PWD principal secy Ashwani Kumar transferred to Puducherry
NEWDELHI: Ashwani Kumar, principal secretary at Delhi’s public works department (PWD), who has constant run-ins with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government, has been appointed as the chief secretary of Puducherry.
According to the Union ministry of home affairs, A Anbarasu, the secretary (services) at Delhi government, was also transferred to Puducherry. Puducherry’s chief secretary Manoj Kumar Parida and another senior officer G Narendra Kumar have been transferred to Delhi but are yet to be get new assignment.
Ashwani Kumar, a 1992-batch IAS officer of Anunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram and Union Territories cadre, has been at loggerheads with the AAP government on several issues, including desilting of drains and PWD proposals, among other things.
Kumar was also holding the charge of vigilance secretary in the AAP government.
In June, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had written to chief secretary MM Kutty and asked him to initiate proceedings of “dereliction of duty” against Kumar for showing laxity in desilting of drains.
In response, Kumar had hit back saying “negativity and squabbling attitude” does not work in such a challenging task.
In September, Delhi’s ruling AAP had accused Kumar of corruption and stalling development works, charges the officer denied and termed as a “cockand-bull story”.
A panel formed by the Delhi Assembly had also initiated “breach of privilege proceedings” against Kumar, but he later got a stay from the High Court.
In October the Dialogue and Development Commission of Delhi, in its report, had accused Kumar of delaying the Barapullah Phase-iii elevated corridor as he could not acquire a patch of private land coming in the way of the project. NEW DELHI: Starting Friday, the number of stations monitoring air quality in the city increased to 35 from the existing 17, with two more stations scheduled to be added to the network by next week.
Officials said air pollution data till now was being recorded by four stations run by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee, eight by the Indian Meteorological Department and five by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).
“Ten new DPCC stations at ITI Shahdara, Mother Dairy Plant in Parparganj, PGDAV College at Sriniwaspuri, Dr Karni Singh Shooting Range, Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium, Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, DITE Okhla, Satyawati College, DITE Wazirpur and ITI Jahangirpuri were made online on Diwali. Eight more are operational and data from there is available from Friday,” a senior Delhi government official said.
The new stations, which joined the network from Friday, are located at Mahatma Gandhi Institute for Combating Climate Change in Alipur, ITI Narela, Sonia Vihar Water Treatment Plant, Bramprakash Ayurvedic Hospital in Najafgarh, National Institute of Malaria Research, Sector 8, Dwarka, Mundka Metro Residential Colony, Maharshi Valmiki Hospital, Pooth Khurd and Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies in Rohini.
Apart from this, work is nearly complete at two other stations at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in Pusa and National Institute of Tuberculosis & Respiratory Diseases, Aurobindo Marg, and these two will become part of the network in another week.
The real time pollution figures of PM2.5 and PM10 from these stations will be available on the Delhi Pollution Control Committee website. The Central Pollution Control Board will take this data and calculate the overall air quality index (AQI) of all the locations, which will then be displayed on its website and the SAMEER mobile app.
A more comprehensive picture of air pollution in DelhiNCR, however, is likely to be available from January 2018 onwards when 20 new monitoring stations become operational in areas of Haryana, bordering the capital.