QKolkata: NRC Awareness Programme; Working Sunday For CMC
Your daily lowdown of all things Kolkata.
1. NRC: Awareness Programme In Kolkata Soon
Social welfare organisations will hold an awareness programme about the National Register for Citizens (NRC) issue, in Kolkata on 9 September.
Titled ‘Fault Line Assam’, the programme aims to answer questions regarding NRC posed by the public. A documentary film titled ‘What the fields remember’ on 1980s Assam will also be screened. A book written on the NRC in Bengali will be released at the event, which will be held at Jogesh Mime Academy in Kolkata.
“…We see it (the NRC issue) as a catastrophe unfolding as no one knows what is the future of these people…There are a lot of questions regarding the NRC and we want to address them,” said Kasturi Basu, a member of the Campaign for People’s Unity and People’s Film Collective, which will organise the event.
(Source: The Indian Express)
2. CM Watching, Work On Sunday
About 150 CMC engineers spent their Sunday supervising road repairs with a sense of urgency not seen until the chief minister took note of how the monsoon has exposed the innards of thoroughfares and the inertia of the civic machinery.
"Sub-assistant engineers, assistant engineers at the ward level and executive engineers of the roads, civil and mechanical departments of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation were on emergency duty to ensure that the work was being done properly," a senior official said.
The prod from chief minister Mamata Banerjee came days after mayor Sovan Chatterjee said during a meeting with councillors that "roads in Calcutta are better than roads in any other city in India".
(Source: The Telegraph)
3. Patients Bear Protest Brunt
Patients in the emergency wing of NRS Medical College and Hospital were denied medical care for several hours on Sunday after an alleged mob attack on junior doctors triggered an agitation.
Entry into the emergency wing was barred from 12:30pm till 2 pm, but the torment of patients waiting to be admitted and those already in the wards lasted much longer, their families said.
Junior doctors, who are the mainstays of any state-run teaching hospital, had ceased work after seven of them were allegedly attacked by some people who had brought in a patient from Topsia with a bleeding head injury.
(Source: The Telegraph)
4. Seven Held For Mobile Tower Rent Racket
Seven persons, including the HR manager of a private consultancy firm operating out a Sector V office, were arrested on Sunday for allegedly duping many people by promising regular rent in return for space to install mobile network towers of Jio.
Most of the people who were allegedly cheated are from small towns and villages in Bengal and the northeastern states of Mizoram and Meghalaya. The fraud involves more than Rs 5 crore.
One of the accused has been identified as Sheikh Giyasuddin, a resident of Basirhat living in Beraberi, Rajarhat. His alleged accomplice, Sheikh Kalam, is from Madhyamgram. There are three women in the group, investigators said.
(Source: The Telegraph)
5. Acid Poured Into Woman's Mouth
A woman died after her husband and in-laws allegedly poured muriatic acid down her throat in Canning, South 24-Parganas, on Saturday night.
Sumitra Nayek, 22, was taken to a nearby health-care unit, where doctors declared her dead. Her husband Subrata Gayen and the other accused are yet to be arrested.
Sumitra's family members lodged a complaint with Canning police station, accusing Subrata and his parents of killing her.
(Source: The Telegraph)
6. Crater Caught In Repair Tussle
Diameter 2 feet; depth five inches, slope inwards – those are the vital statistics of a death trap right in the middle of JL Nehru Road near Elliot Park.
The crater on the Esplanade-bound flank of the road has been growing while police and the civic authorities blame each other for the depression.
The police said they had alerted the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) repeatedly about the damaged portion of the road. A senior official of the civic body, on the other hand, said the police did not allow time for the repair work to harden before opening the road to traffic.
(Source: The Telegraph)
7. Government, Railways To Form Joint Committee To Prevent Elephant Deaths On Tracks
The state government and railways have decided to form a joint action committee to find ways to prevent elephants from being hit by speeding trains.
“It is our joint responsibility. Both the railways and state forest department need to coordinate and work together to prevent such mishaps. I sincerely hope that the experiment works…,” said state Forest Minister Binay Krishna Burman.
“Every time there is an elephant death, the state forest department and railways pass on the responsibility…a joint action committee will be formed with representatives from both departments to formulate a ‘joint action plan’, a blueprint on how unfortunate deaths of elephants can be avoided,” said a forest department official.
(Source: The Indian Express)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)