Sena-MNS politics over Ganesh Utsav
Lokmanya Tilak is credited with transforming the strictly personal and religious Ganesh festival into a mass movement for effectively conveying socio-political messages. After almost 125 years after the first Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav started, attempts to control the festivity are leading to unease. Initially, the MNS protested the curbs imposed by the courts and the bureaucracy on Ganeshotsav pandals. It forced the Shiv Sena to follow suit. The MNS then mocked Uddhav Thackeray, who had thrown a challenge to PM Modi. An MNS poster challenged the Sena to construct Ganesh pandals in Mumbai first before leaving for Ayodhya.
When technology fails
Though the entire public transport network in Mumbai is getting smart with news gadgets and newer technologies, the crowds in Mumbai have failed at least one such project. After the stampede at the Elphinstone Road railway station, the railway administration had decided to use a video analyser software in CCTV cameras to gauge the number of people standing at the station at a given point of time. The crowds in Mumbai are so thick that the technology set off false alarms, burdening the already short-staffed RPF staff at the station. Now, the RPF personnel has told the railway staff that it will go back to old methods for crowd control till some new technology comes up.
Unsafe at Chembur
The east Mumbai suburb of Chembur is known as gas chamber due to the air pollution caused by oil refineries, fertilizer factories and numerous other ancillary industries. The 900 acre area also has several residential colonies in the vicinity. Moreover, the state government wants to rehabilitate slum dwellers from across Mumbai to this area. The Tuesday’s fire at the BPCL refinery, however, has underlined how even a small mistake may cause loss of lives in large numbers. Earlier, the NGT had said this earlier and asked the government to resettle the slum dwellers to other place. Now, even the Bombay High Court has held that the NGT’s decision was correct.
MPSC to get its own building, finally
The Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC) is now all set to get its own building almost after 68 years of its existence. The commission currently is working from two different MTNL premises and has its headquarters in the Bank of India building in South Mumbai. Formed on April 1, 1937, the then Bombay-Sindh Provincial Public Service Commission dropped Sindh from the name in 1947 and the headquarters were shifted from old secretariat building to the Bank of India building. After Maharashtra assumed statehood in 1960, the Commission was renamed but couldn’t get its own address. An old proposal to grant a new office was just gathering dust until a group of employees took it on themselves to follow it up.