MONTH THAT WAS

No foreign trips in name of high speed trains: PMO

New Delhi: The high speed trains, including the bullet train, remain a pipe-dream since first proposed a decade ago by Lalu Prasad during his tenure as the railway minister, though nearly 250 railway officials have gone on tour to more than 30 countries all these years to make the project a reality.

Another 40 officers would have gone to China on April 1 for a fortnight training programme for the High Speed Rail Technology (HSRT) operations, but for the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) asking the foreign ministry to refuse the “political clearance” to their trip. Enough of these joy trips without any results on the ground, the PMO said, expressing its displeasure over the Railways going slow in infrastructure, be it the high speed trains, electrification or doubling of the tracks. What use going abroad for training when execution of all these projects is way below the target by the end of 2016, it asked.It noted that the Indian Railways still do not have a single high-speed rail (HSR) with the operational speed of over 200 km per hour to warrant the officers’ travel abroad for training to run such trains. The fastest one is the Gatimaan Express, which plies between Delhi and Agra at the top speed of 160 km per hour.

The Modi government took keen interest in the high speed trains, but the PMO regretted that nothing happened except many conferences and the officers’ visits to countries like Japan, Korea and China in the past one year. Even Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu and Railway Board chairman A K Mital recently visited Japan.

The PMO wants the Railway Ministry to speed up the infrastructure projects before putting in any proposals for the foreign trips. It wanted to know what steps the ministry took after the PM’s principal secretary Nripendra Misra wrote to the Railway Board chairman in January.

In his missive, Misra had regretted little progress in the government’s resolve to develop and modernise the railway facilities. “While reviewing the progress up to 2016, against the target of 1500 km of doubling, only 531 km has been achieved. In electrification, against the target of 2000 route km, only 1210 km has been achieved,” the letter said.

Bringing school to street children

Pune: The ubiquitous scene of wandering school drop-outs at traffic points, near shops and around cinemas is not exactly an eye-catcher here. Yet, the situation has not changed even with the government’s annual ritual of surveys to identify these children and include them in mainstream education. Government officials, experts and educationists are at a loss as to how to reduce the number of such children by putting them in schools.

Now, a ray of hope has shone after a Pune-based architect designed a mobile school concept. In the novel idea, 23-year-old Pruthvi Nimbalkar aims at taking the school to these children instead of dragging them to the institutes. His idea has bagged the first prize at ‘Transform Maharashtra’, an initiative for youth to make them participate in governance on May 1.

Nimbalkar, a student of Dr Vasantdada Patil College of Architecture and hailing from Kolhapur, came up with the idea and designed a model. The budding architect has always a soft side for the street children. 

It was then he thought of taking the school to the children instead of pushing them to attend classes. “In the concept, a mobile school room will have 12×12 ft with steel panels with bamboo or pipe joints. I have used wheels of mopeds at the base of the room so that it can be moved around using a vehicle. It will have charts, images and basic learning material so that the children can learn on their own.

“We have also designed the doors in such a way that when it opens and reaches 30°, a marking is made. The same mark again appears at 60°. This will enable the students to learn about angles and degrees. The same practical principle is also followed during teaching,” Nimbalkar said.

He further said, “We will put mobile schools at places wherever street children are found in large numbers. Members of NGOs or social workers can regularly visit these mobile schools and teach the children. Generally, schools for street children are located faraway, which is also one of the hindering factors for drop-outs. “This is why I want to develop the mobile school. They can be taught according to their convenient time,” Nimbalkar said, adding that one mobile unit will cost at least Rs 96,000 but he is hopeful that it can be reduced.

Bank loan fraud: 2900 crores siphoned by shell companies

New Delhi: A complex web of 339 shell companies used for allegedly diverting funds unscrupulously to the tune of Rs 2,900 crore has been unearthed by the CBI during its probe into such cases over the last three years.

CBI sources said the shell companies were allegedly being used by the suspects to divert loan funds meant for specified purposes, creating fake invoices, and ’round-tripping’ of funds to evade taxes and generate black money. Round-tripping is sending money to tax havens abroad in the guise of payments for fake imports through shell companies and bringing back that money, showing it as “foreign investment”.

The findings of the CBI are just a tip of the iceberg as these are only those cases where the agency has been able to find ‘legally-tenable’ evidence of money trail, cheating and diversion of funds to cheat the banks, said the sources not willing to be named, reports PTI.

The murky activities have been exposed during the CBI probe into various loan fraud cases involving 28 public sector banks and a private bank, the sources said. Besides this, the agency is probing about 200 bank fraud cases involving funds of at least Rs 30,000 crore, they said. The CBI is prosecuting these companies for corruption and scheduled offences associated with it. In addition, it will also refer these cases to other investigating agencies for action under various laws like the Companies Act, Prevention of Money Laundering Act, Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Act, Income Tax Act etc, the sources said.

Emergency Medical Rooms in Railway Stations

Mumbai: The Central Railway (CR) has set up 24×7 Emergency Medical Rooms (EMRs) at five stations spread across its suburban network in the metropolis, which would provide timely medical assistance to rail accident victims as well as commoners at a token charge of Re 1.

This decision came after a Bombay High Court order asking the Railways to set up EMRs at all stations on the Central and Western line here in a phased manner following a PIL in March by rail activist Samir Zaveri on the issue of lack of prompt medical help in case of accidents on railway tracks. The five EMRs set up, in association with a city-based medical firm Magicdil Health For All Pvt Ltd, shall begin operations soon.

“The idea to start these EMRs is to provide timely help to rail victims as well as to offer affordable medical consultation to needy masses. Timely medical assistance to accident victims will definitely reduce the number of rail related deaths as well as provide relief to injured passengers,” chief PRO of CR, Narendra Patil said.

All the EMRs will be manned by paramedics and 3-4 MBBS doctors each, who would conduct a health check up and prescribe medicines to victims and masses for Re 1.

However, patients (except for rail accident victims) will have to themselves bear other medical expenses.

“After CR came out with a tender for setting up EMRs at its suburban network, we took part in the bid and bagged it on merit. We have got the contract to operate EMRs at 19 stations for five years and our set up is completely ready to begin work at five stations,” said Dr Rahul Ghule from Magicdil. He said these EMRs would be equipped with all necessary life saving tools and medicines including ECG machines, ambu bags, pulse-oxymeter, oxygen cylinders etc.

“Accident cases come very rarely and our doctors would be working 24×7. With an aim to provide affordable health for all under the National Health Policy, we thought of serving poor patients at the token cost of Re 1,” said Dr Ghule.

The real test of the doctors would be to save lives of rail accident victims in the golden hours, he said.

To recover the cost of setting up these EMRs and the fee of highly qualified doctors, Railways is providing its premises, electricity and water for the purpose. While Magicdil would utilise the space to give personalised treatment to patients.

An expert on Railways and medical issues, Rajiv Singhal said, “It sounds like a fairy tale to serve commoners at Re 1 as it will put financial strain on the EMR operators. However, if doctors are able to save even a single life, then entire the mission would be accomplished.”

Excessive RTI queries cost the applicant right to seek info

Chandigarh: A Punjab resident running riot with rampant applications under the Right to Information Act (RTI) has become a pain in the neck for the state authorities. 

The state information commission forfeited Amarjit Singh Dhamotia’s right to seek information under the act from the local civic body. In an order, the commission has directed the civic corporation in Ludhiana to ignore RTI applications filed by Dhamotia.

The order said Dhamotia’s “unbridled desire to seek information” has left the civic body to deal with more than 500 applications. The commission maintained that Dhamotia has been seeking “inane and voluminous information” which had become counter-productive to public interest. “The applicant filed more than 500 applications under the RTI Act to seek voluminous information which cannot be provided,” it said.

The commission held that the RTI applications filed by Dhamotia have drastically hampered the routine work of the civic corporation with many of its officers busy all-day in securing the information sought by him.  State Information Commissioner Yashvir Mahajan said, “The duty of the commission is to see that such blatant misuse of the RTI Act should not be allowed further and such situation needs to be appropriately dealt with, to secure the faith of the public and remove obstacles in functioning of public authority.” 

Such misuse, Mahajan said, will prevent public authority from focusing on transparency. The commission cannot allow such “fishing operations” of the appellant, while maintaining that the commission sees his acts as a misuse, rather abuse, of the RTI Act with an unsavoury motive, which is why it directed the public authority to ignore his applications in the future.

FDA destroys mangoes laced with carbide

Nagpur: In a major overhaul, the Food Drug Administration (FDA) officials raided several mango shops, seized and destroyed mangoes which were injected with the Calcium carbide at the market yard of Kalamna. The raid was conducted at the Agriculture Produce Market Commodity (APMC) Kalamna market, where mangoes collectively weighing 5,516 kilograms were seized from different shops. The total value of mangoes is estimated at Rs 1.70 Lakh. The operation was carried under the supervision of FDA Joint Commissioner Shashikant Kekre and executed by Assistant Commissioners Milind Deshpande and Motiram Pawar. A team of food safety officials Manoj Tiwari and Akhilesh Raut raided the shop of Raju Kataria and found 240 kgs mangoes which were tested positive for carbide.

Later, Food safety officials Vinod Dhavad raided the shop of Mohammad Irfan Rais at the same location and found 2,998 kgs of mangoes positive with carbide and immediately confiscated the mangoes worth Rs 1.20 lakh.

Food safety officer Pravin Umap and FDA officer from Bhandara along with officials Bhaskar Nandanwar and other joint teams conducted a raid at office of one Jitendra Mankar at the market yard and seized mangoes weighing 2,278 kgs worth Rs 45,560. Then FDA officials raided the shops of Mohammad Isaq Haji, Mohd Javed and Shraddha Fruit Traders and seized and destroyed mangoes worth lakhs. The team officials were Kiran Gedam, Sheetal Deshpande and Anand Mahajan.Calcium carbide is also used in some countries for artificially ripening fruit. When calcium carbide comes in contact with moisture, it produces acetylene gas, which is quite similar in reaction to the natural ripening agent ethylene.

Two Indian Companies in World’s Most Ethical List

NEW DELHI: Two Indian companies, Tata Steel and Wipro, have been named in the list of world's most ethical companies by American think tank Ethisphere Institute.

Ethisphere honours those companies who recognise their role in society to influence and drive positive change in the business community and societies around the world.

In 2017, there were 124 honorees spanning five continents, 19 countries and 52 industry sectors.

"These companies also consider the impact of their actions on their employees, investors, customers and other key stakeholders and leverage values and a culture of integrity as the underpinnings to the decisions they make each day," Ethisphere Institute said.

Wipro is one of the two information technology companies named in the list, the other being Xerox Corporation. Meanwhile, Tata Steel is also one of the two companies named in the metals, minerals & mining space. US-based Schnitzer Steel Industries Inc is the other company in this segment.