City airport reaches a new milestone
Nearly 35 years after its inception, the Jayaprakash Narayan International (JPNI) Airport in Patna began round-the-clock flight operations from Sunday midnight. With all technical arrangements for night landing and take-off put in place by the Airports Authority in India, the congested airport now expects a reduction in daytime air traffic. JPNI is the country’s 16th busiest airport. On Sundays, 42 flights make departure from the airport. The night-landing facility will lead to an increase in the number of flights landing and taking off from the airport in the coming months, said JPNI director Rajendra Singh Lahauria. While Jet Airways began its Pune-Patna-Pune service on Sunday, AirAsia and Vistara are likely to follow suit.
Showing gratitude to the Sun God
The banks of the Ganga in Patna was swarmed by men and women gathered to offer ‘arghya’ to the sun during the four-day Chaiti Chhath festival. Fasting for 36 long hours, the devotees stood knee-deep in the river as they offered water to the sun and prayed for the wellbeing of their families and relatives. The Chhath festival revolves around the Sun God for sustaining life on earth. Nineteen ghats in the city were spruced up. Policemen were deployed at every ghat to manage the crowds. CCTV cameras were also installed at various key points. Traditional Chhath songs were sung by many devotees as they walked to and away from the ghat.
HC sets deadline for curbing noise pollution
With the streets of the Bihar capital constantly drowned in vehicular noise, the Patna High Court has asked the state government to take steps to minimise the menace. While hearing a bunch of PILs, a division bench asked the government to come up with an action plan by April 10. Most of the streets remain noisy at most times of the day. Three-wheelers have done no good to the already bad situation. Many of the three-wheelers have removed the filters from silencers in order to reduce the consumption of fuel, but it causes a rise in noise.
New varsity faces space crunch blues
A week after it got a vice-chancellor and a pro-vice-chancellor, the newly created Pataliputra University is scrambling for space. The varsity is keen to start the academic session from July. The varsity was carved out of the Magadh University (MU) earlier this month. As many as 25 of the MU’s 44 constituent colleges and three of the four government-funded minority colleges under MU were brought under the Pataliputra University. Governor Satya Pal Malik appointed Banaras Hindu University (BHU) professor Gulab Chand Ram Jaiswal and NIT Patna electrical engineering professor Girish Kumar Choudhary as the VC and pro-VC respectively. While the new university wants to start PG courses in arts, science and commerce streams, it finds itself with not enough space in the colleges to run the courses.
Anand ST Das
Our correspondent in Bihar
anandstdas@gmail.com