STATE

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HYDERABAD

THE HINDU

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2015

e-boarding service launched at RGIA

BRIEFLY

First airport in the country to launch the facility for all domestic passengers
SURESH KRISHNAMOORTHY

Home Minister Nayani Narasimha Reddy and ViceChancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru Architecture and Fine Arts
University Vice-Chancellor, P. Padmavathi felicitating newly
elected Warangal MP, Pasunuri Dayakar and his wife in
Hyderabad on Monday. -PHOTO: NAGARA GOPAL

MANHANDLING OF JOURNALIST
Press Council of India serves notice on TS govt.
HYDERABAD: Taking cognizance of

an attack on The Hindu journalist

during Beef festival held at
Osmania University, the Press
Council of India has asked the
State government to submit a
report within two weeks on the
issue. In a letter dated December
23, 2015 and addressed to Chief
Secretary and DGP of Telangana
State, the Council informed that
it will decide the course of action
based on the report.
On Thursday, December 10,
while covering the Beef festival,
Nikhila Henry, a Special
Correspondent with The Hindu
was manhandled by the police
officials inside the Osmania
University campus and taken to
the police station. The attention

of the Press Council of India was

drawn by one of its Members,
Kosuri Amarnath about the
attack.
Since the matter prima-facie
discloses a threat to the free
functioning of the press and the
statute mandates the Press
Council to preserve the freedom
of the Press, Honble Chairman,
Press Council has taken suo-motu
cognizance of the matter under
Regulation 13 of Press Council
(Procedure for Inquiry)
Regulations, 1979, read one of
the contents of the notice.
The Council has further asked
the State government to ensure
that the journalists discharge
their duties without any fear or
hindrance.

BRAND HYDERABAD
Hyd Parks open session with KTR today
HYDERABAD: Hyd Park, an open

platform for discussions and

exchange of ideas, debates,
books, intellectual, political and
social and literary events, is
organising an interaction with the
Minister for IT & Panchayat Raj K.
T. Rama Rao at Rock Heights,
Shilparamam, Hitec City, on
December 29, at 6.30 p.m.
L Ravichander, senior counsel

of A.P High Court and columnist,

will be anchoring the
conversation for Hyd Park with
KTR on a range of topics on the
theme of Brand Hyderabad.
The event is free, open to all
and will also have Q&A session
with the audience. For details,
contact: oratorgreat@gmail.com
or +0-95812-12340 Sriram Karri, a
press release said.

HYDERABAD: The Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) here

became the first airport in the
country to launch e-Boarding facility for all domestic passengers.
Union Minister for Civil Aviation
Ashok Gajapathi Raju clicked the
service marking the inauguration
of this facility that was built inhouse by the GMR Hyderabad
Airport (GHIAL).
Now, a domestic passenger will
have to flash his or her e-Boarding card on their mobile phones
and furnish Aadhaar card number to walk into the airport and
straightaway catch a flight. One
can also use the boarding card issued by Common Use Self Service (CUSS) machine or check-in
counters also. Passengers will
continue to have the flexibility to
show a photo-ID in
case the Aadhaar
number is not available. This solution
TRAVEL
eliminates the need
EASY
for manual stamping
boarding passes or
New mantra of
check-in counters.
Speaking to presspersons after the
launch, the Minister
said a lot of hard work had gone
into the process before its formal
launch here on Monday. The
concept of keeping nefarious
people out and helping passengers enjoy the convenience of air
travel is a continuous process,
globally. Airports constantly
strive to offer a seamless interface
between getting a boarding pass,
getting their baggage cleared and
actually boarding the aircraft, he
explained. The mix of passenger
convenience and compliance
with security systems has to be
maintained, even as it keeps
changing, considering that it is a
very dynamic situation. Travel fatigue should not lead to travel
rage and irritate passengers. Hyderabad and Bangalore airports are
better administered. We will extend the e-Boarding facility in a
phased manner, starting with airports that have high footfall, Mr.
Raju said.
CEO of GHIAL, S.G.K. Kishore
said, After a successful pilot project and the go-ahead from Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, we

leveraged our internal capabilities to commence full-fledged

end-to-end E-boarding in shortest possible time. The implementation is the outcome of a collaboration with our stakeholders
including Air India, Jet Airways
and Spice Jet and the Central Industrial Security Force. Later,
Mr. Raju said the new aviation
policy would be announced early
next year and put up for approval
by the Union Cabinet before making it public. The proposed policy
got over 3 lakh suggestions, many
of which were considered while
fine tuning the draft, he said.

A passenger using the newly inaugurated e-boarding facility at RGIA in Hyderabad on Monday. PHOTOS: KVS GIRI

CTE has potential to train other airline personnel too

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.
HYDERABAD: Union Minister for
Civil Aviation, Ashok Gajapathi
Raju has said that with the Centre
striving to make a Skill India,
skill development and training
was a priority on a continuous basis and without a specific
timeline.
Training is important. Quality
and professionalism in operations and service give an airline
its name - good or bad. Only Air
India and Jet Airways are known
for their focus on training and
those that have exclusive centres
for training, he told presspersons
during a visit to Air Indias Central Training Establishment
(CTE) here on Monday.
The CTE, set up in 1971, currently trains its pilots, cabin crew
and engineering staff primarily

Union Minister for Civil Aviation, Ashok Gajapathi Raju interacting with
pilots and cabin crew in Hyderabad on Monday.

for serving on Airbus 320 aircraft

had a chequered past. It has had
its highs and lows, ups and downs.
But if it gets some more faculty
members, it has the potential to
train other airline personnel too.
So the endeavour now is to chalk
out plans directed at making the

Learn from failures, says Satya Nadella

N. RAVI KUMAR
HYDERABAD: It was a brief inter-

action with Microsoft Chief

Executive Officer (CEO) Satya Nadella but enough to
leave the audience, comprising many young, aspiring entrepreneurs, at the T-Hub
here, in awe as he spoke on
how failures became important, how Artificial Intelligence was poised to define
the future and what the tech
giant had to offer for start-ups.
Displaying abundant energy levels, from the fast-paced

steps to the speech during the

hour-long visit on Monday to
the technology incubator set
up by the Telangana government, he said the importance
of failure lies in what you
learn from it. Failure itself
cant be celebrated.
To drive home the point, he
cited his career and said how
the successes were built on
learning from peoples failure.
An entrepreneur, he added,
should not be discouraged as
you have to fail at multiple
things before you succeed.
Appreciating start-ups for

their risk-taking abilities, he

underscored the need for
them to evolve the concept, in
tune with the learning from
customers, competition and
the environment; build capabilities in terms of human
capital; and curate culture on
a constant basis. It starts
with your personal values,
you cant fake [them], the
more you live [with them] the
more it is sustainable, said
Mr.Nadella, who is on a private visit to the city where he
grew up.
Evidently impressed with

MoEF defers approval to

Yadadri power project
SWATHI V.
HYDERABAD: The proposed 5 x

800 MW super critical Yadadri Thermal Power Project at

Damarcherla of Nalgonda district ran environmental hurdles when the Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC)
under the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF)
deferred Terms of Reference
(ToR) for the project, citing
ecological concerns.
The presentation was
lacking in clarity and only
verbal submissions were being offered by the PP (Project
Proponent) on the concerns
that have been raised, the
EAC noted, referring to
TSGencos presentation to
answer the questions raised
about the tributary of Krishna
River flowing through the
plant site.
Concerns about the tributary, Thungapahad stream
were raised by EIA Resource
and Response Centre (ERCINDIA), a Delhi-based
NGO, in its representation to
the MoEF, where it pointed
out that a single-time assessment of geology and hydrogeology of the project site could
be insufficient. This is inadequate as the hydrological scenario varies drastically between wet and dry seasons,
which in turn will cause seasonal variation in drainage
and discharge. The wet season will be characterised by
increased flow into the Krishna River Basin, including the
Thungapahad stream that
passes through the study site,
CM
YK

Pylon of the Yadadri Thermal Power Project at Damarcherla.

PHOTO: BY ARRANGEMENT

and might also give rise to numerous seasonal nalas that

would otherwise be absent in
the dry season, the organisations petition to MoEF said.
Finding fault also with the
site selection, the representation said it was done during
an aerial survey by the Chief
Minister K. Chandrasekhar
Rao, but not after judicious
consideration of all alternatives. The ministrys guidelines barred thermal power
plant on forest land or prime
agricultural land, and stipulated that the site should be at
least 500 metres away from
the food plain of the riverine
systems. The resource centre
also felt that one-time assessment of the flora and fauna
and soil quality study at the
project site will not be sufficient to understand the seasonal changes. The ToR does

not mention the quantum and

spatial distribution of sampling effort which should ideally be proportionate to the
study site. Absence of cumulative impact assessment in
the area, and uncertainty with
regard to ash utilisation were
two more concerns raised by
the organisation. Subsequent
to the representation, a subcommittee constituted by the
EAC visited the project site,
watched the tributarys flow
and interacted with local people, before submitting its report. In its latest meeting on
December 18, the committee
observed that the TSGencos
presentation did not appear
to deal with the NGOs concerns, and asked the latter to
come up with an action plan
for implementing the subcommittees recommendations.

the T-Hub, he said it was always a pleasure to be in Hyderabad though the city had
changed quite a bit. There
was no T-Hub [back then], only T, I guess was Tank Bund,
he remarked. Microsoft, he
said, could partner with startups. We have an accelerator
[programme], we are not in
equity game, it is your equity.
Our goal is to support you, he
said, adding how the firm was
investing a lot in public cloud
in India. The key attribute of
our public cloud is data infrastructure, machine learning in-

frastructure, artificial intelligence, he said, telling young

entrepreneurs how the local
solutions they developed also
had a global market. We can
be a great go-to market partners, he said, urging entrepreneurs to work on addressing issues pertaining to
last-mile connectivity, preferably utilising the unused part
of TV spectrum. To a query
on the defining technology, he
said AI (Artificial Intelligence) was poised to change
everything from education,
health, energy to retail.

Crackdown on artificial
ripening of fruits
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
HYDERABAD: In a decision that
could lead to disquiet among
fruit traders and vendors, the
State Government has decided to implement the provisions of Food Safety and Standards Act 2006 and Food
Safety and Standards (Prohibition & Restriction on
Sales) Regulation 2011 firmly
against the use of calcium
carbide for ripening of fruits,
well ahead of the mango
season.
In the orders issued on
Monday, Principal Secretary
(Health) Rajeshwar Tiwari
said use of calcium carbide by
the wholesale/retail fruit
traders/vendors under the
provisions of the 2011 Regula-

tion will be monitored.

As per rule 2.3.5 of 2011
Regulation, no person shall
sell or offer or expose for sale
or have in his premises for the
purpose of sale under any description, fruits which have
been artificially ripened by
use of acetylene gas, commonly known as calcium carbide. The orders issued on
Monday said every fruit vendor should display a poster
against use of calcium carbide for ripening fruits and it
should state that use of calcium carbide for ripening fruits
is injurious to health.
It also states that the vendors shall promise that the
fruits sold at the shops are not
ripened by using calcium carbide.

best use of the vast facility, he

said. Dwelling on the organisation post the merger of the Indian
Airlines and Air India in 2007, he
said Air India, as it is now called,
was becoming more visible than
it was in the past. On the challenges that they faced, Mr. Raju said

seniors needed to take active part

in training personnel. I see myself as a motivator. We have the
best professionals in the world.
But the gap between what we are
capable of achieving and where
we are, needs to be narrowed, he
stated.
He was accompanied by Director-Training of Air India, Capt.
A.S. Soman and Capt. N. Sivaramakrishnan, General Manager
(Ops-Training). Mr. Ashok Gajapathi Raju spent over two hours at
the CTE going around and taking
a close look at the training facilities. Interestingly, he spent almost 45 minutes inside what he
later described as a magic world,
the A 320 Simulator. Capt. Sivaramakrishnan said the CTE here
had been sanctioned another A
320 simulator that cost about Rs.
60 crore.

State government to work

with Microsoft, Infosys

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and (right) IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao with Infosys CEO and MD
Vishal Sikka in Hyderabad on Monday. -PHOTO: MOHAMMED YOUSUF
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
HYDERABAD: Technology incubator T-Hub came alive on
Monday with two wellknown figures in the IT space
visiting the campus and a
State government team led by
IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao exploring avenues of collaborations with their firms.
Briefing presspersons, after the visits of Microsoft
CEO Satya Nadella and Infosys CEO and managing director Vishal Sikka, the Minister
said the government would
like Microsoft to scale up its
activities in the education
sphere.
Mr. Rao and the IT Secretary Jayesh Ranjan said apart
from playing a big role in digitising classrooms, the government wanted to work with the
firm on cloud enablement of a

lot of SMEs to build a sustainable business environment.

Stating that Mr. Nadella was
extremely impressed with THub, Mr.Rao said the government, for promoting startups, was keen on such spaces
being set up by companies
and accelerators such as Microsoft.
To cater to the demand of
start-ups, I think we need a lot
many private players coming
in. The government can play
the role of a facilitator, offer
incentives, sops, which, the
Minister, added would be announced in the forthcoming
start-up policy of the
government.
On the discussion with Mr.
Sikka, he said the Infosys head
extended an invitation for the
inauguration of the firms
campus in Pocharam, Hyderabad.

It would be one of the largest of the company with a total

of 25,000 seats.
Initially, the company proposed to open the facility with
12,000 seats.
Noting that Chief Minister
K. Chandrasekhar Rao would
be requested to open the facility, in February, the Minister
said the States IT policy was
also to be launched around
the same time.
Telangana had planned to
launch the policy coinciding
with the visit of Mr. Nadella
but decided against it in view
of the Code of Conduct being
in force for the MLC and ensuing GHMC polls.
To a query, he said Infosys
was expected to spell out its
expansion programmes plans
for the State during the inauguration of Pocharam campus.

TS makes rapid strides in power sector

N. RAHUL

Telangana has
come a long way in power
supply from being a huge deficit State in the sector when it
was formed last year to bridging the demand supply gap
and ensuring there were no
power cuts even in peak summer in 2015.
This was possible solely because the demand for power
from agriculture sector had
dropped drastically and the
State entered short-term
agreements to purchase
about 2,000 MW on yearly basis with projects in southern
region.

HYDERABAD:

Such a scenario was not

foreseeable a year ago when
Telangana and Andhra Pradesh were locked in a running
feud over power purchase
agreements (PPAs) entered
into prior to bifurcation. Telangana demanded validity to
the PPAs but AP rejected the
same.
The situation has turned
the other way round with Telangana wanting no further
continuation of the PPAs but
compensation for the quantum lost from central generating stations. AP, on the other
hand, wanted share in ongoing projects, particularly
those of Singareni Collieries

at Jaipur in Adilabad and Telangana Generation Corporation at Bhoopalpally

in Warangal district.
Telangana
has an installed generation capacity
of 2,280 MW
(thermal) and
1,980 MW (hydel)
besides a share in
Vijayawada and Rayalaseema thermal power stations, the central stations and
gas based projects. It has a
share of 53.89 per cent in
VTPS and RTPS (both have
an installed capacity of 2,810

MW) and 3,500 MW that is to

be distributed by the central
stations between the two
States. Out of the 500
MW produced by
the gas-based projects GVK, Spectrum, Vemagiri,
Gautami and Konaseema AP and
Telangana will continue to share in the
ratio of 46.11 per cent
and 53.89 per cent respectively.
The comfortable power position this year owed to agricultural demand which was
170 to 180 million units a day
in kharif dipping substantially

in rabi last year after the government said it could not supply. The farmers shifted to irrigated dry crops in rabi and
the same situation prevailed
in kharif this year. It was not
only power supply but poor
lending of loans and calamities that contributed to a fall
in agricultural demand in
power sector this year. The
demand in rabi last year was
145 to 150 MU which further
fell to 140 to 145 MU per day
this year.
On the other hand, AP cancelled its short-term agreements and Telangana lapped
them up to make up for whatever small shortage of power.
HY-HY