kolkata confidential

Water tax canon?
With Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya having announced service charge on water supply, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation is agog with rumours of him being relieved from his post. The idea - floated by the Trinamool camp — is that the CPM may project service charge as an excuse to remove the mayor. Sources close to the party and mayor’s office, however, shrug off the very idea. “It’s just a rumour has been around for long. We don’t feel it is even benig considered,” said one. But Trinamool has its own ideas. “Their party can think of alternatives in April. It may be Robin Deb or even Md Salim,” said a senior Trinamool leader.

Revenge of the cops
The recent police reluctance to discuss the investigation into the abduction of a youth had the media up in arms. The speculation was that the cops were making no headway and were mum to cover up their embarrassment. Accordingly, reporters had jointly approached the Commissioner of Police, Gautam Mohan Chakraborti, with a request to provide the lowdown. The CP asked for a day’s time. But the press conference the next day embarrassed the media to no end. Not only had the Detective Department cracked the case — busting an organised kidnapping gang and recovering the ransom — but all of it was done by it a cop with a fractured leg, who was operating from home: DC (DD) Jawed Shamim.

Despite ban, docs on call
The state government’s ban on cellphones inside operation theatres seems to have garnered little response from doctors and surgeons. A recent drive by different hospital authorities caught dozens of senior doctors and surgeons. The good doctors not only kept their cellphones on and in full volume, many were even seen chatting away to glory while patients lay waiting to be operated upon. When confronted, the redfaced but undaunted doctors gave a variety of excuses. Some said they needed to keep in touch with their family. Some said they have critical patients in their care and were expecting calls anytime. Yet others were blatant enough to accept that their private practice makes it necessary to stay in easy reach. The government could do little but to let them go with a warning.

Engineering gaps
At the second Engineering & Technology student’s convention organised by the SFI, state IT minister Debesh Das said, “in our state we are not getting employable students”. Though there is a great demand of civil engineers and students in core sectors, private engineering colleges will not venture to open such departments, as it requires considerable infrastructure, he said. The companies of the IT sector, he said, are not taking engineers but opting for science graduates, claiming that they are better than the engineering graduates the private engineering institutions churn out. And as a reason, the former professor of Jadavpur University had this anecdote to recount: “A student approached me for a job, looking at his credentials I said it was quite impossible. A few months ago, I came to know that he has been appointed a teacher in an engineering college.”