State Bank of India has agreed to lend Rs 1,400 crore to Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) to part-fund its 500 mw Bokaro thermal power station (A) project,” a bank release said here, adding SBI’s associate banks will lend Rs 1,000 crore for this purpose.

The thermal unit, which is likely to be commissioned next April, will be set up at an estimated cost of Rs 3,500 crore with a debt-equity ratio of 70:30. Referring to contentious coal supply and power purchase agreement, the release said fuel will come from the Central Coalfields and the power generated will be fed to the National Grid.

“DVC has signed a power purchase agreement with the Punjab State Electricity Board to supply 200 mw, while the rest will be consumed in Jharkhand,” the release said.

The power generation from old thermal plants of DVC stands at 2,210 mw and it has commissioned new thermal plants with additional capacity of 3,500 mw so far. The Corporation is expected to make further capacity addition of 1,250 mw during this fiscal

“Chief Minister Munda has given his approval to set up ‘Jharkhand special court ordinance 2012′. The ordinance has been sent to the governor for notification,” an official of the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) told IANS Saturday.

The official added: “The vigilance courts are over-burdened with corruption cases. The tainted officers sell or transfer their properties during case trials. With this ordinance, the special courts would hear the cases fast and would have the power to seize properties of the tainted officers.”

The special courts will issue notices within 30 days of the petition against the tainted officers.

To fight corruption in government offices, Jharkhand has already formulated the Right to Services Act and the Electronic Delivery Services Act.

“Work at the site has since been stopped after the discovery of the antique coins. We will write about the findings to the Archaeological Survey of India,” Dumka Deputy Commissioner Prashant Kumar said here.

Some coins were slim and big while other ones were thick and small in size. The site from where the coins were found is half-a-km away from Marpa village, which is also an interesting place for archeologists, another government officer said.

The three-member commission decided the fresh dates in its meeting held on Tuesday and a notification for the same would be issued on April 16, starting the process for filing of nominations.

The earlier notification of March 12 for holding biennial election to fill the two vacancies from Jharkhand was rescinded by President Pratibha Patil on March 31 following a recommendation by the EC in the wake of allegations of use of money power in the March 30 poll.

As per the fresh schedule, the nominations can now be filed upto April 23 and scrutiny will be done the next day.

The EC has fixed April 26 as the last date for withdrawal of nominations and polling would be held on May 3 between 9am to 4pm and counting to be done the same day at 5pm.

The term of office of two members of the Council of States elected from Jharkhand was to expire on April 2 due to the retirement of Surendrajeet Singh Ahluwalia and Mabel Rebello. The EC has said that the election process has to be completed by May 5.

The Election Commission has already written to the government for a CBI probe into the events that led to countermand of March 30 Rajya Sabha elections in Jharkhand.

The decision came after the Jharkhand high court asked the commission to constitute a probe.

“There are no problems from the Maoists, as everyone needs water…in fact, they help us,” a state government official told IANS on condition of anonymity.

Large parts of the backward but mineral-rich state are under Maoist rebel influence, with as many as 20 of the 24 districts considered to be under the sway of left-wing extremism.

The official said lower-level Maoist functionaries interact with the government staff on a daily basis when it comes to repairing old handpumps and borewells or setting up new ones to provide drinking water to tribal populations.

As the water stress months – March to June – have set in, the demand for drinking water works would go up in the rural areas.

“Some of their (Maoists’) demands are genuine,” said an official involved with the survey and setting up of borewell projects in the rebel dominated areas.

Though waterfalls in the hilly parts of the state have been conventional sources of drinking water, bacterial contamination in recent years has rendered the water bodies unfit for human consumption, say officials.

Though plans to increase piped water supply, which remains low at seven percent in the state, may take some more years, officials said borewells and handpumps are the only viable means to provide drinking water in rural areas.

As a result, Jharkhand has the highest density of handpumps in the country with 61 persons per unit.

In Jharkhand, large swathes of the population do not have access to safe drinking water and sanitation. About 30 percent of habitations have partial drinking water facilities and groundwater sources contain fluoride, arsenic and iron.

Officials claim that the problem of arsenic is now confined to three blocks Udhwa, Rajmahal and Sahebganj in the northeastern parts of the state and that they will finish treating in the next 18 months under a special scheme.

Laying stress on drinking water supply, the state aims to increase spending on it from three percent to 10 percent during the 12th Five Year Plan from 2012-13 to 2016-17.

Or else, just dial the toll-free number (0657) 3059999 or send an email to info@aapkacm.com and narrate your woes. The chief minister and his secretariat will personally look into the matter.

The Jharkhand chief minister has launched a grievance management system, which in its hi-tech avatar, aims to use information technology for better and transparent governance, enabling people to state their bonafide grievances directly through multiple platforms ‘ phone calls, fax, email, even social network platform Facebook or micro-blogging site Twitter.

If successful, it can put him in the league of chief ministers known for pitching information technology for better governance ‘ e-governance in short ‘ such as Bihar’s Nitish Kumar, Gujarat’s Narendra Modi, Delhi’s Sheila Dikshit or Jammu and Kashmir’s Omar Abdullah.

In fact, it seems Munda has stolen a march over Nitish Kumar in using IT to get across to people. While the Bihar government website has an internal link “Write to CM”, Munda will directly monitor the grievance management system on his PC desktop.

But while Munda takes extra steps on the information superhighway, Nitish is undertaking a series of “janata durbars” and “seva yatras” across Bihar to get in touch with citizens directly.

The mechanism of people reaching out to the chief minister with their grievances has been kept simple. Munda, unlike his Jammu and Kashmir counterpart, will not personally be on Twitter.

The email id info@aapkacm.com will be linked with Facebook and Twitter to enable the computer-savvy to key in their problems, while the phone number 3059999, will, via 30 call centre operators, will prepare a detailed list of complaints for the chief minister.

“The state government will issue advertisements in newspapers tomorrow about the toll-free number and email id,” Munda told newsmen on the sidelights of the launch.

A call centre and aapkacm.com has been installed by Cyber Swift Infotech Pvt Ltd of Calcutta  initially to address complaints related to public distribution system and paddy procurement centres. Each complainant will be sent a referral number through an SMS for future use.

The grievance redress system has the potential to be a landmark for Jharkhand. But, for starters, it will be interesting to see Twitter users, usually yuppie urban youngsters, react to kerosene corruption.

Ulsoorgate police on Monday arrested Manish Kumar Singh, a native of Jharkhand, on charges of siphoning money from others’ bank accounts. He had withdrawn Rs10,000 and Rs15,000 from the accounts of two persons at State Bank of Mysore’s ATM at Cauvery Bhavan at Mysore Bank Circle in December, 2011.

When the victims discovered that some amount was missing from their account even though they had not withdrawn it, they complained about it to the police. The investigation led the police to Singh, who was caught on Monday.

His modus operandi took the police by surprise. Deputy commissioner of police (central division), G Ramesh, said Singh used to make the ATM partially defunct by inserting a matchstick in its asterisk (*) key. When a debit card is swiped in such an ATM, the machine records the details of the card but does not accept the Personal Identification Number (PIN), possibly because the keypad gets disabled.

After disabling the ATM thus, Singh used to be in the ATM kiosk and take note of the PIN when a person used to try making a transaction. As soon as the person who swiped his/her card in the disabled ATM used to leave or try at another ATM, Singh used to remove the matchstick from the machine, punch in the PIN and withdraw money.

Singh told police that the machine retains cards’ details for some time, and by punching in the PIN even a short while after a card has been swiped, a transaction could be made.

It was the ATM’s CCTV footage that got Singh caught. KPTCL assistant engineer Nandini had on December 27, 2011, gone to the SBM ATM at Cauvery Bhavan for some transaction. She swiped her card in one ATM in the kiosk but that machine was ‘apparently’ not working. She then shifted to the other ATM in the kiosk and finished her work. Meanwhile, Singh, through his matchstick trick, withdrew Rs15,000 from the first ATM where she had swiped her card. Likewise, Singh withdrew Rs10,000 from the account of another KPTCL employee, Lakshman, on December 30.

When the victims discovered that some amount was missing from their account even though they had not withdrawn it, they checked their accounts’ mini-statement and learnt that the sum was withdrawn from the SBM ATM at Mysore Bank Circle.

They, individually, lodged complaints with Ulsoorgate police. The police went through the ATM kiosk’s CCTV footage of the days of the transactions and noticed two youth behaving suspiciously.

Expecting that the culprit may visit the ATM again, the police alerted the bank’s security staff about him. A few bank employees who were aware of the incident noticed the culprit in the ATM kiosk on January 11 and informed the security.

The kiosk was locked and the police were informed. The police rushed to the spot and confirmed that the youth was indeed the one they had zeroed upon after seeing the ATM kiosk’s CCTV footage.

Editor’s Comment

While it may be ethically wrong and punishable, this person has definitely shown a big flaw in our ATM. This also confirms the huge talent pool in Bihar and Jharkhand which remain under-utilized or get mis-utilized.

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It served as a vital link to Jamui and Banka in Bihar, and would have been used by thousands of pilgrims returning to the neighbouring state after offering prayers at Deoghar’s Baidyanath Dham and Basukinath during the mela, which begins on July 16 this year.

According to reports, 11 of the bridge’s 14 supporting pillars gave way, throwing traffic out of gear. The Deoghar district administration diverted the traffic via Rohini, forcing vehicles en route Jasidih to cover an extra five kilometres.

PWD executive engineer for Deoghar Jai Prakash Singh said the bridge, construction of which was completed in 1978, collapsed due to last night’s heavy rain.

“The river was in spate and the swift current eroded the already weak pillars of the bridge further,” he said, adding that an alternative solution would be worked out soon to cope with the rush of pilgrims, once the river subsided a little.

As construction of a new bridge would take at least a couple of years, the authorities were looking at setting up a bailey bridge over the river as a stopgap measure.

Meanwhile, BJP MP from Godda Nishikant Dubey and Deoghar’s RJD MLA Suresh Paswan demanded a thorough probe into the incident, alleging poor quality of construction was responsible for today’s incident.

“The way the bridge collapsed shows lack of supervision on the part of the authorities concerned,” Paswan said after visiting the site.

Speaking from Canada, Dubey expressed concern over the incident and demanded immediate alternative arrangements to ensure minimum inconvenience to pilgrims and others.

PWD officials too admitted that poor quality of construction could be the reason why the bridge collapsed but pleaded ignorance when asked how much the project had cost and the name of the executing company involved.

Meanwhile, local residents said the Army should be called in to build an alternative bridge immediately.

Yet others expressed the fear that another bridge on the same river, near Rohini, could meet a similar fate.