Children & old ones as well in Belgaum always used to envy people in the metros and other cities that Belgaum has nothing where one can go and relax in the evening. When guests come to Belgaum and they ask, “What’s there to see in Belgaum” the host is in a fix.

Now you need to be, Kote Kere, the Belgaum Lake, which is now being managed by Darshan Udyog Samuha for over sometime, has renovated the entire lake and installed many games and amusement rides for children apart from the famous Boating in the lake.

Recently amusement rides and equipments worth Rs.60 lakhs have been put in place for Belgaumites.

There is a family train, Jumping Ballon, Cortex, Disco Coaster, Happy ride, Dragon ride, Boating, Cricket Zone and gaming console. It also has various food stalls from Chinese, Bhel puri, ice cream to Pav bhaji.

There are benches on the side where one can sit and relax seeing the beautiful lake. If someone special is besides you, then ‘Sone pe Suhaga’. The Kids can have a wonderful time taking all the rides and enjoying themselves. Elders can have a boat ride in a family boat or the peddle couple boats.

Still improvements are begin done with lights etc. the play area open in the evening and the boating in the latter half of the morning.

There are no entry fees as of now and you will have to shell out Rs.10 to Rs.15 per ride or game.

People getting cars, will need to park it opposite the old Vandana Palace road next to the road and there are no parking facilities as such. There are two entrances one next to Kasbekar Metgud Clinic and the other is from the road leading to MalMaruti on the opposite side. Two whellers can be parked at the Kasbekar Metgud Clinic side and a couple of cars can be parked if the others have parked well.

A note while taking kids out there, please apply anti mosquito cream as there are many mosquitoes around and they are huge in numbers and size.

In short, Kote Kere is a perfect place for a relaxed evening with the kids happily playing.

Commuters of the city bus in Belgaum had an unpleasant shock yesterday as the conductor asked to pay Rs.5 to the earlier Rs.4 they used to pay to travel from CBT to Bogarves.

The NWKRTC has hiked city bus fares without explaining the price rise.

The fare has been hiked by Re.1 on a 2 km stage.

Hence ticket fares have risen by Re.1 like 4 to 5, 5 to 6 etc..

Photo courtesy: Akash F Patil

This could be the best for North Karnataka as huge amount of investors have been asked to pen shop here.

The State High-Level Clearance Committee (SHLCC) presided by Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa on Tuesday cleared the investment in many areas. They are as Follows:

• GAIL will lay 746-kms of gas pipeline from Dhabol to Belgaum and Bangalore at a cost of Rs. 4,544 crore.
  • Zuari Fertilisers and Chemicals will set up a urea plant with a capacity of 11.55 million tonnes per annum in Belgaum at a cost of Rs. 4,565 crore.
  • Surya Vijayanagar Steels and Power Ltd will set up an integrated steel plant at a cost of Rs. 20,000 crore in Bagaklot.
  • Arcelor Mittal will invest Rs 50,000 crore to set up a six million-tonne mega steel plant in North Karnataka. The company was offered eight places in North Karnataka, of which two have been short-listed. The company has asked for 4,000 acres for the project. The plant is expected to generate employment for at least 20,000 people. The Rs 30,000 crore phase-I will also include a 750MW thermal power.

This is good news for Belgaumites as most of these industries will give employment to locals here and after these industries set shop here there will be overall development.

The “Yash” Kannada movie was being shot at the Dr.Rajendara Prasad circle College road.
Here are some exclusive pictures of a Movie shooting being taking place at College Road (near Vanita Vidyalaya) on the foot over bridge.

The current shot seemed to be a part of an action sequence.

The same caused serious trouble for commuters on the road the Police had a tough time managing the crowds and the traffic.

Photos :Team AAB

It was a clash of times; MLA Abhay Patil had a verbal clash with councilor Pandhari Parab at a meeting at the city corporation over the 100 crore special grant implementation. The meeting was on in the Mayors chamber to review the various works under the special grant.

Pandhari Parab attacked the MLA over the implementation of the special grant in his ward, the matter heated up, and MLA Feroz Sait had to intervene to cool the matter.

The MLA and the councilor were stopped and held by other members at the meet so that they do not hit each other.

Sucheta Dalal has been a business journalist of high professional repute for the last two decades having worked in Business Standard, The Economic Times and as the Financial Editor of the Times of India. She is not afraid about taking on the big guns. A great example for young journalists!

Ms Sucheta Dalal is an award-winning business journalist and author and her career is founded on many newsbreaks, insightful analysis and high integrity. She has been a journalist for 25 years and was conferred the prestigious Padma Shri for journalism in 2006 and Femina’s Woman of Substance award for her work on the Harshad Mehta scam in 1992 and related writing.

Sucheta did her schooling from St Joseph’s convent school for 3 years and later pre university from RLS College. Her parents stayed in Belgaum for many years until they sold their house in Belgaum after 1996.

She did her BSc. in Statistics from Karnatak College Dharwad, followed up with a graduate and post graduate degree in law (LLB and LLM) from Bombay University. Her journalistic career began in 1984 with Fortune India, an investment magazine. She has subsequently worked with Business Standard and The Economic Times and then went on to become Financial Editor of The Times of India. She has been a columnist and consulting editor for The Indian Express group until 2008. She is now a Consulting Editor for MoneyLIFE a personal finance fortnightly (www.moneylife.in). Her columns are also published by various publications including the Dainik Hindustan.

Sucheta’s areas of interest are the capital market, investor related issues, consumer issues and the infrastructure sector. She is well-known for her numerous investigative pieces in all these areas and most notably for breaking the securities scam in 1992 which was India’s biggest financial scandal until then.

She has co-authored a book on the securities scam with her husband Debashis Basu called The Scam: Who Won, Who lost, who got away (1993). This book, which was a best seller that year, has been revised, updated and re-released in 2001 and again in 2005 (It is now called The Scam: From Harshad Mehta to Ketan Parekh). In March 2000, she wrote a biography of A.D.Shroff, who was considered a financial genius in the 1950s. (Published by Viking books of Penguin). Pathbreakers — a book of 26 inspiring interviews with eminent Indians — by Sucheta Dalal and Debashis Basu was also released in July 2007.

Ms Dalal takes active interest in consumer and investor related issues. She has been a Member of the Investor Protection and Education Fund set up by the Government of India under the Department of Company Affairs and a member of the Primary Market Advisory Committee of the Securities and Exchange Board of India. She is a Trustee of the Consumer Education and Research Centre of Ahmedabad, which is among the largest consumer and investor advocacy groups in India. She is also a Member of Bank of Baroda’s Standing Committee on consumer services and on the board of Credibility Alliance, which is a consortium of voluntary organisations committed towards enhancing accountability and transparency in the voluntary sector through good governance.

Articles written by her on Belgaum:

Politicians should leave Belgaum alone

Resolutions time is here.

For 2010, at AAB, we have a resolution too.

We intend to make everything that revolves around AAB clean and clear. We are not talking about just news. When we say everything, it includes our presentation manifesto, our content strategy, our style substance, our creative layout, our ad campaigns, our value proposition, everything.

Having said that, we needed to get started on our resolution. The first step towards the same is the layout of our site. While the color schema and layout remains the same, if you notice, we have made it far cleaner and clearer if you will. The boxes are now squared and appear in a proper formation adding clarity to our website. We have got a brand new news slider that lets you take a look at our ‘featured posts’ segment, at the bottom of the page, we’ve integrated a social media toolbar that lets you indulge and synthesize AAB with social media elements like Facebook, Twitter, Chatting and RSS and a whole lot more.

We plan to keep working on this day on day, month on month, with the precise objective of delivering clean, clear and Belgaum focused media content for our passionate readers.

For this design overhaul, we’d like to thank the folks at Leading Minds!

2010, here we come!

Match finished at 1.07 pm. Story up at 1.07pm.

In a sort of one-sided game the Belgaum super kings won the first ever PVG Belgaum Premier League T 20 tournament playing against PVG Warriors.

PVG Warriors scored only 83 runs loss of 10 wickets where as the Belgaum Super Kings managed to achieve the target in   14.3 overs for the loss of 5 wickets.

Super kings have proven to be on the top by winning by one runs in two matches and the super win the semis in the super over. In the league matches also super kings had won against PVG

Belgaum Super Kings is a Franchisee owned by Siddaganga Oil Extractions.

MAN OF THE SERIES : CHETHAN WILLIAMS

MAN OF TEH MATCH  : ANIRUDDH JOSHI

BEST BATSMEN          :BHARAT CHIPLI AND NISHANT SHEKHAWAT

BEST BOWLER           :ANISH D. V. AND VINUPRASAD

BETS FIELDER            EEPAK CHOUGULE

By Swapna Joshi

The Semi-finals on Saturday 2 Jan, between the Belgaum Superkings and the Gosavi’s Royal Hounds saw a scintillating win by the Belgaum Superkings who had to put in all their skills to overcome a not very big score, but very good bowling and fielding by their opponents.

The target of 113 put up by Gosavi’s Royal Hounds was anything but impossible for the Belgaum Superkings but they struggled in the beginning, the pitch acting unfavorably and lost some crucial wickets and were about 30 runs for the loss of 3 wickets in the first ten overs, but batsman Imran (who has been playing quite consistently), with Shoaib Manager, put up a partnership of 29 runs in 2 overs that changed the course of the game and finally the match ended in a tie!

The match was absolutely a very nail biting, tension filled one for both the teams’ supporters, who saw their adrenaline rush to the hilt.

The final win was decided upon one Super over each to be played.
This saw an amazing display of good bowling by the Captain of Belgaum Superkings’ Chetan Williams, who bowled the Super over to take 3 wickets and conceded 4 runs to the Gosavi’s Royal Hounds.

The Belgaum Superkings’ batsman Joshi hit a four in the first ball of their Super over and a six in the second ball to wrap up the match in a beautiful Win to enter the Finals, against the PVG warriors.

The match had it been relayed in other places of Karnataka and in entire India, would have thrilled the Cricket lovers.
A good network of relay channels to cover all Sports is a very essential in India, be it Cricket, or Kabbaddi, or Badminton or any other sport. The Convenors, Sponsors and all people concerned should take the initiative to bring Sports to all.

This piece of writing is just a synopsis about the day’s sports scene, that I watched live and is not a much-authenticated scoreboard, or a Cricket commentary.

The finals will be played tomorrow (sunday 3 jan 2009)between PVG Warriors and Belgaum Super kings at 10 am.

MATCH BETWEEN  VS RENUKA ROYALS VS PVG WARRIOR’S KHANAPUR

MATCH RESULT                : PVG WARRIORS WON BY 32 RUNS

TOSS WON BY  :  PVG WARRIORS    &  DECIDED TO  BAT

1^ST Innings of  PVG WARRIORS   Score:    175/4 IN 20 OVERS

2^nd Innings of  RENUKA ROYALS            Score: 143/7 IN 20 OVERS

MATCH BETWEEN: GOSAVI’S ROYAL HOUNDS VS BELGAUM SUPERKING

TOSS WON BY:  ROYAL HOUNDS    & DECIDED TO BAT

MATCH RESULT: BELGAUM SUPERKINGS WON BY 10 WICKETS BY SUPER OVERS

1^ST Innings : ROYAL HOUNDS                        SCORE : 112 ALL OUT IN 19.2 OVERS

2^nd Innings of    BELGAUM SUPERKINGS      Score: 112 FOR 8 IN 20 OVERS