Kolkata Airport upgradation starts....

Work starts at the Kolkata airport, so in a few years the country would have 4 upgraded airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata in addition to the two swanky ones in Bengaluru and Hyderabad.

The Kolkata airport upgrade will be a test case for AAI to prove its mettle. Deep piling work for the integrated passenger terminal has already commenced last month. The entire project — which includes laying of an additional taxi track and parking bays, as well as upgrade of communication and navigation systems and constructing a state-of-theart ATC tower and technical block — is to be completed by May 2011. The upgraded Kolkata airport will have a new integrated passenger terminal building, adding 1,80,000 sq metre, which will enhance the airport’s handling capacity during peak hour from 2,850 passengers to 9,220 passengers. The steel-and-glass terminal will have modern passenger amenities such as travellators, escalators, elevators, passenger boarding bridges, in-line baggage conveyer system and multi-level car parking. Ramalingam said AAI was in talks with Kolkata Metro Railway Corporation (KMRC) to extend the East-West Metro to the airport, so that passengers could avail of it. KMRC has forwarded the proposal to funding agency Japan Bank of International Corporation.

MSRDC tries to float waterways plan again

After failing on a few occasions to start inland water transport for Mumbai, the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) has made yet another move to kickstart water transport for the eastern and western fronts. A few years ago, hovercraft services were available between Chowpatty and Juhu on the western front and Gateway of India to Vashi and Belapur in Navi Mumbai. A few experiments were conducted to provide hovercraft services till Mulund too. But the unorganised efforts of companies did not yield results. The MSRDC has been planning to shape up the proposal. Its last attempt was caught in a legal wrangle and the company shortlisted for the task was not financially viable. This time around, the MSRDC wants to formulate a concrete plan with all-weather crafts. As the MSRDC is seeking companies with good financial backgrounds, the officials have called for proposals with a deposit of Rs three crore for the western suburbs and Rs two crore for the eastern suburbs. The project will be implemented on Build Operate and Transfer basis. The companies will have to design, finance, construct, monitor, operate, maintain and transfer the project. The final proposals have to reach the MSRDC office by March 7, 2009. On the western front, the MSRDC wants to connect the central business district of Nariman Point with Gorai, with stoppages at Chowpatty, Bandra and Andheri. On the eastern side, the authorities plan to connect the Gateway of India with Navi Mumbai and Mulund. This will save travel time too. MSRDC’s founder-managing director R C Sinha who shaped the flyovers for the city said, “The corporation must study the proposal and its feasibility or it would turn into something like the Worli-Bandra project (where costs are increasing each month.)’’ The Maharashtra Maritime Board was to start the construction of jetties at Gorai, but this too has not been done. Corporation sources said they have the permission from the environment and forest ministry but the eastern front plan was yet to get the final nod. Following the terror attacks, the department of atomic energy is also likely to put forward its objections as the BARC falls en route.

Kashmir elections' results

After an election that saw voters defy boycott calls and conquer the fear of the gun in the Valley, the National Conference looks likely to form the next government in Srinagar in alliance with the Congress. This would mark the return of the Abdullahs at the helm after six years. The NC emerged as the single largest party overtaking the separatist-backed Peoples Democratic Party in an election that saw a strong turnout of 60.5% despite a Pakistan-sponsored call for boycott, thereby strengthening the credibility of India’s democratic process. The outcome was unanimously hailed as a victory of Indian democracy and a rebuff to what chief election commissioner N Gopalaswamy called the fear factor. The NC promptly staked claim to form the next government.The NC, with 28 seats, and the Congress, with 17, will have the majority in the 87-strong House. The NC survived a drop in vote share in both the Valley and Jammu to best the PDP, which backed by proxy support from separatists and its strongholds in the southern part of the Valley, won 21 seats. Just like its prospective partner, the Congress saw a major erosion in its vote share. The BJP, in contrast, pulled off an improved performance, taking its tally from one to 11, its best-ever show. The party vote share recorded a jump of over 10%, thanks to the polarisation in Jammu over the Amarnath land controversy.

What went wrong....

Interesting information by Shishir Gupta

The Intelligence failure in the run-up to the November 26 attacks and the crossed wires during the 60-hour siege:

The September 24, 2008, letter sent by IB Joint Director Ashok Prasad to Maharashtra DG.

The November 30, 2007, letter sent by IB Director P C Haldar to Maharashtra DG P S Pasricha

The National Security Advisor M K Narayanan, Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta, Intelligence Bureau Director P C Haldar and Maharashtra Director General of Police A K Roy met to discuss the Mumbai terror attacks. With the NSA listening, Roy asked Haldar why the November 20 intelligence alert on a Lashkar-eToiba ship, given to the Coast Guard and Naval Headquarters, was not passed on to the Mumbai Police.Haldar bluntly replied that the Mumbai Police could do nothing on the high seas, clearly indicating that the Navy and the Coast Guard had failed to deliver.
What is evident in the flurry of meetings, from New Delhi to Nagpur, is the growing realisation that on November 26 night, all systems that could have prevented a 26/11 failed. INTELLIGENCE: Even on the morning of 26/11, a communication asking for activation of 10 SIM cards was picked up by the R&AW on the Bangladesh border. Intelligence agencies failed to decipher its significance. At 9.21 pm, the attack began IB chief Haldar and his R&AW counterpart Ashok Chaturvedi failed to act on the top-secret alert sent to then Maharashtra DG P S Pasricha on November 20, 2007. Haldar wrote to Pasricha that reliable inputs indicated that the LeT was planning a major terrorist strike and the action might involve “fidayeen attack, stand-off firing and use of grenades”. Even though the exact target had not been disclosed, he added, the operation could involve taking hostages. Asking the DG to sensitise his officers, Haldar promised to revert “as soon as” more information was available. Even as Special Director, Multi-Agency Centre (MAC), Haldar had written to Pasricha on August 7, 2006, and given details of specific targets in Maharashtra.
However, Haldar never reverted back to Pasricha, despite the promise, till four days after the Marriot Hotel bombing in Islamabad. On September 20, 2008, Joint Director (MAC) IB Ashok Prasad alerted the Maharashtra DG that the LeT was planning an attack in Mumbai and identified Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Vallabbhai Patel Stadium, Sea Rock or Taj Land's End Hotel, Mumbai Juhu airfield and JW Marriot Hotel as likely targets.
The scene now shifted to Delhi and the US, through established intelligence channels, alerted R&AW Joint Secretary A K Dashmana in a November 18, 2008, meeting that an LeT ship was trying to infiltrate into Indian waters. It also gave latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates of the vessel. This input was passed on to the IB for dissemination to the respective agencies. Joint Director Prabhakar Alok forwarded the input to the Naval Headquarters and the Coast Guard for action.
While the Naval Headquarters never passed on the intelligence to its sword-arm, the Western Navy, the Coast Guard launched a search for the suspected LeT vessel on November 21 dawn. As the provided coordinates by the US Intelligence put the vessel 20-30 miles south of Karachi, the Coast Guard never found the ship. Its officers not only wrote a letter to IB Joint Director Alok but also called him up in a bid to get more intelligence. Alok promised to revert, but like his boss never did.
Even on the morning of 26/11, a communication asking for activation of 10 SIM cards was picked up by the R&AW on the Bangladesh border. Intelligence agencies failed to decipher its significance. At 9.21 pm, the attack began, with Ajmal Kasab and Ismail Khan opening fire at the CST Terminus. The Mumbai Police top brass was at the time making their way to Oberoi Trident to attend a wedding.

POLICE: A price was paid for the division of authority between the Mumbai Police Commissioner, who was absent from the command centre, and the DG, who is in-charge of the state but not the city. Almost around the same time, there was another high-level meeting on at another place in the city. The then Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad Chief Hemant Karkare, DG Roy and the then state Home Minister R R Patil were discussing the sensitive Malegaon blast investigation. Around 9 pm, they called it a day. Karkare called up home to say he would be back in time for dinner, while Roy left to pick up his wife for theTrident wedding.
While they were on their way to the hotel, Roy got a call from a friend at Masala Kraft restaurant in the Taj Palace Hotel saying that there was firing outside.The DG immediately alerted DCP (Zone I) Vishwas Nagre Patil to reach the spot and take control as it could be gang warfare. The friend again called up,and this time the DG could hear the continuous burst of fire on the phone.Roydecided to give up the plan to go to the wedding and returned to the headquarters. Here all top state officials except that of the Mumbai Police were watching the action on TV in his room,along with Home Minister Patil.
Roy called up the Mumbai Police Commissioner’s control room, only to find that Joint Commissioner (Crime) Rakesh Maria handling the operations and Police Commissioner Hasan Gafoor were not there. By now, reports of firing were pouring in from CST Terminus, Cama Hospital, Taj Palace, Nariman House and Trident Hotel. With Gafoor parked inside his car outside the Trident, the command and control of Mumbai Police response had collapsed, with few ready to take orders from Maria and Roy not in charge of the city.
The city and the country paid heavily for the division of authority between the Mumbai Police Commissioner and the DG on that day as the two for the past decade have had a separate police communication network, budget and operational control.Even the annual confidential report of the Mumbai Police Commissioner is written by State Additional Chief Secretary and not by the State DG.
The decision to withdraw AK-47 assault rifles from the police inspectors, taken by Roy as Mumbai Police Commissioner three years ago, also proved disastrous. All that the Mumbai Police had in response to the LeT's artillery was assault fire and grenades of World War II vintage, .303 Lee Enfield rifles, .38 bore revolvers, 9 mm pistols and lathis.
Only Additional Commissioner Ashok Kamte had got an AK-47 issued from police armoury that day. When he came face to face with the terrorists along with encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar and Karkare, he fired twice at Kasab but missed narrowly. Not wearing the state-of-the-art bulletproof headgear he had got from Kosovo, he was shot dead along with his two colleagues. It was around midnight that Maria and Roy realised the situation had got out of control. Maharashtra Chief Secretary Johny Joseph was requested to seek commandos and the NSG for help.
Given the cost of the breakdown of coordination that day,the State Government is now mulling putting the Mumbai Police Commissioner under the direct control of the state DG.So,on 26/11,barring constable Tukaram Omble, who took Kasab’s five bullets in his chest to arrest him, and a handful of officers, the Mumbai Police was found woefully wanting. This set the stage for the Army, Naval Commandos (MARCOS) and the NSG to enter the theatre of operations. ARMY, NAVY AND NSG MARCOS: first refused to enter the hotels without state authorisation, then claimed to have killed two terrorists inside Taj within hours of starting operations. That information was totally false The first to be called for commando help was Mumbai Sub-Area Commander Major General R K Hooda,who in turn informed the Maharashtra Government that he did not have any Army commandos with him. So what the public saw in the early hours were only Army footsoldiers on peripheral duties and not crack troops.
On November 26 midnight, Joseph called up Western Naval Commander J S Bedi for marine commandos as well as NSG Director J K Dutt in Delhi. It took another two hours for MARCOS to finally arrive. Although the Navy denies it, MARCOS refused to enter the Taj or Trident without written authorisation from the state Government. After the matter was sorted, two columns (seven each) of MARCOS entered the Taj and the Trident complexes. With the NSG team headed by a Brigadier still on its way, having had to arrange an IL-76 aircraft from Chandigarh to fly them and then Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil, the MARCOS made it officially known that they had killed two terrorists at the Taj complex between 4-4.30 am.
This information was totally false and it is still not clear whether the MARCOS engaged the enemy directly on that day. The NSG landed at 4.20 am on November 27 and took over the operation at 9 am as the MARCOS refused to function under the NSG Brigadier. In fact Army and Navy officers further complicated matters by going live on TV channels while the fire-fight was on. Southern Army Commander Noble Thamburaj talked about a dozen terrorists being present in the Taj to the media even though he had no direct knowledge of the operations. General Hooda, the Sub-Area Commander, played to the gallery while the MARCOS projected itself as Rambo.
Neither did NSA Narayanan, who was out at a party that fateful day, nor the then chief minister took matters in their control. Shivraj Patil was in Mumbai only for a few hours during which he announced that terrorists had run away. A month after the Mumbai massacre, during which IB operational chief D K Sinha and R&AW Joint Secretary J S Khanna were in constant touch, a number of questions remain unanswered: Identity of the local contacts of the terrorists who helped the LeT identify the targets, including Nariman House

Past three year records of all the Taj and Trident Hotel employees have revealed nothing. ? Is there an al-Qaeda link to the Lashkar attack as for the first time Jews were slaughtered.

Identity and location of the controller talking to the two Taj Palace terrorists . The controller virtually gave away his location when the terrorist asked him, “Wahan kitne baaje hain?” The VOIP call was traced to West Virginia and then lost.

Were there 15 terrorists in total with five following up in another boat? The hunt is still on.

The track back device in the used GPS was set for K T Bandar near Karachi.

Who is the owner of ship Al Hussaini?

Somewhere in Ahmedabad....

The Kankaria lake is lit up for the inauguration of the Kankaria Carnival celebrating the re-opening of the lake after a period of two years.

Maintain the beauty of your building or ....

Soon maintaining the beauty of your building will be your responsibility. A Bill, aimed at boosting the aesthetics of cities by making it mandatory for owners and occupants to ensure that the exterior of a building is maintained well, has been introduced in the Maharashtra legislature during the ongoing winter session. “The Bill intends to make citizens more responsible for maintaining the external appearance of their house and that buildings are clean, neat and free from stains,” an official from the Urban Development department told a news agency at Nagpur. He said that this was an effort to sustain the “aesthetic harmony of the cities to ensure they get a clean look which can be maintained over the years,” he said, adding that the participation of citizens was important in the process. The Bill also empowers the commissioner of Municipal Corporations to evolve a scheme to maintain the aesthetic harmony and charge fine if the owner fails to maintain the required beauty of the building, he said. The Bill makes it mandatory for the occupant or owner to ensure that the exterior of the building is in good condition. The building should be devoid of cracks, stains, shabby enclosures or even cable wires that are left hanging, he said. The commissioner may send a notice to the people concerned if it is discovered that the exterior of the building is shabby after an inspection. It would be mandatory for owners to carry out the changes in line with what has been suggested by the commissioner. That needs to be done within 30 days, the official said. The owner of the building would be liable to pay the expenses incurred if he fails to make changes as per the notice. Interest at the rate of 2% on what has been incurred would be charged for ignoring the earlier warnings, said the official. The Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act, Bombay Provincial Municipal Corporations Act, 1949, City of Nagpur Corporation Act, 1948, and Maharashtra Municipal Councils, Nagar Panchayats and the Industrial Townships Act, 1965, would need to be amended suitably to incorporate measures suggested in the Bill.

Fiscal discipline helps 24 states wipe out revenue deficit: RBI

Several state governments have turned around wiping out their revenue deficits after a gap of 20 years. An RBI analysis of budgets of 28 state governments indicates that their revenue account turned around from deficit to surplus during 2006-07 (accounts) after a gap of two decades to a surplus of Rs 24,857 crore from a peak deficit of Rs 63,407 crore in 2003-04. With the exception of four states —West Bengal (Rs 8,333 crore), Kerala (Rs 2,638 crore) Punjab (Rs 1,749 crore), and Jharkhand (Rs 1,090 crore in revised estimates) — all states have recorded a revenue surplus. Madhya Pradesh topped the list with a revenue surplus of Rs 3,332 crore. New Delhi, which along with Puducherry is not a part of the 28 states, has recorded an even higher revenue surplus of Rs 7,755 crore. The study attributes the turnaround to voluntary efforts at fiscal correction through enactment of fiscal responsibility legislations (except West Bengal and Sikkim), buoyancy in revenues as well as higher devolution from the Centre on account of higher economic growth. Their gross fiscal deficit (GFD) and revenue surplus as a percentage to GDP are placed at 2.3% and 0.48%, respectively, in the revised estimates of 2007-08. In 2008-09 (budgetary estimates), states budgeted a higher revenue surplus at 0.54% of GDP. The GFD as a ratio to GDP is budgeted to decline to 2.1%. Many states have already achieved the 12th finance commission (TFC) target and targets set under their fiscal responsibility legislation with regard to revenue deficit and GFD in 2007-08 (RE). The impact of Sixth pay commission will differ from state to state depending upon the pace of adoption of recommendations and their implementation. In view of the ongoing fiscal correction and consolidation process, the states may need to base their decisions relating to salary levels after due consideration to their fiscal capacity, employee strength, size of population and the required complementary expenditure for productive employment. Despite improvements on an overall basis, the study has noted that there exists wide variation across the state governments with regard to fiscal performance. While some states have already achieved the TFC targets with regard to several indicators well ahead of the time frame, there are some other states where fiscal correction is slow. The correction in the revenue account and the consequent revenue surplus resulted in higher allocation of expenditure towards development and social sectors in almost all states. Another area that continues to be a cause of concern is the finances of local bodies. The study points that finances of local bodies in both urban and rural areas portray a dismal picture. It has been well documented that the process of devolving funds to the local bodies based on recommendations of the state finance commissions (SFCs) has not yielded the desired outcomes.