Mumbai News Highlights: The demolition of the 120-years-old Elphinstone Rail overbridge falling in alignment of the Sewri-Worli connector is awaiting approval from the Mumbai Traffic Police , officials from the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA).
SVR Srinivas, Commissioner of MMRDA, said, “An alternate route plan has been given and we are waiting for traffic block permission from the police.
Once it comes, the demolition will be taken up.” According to the MMRDA, the demolition may begin next year considering the time required by police among other related issues.
In other news, earlier this month, Mumbai City DCP N Ambika’s request for central deputation was approved.
Headed to the Intelligence Bureau (IB), she is the 21st IPS officer from Maharashtra cadre currently on central deputation.
These 21 officers do not include IPS officer Shirish Jain, who had returned from central deputation last month.
Sources said that one or two requests of deputation are pending before the Union government and the number could go up.
According to the 2018 Union government notification, in all, there are 172 senior duty posts in the state eligible for deputation.
As per service rules, the maximum number of police personnel who can be sent for deputation from a state is 40 per cent of the total officers, which in case of Maharashtra is 68.
Meanwhile, days after a project to build a manufacturing zone for power and renewable energy went to Madhya Pradesh for which Maharashtra was also a contender, the Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP on Saturday accused the Shinde-Fadnavis government of losing yet another project to other states.
In April, the Union Ministry of Power had sought expression of interest (EOI) from the states for setting up a manufacturing zone on a pilot basis for power and reenewable energy Equipment.
The last date for submission of EOI was June 8, when the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government was in power.
Eight states , Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Telengana , had submitted EOIs to the Centre.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde said his government was committed to resolving the traffic problems in Thane city.
Shinde, who represents Kopri-Pachpakhadi Assembly constituency in Thane district - his home turf - was speaking while dedicating to people the third bridge on the Kalwa creek.
He also said that in order to eliminate traffic congestion in the city, various projects, including a bypass and extension of Eastern Freeway, have been undertaken. (PTI) The UK Deputy High Commission held a Remembrance Day service at a church in Mumbai to remember the valour and sacrifice of the heroes of World War I and World War II.
To mark #RemembranceSunday , we held a Service of Remembrance at the St.
Thomas’ Cathedral in Mumbai. @alangemmell laid a wreath and paid tribute to the heroes of two World Wars. ⁰We Will Remember Them.⁰⁰ #RemembranceDay #LestWeForget pic.twitter.com/UxthMA1Mg7 Borivali MLA Sunil Rane inspected the mangroves project located at Gorai, which is currently being constructed.
A mangrove conservation centre and Mangrove park across 8 hectares in Gorai at a cost of Rs 26.97 crore.
The components of the park include a mangrove trail, bird observatory and kayak trail.
Visited the Mangroves Project located at Gorai, which will soon be famous amongst tourists from India and abroad, and inspected the work being done.
During the visit North Mumbai MP Mr.
Gopal Shetty, Forest Officers, BJP Padadhikaris-Karyakartas were present. pic.twitter.com/uRtoIcmakY Mumbai police on Sunday arrested a man for allegedly beating a 65-yr-old woman beggar to death in the Dhobi Ghat area.
The police said that the incident took place near Dhobi Ghat of Mahalaxmi on Saturday night. “When the deceased woman Sharda Keshav Waghmare was sleeping with her bag, the accused tried to steal it.
After that, the woman woke up.
He pushed the woman on the ground and beat her badly to death,” the police said. (ANI) A two-year-old girl was crushed to death by a tempo while she was playing on a road in a locality in Mumbai, police said.
The incident, which took place on Saturday afternoon in Cheeta Camp locality of Trombay area, was recorded in a CCTV installed near the spot which showed the tempo driver did not notice the girl and the vehicle crushed her.
The driver did not stop the vehicle after it hit the girl and left from the place.
The girl was sitting on a road in the locality along with her two brothers when the incident took place, an official from Trombay police station said. (PTI) The Archaeological Survey of India will complete the work of illuminating Bibi Ka Maqbara, a 17th century monument in Maharashtra's Aurangabad city, by the end of this year, an ASI official said.
One of the popular monuments in Aurangabad, the tomb receives heavy footfall of tourists. "While the primary testing of lights is already done, they will be made secure with stainless steel nets so that they remain safe," the official said.
The premises will be transformed as the ASI will revamp the landscape by changing the trees and making the fountains in the water tank functional, he said. "The plastering of the inner and outer boundaries of the tomb is already underway.
This will also be completed by the end of this year," the official said. (PTI) A houbara bustard bred in the United Arab Emirates has been rescued from the coastal Sindhudurg district in Maharashtra, officials said.
The bird is in good health and it would be released in the desert area of Rajasthan or Gujarat, the winter habitat of these birds, they said.
Local Range Forest Officer Rajendra Ghunakikar on Saturday said, "A farmer at Mundage village in Devgad tehsil spotted an exotic-looking bird with a ring on its leg on Thursday evening and alerted forest officials.
We went there and took it in our custody." The bird is currently kept in a facility at Kankavali in the district and is in fine health, he added. (PTI) Irked by traffic congestion on the way to work, a Mumbai Traffic Police officer ventured out of the autorickshaw he was travelling and solved the crisis, giving respite to the motorists on road.
Appreciating his efforts, Prabhat Sinha, whose Twitter bio says he is the Director of Public and Government Affairs, shared the policeman’s photograph. सदैव तत्पर, सदैव मदतीस @MumbaiPolice - while on way to his work this responsible policeman got out of the autorickshaw managed the traffic when he saw he was needed and then left for his duty @MTPHereToHelp kudos pic.twitter.com/I7ffLHI0J6 A 25-year-old Indian Navy sailor allegedly died by suicide on a frontline warship in the Mumbai harbour Saturday evening, the police said.
Happy Singh Tomar was on security duty and he was found dead in an isolated room.
The incident happened around 7 pm, said the police.
Read more Customs officials arrested seven passengers in two separate cases and seized 61-kilogram gold collectively worth Rs 32 crore at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International (CSMI) Airport in Mumbai Friday.
This has been the highest seizure in a single day in the history of Mumbai Airport Customs, the customs department said in a media statement.
Read more A cyber fraudster posing as an executive of a retail hypermarket chain allegedly tricked a 49-year-old mechanical engineer working for Bombay Port Trust to reveal his bank details and withdrew Rs 80,000 from his account, said the police.
According to the first information report (FIR) registered at the Wadala police station on November 12, the complainant held a Big Bazaar profit club card and had a balance of Rs 10,000 in it.
Read more Days after Madhya Pradesh got a project to build a manufacturing zone for power and renewable energy for which Maharashtra was also vying, the Shiv Sena and NCP on Saturday accused the Shinde-Fadnavis government of losing yet another project to other states.
In April, the Union Ministry of Power(MoP) had sought expression of interest (EOI) from the states for setting up a manufacturing zone on a pilot basis for power and renewable energy Equipment.
Read more Amid growing concern over insurance companies not paying farmers for crop loss, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said that money collected from Maharashtra’s farmers to pay premium to insurance firms was going in the pockets of companies due to the Centre’s policies.
Rahul, while addressing a meeting at Kalamnuri in Hingoli district on the 66th day of his Bharat Jodo Yatra, said: “Today, I met a farmer who took me to his soyabean farm.
It was destroyed but he is yet to get the insurance money.
This is same for all farmers of Maharashtra because the money paid by you is going into the pockets of two to three insurance companies.
The central government of Narendra Modi is, however, busy fighting elections.” Read more The Maharashtra government has changed the standardised way of writing letters ‘La’ and ‘Sha’ in the Marathi Devanagari script.
The prevailing practice of writing the two letters in Hindi Devnagari script will no longer be accepted.
Read the full story here IN A bid to overcome challenges identified by the state Women and Child Development Department regarding the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) in an urban areas like Mumbai, the balwadis run by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) have been geo-mapped.
These balwadis will carry out the key functions of an anganwadi centre.
Read more A day after Lok Sabha MP Gajanan Kirtikar joined Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena faction, the Shiv Sena (UBT) called Kirtikar a spent force while claiming that he would soon be forgotten by the people. “People will soon forget him.
When he faces election next time, voters will say if he was right or wrong,” Sena MP Sanjay Raut told mediapersons.
Read more A special court in Mumbai in a recent order granted bail to a 25-year-old food delivery executive booked for sexual assault of a minor considering among grounds his trip history on the food delivery application, which showed that he was not present in the area where the alleged incident took place.
The police had booked the man under various sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act based on a complaint of the victim’s father, who said that on October 30, when he returned home, his 13-year-old daughter, who has a speech and hearing impairment, told him through sign language that a man had kissed her when she was out to buy grocery near their home.
She later guided her father to the accused’s house and pointed to him.
He was arrested based on the complaint.
Read more.
Indian tennis great Leander Paes recently approached a Mumbai sessions court in an appeal against a metropolitan magistrate court’s order in February which said he had “caused various acts of domestic violence” to his former partner Rhea Pillai.
Paes was also directed by the court to pay monthly maintenance of Rs 1 lakh to Pillai and monthly rent of Rs 50,000 if she left their shared residence.
His plea seeks the quashing and setting aside of the February order and a stay on it in the interim till his appeal is decided.
The plea is likely to come up for hearing next week.
In his appeal, Paes has said that the nature of their relationship was not in the “nature of marriage” and that he had remained cordial with her despite their relationship breaking down for the sake of their child, born in 2006.
He sought condoning of the delay in filing the appeal citing among reasons his father’s health.
Read more.
Few may know that Mumbai, a city perhaps best encapsulated by its massively congested urban sprawl and towering skyscrapers, is actually home to the second largest collection of Art Deco buildings in the world.
Salman Rushdie, in an essay for the book Bombay Meri Jaan, says that the style was such an integral feature of his conceptualisation of the city that he thought it originated across the seven islands. “I actually grew up believing Art Deco to be the ‘Bombay style,’ a local invention, its name derived, in all probability, from the imperative of the verb to see,” he writes, “Art dekho, Lo and behold art.” Read more.
Mumbai's Air Quality Index improved to the 'Moderate' Category after staying in the 'Poor' stage for a week.
NCP MLA Jitendra Awhad was granted bail by a Thane court along with 12 others, a day after he was arrested in connection with an FIR registered against him on Tuesday for forcibly shutting down the screening of the Marathi film Har Har Mahadev along with his supporters at Thane’s Viviana mall.
On Monday night, Awhad led several NCP supporters inside the theatre and asked the patrons to leave, asserting that the movie allegedly “distorted Maratha history and such movies would not be allowed to be released in the state”.
Meanwhile, the Bharat Jodo Yatra led by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi resumed from Shevala village in Hingoli district Saturday morning on its sixth day in Maharashtra.
The foot march will pass through Arati village, Pardi Mod bus stand and Kalamnuri zilla parishad high school ground, before halting for the night at the Shankarrao Satav arts and commerce college ground in Kalamnuri, a party functionary said.
In other news, the Maharashtra government on Friday said it could reopen the Gokhale bridge for pedestrians, autorickshaws and two-wheelers by next week.
A technical assessment of the bridge will be carried out jointly by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), Western Railway and Mumbai police’s traffic department for this purpose.
The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) is undertaking the Thane Creek Bridge (TCB) 3 construction work.
The project was initiated to decongest the traffic from the existing TCB 1 and 2 since an international airport is coming up in Navi Mumbai.
This new bridge, once ready, will ensure smooth traffic movement and hassle-free connectivity between the twin cities , Mumbai and Navi Mumbai.
With the dip in minimum temperature, the air quality index (AQI) in Mumbai has started to oscillate between the ‘poor’ and ‘moderate’ categories.
According to the System of Air Quality Forecast and Research (SAFAR), Mumbai’s AQI readings were in the ‘poor’ category throughout this week, ranging between 220 and 260.
As per SAFAR’s AQI monitoring chart, AQI of 0-50 is ‘good’, while it is ‘satisfactory’ at 51-100, ‘moderate’ at 101-200, ‘poor’ at 201-300 .
The ‘very poor’ category denotes AQI of 301-400 and beyond 400, it is labelled ‘severe’. source