Monday, February 23, 2009

Karnataka High Court sets up 'Green Bench'

This could well be a first in legal history. Karnataka High Court has announced setting up of the Bench to exclusively deal with environmental issues. Thi High Court receives plenty of appeals n issues like mining, water, forest, lakes, pollution etc. The Court can now speedily dispose of such cases as those will directly come under the purview of this special Bench headed by Chief Justice. The cases pertaining to environment in any other circuits will transferred to this Bench.
The notification says that all the writ petitions related to grant of lease/licence of mines and minerals, or govt., private or forest lands which are concerned with the protection and improvement of environment and prevention of hazards to human beings, other living species, and have bearing with pollution control, will now be dealt with this Bench.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Old singing of Pt Bhimsen Joshi released on CD

Rare and old recordings of Pt. Bhimsen Joshi has been released as CD album titled 'My Music - The SaaReGaMa Years'. (The company SaaReGaMa was previously known as HMV) This is a set of four albums having 2 CDs each. These contain more than 40 Raagas, some of which have been created and composed by Bhimsenji himself. Some of these recordings were earlier released on 78 RPM records by HMV. Some of these are 3 minute bandeeshes sung by Panditjee at his 24 years of age. These date back to recordings from 1946.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

e-governance awards in India

A small hilly state of Himachal Pradesh has got Natational Award for e-governance award for 2008-09 for its electronic gazette (e-gazette) and Himachal Prdesh Police Web Portal (HIMPOL). HIMPOL has also been awarded under the catagory of 'oustanding performance in citizen centric service delivery'.

A so called backward state of Bihar has won national Award for e-governance for 'Jankari', its project to empower people with information under Right To Information (RTI) over telephone.Bihar is the first state to start such a project, envisioned by chief minister Nitish Kumar, which enable people living in remote places of state under RTI through just a telephone call. The operators receiving the calls in call centers draft the application under RTI and send it to public authorities for providing the requisite information to applicants. State government is making efforts through its Public Relations department to make people aware of the programme and the public telephone utility BSNL is making efforts to widen its network. In the two years of it soperation the call centre received nearly 22,600 calls of which about 700 were for submitting applications, about 3000 for filing first appeal and about 1400 for filing second appeal. Now the 400 blocks fo t eh state will be connected with state secetariate through Bihar State Wide Area Network to provide quicker information to and from block headquarters. Efforts are on for conveting information on treasury, VAT, transport applications and e-tendering.