment on who made the complaints and which districts the complaint came from, sources at the CEO office said the EC observers’ visit came after the CPI-M's allegations about attacks on Left activists by Trinamul Congress- Maoist combine in some districts.
The observers are reported to have discussed the law and order situation in the Darjeeling Hills with the DM and SP during today’s video conference in details. The officials have told the observers that the situation in the Hills has improved a lot in the last three days, sources said. The CPI-M today said the visit of EC team in the state, “was probably a balancing act”. “This time, if they are visiting other areas than the ones earmarked by the Trinamul, they are probably doing a balancing act,” CPI-M state secretary Mr Biman Bose said. Meanwhile, state additional chief electoral officer Mr NK Sahana said police have seized 32,299 litres of illicit liquor from 18 districts last month. sns

Jobs rain on Joka campus

IIM Calcutta students with work experience have received more job offers than last year with half a month of lateral placements still to go. Lateral placements, offered to students with work experience at the end of their second year, indicate how the final placements will be. The final placements, in which all students, including those without work experience, can participate, begin in March. “We have completed a month of lateral placements and already there is 60 per cent rise in the number of offers over last year. By the time lateral placements close at the end of February, we hope the number will be even better,” said a representative of the institute. Students with work experience in the 2009-2011 batch at Joka have received more than 200 offers from over 50 firms. This placement season has seen the participation of banks, private equity firms and hedge funds. Barclays Bank was back on campus recruiting in big numbers along with Olam International, which offered positions in Singapore. Recruiters like Google, Microsoft and Amazon that had hired modestly or given placements a miss during the economic downturn, also returned to Joka. Other companies that hired from the campus include Accenture, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Shell, Aditya Birla Group, RPG and Hinduja. One of the students was offered the position of manager in public sector consulting by Deloitte, where he would get to lead a team of 10 to 15 experts on government policy. Metro every 5 mins The city’s transport lifeline is set to shave a minute off its rush-hour frequency this summer, giving commuters a train every five minutes. “If all goes well, we will increase the frequency during peak hours to five minutes by July,” chief operations manager S.K. Das said on Friday. Metro Railway would need to upgrade its signalling system and bring in more rakes — at least two for the time being — to be able to increase the frequency of trains. Das said his team hoped to complete installing the new signalling system by March. “Around the same time, two new air-conditioned rakes will join our fleet,” he added. The Railway Board has sanctioned Rs 10 crore to replace Metro’s block signalling system with an automatic one, designed to help improve peak-hour frequency as well as safety. Block signals are set up at a distance of one to two kilometres. After a train leaves one terminal, it has to travel 180 metres beyond the third station from the starting point for another train to start. As soon as a train crosses the 180-metre mark beyond the designated station, a message is automatically sent to the panel operator, who then gives the green signal for the second train to start. “Once the new system is implemented, multiple signals between two stations will narrow the gap between trains and enable higher frequency,” an engineer explained. The scheduled arrival of two more AC rakes from the Integral Coach Factory in Perambur, Chennai, will ease the pressure further. Trains presently run at a frequency of six minutes during peak hours. The six-minute frequency is maintained through the 9-11.30 slot in the morning and between 5 and 7 in the evening but that is proving to be inadequate. Metro Railway has decided to increase the number of trains from 222 a day to 236 from February 14 to cope with the increased passenger load. “In 2009-10, as many as 13.7 crore passengers travelled by the Metro. In 2010-11, the figure till February 10 was 13.74 crore,” Metro Railway spokesman Protyush Ghosh said. Plans to ease airport clog Thursday’s Metro report on the slip road A multi-agency team on Friday drew up a list of measures to ease the snarl on the slip road through the airport campus, which prevents at least 10 fliers from catching their flights daily. Senior police officers and representatives of the airport and airlines got down to discussing the problem a day after Metrohighlighted the reasons for the 24X7 snarl that regularly holds up fliers and flight crew, at times for close to an hour. Officials who attended the meeting said recommendations for better traffic control on the link between VIP Road and Jessore Road would be sent to the state government. “Several plans were drawn up but the key to ensure smooth movement is enforcing the one-way rule on the slip road,” said a senior airport official. The other proposals include narrowing the rotary, increasing the cop count on the stretch and streamlining traffic control in front of the two airport terminals. The slip road is meant for one-way traffic but the rule is hardly followed. “Till three months ago it used to be a one-way stretch, open for city-bound vehicles till 2pm and for Barasat-bound ones after that. But then suddenly vehicles in both directions started hitting the road simultaneously, resulting in unmanageable snarls,” said the spokesperson for an airline. Around 70 per cent of the people using the link are not fliers. A senior police officer said the government would be asked to “strictly enforce” the one-way rule. Narrowing the rotary at the crossing of the slip road and VIP Road is among the other suggestions. “One-way traffic and a narrower rotary can ease the bottleneck to a large extent,” said Vijay Matta, the chairman of the airlines’ operators committee, who attended Friday’s meeting. The district traffic police will ask for more personnel to man vehicular movement on the road. A source said the authorities could ask for 70 per cent more personnel. On the need for better traffic management in front of the terminals, an airport official said: “Vehicles, especially taxis, flout rules to pick up passengers emerging from the airport. This, too, contributes to the block.” A section of airport officials, however, doubts whether the recommendations would ever be implemented. “Several such meetings had been held but the proposals remained on paper,” said an official. The slip road was opened for traffic at the police’s request in March 2009 to lessen the load at the VIP Road-Jessore Road crossing.