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"If the visitor, on his return from the fort, is found carrying less plastic than what he took along, the deposit amount will be kept as penalty," said State Forest Minister Babanrao Pachpute, who was in the city for a hearing at Council Hall, on Monday.

Municipal Commissioner Praveensinh Pardeshi was also present. The forest department is also planning to charge entry fee for vehicles at the fort, it was stated.

Pachpute said, "Sinhagad is a popular haunt. People take a lot of plastic with them and litter them. In order to curb this menace, we have decided to charge amount in the range of Rs 50 to Rs 100, if the person is found carrying plastic bag with him. This will be in the form of deposit. Before they climb the fort, the plastic items with them will be counted, and on their return these will be again verified. If these plastic bags or bottles count less than they were, the deposit will be kept with us as penalty."

Villagers from the local village committee will be put into action. "The penalty and the entry fee amount recovered from the citizens will be utilised for paying remunerations to these employed people," he said.

The State Forest Department, with the help of the Pune Municipal Corporation, has also embarked upon the development work at Sinhagad. Since the forest department does not have sufficient amount of funds, the PMC will provide Rs 1.75 crore. This joint project will spread over a period of two years. It will include, among other things, a plantation drive, repairing and strengthening of the old water tanks on the fort, cement weir and control over forest fires.

The 10-teraflop supercomputer being built by the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) will be 10 times more powerful than the USbuilt Cray supercomputer in use at the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), based in the Delhi suburb of Noida.

A teraflop machine does one trillion calculations per second.

The machine is expected to be ready by 2009. "It is more versatile, (will provide) better accuracy and modelling (of weather data)," said A.R.

Upadhya, director of NAL.

A scientist at the NCMRWF , who did not want to be named, said a country as large as India that experiences complex weather patterns because of monsoon vagaries needs more powerful machines and also trained personnel to use the machines.

"For (building) new models, you need people who understand them (supercomputers)," he said.

The new supercomputer, which is to be linked with the proposed integrated Indian weather forecasting system, could help in both long-range forecasts and short-range predictions of extreme weather events such as the early monsoon being witnessed in parts of India.

The country is also launching new remote-sensing satellites such as Megha Tropiques and Oceansat to understand cloud patterns around the tropics, crucial to provide accurate weather forecasts.

Speaking at a press conference at Empress garden on Sunday, Suresh Pingle, honorary secretary of the Agri-horticultural Society of Western Maharashtra and a member of the green committee, said, "There are a lot of places with greenery in the city, such as the University of Pune and the National Defence Academy campuses. However, often, because of the interference of the bureaucracy, there is a threat to the green cover in the name of development. Nobody can question this. With this in mind, we have decided to form the body, which will act as a watchdog of the green cover."

The Agri-horticultural Society of Western Maharashtra is the managing body of the Empress garden.

Senior botanist Shridhar Mahajan, wellknown ornithologist Prakash Gole, industrialist Suman Kirloskar and a few journalists have come forward to form the committee, Pingle informed.

The real estate boom in the country in the last two years has turned the sector into an exciting investment option. With property prices escalating, investments in real estate have fetched returns that can even rival the stock markets'.

While not many can invest directly in real estate because of the huge money required for property purchases, the launch of realty mutual funds has made it possible even for small investors to have access to a diversified portfolio.

The options are open to all whether to invest in a physical property or buy mutual fund units. While taking the plunge, an investor needs to consider a number of factors, including the tax aspects, the liquidity and long-term prospects of such investments.

Let us begin with a comparison between investments in physical property and real estate mutual funds.

Money matters
An important consideration in favour of realty mutual funds is the small money required to enter the sector. A person can begin with investing just Rs 5,000 as in any other mutual fund. However, an investor needs to be well informed and the guidelines on the back of the form about the minimum investment and other details will be of significant help.

On the other hand, investors need to shell out big bucks for physical purchase of property.

While bank loans can be a way out to meet a person's financial needs in buying property, no such facility is available for purchasing mutual fund units.

A property must be held for a minimum of 36 months from the date of purchase to calculate long-term capital gains, while it takes just 12 months for mutual funds to yield long-term results.

Tax count
A property may serve as a steady means of income from rent but this income is taxable.

However, dividends earned from real estate mutual funds are completely exempt from tax under section 10 (35) of the income tax act. This can act as a big boost for small as well as big investors to go for real estate funds.

However, the tax liability on long- and short-term capital gains is the same for both physical assets and mutual fund units.

Again, a property calls for a tax deduction of up to Rs 1,50,000 per annum taking into account the interests on loans.

• Duty scale
  
• Liquidity flow
  
• Easy gift

Speaking to TOI, Tasneem Balasinorwala, founder-member of Kalpavriksh said, "This booklet takes up the issue of greens in the city. It has a simple purpose -- it demonstrates how you can contribute to the environment by simply knowing more about it or saving a tree from being felled in the neighbourhood. It does not seek to make an environmentalist out of citizens, just to take a few minutes of the citizen's time in order to impart new information. For example, how a simple phone call could save the life of a tree."

This guide will have three sections covering the city's environment, the Tree Act and tree plantation. The city's hills, rivers, lakes, trees and complete eco-system will be detailed and there will be information on how a citizen can go about a plantation drive and a list of heritage trees as well as dead trees in the city.

"We can do a lot to protect our immediate environment. Rampant tree-felling in cities has seen many citizen groups including Trees (Delhi), Pune Tree Watch, Hasiru Usiru (Bangalore), Nizhal (Chennai) and Save Rani Baug in Mumbai rally round to protect what rightly belongs to the citizens. Besides, there are projects in many Indian cities where efforts are being made by citizens to protect the environment in different ways. An environmentally-conscious citizen may wish to participate as well, and this book will serve as a perfect guide," Balasinorwala said.

The book will also include various drives of the Pune Municipal Corporation in consultation with Yashwant Khaire, head of the garden department.

Initially, 500 copies of the book will be printed and a tentative price of Rs 50 has been decided upon. According to Balasinorwala, the NGO will target school and college students and teachers, government agencies, common citizens and resident welfare associations.

The section provides details such as minimum and maximum temperature, minimum and maximum relative humidity, rainfall and wind direction for each district for the next five days.

To view the district-level forecasts, click on the map of the country in the district level forecast section on the IMD website, and then on the state and district.

The website will have short range (next 48 hours), medium range (3-5 days) and long range forecasts (issued twice a year). A multimodel ensemble-based district-level weather forecast will also be issued every five days.

TOLL FREE NO:
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For the first time, the Zilla Parishad has been asked to install the rain gauges so that the irrigation department has information about the rainfall and is better equipped to control the release of water from dams.

The first major event since their launch - IYCN's Delhi Youth Summit on Climate (DYSoC) - will be held on May 28 and 29, in Teen Murti Bhawan. Eighty young people will come together to set the agenda on climate change for Delhi.

The DYSoC is in association with UKbased Lead International's India chapter, Fountain of Development, Research and Action, the UNESCO and the Youth Parliament Foundation. Registration forms can be downloaded at iycn.in.

"There has been no real `Indian' youth movement on the issue of climate change. When Kartikeya, a key member of IYCN, attended the UN Cli- mate Change Conference in Bali in De- cember as part of a US youth delega- tion he was shocked that there was no representation of the Indian youth at such an important conference," says Govind Singh, a Ph.d scholar at Delhi University's School of Environ- ment Studies.

And so Kartikeya Singh, a Compton Mentor fellow (a US fellowship) who is working on renewable energy resources in India, and Govind envisioned this youth coalition.

The forest department and the PMC will jointly launch the project and seek help from an NGO to complete the project.

The PMC plans to plant 4,000 trees on the hill and protect wildlife as well. Members of the tree authority, including Chandrasen Borhade, Dattatrya Dhankawade and Sunita More expressed concern over the decreasing green cover spread across 245 hectares of land due to slums.

With the budgetary allocation of Rs 2.60 crore, the civic body has already started work on three stations, while the construction of the other four is expected to start in a few months' time.

"We have started construction of new fire stations on Sinhagad road, at Kothrud and at Kondhwa. The work will get completed in four months," said chief fire officer Devendra Potphode.

We have identified land for construction of four more fire stations at Hadapsar, Dhanori Baner and Kharadi, he said. "The work is expected to start within three months and the fire stations should be functional by the year end."

They are the custodians of your right to information. But try asking them for information and see what is in store for you.

M.V Mysura Reddy did try . and drew a blank. Only nine commissions including the Central Information Commission responded, the rest did not even bother to acknowledge his request sent two months ago.

And it did not seem to make a difference that he is a member of the body that enacted the law more than two years ago - the Indian Parliament. The infor mation law says public authorities have to respond to RTI applications within a month and empowers the commissions to impose a penalty of Rs 250 for each day of delay beyond this period.

Disappointed, Reddy has finally complained to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh questioning "what moral right do these commissioners have to adjudicate RTI cases if this is how they themselves honour RTI Act". A Rajya Sabha member, Reddy said he wanted to assess the status of the implementation of the law and asked for 14 pieces of information on their working.

Of course, Reddy did not get answers even from the commissions that did respond.

"To a simple question like in how many cases did they provide infor mation and how many cases were re jected by them, they say that they do not maintain such records. I thought this was a very basic information to assess how pro-people an informa tion commission is," the MP said.

Information commissions - packed with retired bureaucrats - al ready are on the firing line from RTI activists complaining that they are far too lenient on public authorities and hardly impose penalties on the government.

Reddy also pointed to the resource crunch the commissions seemed to be facing. "The govern ment has taken credit by passing the law but seems to be strangling it by not providing adequate resources," Reddy wrote to the PM.

Magsaysay award winner for his RTI campaign, Arvind Kejriwal of Parivartan, suggested he wasn't surprised. "It is no wonder that the RTI Act is being mocked at by gov ernment officials," said Kejriwal.

"They are supposed ensure that every citizen is provided the infor mation that one seeks and penalise officials who do not provide infor mation. But how would they protect a law, which they themselves don't follow!" he said.

Things are pretty systematic here.

I have done a lot of research b4 opting for this building.As the layout is amazing and the entire complex stretches acrozz a square plot. so things are very nicely placed.

And as far as the construction is concerned he is on schedule till now and the construction is in full swing as i keep visiting the site often.

I have enquired from Rohan builders about Mont Vert and the reply i got is that "he is a pretty good builder".

Just go and check out the site and you will come to knopw the reality.

Speaking to TOI, Subhash Machare, chief of land estate department, PCMC, said the civic body had failed to get a good response for renting out these shops.

Located off the Pune-Nashik highway, the civic body built the garden around the lake in Bhosari, called the Bhosari lake garden. The PCMC also built 28 small shops near the garden in 2003, said Machare. The land estate department got its possession in December 2004. Each shop measures 7x7 feet and was meant for small traders to sell snacks, flowers and other items to people visiting the place.

He said the department had invited applications from the public for renting out these shops several times over the past five years, but received a low response. The main grievance of the applicants was that very few people visit the area near the shops.

Machare said the shops will hopefully be taken up now, as people have recently shown interest. The civic body will have these shops inspected and the damages repaired if any. It will then invite applications for renting these shops.

Nandkumar Saturdekar, member of PCMC's Tree Authority, in a statement issued here, expressed concern over unauthorised felling of 12 trees in Chinchwad by the PCMC engineering department. These trees were planted by former Corporator Kanta Mondhe at Raj Park in Keshavngar in Chinchwad.

He asked, "If there is no co-ordination between the civic engineering department and the garden department then why should we plant trees?"

Saturdekar said that he has informed the garden department about the second incident of unauthorized felling of 14 trees in Kshavnagar area of Chinchwad on Sunday. He has demanded immediate action against the guilty.

Meanwhile, when contacted Suresh Salunke, chief of PCMC garden department said that he was unaware of the incidents as he was on leave.

Subhash Dumbre, additional commissioner, PCMC said that he would take details from the garden department officials and take appropriate action.

Suresh Kalmadi, who heads the organising committee of the games, met Devyani Rana, who heads the energy and environment unit of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and municipal officials to discuss how to turn this IT hub green.

They discussed waste management, anti-litter campaign, sustainable transport, tree planting and a `no-plastic' drive at Balewadi, where the main stadium will be located. Buses will switch over to compressed natural gas (CNG) in Pune.