8/11/2019 toi 19092014 3

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/toi-19092014-3 1/1

THE TIMES OF INDIA, AHMEDABADFRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2014   3TIMES   CITY 

Ahmedabad: In its first movesignifying cooperation, theChinese city of Guangzhou

has officially invited Ahmeda-bad civic authorities to theirgrand exhibition to be held inOctober this year. Famouslycalled the ‘Canton Fair’, theevent is organized by ChinaForeign Trade Centre (Group),and takes place from October15 to November 4 at the ChinaImport and Export Fair Paz-hou Complex. The invitation

for the 116th edition of the faircomes two-and-half monthsahead of the Vibrant Gujaratsummit to be held in Januarynext year.

“The invitation has come ata short notice but the foreignministries of both India and

China will ease visa proce-dures. This is also a significantopportunity for our delega-tion,” said a senior urban de-velopment department offi-cial. The event is the largesttrade fair in China. It is famousas the fair where the largest as-

sortment of products are dis-played, and which has thelargest attendance. Further, itis also known as the venue inChina where the largest num-ber of business deals is inked.

Adelegation of Guangzhoucity officials held a closed-door

meeting with Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel onThursday. Also present at themeeting were Ahmedabad mu-nicipal corporation (AMC)mayor Meenakshi Patel alongwith high-level secretaries of the Gujarat-government.

The co-operation expectedis in the areas of economy andtrade, environment protec-tion, public policy, education,health, science and technolo gy,and tourism and culture.Knowledge sharing will be

done through delegation vis-its, institutional meetings andsharing of experiences in ar-eas of mutual interest.

When asked about the keysectors that AMC would like topartner in, the official replied:“We are looking at technology,improving civic services andtaking e-governance to thenext level.”

The TradeExhibition WillBe Held FromOctober 15

RIVERFRONT DIPLOMACY: AMC will improve civic services through technology and knowledge sharing

Yogesh Chawda

Come to Canton Fair, China tells AMC

TIMES NEWSNETWORK

Vadnagar:The world’s longestgreeting card with birthdaywishes for PM Narendra Modiin 23 languages of India wasshowcased on Thursday at B NHigh School in Vadnagar, whereModi studied. The Namo teastall owners association alsocollected Rs 70,500 in aid forKashmir flood victims. Dona-tions were pooled by 200 tea stallowners of Naroda, Chiloda,Rakhial and Bapunagar. Thestalls were set up before LokSabha polls this year.

Initially, the stall owners joined hands to celebrate Naren-dra Modi’s 64th birthday onWednesday by praying at Amba-

 ji. They also had a steel birthdaycard made — weighing 3.5tonnes. The stall owners had

planned to take the card to Vad-nagar and celebrate Modi’s hisbirthday at his school there.

However, the plans changedas Modi tweeted that he wouldnot celebrate his birthday andurged supporters to donate forKashmir. Ramesh Thakor whoowns a Namo tea stall in Rak-hial, said: “We decided to collectmoney earned at the stalls from8am to 5 pm and donate the mon-ey for the Kashmir relief effort.”

A day after his birthday, theassociation celebrated a belatedbirthday of sorts by showcasingthe greeting card. “The record of the biggest greeting card wasregistered in Dubai, UAE byNestle on March 21, 2014. Thatcard measured 10.29m in lengthand 14.18m in width.

“The card for Modi is 14.30mwide and 16.20m long. We willwrite a brief on this event andsend it to The Guinness Book Of World Records in the UK for ap-

proval,” said Rakesh Brahmb-hatt, the official witness of theevent.

Mega b’day card inPM’s home town

Hitesh Chavda

The NaMo stall owners with their record breaking card in the background

Amrit Mewada

Gandhinagar: Chief minis-ter Anandiben Patel met ahigh-level delegation led byGuangdong province’s execu-tive vice governor Xu Shaohuaand Guangzhou city mayorChen Jianhua on Thursday.This came one day after a sis-

ter-city MoU between Ahme-dabad and Guangzhou and asister-province MoU betweenGujarat and Guangdong weresigned in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Mo-di and President Xi Jinping inAhmedabad. The CM and topGujarat government officialsand their Chinese counter-parts discussed a strategy toexecute the MOUs quickly. Pa-tel said: “The famous Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai’ sentence willtruly be realized now.”

Patel suggested a blueprintto execute the agreementthrough an action plan pre-pared by Gujarat governmentand Chinese officials. Thechief minister said a cellwould be set up in the chief minister’s office and subjectscovered under the MoU will bedesignated.

The CM observed thatthere are similarities between

Gujarat and Guangdong. Bothare coastal states, both are

leading manufacturing hubsand prominent in economicprogress. While Guangzhouhas the Pearl river passingthrough the city, Ahmedabadhas the Sabarmati.

A memorandum of under-standing (MoU) was signed es-tablishing ‘Sister Province’ re-lations between Guangdong,China and Gujarat. The MoUcovers cooperation in econo-my and trade, environmentalprotection, public policy edu-cation, health, science andtechnology, tourism and cul-ture.

Through this MOU, the sis-ter provinces will extend mu-tual cooperation in sports,youth affairs, urban planning,

waste water management, in-frastructure, environment,

public health and exchange of economic and trade delega-tions.

On the same lines, an MOUwas signed between the citiesof Guangzhou and Ahmeda-bad for closer cooperation be-tween local authorities. Thiswill facilitate engagements ineconomy and trade, environ-

ment protection, public policy,education, health, science andtechnology, tourism and cul-ture. Knowledge sharing willbe done through delegationvisits, institutional meetingsand sharing of experiences inareas of mutual interest.

The CM also requested theChinese delegation that Guja-rati community/ families liv-ing in China should participa-te in the Pravasi BharatiyaDivas celebration in January2015, which is to be hosted byGujarat.

She also invited theGuangzhou mayor to lead thedelegation at Vibrant Gujarat2015 summit for MoUs in in-dustrial, commerce, trade andmanufacturing sectors.

The Guangdong executivevice governor and Guangzhoumayor invited a Gujarat dele-gation to the export-importfair in China in October. Both

dignitaries invited Gujaratchief minister to visit China.

Big Ben meets sister province mandarins

TIMES NEWSNETWORK

CM Anandiben Patel interacts

with the Chinese delegation

TOI

Ahmedabad: After ChinaPresident Xi Jinping’s visit,the Sabarmati riverfront hasbecome a major attraction forAmdavadis. On September 17,

 just after Xi Jinping and PrimeMinister Narendra Modi leftthe Sabarmati riverfront; peo-

ple gathered at the spot in largenumbers and strolled aroundthe riverfront.

However, as children andmembers of the public, tookphotos with the replicas of thewildlife, guards closed thegates of the riverfront. Eventhat didn’t stop people gettingto the riverfront as some wom-en jumped the seven-feet gatesand got in.

Municipal officials said asthe tents, shamiyaanas andfurniture is still there at site,they have restrained entry tothe riverfront. “People in largenumbers won’t be allowed on

the riverfront,” said municipalofficials.

On the other hand, munici-pal authorities requested city

police chief Shivanand Jha todeploy guards at the river-front. “I have ordered a deploy-ment of a guards at the river-

front,” said Jha.The decorative lights put

up shall stay in place until Di-wali.

Public throngs diplomacy venueTIMES NEWSNETWORK

The Sabarmati Riverfront Park in Shahibaug will remain closed to the public till Sunday

Yogesh Chawda

Gandhinagar: Kashiwagi, theIndia-based chief executive offi-cer of Mizuho Bank of Japan metGujarat chief minister Anandi-ben Patel in Gandhinagar, onThursday.

Mizuho Bank, which alreadyhas a license from the ReserveBank of India, will launch an Ah-medabad branch in June 2015.Kashiwagi briefed Patel on de-tails of this.

During the meeting, the CMalso discussed the services-part-nership of Mizuho Bank in theforthcoming Vibrant Gujarat

2015. She appealed to Kashiwagito sign an MOU for a bank part-nership with the Canal-Top SolarPower Project in Gujarat.

Kashiwagi told the CM that onhis tour of Japan, the PM Naren-dra Modi proposed to start theirbanking services in Gujarat andin acceptance of this proposal,the branch will start wideningtheir business in Gujarat. TNN

Mizuho Bankops in cityfrom 2015

Ahmedabad: When PrimeMinister Narendra Modi de-

cided to host Chinese presi-dent Xi Jinping at Ahmeda-bad as the first stop on histhree-day India visit, it poseda challenge both to the stateadministration and police.This was because never be-fore has such a high-profilemeet taken place in Gujaratand they had no experiencewhat to expect.

However, the administra-tion took it as a challenge andin less than a fortnight fin-ished preparations for a meet-ing that left the Chinese presi-dent and delegationspellbound. While the stateand city civic authorities didtheir bit to deck up the venues,police ensured that the twohigh-profile internationalleaders got safe environs.

“The first initiative wasdigitized identity cards is-sued to personnel involved inbandob ast duty. For the first

time in the history of the statepolice, cards were embeddedwith QR codes so they cannotbe duplicated or misused. Mo-

bile phones of all officialswere equipped with the QRscanners with which theycould verify whether the per-son is at the right spot at theright time and his or her cre-dentials,” said a senior citypolice official.

CCTV came handy for citycops. They ensured that the

entire route taken by the dig-nitaries had proper camerasand also provided live feeds of several private cameras to the

city police control room tokeep a eagle eye on proceed-ings.

In another initiative, citycops got the rights for 150IPTV cameras of private es-tablishments near the hotel inVastrapur which they couldsee on their mobiles.

“Two other initiatives in-

cluded computer modeling of the places and group messag-es.

In the first, police pre-

pared models of the impor-tant places, including HotelHyatt, Gandhi Ashram andSabarmati Riverfront andshowed personnel deploy-ment that could be checked inreal time.

For the second, they used aplatform, LM-ADCPOL, withwhich every official was kept

updated about VIP movementand instructions,” said a tech-nology expert who workedclosely with city police.

 Tech helped cops pull off Xi bandobastTIMES NEWSNETWORK

The extremely tight security ring around the hotel where Xi Jinping was staying

Ashwin Sadhu

Ahmedabad: The GujaratTechnological University(GTU) inked a memorandumof understanding (MoU)with two Chinese universi-ties — Jiangsu University,Zhenjiang and HuazhongUniversity of Science andTechnology, Wuhan — forstudent exchange and educa-tional partnership onWednesday.

GTU registrar G P Vado-dariya said that the MoU hasbeen inked to design aneight-week summer intern-ship programme betweenthe universities where thestudents and faculty ex-change can take place and

 joint research can be carriedout. “We are also establish-ing a Chinese language cen-

tre at the GTU to assist stu-dents,” he said.

GTU officials said thatthey are in talks for dual de-gree arrangement for whichthey will have to streamlinethe courses and specializa-tion.

The university had earli-er entered into a MoU withSias International Universi-ty at Xinzheng on November28, 2013.

In January 2015, duringthe Vibrant Gujarat summitfour universities of Gujarat

including GU, will sign MoUswith various Chinese univer-sities for summer intern-ships, research among otherfields of academics.

On Wednesday, the vice-chancellor of GU, M N Patelwas called for a meetingwhere he was asked by thestate government to look intofields of academics whichcan be subjects for MoUs dur-ing the Vibrant Gujarat sum-mit, said sources.

GTU, two China varsities ink MoU

TIMES NEWSNETWORK

Ahmedabad: After thehigh-profile visit of Chinesepresident Xi Jinping, Ahme-dabad is likely to get con-

nected to Beijing.The buzz among in-formed sources is that a newBangalore-Beijing flightwill be launched by Air Chi-na with a stop-over in Ahme-dabad.

“A delegation of seniorgovernment officials fromChina visited Ahmedabadairport earlier this year tocheck the feasibility of oper-ating a flight from China,”said a senior AAI official.

According to sources,Air China may make Ahme-dabad its hub in India aswell.

Flight toBeijing fromcity soon?

TIMESNEWSNETWORK

Ahmedabad: TenzinTsundue, the well-knownTibetan activist caught atGandhi Ashram on September17 hours before China

President Xi Jinping’s visit, willbe detained till Friday. Crimebranch officials said theycannot afford to release Tenzinas Xi is in India till Fridayevening. “We will release himas soon the Chinese Presidentleaves India,” said a crimebranch official. Tenzin hadsneaked into Gandhi Ashramon the night of September 16and was discovered only hoursbefore Jinping was scheduledto visit the Ashram. TNN

Tibetan protestor to bedetained till Xi leaves

KNOWLEDGESHARING