Salt Lake to bill boards

The cash-strapped Bidhannagar Municipality has decided to raise revenue by taxing all billboards on private and government premises.

The Salt Lake civic body has introduced the tax on grounds of “visual pollution”. “We decided to impose the tax in the beginning of the year and started sending out notices from February,” said municipality chairperson Krishna Chakraborty.

“The tax will be collected at the rate of Rs 109 per square foot and we hope to earn close to Rs 2 crore a year from over 300 such billboards across the township,” Chakraborty said. The visual tax of a standard 300 sqft billboard would work out to Rs 32,700 a year. Earlier, only hoardings on roads and municipal land were taxed by the Salt Lake civic body.

The Calcutta Municipal Corporation had brought hoardings on private premises under the tax ambit in 1985. The rate in Calcutta varies from Rs 110 to Rs 800 per square foot depending on the location and size of the hoarding.

The Salt Lake civic chairperson said the decision has been given the go-ahead by chief minister Mamata Banerjee, known for her stand against any fresh levy on citizens as was evident from her opposition to the fare hike in Wednesday’s railway budget. “We have already got the green light from the chief minister. The tax will not affect ordinary citizens but only those running a business from their premises,” she said.

Bidhannagar Municipality’s move, however, faced stiff opposition from billboard owners and outdoor advertising agencies, who submitted a memorandum to the chairperson on Thursday, calling for a reduction in the rates. They also denied having received any notice from the civic body.

“The municipality never informed us about the fee. It should at least be introduced from next financial year,” said Bidhan Ganguly, the secretary of the Bidhannagar Advertisement Association.

An attempt to pull down a billboard at Salt Lake stadium on Thursday morning ran into trouble. “The civic officials said they had an order to pull it down because we had not paid tax for 15 years. We showed them papers that proved all payments till 2014 had been made to the sports department, which owns the land on which the billboard stands,” said Anindya Banerjee, director of Enkon. It was only after the agency representatives met Chakraborty that they realised a new visual tax had been imposed.

According to municipality sources, there are close to 50 billboards on the Salt Lake stadium premises alone. The municipality has asked the Sports Authority of India, which owns a part of the stadium, to include the visual tax when it renews the contracts with billboard agencies and pay the money to the civic body.

The municipality has also undertaken a survey to list legal and illegal hoardings in the township and has so far come across 180 legal and 167 illegal hoardings.

“We have already pulled down close to 40 illegal hoardings and if the owners fail to pay the taxes we will pull down more,” Chakraborty said.

The civic authorities have also proposed to increase the licence fee of billboards on municipal land from Rs 209 per sqft to Rs 450 per sqft.

Eden eyes size summit – Spectator loss still a bigger worry for CAB than lost stadium-capacity crown

The Eden Gardens is aiming to reclaim the crown of India’s largest cricket stadium by next year, never mind the dearth of spectators in Calcutta to fill a fourth of those seats for a Test match.

Eden had shrunk from size 89,000 to 60,000 in the run-up to the World Cup, leaving many dismayed at the thought of their favourite stadium losing its famous reverberating roar. The unofficial capacity, people standing included, used to be around 1,30,000 back in those days when an international match at the ground meant looking for tickets months in advance.

The additional seats that will take Eden ahead of DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai — both currently have the same capacity — have been planned in Block J. A second tier will be added to that block after the Indian Premier League (IPL) starting next month and elections to the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) in July.

“The roofs of the newly constructed blocks B, C, K and L are being fitted right now and we hope to finish before the IPL season commences. The turnstiles and the proposed upper tier of Block J should be ready by the start of the 2013 edition of the IPL,” CAB joint secretary Biswarup Dey said.

But will giving Eden back its size translate into restoring its reputation as cricket’s most enthusiastic — and noisiest — amphitheatre? Former cricketer Devang Gandhi said he was “very happy” about his home ground regaining top place in the stadium capacity stakes, only to add that it wasn’t just about numbers anymore.

“I have watched matches from the lounges in all the top grounds of the country and my experience has been the best in one of the Eden corporate boxes,” Devang said.

T20 cricket, corporate style, is what has kept Eden ticking of late. The once discerning Eden crowd that loved its Test cricket as much as it did the shorter game was sorely missed during the India-West Indies Test in November last year as well as the ODI against England in October. The ODI turnout of less than 27,000 was the lowest at the ground for a game featuring India.

The CAB is, of course, hoping for a turnaround soon. “Calcutta still loves its cricket and the crowds will come back. We want Eden to be prepared for that, hence the expansion,” an official said.

An engineer involved in the project said the Block J platform would have to be pulled down to lay a new foundation for two-tier seating arrangements. Turnstiles will be set up for match passes with magnetic strips on the reverse.

Block J is to the left of the BC Roy Club House.

The CAB has already spent around Rs 100 crore on the first phase of development, which included pulling down blocks B, C, K and L and redoing them with a mezzanine floor lined with plush corporate boxes.

Apart from the new chairs in the galleries, the ground now has food courts, cleaner toilets, a 3,000sq ft TV production room, underground reservoirs and fire-fighting facilities like hydrants. Sources said Rs 11 crore was being spent on the roofing, done with aluminium sheets imported from Germany.

“The roof has been designed to match the false ceiling and lighting around the corporate boxes,” an official said.

Eden could also do with more heads under those roofs.

Smoke disrupts Metro services

Metro services were disrupted between 3.40pm and 4.08pm on Thursday after smoke was detected on the third rail at Sovabazar station. Engineers found that some polythene bags that were stuck in the tracks had burnt because of heat and caused the smoke. Trains ran between Kavi Subhas and Maidan during this period.

Duped: Two youths, posing as cops, duped a woman in Behala and stole gold jewellery from her on Wednesday afternoon. Jharna Acharya, 65, a resident of Biren Roy Road (East), was about to enter a medicine shop when the duo approached her and advised her to take off the ornaments she was wearing, citing incidents of snatching in the area. They helped her put the jewellery inside her bag and left. Acharya found glass bangles in the bag after she returned home.

Suicide: Abhranil Mal, 23, a first-year student at Shrish Chandra College in Shyambazar, committed suicide by consuming sleeping pills inside a garage on APC Road late on Wednesday. Police said Mal, a resident of Raja Dinendra Street, had left behind a suicide note saying he had been depressed because of his inability to contribute to his family’s earnings.

JU election: An alliance of the Federation of Arts Students (FAS) and the Democratic Students Union (DSO), the students’ wing of the SUCI, won the arts faculty students’ union elections in Jadavpur University. The seats of chairperson, general secretary and assistant general secretary (day) went to the FAS while the SFI bagged the post of assistant general secretary (evening). The elections were held on Wednesday and the results declared on Thursday. The SFI had won all the seats last year.

Fake currency: Mohammad Rehan, 25, a resident of Narkeldanga, was arrested from the Moulali crossing on Thursday evening for carrying fake currency notes. A hundred Rs 500 notes were found on him.

Accident: Mohammad Shanwaz, 30, died after a jeep knocked him down on Central Garden Reach Road around 5.30am on Thursday. Shanwaz, a local resident, was taken to SSKM Hospital where he was declared dead on arrival.

GATE topper: Kamalika Chatterjee, a Jadavpur University student, has topped the mechanical engineering discipline of the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) 2012.

Rape threat to slain constable’s niece – 24-year-old asked to withdraw complaint in a day or face a second attack

The 24-year-old woman whose uncle was fatally assaulted for standing up to her tormentors on Holi has alleged that the assailants had threatened to rape her if the family did not withdraw its complaint.

Mamon Dhar lodged a complaint with the airport police station on Thursday, saying she had received several calls on her mobile phone asking her to ensure that the March 9 FIR was withdrawn within 24 hours. The FIR named seven youths who had allegedly assaulted constable Ashim Kumar Dam.

“The callers abused me and threatened to raid our house again and rape me if we don’t take back the complaint,” said the Birati resident, scared but determined to keep fighting for justice. “They are targeting me because the entire family is numb with shock and I am the only one protesting. But the threat calls can’t silence me. I will keep up the fight, even if I am attacked for a second time. Jodi benchey thaki, er sesh dekhey chhaarbo (Will see the end of it if I am alive). I will identify the youths during the TI parade even if that means risking my life.”

Mamon wants to meet chief minister Mamata Banerjee and request her to ask the police to speed up the probe into the death of her uncle. “The police may have been doing their bit but it’s not enough. It’s a week since the incident but several of those named in the FIR are still at large.”

Five youths had turned up at the Dams’ two-storeyed house near Bisharpara railway station in Birati and teased Mamon and forcibly smeared her with colours. They left after her uncles protested but returned in a larger group, armed with guns, wickets and hockey sticks.

One of the youths hit Ashim on the head with a hockey stick and another stabbed him in his abdomen, hands and legs. The gang also assaulted other members of the family, including Ashim’s brother Sekhar and their 78-year-old mother. The constable died of cerebral haemorrhage at a private hospital in the city on Sunday morning.

The Dams have named seven youths in the FIR but only three of them have been arrested — Abhijit Ghosh, Debu Mukherjee and Tapan Chanda. A fourth youth — Babu Chakraborty — has been picked up though his name does not figure in the FIR.

A senior officer of the Bidhannagar police commissionerate claimed “no stones have been left unturned” in the probe into the assault and harassment. “Four persons have been arrested in the past three days. A hunt is on for the rest. We are also trying to identify the persons who had made the threat calls,” the officer said.

Job racket busted

Four persons, two of them women, were arrested on Wednesday night for allegedly duping youths by promising them jobs in a security agency against money.

“The racketeers had opened two placement offices by the name of Baba Enterprise on Lenin Sarani and GC Avenue. They charged each candidate between Rs 4,000 and Rs 5,000,” said a police officer.

The applicants were told that the amount included enrolment fee for the placement agency, training and uniform. The arrested women acted as counsellors.

“The candidates were asked to wait for their turn to get inducted into the agency. The recruitment calls, however, never came,” said an officer of Bowbazar police station.

Police identified the arrested as Monish Saha, Amit Kumar Singh, Neha Roy and Gayatri Majumder. Another accused, Palash Guha Niyogi, is yet to be arrested.

Four complaints lodged with Bowbazar police station led to the arrests. Cops suspect the gang had duped dozens of youths.

‘Chargesheet against AMRI directors mechanical’

KOLKATA: The chargesheet against AMRI Hospitals directors Radheshyam Goenka and Prasant Goenka is mechanical, their counsel and former state advocate general Balai Chandra Roy argued before Calcutta high court’s division bench of Justice A K Roy and Justice A K Ray on Thursday. The hearing will continue on Friday.

Roy said while the chargesheet states, “In a hospital, a fire can take place”, it is not clear what role could directors have in an accidental fire.

Roy also argued that there was no specific allegation against the two accused. The charge against the directors is that they neglected the fire safety clause of the hospital. The two accused are in custody for 97 days while the investigation has been completed, Roy added.

Debashis Roy, state public prosecutor, said the state has already filed a special leave petition in Supreme Court against the bail granted by Calcutta high court to another AMRI director Radeshyam Agrawal on February 17.

BSF constable injured by cattle smugglers

KOLKATA: A Border Security Force head constable received serious head injuries after being attacked by suspected cattle smugglers from Bangladesh, along the international border under BOP Angrail in North 24-Parganas, on Tuesday night.

Around 10.30pm, a BSF patrol party was attacked by 20-30 miscreants when they tried to stop cattleheads from being taken across the border into Bangladesh. The injured head constable, identified as has been identified as Ajit Singh. He has been admitted to a hospital in Bongaon. After the attack, the BSF succeeded in nabbing a miscreant who turned out to be a Bangladeshi national and seized 15 heads of cattle from the spot.

“We have lodged a protest with Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) after the incident. Had they been alert, criminals from that country would not have managed to cross over and smuggle back cattle,” a BSF officer said.

The BSF is now planning to adopt a new strategy to curb cattle-smuggling along the Indo-Bangla border in West Bengal. “We have already tried out the scheme in Murshidabad and it has been a success. Along with local police, we make efforts to stop the movement of cattle towards the border villages on the Indian side, from where they are taken across the border at night. The BSF and police teams are also carrying out raids at the assembly points where the smugglers meet. We have had results. There has been a nearly 80% drop in cattle smuggling in that region since the first week of February. We plan to extend this strategy to other sectors like Nadia and North 24-Parganas,” the officer said.

It is primarily cattle smuggling that has led to tension between the BSF and the BGB in the past. Cattle is brought to West Bengal from states like Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Gujarat. They are taken to the border and sent across by smugglers. BSF personnel are attacked when an attempt is made to nab the smugglers.

Medical College upgrade in limbo

KOLKATA: Does it take years for an already existing hospital of repute to get upgraded to the level of AIIMS? Medical College and Hospital Calcutta (MCHC), the oldest hospital in Asia, is being improved for the past five years but it is yet to take shape. If this be the rate of progress, the dream project cannot be completed in the next couple of years.

How many years does it take for an already existing hospital of repute to get transformed into the lines of AIIMS? Medical College and Hospital Calcutta (MCHC), the oldest hospital in Asia, is undergoing the transition for over five years now and counting. Going by the snail paced progress of the dream project, it might take years for the project to see the light.

There, however, was a spark flicker of hope when the Trinamool Congress came to power at the state about 10 months back. The hospital expected the project to get a boost after Mamata Banerjee took charge of the health ministryhoped a leap in the progress of the project. But it the project hasn’t progressed much in the past few months, said sources.

“With the Trinamool Congress at the state and the party being a part of the UPA government, we had high hopes in the speedy completion of the project. But nothing has changed in the past 10 months. The project is in a limbo and we have no idea when it will materialize,” said a hospital source.

In August 2003, the then union health minister Sushma Swaraj had given the in-principle assented nod to the upgrade of MCHC on the lines of AIIMS. At the behest of the health ministry, a team from AIIMS visited MCHC in April 2007 to take stock of things. The final shape to the proposed centre of excellence after a visit by a team from AIIMS to MCHC in April 2007 at the behest of the ministry of health. After getting a feedback.

Based on their feedback, the Centre sanctioned Rs 100 crore for the project while the state was given responsibility to arrange for given the responsibility of pumping in Rs 20 crore.

The upgrade included construction of an OPD complex to house OPDs of all streams, an academic block, acquiring of latest equipment, building a multispeciality unit and a regional cancer treatment centre with nuclear medicine facility.

Though construction work began in 2007, only the OPD unit has been made ready in the last five years. No one has clue about the multispeciality unit that was supposed to become operational by March 2010. No one can say for sure when the work on the multispecialty unit will begin. Infact this unit was be become operational by March 2010. Cut to March 2012, two years down the building itself is yet to come up forget about other infrastructure including equipment and others.

Meanwhile, the cost has escalated to 156 crore from the original estimate of Rs 120 crore in 2009. The state government had to bear the additional cost.

The health department officials blamed the delay on a tussle between the Noida-based HSCC (India) Ltd, the implementing agency of the project, and the local construction company. “Existing services have to be continued while the uplift is underway. Thus it isn’t easy to keep to the timeline. The dispute between the implementing agency and the construction company over payment issues has added to the delay.

But work on the multispecialty unit will soon begin,” said Asit Biswas, spokesperson of the health department.

Shifting of some offices that are housed in the dilapidated building, where the multispeciality unit would come up, posed a problem. The co-operative of the hospital staff and an office of the Kolkata municipal corporation are some the offices that are housed in the building that would have to be razed.

Ananda Basak, a member of the advisory committee of the state government’s employees federation, said, “Initially, the hospital did not bother to inform us about the shift. But once we received the notice, the office was vacated within two days.”Another source said that “The staff have agreed to relocate their office. Also, the tussle between the HSCC and the local constructor needs to be intervened by the government from time to time, otherwise the project will not be completed anytime soon. see light of the day,” said a hospital source.

Girl arrested for infant murder

KOLKATA: A girl allegedly attacked her neighbours with a sharp weapon and killed a two-month-old baby at Ichhapur on Thursday. The victim’s uncle later lodged a complaint against Ashima Das. Police have arrested the girl but are yet to ascertain the motive behind the attack.

Ashima, a graduate, used to give private tuitions. At 12.30pm she suddenly barged into her neighbour Pradesh Das’s house and attacked them without provocation. She kept attacking the others one after another, injuring a total of five persons.

One held with fake notes

KOLKATA: A youth was intercepted with Rs 50,000 in fake currency from near Sealdah on Thursday evening.

Due a prompt action of a traffic sergeant, a youth carrying Rs 50,000 Fake Indian Currency notes has been intercepted near Sealdah on Thursday evening.

Acting on a tip off, police nabbed Mohammad Rehan, 22, was acting suspicious. A traffic sergeant noticed this and chased him. Rehan was nabbed near Moulali. while he was headed to Moulali from Sealdah.

It was a traffic sergeant who pointed the youth to police.

Police are interrogating Rehan to know about the others involved in the racket.