University polls in Kolkata
Presidency University will hold campus elections on November 14, the authorities announced. On October 17, the state education department had said Jadavpur, Presidency, Rabindra Bharati and Diamond Harbour Women’s universities may hold campus polls whenever they deem fit. Presidency University issued a notification announcing the poll date and results would be declared on the same day. Last time, the polls were held in January 2017. The state government imposed a bar after that to quell campus violence.
New Tallah bridge to be wider
The proposed bridge over the railway tracks at Tallah will be six-metre wider than the existing one with a load-bearing capacity of close to 400 tonnes if the government and the railway accept the PWD’s proposal. The present bridge has a load-bearing capacity of around 250 tonnes. Engineers of various agencies that run a health check on the bridge advised the government to pull down the bridge terming its condition “precarious” following which heavy vehicles were banned on the bridge. The proposed bridge has a deck size of 24 metres in width—5.5 metre more than the existing one. This means the existing pillars will have to be pulled down and new ones built to bear the load of the wider decks, PWD engineer said.
Hawkers encroaching
Hawkers in Gariahat, who were given stalls by Kolkata Municipal Corporation, are now occupying double the width of the footpath than what they used to do before. The hawkers have kept their old wooden tables in front of the 4ft-wide kiosks. At many places, hawkers occupy both sides of the pavement leaving space for only one person to pass through the narrow passage left free. The civic body had handed over 20 kiosks to hawkers whose pavement shops were burnt when a fire broke out in January. The stalls were given free of cost and the civic body had asked the hawkers to stay within the kiosks.
Spring Fest at IIT-Kharagpur
Spring Fest of IIT, Kharagpur, the institute’s annual social and cultural fest, will be held from January 24 to January 26, 2020. With a footfall of more than 80,000, Spring Fest is one of the largest of its kind in Asia to be organised entirely by students, said an IIT official. This year Spring Fest has scheduled Hitch Hike, the Nationwide Prelims for five of its flagship events—Nukkad, SF Idol, Shake a Leg, Two for a Tango, Shuffle in October in eleven cities across India, which include Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.