Draft notification for Bike Taxis in New Town

Pic from Financial Express dt 6 March 2016

In terms of notification no.2576-WT/TR/3M-92/2009 dt 30.6.2016, the Transport Department, Govt of West Bengal has published a draft notification inviting comments on rules for introducing bike taxi services in New Town. The notification proposes to allow two-wheelers as Contract Carriages in terms of section 2(7) of the MotorVehicles Act 1988. Permits would be given by RTA (Regional Transport Authority) North 24-Paraganas.

I thanked Hon'ble Transport Minister Subhendu Adhikary and Transport Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay last week for the notification. I've had a preliminary discussion with Ola officials and agency running it in Gurgaon mostly to bring the contents of the notification to their knowledge. Once the final notification is done (last date of suggestion was last Friday) , we from NKDA will take further action. With service roads, wide streets and a planned network of roads and auto-stands, New Town residents and visitors should have great use of the bike Taxis once these are on road.

The draft notification says that the area of operations for the bike taxis in the pilot phase would be within New Town, that Major Arterial Roads would not be accessible to Bike Taxis except crossings and the colour would be white with words "Bike Taxi" written in blue letters. GPS tracking of bikes would be done. More than one pillion rider would not be allowed. No minors would be allowed. Helmets for rider will be provided by the driver. No luggage except very limited backpack / briefcase will be allowed. Service provider will develop an App for use by citizens. The Service Provider must have at least 15 bikes.

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Clippings:

Khabar 265 dt 17 July 2016

Millennium Post dt 17 July 2016

Banmahotsav at Eco Park

Ministers Firhad Hakim and Benoy Krishna Barman launched Bon Mahotsav 2016 of Forest Department from Eco Park this morning.  In New Town 46,000 pits have been dug and after two showers or so, actual plantations will start from 25 July. There was token tree plantation by all VIPs today 

Lottery for shops / stalls

Lottery for shops / stalls of three markets of New Town will be held at Rabindra Tirtha on 18th and 19th  July by NKDA

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Clipping:

Khabar 365 dt 13 July 2016

PPP Public Art "Dwar"

"Dwar" near City Centre2

In a little plot of land of Hidco near City Centre 2, a private developer Benchmark Developers developed an installation called "Dwar" denoting the entry to New Town as one drives in from the Airport. Minister Firhad Hakim inaugurated the sculpture.

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In the morning, the 52st Branch in Kolkata of Union Bank was inaugurated by me. This is located at the entry point of New Town from Salt Lake side. A picture:

New Union Bank at New Town

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Clippings (all three from Millennium Post dt 12 July 2016):

Rooftop Green Urban Farming

Rooftop of 1C market: Green Urban Farming

Yesterday, we went to visit the 1C Market with CEO, CE NKDA and others to see the progress of the rooftop green farming. This would be an example of growing organic vegetables with rainwater, with a coir based root nutrition system instead of earth (earth would create additional weight on roof and would clog drains etc) and using composted organic waste of the market as manure. The plants would be protected from direct sunlight by using solar panels that would in turn produce net-metered clean power. The water in tanks (40,000 litre capacity) to hold the run-off water from rooftop would be lifted up using solar pumps. The organic produce of this urban garden would be sold from an NKDA stall in the same 1C market building. Expected to be launched by Puja season.
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Clipping:

Pratidin dt 9 July 2016

Asian Age dt 11 July 2016

Convention Centre : Visit by Minster

Minister Firhad Hakim visited the construction site of Biswa Bangla Convention Centre yesterday. There were few presentations by Architects DMA, Agency L&T and Engineers of Hidco. A target of March 2017 was set.

Before that, Minister reviewed the progress of Namami Gange projects in the state. 10 municipal chairpersons were present. CMD EPIL, Consultants Egis, Project Director and others were present.

We also presented to the Minister at Hidco Conference room the progress on the Kolkata International Arbitration Centre and the design of the 15,000 seater indoor stadium.

Afterwards, I went with officers and engineers to the Start Up building under development. I also had the first cup of coffee at Business Club yesterday, the first prepared in Cafe Ekante at the Business Club: a picture taken yesterday:

Coffee at Cafe Ekante at New Town Business Club

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Clippings:

Khabar 365 dt 10 July 2016

HT dt 10 July 2016

Millennium Post dt 10 July 2016 

Asian Age dt 10 July 2016

Vision and Long Term Planning : 10 years

In the meeting with Alipurduar district at Hasimara on 28 June 2016, Hon'ble CM mentioned that Long Term Planning (10 year span or so) and Vision statements may be drawn up by various entities, so that a city, for example, would know how to go into the future.

While doing the Smart City Plan for New Town, we'd zeroed on a vision statement that talked about being a livable city that takes pride in itself and one that is economically vibrant (see my blog post at http://principalsecretarysblog.blogspot.in/2016/03/a-livable-city-that-takes-pride-in.html ) . So now we decided to proceed for long term perspective planning.

We had a brainstorming session today with CEO NKDA Debapriya Biswas, CE NKDA P Ray, Chief Architect NKDA Sukrit Chatterjee and Dr T N Majumdar of IT Kgp was a special invitee.

I mentioned that the 10 year plan of New Town must stand on the Vision Statement, the fact that demographically the commuting population was twice as large as the resident population, that the Economic Hubs (Financial/Legal, Health, Educational and IT) would play a pivotal role and that it would aspire to be a Green City.

Dr Majumdar talked about the concepts of Global City (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city ) and Creative City ( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_city ) and agreed to help us. He'd revert in 2 weeks' time.
 
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Clipping:

Asian Age dt 8 July 2016

Cafe Ekante at Bus Stand

Cafe Ekante Stall being built: at Bus Terminus on first rotary

The raised triangular places at first rotary are already popular public spots where the neighbourhood come down in the evenings to give adda or munch phuchka. Now Cafe Ekante is going to set up a kiosk shortly.
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Clipping:

Aajkal dt 7 July 2016

Communication with Citizens

600 sq ft curved LCD [anel: to be operational soon

Demo video running 

During one of the citizen workshops on Smart Fridays during preparations for the Smart City for New Town, few residents, especially senior citizens, mentioned that they were not getting information on the various events happening in New Town. I tried to refer them to our web site (see, for example, http://www.wbhidcoltd.com/events/events.pdf ) or our Mobile Apps "Smart City New Town" but they responded by saying that they were often not net savvy. They refereed to old fashioned newspaper stands near bus stops and posters on walls etc. We, instead, decided to install a very large LCD board on Hidco Bhavan prominently which one cannot miss. We plan to broadcast scrolls, slides and videos including live TV feed (for example, govt events like swearing in of ministry etc). Because of the curved facade of Hidco Bhavan, engineers had to invoke special techniques. To be able to withstand wind pressure, storm, rain and dust, tough specifications were cited by the engineers.
I am told that the LCD project will be handed over for use by Hidco by July 2016.
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Clippings:

MP dt 6 July 2016

Millennium Post dt 6 July 2016

Ei Samay dt 6 July 2016

Green City Football League

A Green City Football League is planned to be organised at the Football Ground of Action Area 1 of New Town in association with M/s Kaleidoscope. This is for the residents of New Town and wish to catch on the Euro Football Fever as well as the Green City Programme of the State Government. The league will be held on 9-24 July 2016.
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A very large team of engineers led by Shri Ananda Ganguly, ED(Enginnering) inspected all roads of New Town to see how (i) these may be kept water-logging free (ii) weeds and blockages on roadsides are removed (iii) potholes do not appear and few that are present are repaired immediately. I took a review meeting in the evening and set targets to different engineers of HIDCO and NKDA.
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Clipping:

Times of India dt 5 July 2016

Ei Samay dt 5 July 2016

Innovative Incentive for Clean Green Eco Park

Hon'ble CM on 1st July at the North 24-Paraganas district meeting asked officials and chairpersons present to be innovative in beautifying, greening and cleaning cities of the state. Today morning I discussed an interesting concept with Vodafone. By rewarding people to use garbage-vats by giving free talk time (say 5 minutes' talk time) to anyone who uses the bin. How will it work? Anyone opening the lid and throwing something into the bin will switch on a small key pad on which the mobile number of the person can be keyed in. This will auto-send an SMS to Vodafone who will give x minutes' talktime free to the user mobile. We also talked about an emergency red button on light-posts in Eco Park which, when pressed, will give a silent alert to the nearest Eco Park Office and Police Camp with location: this will make Eco Park safer for visitors. A CCTV located nearby would prevent misuse of the alert button.

Incidentally, Airtel has already agreed to install free Wi Fi in Mothers' Wax Museum for allowing selfies to be instantly uploaded by WhatsApp etc.
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Clippings:

HT dt 4 July 2016

Khabar 365 dt 4 July 2016

Khabar 365 dt 4 July 2016

Asian Age dt 4 July 2016

Green Sculpture

Yesterday, we had a detailed meeting with Ms Aditi Chakraborty, noted creative expert, to set up in Eco Park a 'green sculpture" that will encourage people to love trees. The installation will be made up of naturally occurring materials, as distinct from artificials like fibre glass etc. We agreed to provide a space of 25 ft by 35 ft in Eco Park for this. I explained that the concept would match the Green City programme now being launched in New Town. She agreed to send the concept drawings soon.

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Clippings:

HT dt 3 July 2017

New Town Business Club: Application Starts

I visited the New Town Business Club this afternoon. I found that several kiosks (3ftx4ft) on street-light poles have been set up; there should now be no difficulty in finding out the location as you come from Salt Lake end and turn right on the first main traffic rotary signal.

The application forms are available with the Manager and I was told that more than 150 forms were taken away on the very first two days. Here is the FAQ: http://nkdamar.org/Pages/FrequentlyAskedQuestions.aspx

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Clippings:

"Internet Kitchen"

An start-up founder met me last week with an idea of setting up an "internet kitchen" in New Town. This would be, according to him, a back-end kitchen without a restaurant that would only deliver food at home / workplace where anyone could order something through an Apps and it would be delivered to his place. The difference between a normal home delivery service and this internet kitchen would be that nothing would be pre-cooked for quick service (as in an restaurant) so one would always have the freshly prepared food like from one's own home kitchen. Since there were a substantial presence of IT / BPO staff in New Town, many of  whom have to eat out every day and are tired of restaurant food and miss home food (think of Mumbai's dabba-wallahs, I thought)  this would be a good model.

I arranged to show him the Hidco Bhavan Canteen andreferred to the Tender ( see http://wbhidcoltd.com/uploads/tender/Tender_1162.pdf ) which will soon be republished, where one could use the large kitchen space with only the requirement that Hidco Bhavan staff would get standardised food items at reasonable cost (Chicken Thali: Rs 60-65, Veg Thali Rs 35-45 etc, see the tender link).
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Clippings:

Ei Samay dt 29 June 2016

Millennium Post dt 29 June 2016

Khabar 365 dt 28 June 2016

aajkal 30 June 2016

Aajkal dt 1 July 2016

Millennium Post dt 1 July 2016

Millennium Post dt 1 July 2016