📌 Description

• Replaces pytz with the stdlib zoneinfo module (ZoneInfo) for timezone handling — removes an unnecessary third-party dependency since Python 3.9+ ships zoneinfo natively.
• Modernises the Dockerfile: upgrades the base image to Python 3.13, drops pip in favour of uv, adds proper layer caching, and uses uv run to launch the app.
• Bumps all pinned dependency versions in requirements.txt and regenerates uv.lock.

ℹ️ Fixes / Related Issues
Related: N/A

🧱 Type of Change

• 🐛 Bug fix
• ✨ New feature
• ⚠️ Breaking change
• 📝 Documentation update
• 🧪 Test suite change
• ⚙️ CI/CD pipeline update – Dockerfile rewritten to use uv and Python 3.13
• 🧹 Code quality / Refactor – pytz → stdlib zoneinfo
• 🐢 Performance improvement
• 🕵️ Debug/logging enhancement
• 🔧 Developer tooling
• 🔒 Security fix
• 🧰 Dependency update – removed pytz, bumped all pinned versions in requirements.txt and uv.lock

🧪 How Has This Been Tested?

• Unit Tests (tests/unit/)
• Functional Tests (tests/functional/)
• Integration Tests (tests/integration/)
• Manual Testing

⚙️ Test Configuration:

• OS: Linux
• Python: 3.13 via uv
• Docker build tested

✅ Checklist

• My code follows the CONTRIBUTING.md guidelines
• I've performed a self-review of my changes
• I've added/updated necessary comments and docstrings
• I've updated relevant docs (README or endpoint docs)
• No new warnings introduced
• I've added tests to cover my changes
• All tests pass locally (scripts/run_tests.py)
• I've run linting and formatting (pre-commit run --all-files)
• Docker image builds and runs correctly
• Changes are backwards compatible (if applicable)
• Feature flags or .env vars updated (if applicable)
• I've tested across multiple environments (if applicable)
• Benchmarks still meet expected performance (scripts/benchmark/benchmark_requests.py)

🛠️ Affected API Behaviour

• app/app.py – Modified /authenticate route logic
• app/pesu.py – Updated scraping or authentication handling

🧩 Models

(none)

🐳 DevOps & Config

• Dockerfile – Upgraded to Python 3.13, replaced pip with uv, added layer caching
• .github/workflows/*.yaml – CI/CD pipeline or deployment updates
• pyproject.toml / requirements.txt – Removed pytz, bumped pinned versions
• .pre-commit-config.yaml – Linting or formatting hook changes

📊 Benchmarks & Analysis

(none)

🧠 Additional Notes

• zoneinfo is stdlib since Python 3.9 — no new dependency, no behaviour change. datetime.now(ZoneInfo("Asia/Kolkata")) is a drop-in replacement for
  datetime.now(pytz.timezone("Asia/Kolkata")).
• The Dockerfile uses --no-install-project during the dependency install step so the project package itself isn't built until app code is present, enabling correct layer caching.
• uv.lock minimum supported Python remains >=3.11 per pyproject.toml; the Docker runtime is 3.13.