Namma Metro to link Bengaluru International Airport

The proposed High Speed Rail Link (HSRL) between the Bengaluru International Airport (BIA) and the city has been scrapped.
Bangalore in-charge minister Ramalinga Reddy said the central government had done it keeping in mind its viability and cost.
“Namma Metro will be extended to BIA,” he said, during an inspection of ongoing works on the underground corridor. He was accompanied by food & civil supplies minister Dinesh Gundu Rao and Bangalore South MP Ananth Kumar.
While Gundu Rao said HSRL wasn’t practical, Ananth Kumar said it was not cost-effective.
Experts felt it wasn’t a good idea to invest so much money on a project that would benefit only a section of passengers. The proposed Metro link will take passengers from the city to BIA in 44 minutes.Currently, a Detailed Project Report is being prepared on the proposed Nagawara-BIA Metro section to be taken up under the Phase 2 A of the project. This line will be the crucial last link between the Metro network and the airport.


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NaMo on the Big Dig

Taking a dig at the Centre for its “gold hunt”, BJP’s PM candidate Narendra Modi urged the government to bring back the black money allegedly stashed in Swiss banks.
“The government has started to dig for some 1,000 tonnes gold, after someone dreamt of it. You bring back the money that the looters have stashed in Swiss banks. That would be more than the value of 1,000 tonnes of gold,” Modi said while addressing BJP workers upon his arrival in Chennai for a day’s visit.
The Gujarat chief minister was apparently mocking at the excavation work being undertaken by the Archaeological Survey of India in Unnao in Uttar Pradesh to hunt for a gold treasure. The expedition was triggered by a seer’s dream predicting the presence of about 1,000 tonnes of gold in the area.
Modi said the deadly cyclone Phailin which hit parts of Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Bihar did not destroy much as it was feared, but the country was witnessing a cyclone of change to ensure a “Congress-mukt (Congress-free) Bharat”.
He said he has been witnessing a wave of change in the country, including in Tamil Nadu, for a change of government at the Centre.
Later, speaking at a function in the city, the Gujarat CM also targeted the UPA government over its foreign policy as well as military modernization, saying that because of its “dysfunctioning” the country was facing great pressure from Pakistan and China.
“Today, the current dysfunction in Delhi has prevented even the much-needed military modernization and upgradation of India’s defence infrastructure. As a result, the Indian armed forces are under great pressure from the northern and western frontiers,” he said.
He also said no other country suffered due to terrorism like India in the recent past. “It is central to our foreign policy as terrorism is driven from abroad. We need to unite the world against terrorism,” he underlined.

Congress has slammed Narendra Modi for mocking ASI’s treasure hunt in Unnao, saying the move could benefit the country and there was no harm in going for it. Party spokesperson Renuka Chowdhury rebutted Modi’s charge that the exercise was undertaken on the basis of a sadhu’s dream about 1,000 tonnes of gold lying buried under the fort in Unnao district, claiming the ASI’s excavation was based on a report of Geological Survey of India that there could be metal buried underground. 

The Gujarat Irrigation and Drainage Act, 2013 snippets

The state irrigation department has finalized the rules for implementing the controversial ‘The Gujarat Irrigation and Drainage Act, 2013’. The act was passed by the state assembly and approved by the governor recently. The new rules will be notified in the next few days.
The new act gives the state government powers to imprison any farmer for six months and impose a fine up to Rs.10,000 for drawing water from a canal without proper permission. The bill was opposed by the Congress and Gujarat Parivartan Party when placed in the house.
The state government would appoint canal officers who would be responsible for lodging the cases against farmers exploit water resources in unauthorized manner. Even a watchman can file a complaint against such farmers. The act calls for farmers to take prior permission of canal authorities to dig a well in their own land adjacent to a canal.

Sensex, Nifty soar to 3-year high

Strong foreign fund buying backed by an upbeat statement from Moody’s Analytics about the Indian economy and signs of economic revival in China, combined with short covering, took the sensex to near its three-year high on Friday.
With banking stocks leading the rally, the Sensex gained 467 points to close at 20,883, a level that is less than a percentage point away from the all-time closing high mark of 21,005.
The day’s rally also added Rs 1.1 lakh crore to investors’ wealth with BSE’s market capitalization now at Rs 66.7 lakh crore. The day’s session started on a marginally positive note and as the session progressed, positive news flow helped.

SBI to install 7850 ATMs by March

In an attempt to improve ATM connectivity, State Bank of India has awarded CMS Info System the contract to install 7,850 ATMs by March 2014. The move is aimed at providing necessary infrastructure for multiple financial inclusion initiatives, including the Direct Beneficiary Transfer Scheme.
Underlining the urgency to enhance the banking facilities in the country, finance minister P Chidambaram had recently asked public sector banks to increase ATM footprints so that every branch could have at least one ATM. SBI’s Rs 450-crore order to CMS is the largest ATM deployment contract awarded by any bank in the country.

State Bank of India plans to add 26,500 ATMs over the next five months to take the total count to 65,000, a move that will strengthen the ATM network of the country’s biggest lender and its five associate banks.
The SBI group — SBI and the associate banks — already runs India’s largest ATM network with 38,779 machines. A bank executive said SBI will, by March 2014, set up 7,800 ATMs under its own brand, while 17,200 will be brown-label ATMs that will be managed by a third-party vendor.
SBI has given CMS Info Systems, a Mumbai-based IT solutions provider, the contract to instal, manage and service 7,800 ATMs, the executive said. The contract is estimated to be in the range of Rs 250-260 crore. Banking experts said this is one of the biggest deals in the ATM space in the country. Of the 26,500, the bank has installed 6,100 ATMs so far and has an ambitious target of 20,400 ATMs for the remaining six months.
Brown-label ATMs are those for which public sector banks jointly call for competitive bidding to derive benefits of scale and achieve financial inclusion. They are mainly installed in rural and semi-urban areas.
In the Union Budget, finance minister P Chidambaram had asked public sector banks to equip all of their branches with ATMs.
As on March 2012, 33,700 branches of state-run banks did not have ATMs.
ATMs provide customers an alternative channel to withdraw deposits and enable branches to focus on customers requiring other services like loan or demand draft.

Somewhere in Ayodhya....

All the hype around the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s (VHP) ‘Sankalp Diwas’ in Ayodhya fizzled out after more than 1,300 people, including BJP MP Yogi Adityanath, were arrested in a massive crackdown by the UP administration.
The UP government had banned the event meant to whip up support for construction of a Ram temple.
Nearly 250 VHP activists managed to break through the security arrangements to reach the venue, but were arrested before they could head for the makeshift Ram temple. Apart from Adityanath, the arrested included BJP MLA Ram Chandra Yadav, former minister Lallu Singh and senior VHP leaders Champat Rai, Ram Vilas Vedanti and Sharad Sharma. 

LPG Portability Scheme