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IAS officer transferred from Chennai Corporation for warning against Chennai Floods
Do you remember IAS officer Vijay Pingale?
CHENNAI- You may not but with the current condition of Chennai, he is one person we should all remember. Around three weeks back, the government had shunted out of the Corporation of Chennai this top official with a reputation for being highly competent and scrupulous. This was just three days after he named contractors who botched up road work in the city and fined them in an unprecedented move towards transparency by the civic body.
He was transferred
Corporation works department joint commissioner Dr Vijay Pingale received the transfer order from the chief secretary on November 14. The government had moved him to the industries department as joint secretary.
Pingale, an MBBS graduate and IAS officer of the 2004 batch, spearheaded several initiatives in 16 months as joint commissioner in the corporation, most notably in the road quality control wing.
Officials said on condition of anonymity that the powerful contractor lobby was responsible for the decision to move Pingale out of the corporation. “The timing of his transfer, only days after he penalised contractors responsible for poorly laid roads, is no coincidence,” an official said.
Image:TheHindu
On November 11, the corporation, under Pingale, made public the names of nine contractors who it said would have to reimburse the civic body Rs 2 crore for repairs it carried out on stretches laid by them. Pingale had promised to name other contractors for poor work and said the total penalties were likely to rise.
“The penalties infuriated the contractors,” a corporation engineer said. “Pingale insisted on accountability and never buckled to political pressure. This obviously did not go down well with some people.”
Even Ministers didn’t like it
An official who attended a monsoon review meeting headed by minister S P Velumani last week said the minister and other officials had taunted Pingale for being a straight arrow. “It appears that [the minister and senior officials] decided that Pingale had to go,” he said.
“It was because of his expertise that we were able to limit waterlogging when it rained,” the official said. “If he remained in the corporation for two more years or so, he could have truly helped it move forward.”
Pingale’s associates said they were shocked to learn that the government had shunted him out. They said the transfer would affect work on ambitious corporation projects such as a pedestrian plaza in T Nagar, state-of-the art public toilets for the city and a bicycle-sharing project to reduce vehicular congestion, not to mention the his abortive attempt to give the city better roads by making contractors accountable for their work.
The real crime
The officials said inferior work by the contractors, who have admitted to forming a cartel to bag contracts from the corporation, as also to using material of poor quality to lay roads because have to bribe councillors at least 10% of the cost of any project, and corruption at various levels in the corporation had left the city’s roads potholed and broken with the first monsoon rain.
Another corporation official said Pingale had set up a quality control wing in the corporation six months after he joined. “There was resistance to the move because assistant engineers would not be able to make money from contractors if they report poor quality of work,” the official said. “Pingale is an honest man with good intentions but he did not know which strings to play.”
As head of the works department, Pingale was second only to corporation commissioner Vikram Kapur and handled major duties in the civic body including roads, buildings, bridges, solid waste management, storm water drains, electrical, mechanical engineering, planning and investigation.
Now that Chennai is really in ruins, may be the citizens will know who the real villains were.
The Original story published in The Times Of India has been suitably updated.
Shimla-In yet another instance, two private bus operators in Shimla city were seen creating a nuisance for the public by jamming the traffic. A reader clicked some pictures at the BCS bust stop in Shimla city on February 19, 2022, at about 8 PM and shared them with us. The reader alleged that two private bus operators, namely ‘Komal’ and ‘Chadda’, indulged in a verbal spat, most probably over their schedule. While the drivers argued, one of the buses remained parked in the middle of the road, choking the traffic. The staff of these two buses indulged in a verbal spat for about 5-10 minutes during which the general public faced a huge inconvenience. The reader has requested the Traffic Police Shimla to take action against such operators and discourage them from adopting such a bullying attitude that they don’t even hesitate to block the entire road.
Write and Publish Blog on HW
If you have relevant issues/complains that you want the people and the government to see and read about, you can publish blogs on Himachal Watcher. Send us your blogs with pictures/videos at editor [at] himachalwatcher [dot]com
Language: Hindi and English
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Sundernagar-Many people visit the Sundernagar lake in Mandi district and litter along the road. Winds carry all those packets and plastic bottles into the lake. This practice of littering is unlawful because it costs millions in clean-up projects. It portrays a bad picture of an area. Littering is a huge threat to the aquatic life too. In my view, the solution is awareness, responsibility, sensibility and concern for nature. We as a society need to play a big role. At least, dustbins should be installed along the lake. Otherwise, the negligence in the present will affect us in near future.
-Blog and Picture By Divya Acharya, Sundernagar
Write and Publish Blog on HW
If you have relevant issues/complains that you want the people and the government to see and read about, you can publish blogs on Himachal Watcher. Send us your blogs with pictures/videos at editor [at] himachalwatcher [dot]com
Language: Hindi and English
Note For Multimedia Files: If you have high resolution images/videos (taken with smartphone/camera), then send us the originals through Google Drive or We Transfer or any other file sharing applications that suits you.
Shimla-A youth from a small town of the Mandi district – Sarkaghat- started as a freelancer and went on to launch his own start-up in 2014. By 2021, the start-up grew into a company that has garnered international clients and also designed and developed websites and web apps for several Departments of the Himachal Pradesh Government.
Netgen IT Solutions Pvt Ltd- a young agile company- has, so far, developed websites for the Department of Information Technology, Women & Child Development, Rope & Rapid Transport Development Corporation, HP Milk Federation Cooperation, and the HP AIDS Control Society.
Besides, it also developed HimSuraksha Abhiyan App (National Health Mission) and the website of the Department of Tourism & Civil Aviation along with a Services Portal.
Further, the website of the Department of Information & Public Relations and the single window system was also developed by NetGen.
Having developed over 2500 websites, Netgen IT Solutions has an imprint of having worked for clients spread over 25 countries in Europe, America, Asia and Australia.
Bootstrapped as a Start-Up on 7th July 2014, the company has evolved to offer a diverse set of services for web, e-commerce and mobile solutions that have enabled Global and Indian business to adapt to a Digital First environment. In seven years, this Shimla-based company has carved out a niche for itself.
The company started with a small team of just four people, and today it employs strong-heeled 25 IT professionals. The skillset of web developers, designers, networking specialists, social media marketers and others is expanding with the growth of the company.
To mark the NetGen Foundation Day, the company hosted a live inter-action of the team members with some clients to understand the need for future technologies and solutions for a fast-changing business environment in the shadow COVID pandemic.
Mr Rajneesh Rana, Founder and Managing Director of the company, is a computer science graduate. Speaking about the company’s journey, Rana’s says, “Stepping out from working as a freelancer at the small township of Sarkhaghat, in Himachal Pradesh, to launching a start-up company, was my first step in entrepreneurship. The company was founded on a shoe-string budget with a small capital outlay. After overcoming the initial hesitancy, we’re on the firmer ground today.”
With the growth in demand for IT Services, the company in the initial year faced manpower shortages. The management took to train and equip freshers in a mentorship program to meet its needs for IT Professionals and also to equip others to find gainful employment elsewhere. Netgen till date has trained over 50 freshers with essential and advanced IT skills. Most of them for the first time in their careers got exposure to the IT Industry.
The company’s IT Technical Team today is professionally equipped to work in 20+ technologies that can be deployed across a vast network of industries.
The Netgen team of IT professionals has expanded the services that the company now provides. A multitude of projects employing creative website design-development; customised software products; e-Commerce solutions; server administration – web security – networking services; mobile application design – development; social media marketing; stand completed.
“There is a growing demand for many other IT and IT-enabled services that the company has successfully delivered for Global and Indian clients,” said Rajneesh.
“Since the breakout of the COVID pandemic, the demand for online services has increased. It created an environment that demands moving things onto digital platform, bringing more opportunities for the IT sector ,” added Rajneesh.
“Take the case of the Government of Himachal Pradesh, India. To secure baseline health data of the over 70 lakh residents in the state and to prepare effective strategies for countering the spread of the pandemic in challenging hilly terrain, the state government needed a simple but effective IT-enabled solution to capture the data as fast as possible,” he said.
“The ‘Him Suraksha Abhiyan’ application designed and developed by NetGen IT Solutions was used by thousands of teams spread under 2300+ sub-centres. In just over a month, the software solution created successfully captured the data of over 68 lakh residents of Himachal Pradesh,” he added.
The 70:30 Percent (%) Global – Domestic revenue stream of Netgen has prepared the company to expand both its export and domestic service portfolios, said Rajneesh.
Mr Ravinder Makhaik, Director of the company says, “growing steadily, Netgen is a debt-free, profit-making company. A healthy mix of domestic and international businesses, with sound financials, gives the company strength to take up more challenging projects. Our portfolio of government projects is making good progress.”
Founded as a 1 lakh authorized capital company and with annual revenues rising at a 25 % compounded annual growth rate, the Netgen Board of Directors has decided to expand the authorized capital of the company to Rs 10 lakh to meet future growth needs.
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