THE TIMES OF INDIA, AHMEDABADMONDAY, JANUARY 4, 20164 TIMES CITY

7th Death Anniversary

In Loving memory of

Mr. K.S.Joy

An empty placeno one can fill,we miss you &we always will.

A prayer, A tear are all wecan give. Theseyou will have aslong as we live.

You meant theworld to us.

Holy Mass offered at Loyola

Church at 6:30 am.

A tribute of lovefrom your everloving wife &

children

DEATH ANNIVERSARY

Solanki out of favour?Arun Solanki, principal secretary,agriculture and cooperation depart-ment, was absent from the function

held in Kutch for theinauguration of RabiKrishi Mahotsav by chiefminister AnandibenPatel. As departmenthead, he was expectedto attend the ceremony

but it was his junior colleague, MonaKhandhar, secretary of animal hus-bandry and fisheries, who attended inhis place. Solanki’s absence has given rise tospeculation that he may be transferredin the next reshuffle of babus. Sources in the secretariat claimed thatthe chief minister is not happy with hisdepartment’s slow progress in solvingproblems faced by the agriculturalcommunity. Further, during a recentpresentation before the CM, Solankireportedly spoke for a long time but didnot pay attention to what the chiefminister wanted. However, many bureaucrats believethat Solanki has worked hard to solvethe problems facing agriculturists. Hehad failed due to reasons beyond hiscontrol. Adverse circumstances such aspoor rainfall, shortage of water forirrigation, seeds and fertilizer; anddamage caused by floods had becomehurdles in his way.

Dagur loyal to old officeMost IAS officers do not sit in theoffice of the department they holdas additional charge but M S Dagur

seems to be an ex-ception. Dagur is additional chiefsecretary, social justiceand empowerment, andis in-charge ACS, resett-lement and rehabilita-

tion (R&R), Narmada department.Strangely, he prefers to spend moretime in the R&R office than in the officeof his main charge, the social justiceand empowerment department. He got a mainstream post afterspending years in the relativelyunimportant resettlement andrehabilitation, Narmada depart-ment. Perhaps for this reason,he feels more at home at his oldoffice than in the office of hismain charge. If sources are to be believed, Dagur isuncomfortable with his minister, RamanVora. For this reason, Vora involvesSanjay Prasad in his department’s work. Prasad is currently principal secretary,labour and employment but he wasearlier in charge of the social justiceand welfare department. He is evenhandling the social justice department’simportant programme of organizing

among themselves.Taking his cue from theCM’s statement, Aloriais working upon a se-ven-point plan to redu-ce corruption in thebureaucracy.

For his anti-graft plan, he has decidedto minimize man-to-man contact byintroducing an online system of gover-nance. He has also become proactive inkeeping a vigilant eye on officials. Thebureaucracy, however, is skepticalabout Aloria’s anti-graft project as hehas not been able to post a regularvigilance commissioner after takingover as chief secretary.

Top cops unhappy with TanejaAdditional chief secretary (home) P KTaneja, who is on vacation thesedays, is reportedly facing much opposi-tion from some senior IPS officers.

These officers met chiefsecretary Ganga RamAloria a few days back inconnection with theirdelayed promotions andother grievances. Theyalso complained against

Taneja accusing him of not attending totheir issues.However, Taneja reportedly told Aloriabefore going on vacation that he willnot change his approach towards IPSofficers who prefer to work indepen-dently as if they are not part of thesystem. Taneja had taken action against somesenior police officers for laxity. This hasapparently made him unpopular amongtop cops. Now there is a buzz in powercircles that if the IPS lobby uses itscollective might, Taneja may be shiftedin the next reshuffle.

Nehra on comebacktrailRajkot municipal commissioner VijayNehra has earned praise for va-

rious initiatives taken byhim in the laid-back city.Sources said that thehigh-profile officer isnow being considered asreplacement for Ahmed-abad municipal commis-sioner D Thara in thenext round of transfersand postings. Nehra is relatively juniorfor the post but whenThara was appointedAMC commissioner, herappointment was also

criticized for the same reason.It may be recalled that Nehra wasshifted out of the Chief Minister’sOffice (CMO) last year.

celebrations of Dr B R Ambedkar's 125thbirth anniversary.

Two babus seek spacein secretariatIndustries commissioner Mamta Ver-ma and managing director, GujaratIndustrial Development Corporation(GIDC) Manoj Aggarwal — known asChhote Agarwal among bureaucrats —have suggested that they be givenoffice space in the secretariat. Sources said the two officers are tiredof shuttling between their offices inUdyog Bhavan and the secretariatseveral times a day, merely to attendmeetings held by additional chief secre-tary, industries and mines, ArvindAgrawal — the Bade Agarwal of thestate bureaucracy. Arvind Agrawalapparently has the tiresome habit ofholding long meetings.

Gunotsav burden on ageing shouldersA section of the state’s IAS cadre issulking these days over Gunotsavduties assigned to them. Their compla-

int is that junior officershave been asked to visitschools in Ahmedabadand Gandhinagar whilesenior officials, whohave health problems,have been sent to villa-

ges as far as 400km to 500km away.Junior officers assigned duty in Ahmed-abad are Anju Sharma, S J Haider,Vatsala Vasudeva, D Thara, MonaKhandhar, T Natrajan, Dhananjay Dwi-vedi and Sanjiv Kumar. Similarly, Mamta Verma and HareetShukla have been assigned work inSanand. Additional secretary (finance)Roopwant Singh, whose wife is Vadoda-ra collector, is to visit Vadodara Munici-pal Corporation schools. Sonal Mishra,who is posted in a PSU at Vadodara, hasalso been assigned visits to schools inthe same city.A very senior officer, who has severalhealth problems, said the purpose ofGunotsav is to improve rural schoolswhich are not visited by anyone. “In

Ahmedabad, the quality ofeducation is far better thanin any other part of the state.Gunotsav is becoming a meretoken activity and this isreflected in the distributionof work,” said the officer.

CS working on anti-graft planChief secretary Ganga Ram Aloriaapparently takes chief ministerAnandiben Patel’s statements veryseriously. The CM had recently said thatBJP workers should check corruption

TRUE LIES

Ahmedabad: In order to incre-ase medical facilities in ruralareas the state government hasdecided to give incentives andinterest-free loans not only forsetting up medical colleges, butalso for setting up MRI and CTscan facilities at district hospi-tals or headquarters of eachdistrict. Health commissioner JPGupta said that the policy is inthe final stages, and will be an-nounced soon.

Officials in the health de-partment said that emphasiswill be laid under the GujaratMedical Policy to give both ba-sic and quality medical faciliti-es to the rural people. “Under

the new medical policy, the stategovernment will promote MRIand CT scan centres at all thedistrict headquarters on public-private partnership model. Thegovernment has also decided togive incentives like 25% subsi-dy in equipment costs and evenwaivers in stamp duty where-ver the person or the firm is re-quired to set up an infrastructu-re,” said a senior officer of thehealth department.

At present MRI and CT scanfacilities are concentrated onlyin Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Raj-kot and Surat. The governmentwants such facilities to be set upat other district headquarters

like Palanpur, Bhavnagar, Meh-sana among others. The officersaid that the government willalso promote setting up of me-dical colleges in rural areas. Forsetting up a college, the govern-ment will give subsidies on in-terest, provide land at subsidi-zed costs, and will also exemptthe management from payingstamp duty for land registra-tion. The management will also

be exempt from paying electri-city duty for nearly five years.

Incentives will be offered tomanagements even for settingup super-speciality hospitals.Though such hospitals will bein the vicinity of big centreslike Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Su-rat or Rajkot, the governmentwill give same incentives as gi-ven in the case of medical colle-ges to be set up in rural areas

New MedicalPolicy To FocusOn Rural Areas

Dist MRI, CT scan centres soon

Himanshu.Kaushik@timesgroup.com

Ahmedabad: The deadly swi-ne flu claimed two lives justwithin a span of one week.With the death of a 52-year-oldwoman on Saturday and athree-year-old boy on Decem-ber 28, 2015, the H1N1 virusmarked its presence in city.

The woman who died onSaturday, a resident of Nobel-nagar area, had complained ofhigh fever and cold on Decem-ber 22. She went to a privatedoctor on December 28, and la-ter was shifted to Apollo Ho-spital on December 29, said astatement from the health de-partment of Ahmedabad Mu-nicipal Corporation (AMC).

The patient was shifted tothe Civil Hospital on Decem-ber 31, where in she succum-bed. Following her death, theauthorities have given tami-flu, anti-swine flu tablets, toall six members of the decea-sed woman’s family.

Earlier on December 28, athree-year-old boy, from Pra-tapgarh district of Uttar Pra-desh, who stayed in Rajpurarea of the city with his pa-rents, died at the VS hospitaldue to swine flu. Last year, thecity had seen 137 swine flu de-aths.

Second H1N1death in

one weekTIMES NEWS NETWORK

Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IIT-Gn) isoffering a new Humanities and Social Sciences courseto promote interest in India’s intellectual, scientificand artistic knowledge traditions. This full-semestercourse titled ‘Introduction to the Indian KnowledgeSystems’, which begins on January 4, 2016, is designedto lead the students to an intimate understanding ofthe classical Indian thought traditions from an in-sider’s perspective. Course coordinators are ProfMichel Danino, a scholar of ancient Indian history anda guest professor at IIT-GN, and Payel ChattopadhyayMukherjee, a postdoctoral fellow of the Institute.

CITY DIGEST

IIT-Gn to offer Humanitiesand Social Science course

Ahmedabad: As many as 1,275villages in Gujarat still do nothave mobile services.

According to the data madeavailable from ministry of com-munications and technology,out of 17,843 villages in state, alittle over 7% of them are stilluncovered by mobile services.

According to the ministry,nationally 5.42 lakh villages outof total 5.97 lakh villages in thecountry are covered by mobileservice providers, leaving only55,669 villages, around 9.31%without coverage.

Neither the state nor centralgovernment has allocated fundsfor expansion of telecom servi-ces in Gujarat from April 2014 toOctober 2015.

In 2012-13 and 2013-14, aroundRs 1.51 crore and Rs 0.20 crorewas allotted for providing mobi-le services in rural areas underthe Universal Service Obliga-tion Fund (USOF) scheme.

The maximum number of vil-lages in the country without mo-bile services are in Odisha with10,398, followed by 5,949 in Jhark-hand and 5,926 in Madhya Pra-desh.

In 2007, the Universal ServiceObligation Fund (USOF) schemewas launched to provide subsidysupport for setting up and mana-ging infrastructure sites (tele-com towers) in 500 districts inspecified rural and remote areasin the country.

Telecom companies BhartiAirtel, Bharat Sanchar NigamLimited, Aircel, Idea Cellular,Reliance and Vodafone were theservice providers under thescheme. However, the compani-es are yet to attain 100% covera-ge.

Meanwhile, the tele-densityin Gujarat stands at 95.34% with141.06% in urban areas and 62.1%in rural areas.

According to the ministry,the increase in rural tele-densi-ty has gathered momentum inrecent times but the wide gapbetween rural and urban tele-density can be explained by thedifference in purchasing powerof rural and urban consumers.Since the demand of telecom ser-vices is price sensitive, the levelof tele-density is also determi-ned by the purchasing ability ofthe consumers.

No mobile services in1,275 villages of Guj

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

The state government has already moved application forincreasing the number of seats in Surat, Vadodara andNHL Municipal College and for postgraduate seats in LGMedical College. NHL and LG are affiliated to AhmedabadMunicipal Corporation. Anil Mukim additional chief secretary(medical services & medical education) said that the stategovernment has decided to increase the number of medical seatsin the state by around 12 to 15 percent annually. As a part of thispolicy, the state has decided to increase seats in Surat MedicalCollege and Vadodara Medical College, and even at NHL MedicalCollege in Ahmedabad. He said this would lead to an increase ofabout 270-odd medical student seats in the state. TNN

Increase in medical seats in offing

DEFYING OVERLOADYogesh Chawda

A private vehicle overloaded plies in Ahmedabad

adminTypewritten textSource: The Times of India (City Digest), pp. 04, 4th, Jan. 2016

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