Month: February 2023

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday inaugurated the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited’s helicopter factory — the country’s largest chopper manufacturing facility — in Tumakuru district of Karnataka.

Bengaluru-headquartered HAL plans to produce more than 1,000 helicopters in the range of 3-15 tonne with a total business of more than Rs 4 lakh crore over a period of 20 years at this facility in Gubbi taluk, officials said.

The factory, spread across 615 acres for which the Prime Minister laid the foundation stone in 2016, would initially manufacture Light Utility Helicopters (LUH)).

It will enable India to meet its entire requirement of helicopters without import and giving much-needed fillip to the Prime Minister’s vision of ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ in helicopter design, development, and manufacture, they said.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai and senior officials of Ministry of Defence were among those present on the occasion.

“It is a dedicated new greenfield helicopter factory which will enhance India’s capacity and ecosystem to build helicopters,” Singh said.
Assembly polls in Karnataka are due by May.

PM Modi unveiled the LUH, which has been flight tested. The LUH is an indigenously designed and developed three-tonne class, single-engine multipurpose utility helicopter. Initially, the factory will produce around 30 helicopters per year and can be enhanced to 60 and then 90 every year in a phased manner, according to the Defence Ministry.

The factory will be augmented to produce other helicopters such as Light Combat Helicopters (LCHs) and Indian Multirole Helicopters (IMRHs). It will also be used for maintenance, repair and overhaul of LCH, LUH, Civil Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) and IMRH in the future.

Potential exports of civil LUH will also be catered to from this factory, which is being equipped with state-of-the-art Industry 4.0 standard tools and techniques for its operations, officials said.

The proximity of the factory, with the existing HAL facilities in Bengaluru, will boost the aerospace manufacturing ecosystem in the region and support skill and infrastructure development such as schools, colleges and residential areas, it was noted.

The factory is fully operational after the establishment of facilities like heli-runway, flight hangar, final assembly hangar, structure assembly hangar, air traffic control and various supporting service facilities, officials said.

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A second year Indian-American student at Harvard Law School has been elected president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review, becoming the first woman from the community to be named to the position in the prestigious publication’s 136-year history.

A report in The Harvard Crimson said on Monday that Apsara Iyer was elected the 137th president of the Harvard Law Review, which was founded in 1887 and is among the oldest student-run legal scholarship publications.

Iyer said in The Crimson report that as Law Review president, she aims to “include more editors in the process of reviewing and selecting articles and upholding the publication’s reputation for “high-quality” work.”

“I think that right now I’m just focused on making sure we keep the lights on and everything going,” Iyer said.

Iyer’s distinguished predecessors in the role include Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and former president Barack Obama.

The Crimson report said Iyer graduated from Yale in 2016 and received a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Math and Spanish.

Iyer’s immediate predecessor Priscila Coronado said the publication is “extremely lucky” to have Iyer at the helm.

“Apsara has changed the lives of many editors for the better, and I know she will continue to do so,” Coronado said. “From the start, she has impressed her fellow editors with her remarkable intelligence, thoughtfulness, warmth, and fierce advocacy.”

The Crimson said that Iyer’s interest in understanding the “value of cultural heritage” led her to work in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit that tracks stolen works of art and artifacts.

Iyer worked in the office in 2018 before coming to the Law School, and took a leave of absence after her first year studying law to return to the role, it said.

The report added that Iyer joined the Harvard Law Review following a competitive process called “write-on,” where Harvard Law School students “rigorously fact-check a document and provide commentary on a recent State or Supreme Court Case.”

Iyer has previously been involved in the Law School’s Harvard Human Rights Journal and the National Security Journal and is also a member of the South Asian Law Students Association.

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