MTS to Offer Free Wi-Fi At Major Railway Stations in India

MTS to Offer Free Wi-Fi At Major Railway Stations in India

The railway budget which was released in the month of February this year stated that over 400 railway stations will have Wi-Fi facility. And now, it seems that the railway department is taking steps to make it possible by the end of third quarter 2015. Not all stations might get internet connectivity, but yes, the major junctions and the busiest stations are expected to get the Wi-Fi services.

Sistema Shyam, which is also known as MTS (Mobile TeleSystems), has tied up with Indian Railways to launch free Wi-Fi services at major stations in the country. The decision was taken as a part of the government’s initiative of Digital India.

The service will be rolled out under the MTS brand, who have been primarily offering CDMA based data services since 2008 (when first released in India). However, over last couple of years, they have not been able to get the kind of traction expected.

To access free MTS internet on Railway stations, users will need to activate Wi-Fi on their devices, open a page christened Indian Railways MTS Wi-Fi, from where they can go online. The company is looking forward to offer free Wi-Fi services in all the metro trains in Gurgaon. It will also offer its services at the stations where the company does not offer CDMA services of MTS brand.

A Sistema Shyam spokesman confirmed the Wi-Fi services pact with the railways, adding that the company has concluded all regulatory formalities for acquiring a pan-India category-A ISP permit.

Busiest Railway Stations In India:

The travellers who start their journey from the stations such as Mumbai CST, Howrah, Ahmedabad, Varanasi, Agra, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Chennai, Pune etc will soon be able to use internet via Wi-Fi on their devices through MTS Internet. MTS or Indian Railways have not officially announced which and how many stations will be part of this project, one can safely assume that stations at Metros and Tier 1 cities as well as major junctions to be part of the project. The government is expected to provide at least one station in every state with such services.

Free Internet For How Much Time?

We wish it could have been for free as long as we use! But the MTS Internet will offer free Wi-Fi for the first 30 minutes only. That might be enough to go through your important emails, check your social media profiles or even read the trending news ontrak.in :). The MTS WiFi internet can be used on your laptops, mobiles or tablets.

There is no such confirmation about the charges post the 30 minutes of usage. We will update you as soon as we have some confirmation on the rates!

Source: www.govemployees.in

Submission of Fake Caste Certificates

Submission of Fake Caste Certificates

Information about appointments secured on the basis of fake/false caste certificates is not centrally maintained.

However, the Central Government had undertaken a one-time exercise to collect information about appointments secured on the basis of fake/false caste certificates in the year 2010. As per information received from various Ministries/Departments etc. 1832 appointments were allegedly secured on the basis of fake/false caste certificates. Disciplinary proceedings had been instituted in all the cases. It was reported that out of the above 1832 cases, 276 had resulted in suspension/removal etc, whereas 521 cases were entangled into litigations and in remaining 1035 cases disciplinary proceedings were pending.

The Government instructions provide that an appointing authority should verify the caste status of SC/ST/OBC candidates at the time of initial appointment as well as at the time of promotion.

Chief Secretaries of States/Union Territories have been requested to issue instructions to the District Magistrates/ District Collectors/ Deputy Commissioners of the Districts to the effect that when asked to verify the veracity etc. of caste certificates, they should ensure at their own level that veracity of the caste/community certificate referred to the district authorities is verified and reported to the appointing authority within one month of receipt of request from such authority. In order to rule out collusion between candidates holding false/forged certificate and employees at the district level or sub-district level, disciplinary proceedings may be initiated against officers who default in timely verification of caste status in such cases or issue false certificates.

This was stated by the Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions and Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office Dr. Jitendra Singh in a written reply to a question by Shri Rattan Lal Kataria in the Lok Sabha today.

Source: PIB News

AADHAR Enabled Bio-metric Attendance System

AADHAR Enabled Bio-metric Attendance System

Bio-Metric Attendance

The Government has decided to use an AADHAR Enabled Bio-metric Attendance System (AEBAS) in all offices of the Central Government, including attached / sub-ordinate Offices, in India as an enabling platform for marking of attendance.

As per the information collected, the status of implementation of the AEBAS in Central Government Offices in Delhi is as follows:

No of organizations where employees are marking their attendance – 312
No of organizations where employees are registered but not started marking their attendance – 93
No of organizations on boarded but yet to complete formalities for employees registration – 100
Total – 505

National Informatics Centre has incurred an expenditure of Rs. 4.8 crores in procuring and installing the front end devices like Wall mounted Biometric Terminals, desktop based finger print and Iris scanners, etc. for the above offices. Installation is part of the cost of procurement.

This was stated by the Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions and Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office Dr. Jitendra Singh in a written reply to a question by Shri Jose K.Mani in the Lok Sabha today.

Source: PIB News

‘Operation Five Minutes’ – Now Unreserved Ticketing on your Mobile Phone

‘Operation Five Minutes’ – Now Unreserved Ticketing on your Mobile Phone

Suresh Prabhu Launches Mobile App for Paperless Unreserved Ticketing

Fulfilling yet another commitment of the Railway Budget 2015-16, the Minister of Railways Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu launched Mobile Application for Paperless Unreserved Ticketing through video conferencing on Egmore–Tambaram Suburban Section of Chennai, at a function here today. This is a pilot project covering 15 stations in Southern Railway and will be extended to entire country in phases. Referring his Railway Budget announcement, the Railway Minister said that for the passenger, the Indian Railways is committed to ‘Operation Five Minutes’ – that is, purchase of an unreserved ticket within five minutes and today’s launching of Paperless Unreserved Mobile Ticket is the first step in this area. He said that it will allow the passenger to buy a ticket on the move and allow him or her to board the train with the ticket secured on his or her mobile phone, without any need for printing the ticket. Shri Suresh Prabhu commended all the members of CRIS to develop the Paperless Unreserved Ticketing Mobile Application and hoped for speedy implementation of other IT projects in the pipeline. The railway Minister said that the innovative ideas are always welcome and said that he has set up ‘Kayakalp’ Council which will consider innovative ideas for the betterment of Indian Railways.

Shri Suresh Prabhu also unveiled the plaque for the foundation of the Indian Railways Datacentre in Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), an IT wing of Indian Railways, which will provide state-of-the art facilities to house the required computer equipment. Shri Prabhu said that he would expect this new building to be environmental friendly and called upon the officials to complete the construction of this building before scheduled deadline ensuring quality with less cost.

Speaking on the, Chairman, Railway Board, Shri A.K.Mital said that CRIS, a IT arm of Indian Railways since 1986, has proved capable of managing large railway-wide IT applications such as Passenger Reservation System, Unreserved Ticketing System and Freight Operations Information System. He said that over the years, CRIS has implemented other centralised applications such as Control Officer Application, Crew Management System and Integrated Coaching Management System. Shri Mital said that with CRIS taking up the challenge of developing and implementing these large system, the Indian Railways will see a sea-change in the effectiveness and utilisation of its assets, cutting down cost and improving its services.

Member Traffic, Railway Board, Shri Ajay Shukla said that the Unreserved Ticketing System is an important revenue generating system developed by CRIS. He said that nearly two crore passengers obtain unreserved tickets daily through nearly 11470 counters and 5836 locations generating about Rs. 52 crore of revenue per day. He congratulated CRIS for successfully developing Application App for paperless unreserved ticketing system on Indian Railways.

To move forward in line with digital India, Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) has developed a paperless Unreserved Ticketing feature in Mobile Application “utsonmobile” both for Android and Widows platforms. This will eliminate the need for printing of Unreserved Tickets on ATVMs at the stations. User can download ‘App’ from Google Play Store or Window Store.

The application is being rolled out as a pilot between Chennai Egmore & Tambaram suburban Section of Southern Railway covering 15 stations. For paperless ticketing, GPS co-ordinates of suburban railway track on the Chennai Egmore-Tambaram section, plus 15 meters on either side of the tracks have been earmarked as Geo-Fencing area within which no ticket booking is allowed in order to ensure that passengers have ticket before commencing the journey. After implementation of paperless ticketing, facility of printing paper ticket at ATVM will not be available on Chennai-Egmore to Tambaram Section.

The application provides necessary on-screen alerts to guide the passenger during the booking process. Payment for the ticket is done through the “Railway Wallet” feature in the “App”. After booking the ticket, the passenger will get the ticket confirmation screen which contains limited information of the ticket. The paperless journey ticket will be stored in the local mobile application database in the encrypted form which cannot be tampered with. The passenger has to start the journey within 1 hour as per policy for suburban sections. Ticket booked in paperless mode cannot be cancelled in order to prevent claiming of refund after travel.

The ticket has distinct colour scheme everyday and it is embedded with Quick Response (QR) code. It cannot be forwarded to another mobile or edited or printed. The old invalid tickets will be removed from the mobile device through a sync feature in the ‘App’.

For the purpose of ticket checking, the application has various features such as colour scheme, show ticket features, secret code of the day, booking time of the ticket and scrolling of legend “IR UNRESERVED TICKETING’. In case of mobile in disconnected mode, it will be checked through QR Code.

The Indian Railways Datacentre will be a new building in the premises of existing CRIS office. Indian Railways depends heavily on Information Technology for its customer facing commercial activities, train operations, and internal management. Critical IT applications run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, throughout the year, to support Railway operations. These applications cannot be shut down for even a minute on account of any outage of power or cooling.

Sensitive computer equipment used by these IT applications such as high-end servers, storage, network switches etc. needs a controlled environment with precision air-conditioning, uninterruptible power supply (UPPS) , adequate network bandwidth, fire suppression, access control and comprehensive security/surveillance.

The existing datacenters of Indian Railways are nearing their fully capacity. As the number of critical applications increases, this capacity needs to be expanded and the infrastructure brought in line with global standards. To achieve this, the IR Datacentre in CRIS has been planned to ensure state of the art infrastructure for continuous power, precision cooling and protection to the equipment. Complete redundancy and physical security will be provided in the datacenter facilities through the latest technologies in this area. A secure Internet gateway with high bandwidth datacom circuits already exists, and will be expanded further.

The Indian Railways Datacentre can also cater to its PSUs and will help Railways to provide better services to its customers and management.

Source: PIB News

Skill Development for Government Servants

Skill Development for Government Servants

Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Skill Development & Entrepreneurship Shri Rajiv Pratap Rudy has said that the Government has a National Training Policy (NTP) to develop a professional, impartial and efficient civil service. NTP provides for Competency Framework to ensure that civil servants have the requisite knowledge, skills and attitude to effectively perform the functions entrusted to them. Competencies encompass knowledge, skills and behaviour, which are required in an individual for effectively performing the functions of a post.

In a written reply in the Lok Sabha today Shri Rudy said, each Ministry/Department is required to identify the competencies needed for various posts under their control and conduct training for their cadres/employees through various training programmes as per their need under this Policy. Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), the nodal department for National Training Policy (NTP), has developed competency dictionary and tool kit for the civil services. Moreover, generic competency mapping has been completed for every unique position in Department of Personnel & Training, Ministry of Corporate Affairs and Central Secretariat Services cadres.

Source: PIB News