Milestone in India's Airport Development.

World-class terminal opened at IGI Airport.

NEW DELHI:Prime Minister Manmohan Singh inaugurated the swanky, world-class Terminal 3 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport here on Saturday, saying it signalled the arrival of new India, committed to joining the ranks of modern, industrialised nations.

Hailing the new terminal as exemplifying India's resolve to bridge fast the country's infrastructure deficit, he said T-3, built in just 37 months at a cost of Rs.10,000 crore, had established new global benchmarks.

Yet another reason for satisfaction, Dr. Singh said, was that it “proves the success of the public-private partnership model in the execution of a large infrastructure project.” Sprawled over 5.4 million square feet, the new terminal building is said to be the world's sixth largest. Though the new and modern airports in Bangalore and Hyderabad have already been opened, the Indira Gandhi International Airport dwarfs both.

While international operations from T-3 will begin on July 14, domestic operations will start on July 31.

Highlighting the need to rapidly improve the physical infrastructure, in which the country lagged, Dr. Singh hoped to see in future many successful projects, similar to the IGI Airport's terminal. “This will be in keeping with our ambition, our aspirations and our new-found confidence in recent years.”

Dr. Singh unveiled a plaque to mark the inauguration of the new terminal in the presence of United Progressive Alliance chairperson and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and G.M. Rao, chairman of the GMR Group, which led the international consortium that built the terminal.

Milestone in Indo - Mauritius ties.

MRPL inks pact with STC Mauritius.

MANGALORE: Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd, (MRPL), a subsidiary company of ONGC, on Thursday inked an agreement with State Trading Corporation (STC), Mauritius, for supply of liquid petroleum products amounting to 1.1 million metric tonnes (MMT) per annum valued at US $660 million at current fuel prices.

The products comprising Jet ATF, high speed diesel and furnace oil will be supplied for a period of three years and the total value of this deal at current prices is US $2 billion.

The agreement was signed by U K Basu, managing director, MRPL and Soomarooah, general manager, STC, in the presence of Showkuttaly Soodhun, minister of commerce and industries, Republic of Mauritius and Murali Deora, minister for petroleum and natural gas, R S Sharma, chairman, ONGC Group of Companies and others at New Delhi.

Speaking on the occasion Showkuttaly Soodhun, sought the help of India to build their self reliance in petroleum in the form of a JV that will set up and run a refinery at Mauritius.

Jitin Prasada, minister of state, remarked that the three year product supply agreement has further cemented the bond between the two nations and while inviting Soodhun for Petrotech 2010, Prasada commented that this would provide an opportunity to better understand the expectations of Mauritius and further strengthen the relations between the two Nations. Complimenting STC and MRPL, Shri Prasada urged MRPL to ensure that there is uninterrupted supply of fuels as per contract and all products are delivered on time.

It maybe recalled that in 2006, STC after scouting the market, entered into the Product Suppply agreement with MRPL for a period of one year for Gasoil, Jet ATF, HSD and furnace oil and renewed it again for three years in July 2007, due to the consistent and reliable service provided by MRPL . For the third consecutive time STC has now come back to India and MRPL for all of its fuel requirements. This agreement will be effective from August 2010.

Milestone in India's Unity in Diversity and Hindu - Muslim Unity at Bangalore. (Karnataka - India.)

BANGALORE: Borders did not matter and language was no barrier. The message of unity and brotherhood was spread at the 76th anniversary of Malabar Muslim Association on Friday.

Addressing the gathering, chief minister B S Yeddyurappa announced a grant of Rs 5 crore to the Malabar Centre for which a foundation stone was laid. The association urged the Karnataka government to grant them two acres of land to build an engineering and medical college where 25 per cent of students will be given free education. To this, the CM said: “Find the land and the government will surely grant it.”

“Two years from now, the entire face of Bangalore will change and recent success of Global Investors Meet (GIM) is the first step towards realizing this dream,” the CM said.

Kerala home minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan and opposition leader Oommen Chandy acknowledged the fact that NRIs from Kerala played a dominant role in the success of the state. To encourage education among Muslim women Kerala, government has introduced scholarship for them. NRI businessman Yusuf Ali was felicitated at the event. He announced a donation of Rs 50 lakh for Malabar Centre.

Milestone in Indian T Sector - (TCS becomes Ninth Largest Software Company in terms of revenues).

MUMBAI: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has become the world's ninth-largest software services company in terms of revenues, its chairman, Ratan Tata, told shareholders at the company's fifth annual general meeting on Friday. The big daddies in the global IT industry include IBM with revenues of $96 billion, Microsoft ($58 billion) and Accenture ($22 billion).

For the $6.3 billion-TCS, the focus now "would be to climb the value chain in a bid to differentiate its services from competition," said Tata, who would step down from the chairmanship of the IT major in the next couple of years.

TCS was started as a division of Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata group, in 1968 to service the in-house electronic data processing needs. The company today is the largest software services firm in the country. In a bid to be part of the top league, the company has been bagging clients across geographies, building domain expertise, besides adding on a large number of employees.

Milestone - Egyptian gets Indian Heart in City Hospital.

CHENNAI: When Hakim, a 43-year-old lawyer from Egypt flew down to Chennai on June 9 to mend his ailing heart, he never thought that he would be flying back to his native land with an Indian heart.

Through one of the rare heart transplants into a foreigner, doctors at Frontier Lifeline gave a new lease of life to the Egyptian on June 30, thanks to the magnanimity of the relatives of a 52-year-old man who had died in a road traffic accident.

The Eqyptian's heart was was failing despite the coronary artery bypass he had undergone in 2007. He came to the city on June 9 hoping to have another surgery, but in the last week of June he was waitlisted for a transplant. On Friday, he was smiling from the intensive care unit of the hospital, with a new heart beating in his chest.

The heart was harvested at Stanley Medical College and brought to Frontier Lifeline in a record 19 minutes in peak hour traffic as the traffic police arranged a green corridor at 7.20 pm. A team of doctors led by Dr Prasanth Vaijayanth did the transplant at 7.30 pm on Wednesay. According to rules, an organ can be tranplanted into a foreigner only if there is no Indian recepient available during the window period after the organ is harvested.

On Wednesday, when doctors at Stanley Medical College delcared accident victim Gaja braindead, the cadaver transplant registry called every registered transplant hospital in the city and across the country. "No one had an Indian patient on their waitlist," said Dr J Amalorpavanthan.

While it was the absence of an Indian recipient that came as a boon to the Egyptian, the state's cadaver transplant programme has come under severe criticism as hospitals licensed to do transplants have failed to prepare and update waiting lists of patients requiring transplants. Though nearly a dozen hospitals in the city are licensed to do heart transplants, the number of patients waitlist before the cadaver programme for heart tranplants were less than twenty.

"Less than 20% of patients with heart failure qualify for a transplant due to various medical conditions including diabetes and hypertension," said Dr Saravana Ganesh, who was part of the transplant team. The hospital which sees thousands of patients has less than 20 patients who require a heart transplant on their waitlist.

A team led by. "The patient is stable now. He will be here for another week. We will be in touch with his physician in Egypt for follow up," said Dr Saravanan.

Milestone in Indo - American Cancer Institute.

HYDERABAD: The Indo-American Cancer Institute and Research Centre (IACIRC) here has completed 10 years of fight against cancer by providing the best of treatment to patients, chairman and managing trustee of the hospital Nandamuri Balakrishna said.

Speaking to media persons here on Thursday, he stated that the hospital promoted by Nandamuri Basava Taraka Rama Rao Memorial Cancer Foundation and Indo-American Cancer Organisation had offered concessions worth Rs. 35 crore, including Rs. 10 crore last year, to poor patients so far.

Unlike other hospitals where Arogyasri patients get secondary facilities, the IACIRC was providing services on par with what other patients get. Of the 400 beds in the hospital, 125 beds in air-conditioned rooms were dedicated to patients under Arogyasri, he explained.

First of its kind

The 12-bedded bone-marrow transplantation unit established in the hospital in 2008 was the first of its kind in the country, Mr. Balakrishna claimed. The hospital was procuring modern equipment from time to time to keep the facilities up-to-date. The board of trustees of the hospital was reconstituted recently to streamline the functioning of the institute, he stated.

They had also constituted a committee with eminent scientists and doctors -- Lalji Singh, Ganguly and Habeebullah -- for improving the research and development wing.

Milestone - SBI launches Green Channel Counter facility.

CHENNAI: “We want to be a good bank, not just a big bank,” said O.P. Bhatt, Chairman, State Bank of India, launching the bank's Green Channel Counter facility at 51 branches across the country at a function here on Thursday. Inaugurated as part of the bank's 204th Foundation day celebrations, the facility is aimed at providing paperless banking to customers for deposit, withdrawal and remittance transactions.

Mr. Bhatt said the agenda of the bank was to provide an engaging banking experience to its customers and also enrich its services in terms of technology and improved products. The Green Channel Counter enables the customers to deposit and withdraw money from their account without them having to fill up pay slips or cheques. By swiping their ATM cards on the Point of Sale Machines placed at the green channel counters, they can conduct transactions up to Rs. 40,000.

Mr. Bhatt said “This is the first time in India that a service like this is being launched. If the customer feedback is positive, we will extend it to other branches across the country.”

“This will reduce a lot of process time, as duplication of writing and feeding data at both ends will be avoided. It will also remove the hassles of remembering account numbers and accounting,” said Mr. J. Chandrasekaran, Chief General Manager, SBI (Local Head Office), Chennai.

“The idea is also to offer an ease of transactions to senior citizens, especially pension account holders who still prefer branch banking,” he added. In Chennai, the green channel counters are available at the Anna Nagar (Round Tana), Teynampet, Chromepet and Velachery Bypass Road branches, he added.