Patna airport to improve parking facilities

PATNA: The state capital's Jayaprakash Narayan International (JPNI) airport is likely to go in for comprehensive improvement of its parking facilities and its entry/exit paths.

As more and more Biharis are opting for air travel, congestion has grown considerably at the city airport in the past few years. Hence, JPNI authorities are keen on improving parking facilities and traffic flow.

BIT-Patna techies, who studied the complexities in traffic flow and parking facilities for flyers' vehicles over the past one year at Patna airport, recently submitted their recommendations to the airport director.

The eight civil engineering students led by S K Sinha have recommended a completely new layout to improve the existing arrangements. "I have recommended a complete overhaul to make things smoother," said S K Sinha.

The number of flyers at JPNI airport has been increasing at the rate of over 50% per annum for the past two years.

"If air traffic continues to grow at this rate here, there will be no option other than providing a multi-level parking as only limited space is available for the purpose," Sinha added.

Presently there are two passages connecting the airport to the city. It has been recommended that the eastern passage should be used exclusively for entrance and western passage for exit. As enough space is available, the width of the proposed entry and exit roads has been proposed to be increased from six metres to 8.2 metres.

It has been suggested that toll collection point be at the exit of the parking lot as it will not disturb the traffic flow outside the parking area. To make it smooth and fast, an electronic ticketing system can be put in use for automatic collection of toll, the report suggests.

The techies, who were asked to study the issue like the study of Delhi airport (parking) taken up by IIT-Delhi years ago, have suggested stationing security personnel at entry and exit points, which will work as a deterrent for vehicles moving in wrong directions and will also increase security. It has also recommended positioning of CCTV cameras at these points.

As Airports Authority of India (AAI) is waiting for land from the state government to build a new airport, it is eager to provide all possible facilities to flyers at the Patna airport.

"BIT-Patna has provided us the detailed study very recently. It has also been explained to us. The recommendations are presently being studied, after which we will take concrete steps to implement them," airport director Arvind Dubey said.

The study was taken up in May 2010 and the report was submitted to the authorities concerned on June 3, 2011.

Nasa acclaim for BIT-Patna techies

PATNA: Budding techies from Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Patna, have shown their mettle at Lunabotics Mining Competition organized by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), USA at Kennedy Space Center in Florida recently.

The 80-kg robot, indigenously developed by a nine-member team of BIT-Patna, was the only entry from India. Its robot tracking system, Caterpillar Track, was adjudged the best among 36 participants from 13 countries across the globe.

"Our robot had to excavate an artificial lunar surface which was created by Nasa scientists. It was a very tough job to excavate, as the moon's atmosphere was simulated by the scientists," said M A Hassan, in charge of the Nasa project of BIT-Patna.

"But even in that condition, our robot, which was sturdily built, worked well and our robot tracking system was adjudged the best among all the participants," Hassan, who has received an appreciation letter from director (external relations), Kennedy Space Center, told TOI.

A total of 36 engineering institutes had participated in the event held between May 23 and 28. Through remote commands, all participating teams had to make their robots excavate (artificial) lunar surface and collect maximum 'soil' within 15 minutes.

"It was so challenging that a total of 18 robots just could not work under that condition," Hassan said. The BIT-Patna robot could not only work well but also excavated and collected a total of 30kg lunar surface.

For its splendid performance, BIT-Patna team has been directly reinvited to the next year's competition at Florida. "We do not need to go through all the procedure to participate in the prestigious Nasa competition next year. We have got a direct invitation," said Hassan, who along with nine techies played a significant role in fabrication of the robot.

The techies who come from diverse engineering disciplines are third year students-Anmol Sharma, Rajat Tyagi, Vishwa Teja, Anuraj Reddy, Arup Sen, Saurav Morarka-and second year students Pitak Mitra and Shuvmay Ghosh.

The entire project cost the team around Rs 10 lakh, which was provided by companies and public sector undertakings.

Three engineering institutes from India were invited to take part in the prestigious annual competition. But along with BIT-Patna only one institute from South India had participated. The robot of the other participant failed to perform at the demonstration.

Reacting to the feat, BIT-Patna director B N Giri told TOI: "I am more than happy. My students have made us all proud. In the wake of this appreciation, we will set up a full-fledged robotic lab on our campus to provide the students an opportunity to excel in the field."

Patna airport No. 1 in country

Patna: Biharis’ craze for air travel has seen an unprecedented upswing. Once again, city’s Jayaprakash Narayan International airport has topped in terms of maximum air passenger percentage growth among all airports in India this year.

Handling 51.8 % more flyers in the year 2010-2011 than what it had handled last year, JPNI airport has left behind the international airports at Delhi , Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata which handled 14.6%, 13.3%, 14.4% and 19.7% more flyers than last year respectively. All other 46 airports across the country were also left far behind.

According to official figures, Patna airport handled 8,38,509 passengers in 2010-11. It had handled a total of 5,52,440 passengers in the year 2009-10. The airport had registered a growth of 42.2 per cent in terms of passengers’ flow in 2009-10, which was also highest in the country.

JPNI airport which was at 25^th among all 46 airports in India in terms of total passenger flow during 2009-2010, has gone up three notches this year. While in the year 2008-09, JPNI airport was on 34^th position it arrowed up to 22^nd rank this year, leaving behind posh airports like Amritsar, Trichy and Vishakhapatnam.

During its super-show last year, Patna airport had moved ahead of Bagdogra, Jammu, Raipur, Varanasi, Agartala, Chandigarh, Madurai, Vadodara and Port Blair airports in terms of passenger flow leaving them way behind.

Its excellent show is indeed surprising in the sense that JPNI airport was declared as the most critical airports by the director general of civil aviation in 2010.

Pilots consider landing strips at Patna airport as nightmarish as the runway here is shorter than normal, with no room for error or emergency. DGCA had expressed fears in its reports after Mangalore air crash that a skidding of plane could mean the plane breaching the boundary wall and ramming a train as a railway line is just beyond the 6,000ft runway.

The aircraft movement has also consistently grown over the past years. While, the number of both domestic and international aircraft movement stood at 5,230 in 2008-09, it went up to 7,464 in 2009-10 and next year to 9,547.

On this growth front too, Patna airport has left Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and other airports way behind. Bihar has second position on this front following Chandigarh with 36.5% growth.

“This remarkable growth has been achieved in the face of severe constraints. Patna airport will attract even more flyers if the state government gives a serious consideration to airport’s expansion and removes the existing obstacles from the approach path,” said JPNI director Arvind Dubey adding unfortunately, the government never shows equivalent eagerness.

“We will install necessary infrastructure, pursuant to the provision of necessary land by the government, to sustain this extraordinary show,” Dubey added.

alokknmishra@gmail.com

Close shave for 95 as bird hits JetLite flight

PATNA: A JetLite flight from Mumbai to Patna via Ranchi with 95 passengers on board had a close call as it suffered a bird hit while landing at the Jayaprakash Narayan International Airport here on Wednesday morning.

The S2-721 flight took off from Mumbai at 5.40am and landed at Ranchi at 7:55am from where it took off for Patna at 8:35am. As the Boeing-737 approached the Patna airport around 9.20am, its nose hit an eagle at an altitude of 1,000 metres.

Though the commander landed the plane safely, he asked for a thorough technical inspection of the aircraft before flying it to Mumbai. While JetLite's three Patna-based engineers detected few snags, sources said, another technical team reached Patna from Delhi by the JetLite's afternoon flight to help them remove the snags.

Some of the stranded flyers, scheduled to take connecting flights from Mumbai, were flown to Delhi by JetLite's Patna-Delhi flight, S2-287, around 1.30pm en route to Mumbai.

The Mumbai flight was given clearance at 3.30pm, but the captain decided against taking off with all the passengers aboard due to high air temperature. As the airline's move to offload ten flyers met with stiff resistance, the plane finally took off at 5:30pm when the temperature fell.

A JetLite statement later attributed the grounding of the plane to an inspection by its engineering team. It did not talk about any bird hit.

The incident also delayed a GoAir Patna-Delhi flight by 50 minutes as its pilot spotted an eagle's cadaver on the runway.

Crows and eagles in the sky over the Patna airport are not an uncommon sight as there are quite a few slaughterhouses nearby, in the northwest of the airport.

IIT-JEE results: Super-30's score: 24/30

PATNA: Notwithstanding attempts to scandalize Bihar's famous Super-30, the noble initiative under which 30 poor IIT aspirants are coached free of cost by state's maths wizard Anand Kumar and his team every year, shone again with 24 of the students cracking the JEE this year.

The "achievers" include Dharmapal Yadav, son of a truck driver; Abhishek Ujjwal, son of a milk vendor; Amit Kaji, son of a marginal farmer; Arjun Singh, son of a grade IV railman; Jatinder Singh, son of a 'chaat-wallah'; Priyanka Sharma, daughter of a cellphone mechanic; Pravin Kumar Ray, son of an Army clerk; Shubham, son of a schoolteacher and fatherless Ayush Agrawal whose mother and sister eke out a living by giving tuitions in Varanasi.

With this, the total number of Super-30 students in IITs goes up to 236. Set up in 2002, Super-30 is an educational initiative under which 30 meritorious students belonging to economically backward sections are selected and provided free food and lodging and coached for a year to take what is feared by many as one of the country's toughest written tests.

In 2003, 18 of the 30 students came out with flying colours while the number of successful candidates went up to 22 the next year. In 2005, 26 of the Super-30 students made it to IITs while 28 each got through the exam in 2006 and 2007. Anand and his team experienced magic moments from 2008 to 2010 with all their 30 students making it to the list of successful candidates every year.

As Anand earned fame across the globe, certain quarters accused Super-30 of faking success and dared Anand to release the list of students prior to the declaration of the results. Anand obliged his zealous and jealous critics and released the list of students along with their roll numbers to the media three days before the results were out on Wednesday. "Super-30's success is for the world to see," Anand told TOI and modestly credited the "show" to the hard work of his students.

For Dharmapal, it's like a dream come true. The 18-year-old from obscure Rashalpur village in Vaishali district had been facing fierce odds ever since his father met with an accident four years ago. "We were caught in a vicious debt trap as we spent heavily on my father's medicare. I reared a cow and sold milk and cowdung to help my family survive," said Dharmapal, who has ranked 1307 in the OBC category.

Cellphone mechanic's daughter Priyanka travelled all the way from Ludhiana to join the Super-30. "My kinsmen were apprehensive about my safety in Bihar. But it was a safe, and successful, stay," she said as she gave a chuckle of delight.

Though a tad disappointed at the failure of six students, Anand attributed it to high cut-off. "In a first in the history of IITJEE, the cut-off was 229 this year. It was only 190 last year," he said and added that all his students would have made it had the cut-off been even 216 marks.

alokknmishra@gmail.com

Porn viewing, a favourite pastime for teens

PATNA: Among the city's teenagers, particularly boys, watching a 'blue film'—a euphemism for pornography— seems to have become a habit. Over the past few years, this furtive doing has taken over other extra-curricular activities.

On an investigative visit to different cybercafes in the city, this correspondent came across a revelation which may take parents aback.

A check of the web browsing history at a cyber café in Boring Road revealed that of the 100 web pages, 80 page titles referred to pornographic materials and porn video downloads.

Cybercafes in the city are mostly frequented by school and college-going boys and girls. Visitors, constituting boys and girls in a virtually equal number, download porn movies in their mobile phones and also store them in data cards.

Cybercafé owners have not limited themselves to allowing porn surfing to the visitors. Many have jumped on the flesh trade bandwagon as well. They provide beds, girls and also condoms to those looking for them.

During a raid on around 12-13 cybercafes in Gandhi Maidan, Kadamkuan, Kotwali and Buddha Colony police station areas on March 8, SP (City) Shivdeep Lande had found condoms and beds in a cybercafé.

Not only that, the cops had also caught 40 and odd couples in compromising position. Most of the couples were students in the age group of 16 to 18 years, belonging to well-off families.

Igniting the trend is easy accessibility of porn materials to these students. X-rated CDs and DVDs are flooding the city markets. It is alarming that children are the ones who are buying and selling them. Patna, of late, has become a major centre for the production and illegal sale of pornographic materials. Dozens of music shops are engaged in this business. "The children always want new products. And come looking for them," said a CD seller on busy Fraser Road, near Buddha Smriti Park.

About a dozen such stalls are situated around the railway station. Bakerganj, considered the city's largest electronic market, is believed to be the principal supplier of the CDs.

So high is the demand that a grocery shop near Kurji was found hoarding some of these DVDs. These shop owners display some popular CDs and then put the X-rated stuff beneath. Asked how they manage to escape the police net, he said, "The cops themselves come looking for DVDs as bribe. We gift them when they come."

In proof that flesh trade has caught up in upmarket apartments, hotels, guesthouses and in beauty parlours, Patna police had caught bar girls dancing semi-naked at a restaurant situated on Fraser Road in the night of May 8. The police had caught four girls, three bikes, one SUV and a huge cache of liquor. Earlier, such raids had also been conducted in upmarket apartments and beauty parlours, among other places.

The Patna police are up against such elements. "The police are actively working to check such elements. We will conduct raids whenever we get any tip," said Shivdeep Lande.

AI strike: No bookings till May 3

PATNA: The ongoing strike by Air India pilots has crippled air service for Delhi from the city's Jaya Prakash Narayan International Airport.

The state-owned carrier has directed its officials here not to make bookings till May 3. All of its three Delhi-Patna-Delhi flights have been cancelled till further announcement.

As there seemed no end to the strike soon, passengers continued to bear the brunt of the agitation on Friday. Most of the fliers have cancelled their tickets for Air India flights while some others were being accommodated in the flights of other airlines.

Adding to passengers' blues is the poor dissemination of information from the airline officials. Passengers claimd that the AI call centres were not properly informing the booked passengers about the right status of their flight.

A special AI flight IC-809 was flown from Delhi when Patna-bound fliers created chaos at Indira Gandhi International airport on Friday morning. The flight, which arrived here at 12:40 pm, had around 45 passengers.

"We were sent SMSes last evening that the morning flight to Delhi (IC-409) was cancelled. I was going to airport to get my money refunded, but on the I received an SMS that a special AI flight for Delhi will come this afternoon," said a flier.

"We are not updated about the status of the flight. The strike has come as a major inconvenience for us," he added.

The flight returned to Delhi via Ranchi. IC-809 also accommodated several Delhi-bound fliers from Ranchi airport.

AI officials at the airport here are also not being informed about the status of flights. "We had been intimated that the flights are cancelled on Friday. Suddenly we were informed that a special flight was scheduled to arrive at 12.40 pm. We also do not know about the status of flights on Saturday," sources said.

At present, there are eight flights for Delhi. Now that three AI flights are temporarily cancelled, there are only five flights left for fliers.

The strike has come as a godsend for all five private airlines. "Most of the affected fliers are switching over to Kingfisher, IndiGo, Jet Airways, and Go Air flights from AI. This has caused a steep hike in fare prices," sources told TOI.

During normal time an average flier had to pay Rs 3000 to 4000 for Delhi, which has went up to Rs 13,000. "Some fliers are getting tickets for Rs 5000 while some have to cough up Rs 10,000 to 13,000 for the same ticket," sources said.

The strike has also given a hard time to travel agents. "I am cancelling dozens of AI tickets daily. As other airlines are charging exorbitant fares, most of the fliers are opting for trains," said a travel agent.