The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Monday, October 20, 2003, Chandigarh, India

NEWS AND VIEWS

PUNJAB

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PUNJAB

AMRITSAR
ARRESTED: The Majitha police claims to have arrested 10 persons, including a woman, and recovered 180 litres of liquor, 3,430 kg of lahan and three stills. The arrested have been identified as Joginder Singh, Veero, Aroor Singh, Heera, Pamma, Gursewak Singh, Baljit Singh, Nirmal Singh and Jasbir Singh, all residents of Chhapa Ram Singh.

WORKSHOP HELD: A workshop on disaster risk management programme under the aegis of the Home Ministry and the United Nations was held on Saturday. The coordinator of the programme, Mr Hari Kumar said seven districts of Punjab, including Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Ludhiana and Rupnagar had been categorised as highly vulnerable areas.

BARNALA
PTA MEETING: The Parents Teacher's Association meeting of Kendriya Vidyalaya, Air Force Station, Barnala, held in the KV complex on Saturday evoked an overwhelming response from parents as 800 parents visited the campus to get a feedback on the performance of their wards.

BATALA
URGED: A meeting of the local unit of the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, was held here on Saturday under the chairmanship of Mr Davinder Pal. It was urged upon the Local Bodies Minister, Punjab, Choudhary Jagjit Singh, to accept the demand of the retirees of the Local Self Government by giving them 59 per cent DA as other retirees of the Panjab Government were getting D.A. at the rate of 59 per cent.

BATHINDA
EME FUNCTION: An exhibition of technology transition display was held to mark the diamond jubilee celebrations of the Corps of Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (EME) at Bathinda military station on Saturday.

HOSHIARPUR
COUNSELLING CAMP : A counselling camp was organised for the parents of mentally challenged children by Asha Kiran School here on Friday. Dr Dwarka Parshad, Additional Professor, PGI, Chandigarh, explained the problems faced by such children and how to handle these.

PROBE SOUGHT : Mr Tikshan Sud, MLA, Mr Sat Pal Sareen, a former president of the local municipal council, and other local BJP leaders have demanded a probe into the cancellation of auction for giving the annual collection of octroi on a contract basis by the council even after the last bid was finalised for Rs 8.51 crore as against the fixed government rate of Rs 7.61 crore. They demanded strict action against officers responsible for this cancellation.

MEDICAL CAMP : A medical and health education camp was organised at Government Elementary School, Naloian, on Saturday under the School Health Programme. Baba Harbans Singh, a social activist, inaugurated the camp and distributed toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes and fruits to students. A team of doctors examined students.

Jalandhar
PHYSIOTHERAPY CAMP : To impart knowledge about the latest physiotherapy techniques for fitness and to provide better healthcare, a week-long free physiotherapy camp began on the Lyallpur Khalsa College campus here on Saturday. The Punjab Medical Education and Research Minister, Choudhary Santokh Singh, inaugurated the camp.

LUDHIANA
DONATION: Announcing a grant of Rs 5 lakh for building funds, Lala Lajpat Rai, MP, inaugurated newly built rooms at Government High School, Salem Tabri, on Saturday. The MP conceded to the demand of the school authorities for grant of donation to further raise the building. He was welcomed in the school by Mr Ranjit Singh, Headmaster. Mr Mohinder Singh and Mr Bhupinder Singh, on behalf of the Chanan Devi Bhera Trust, announced Rs 1,100 for furniture. Others present on the occasion were Ms Manjit Kaur, Deputy District Education Officer, and Nirmal President, Parent-Teachers-Association.

WORKSHOP: The Rotary Club, Ludhiana, organised a workshop on career counselling in association with the Interact Club at New Senior Secondary School, Sarabha Nagar on Saturday. Prof I.S. Jainwal, Dr Harbans Singh and Ms S.P. Karkara attended the session.

EXHIBITION: A painting exhibition was organised by Dr Sangeeta Lamba, at the Satluj Club. It was inaugurated by Mr Surinder Dawar, MLA on Sunday. The idea of the exhibition is to promote arts. The exhibits are mainly of oil paintings and water colour printings.

MEDICAL CAMP: The management of Gurdwara Shri Guru Singh Sabha (Sarb Sanjha), Punjabi Bagh, organised a free medical check-up camp on its premises on Friday. As many as 700 patients were examined and given medicines free of cost. Among the doctors who examined patients were Dr Saranjit Singh, Dr Arohit Bansal, Dr Charanjit Singh, Dr Partap Singh, Dr Gurdial Singh, Dr Saroj Bala and Dr Manjit Singh. A religious play, ‘Bhai Sukha Singh — Bhai Mehtab Singh’, was also staged.

MEETING: A press note of Gurdwara Shaheedan, near Dholewal Chowk, which is being looked after by the Amar Shaheed Darshan Singh Pheruman Trust, said a meeting of the management committee was held on Friday and decided to distribute free sewing machines at a function to be held on October 25. Mr A.P. Pandey, DGP, Vigilance Bureau, will give away the machines.

CHANDIGARH

Exhibition: An exhibition of latest publications of leading publishing houses will be held at Panjab University on October 20 and 21. This was stated in a press note released here on Saturday. The exhibition features works of leading national and international publishing houses, including Pearson, Oxford, Cambridge, Sage, Academic Press, Addison, Wesley and CRC Press, besides others. The exhibition, to be organised by Atma Ram and Sons was earlier scheduled to be held at the university library. But this was strongly resented by the Chandigarh Booksellers’ Association. They alleged favouritism and said they were not even informed about the programme. The Vice-Chancellor, Prof K.N. Pathak, had later informed that the exhibition had been cancelled.

ICFAI CENTRES: The Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India (ICFAI) offering Distance Learning Professional Certification programmes in finance, management, and insurance, is expanding operations by opening four new centres in the region. This was announced by Mr R.S. Prasad, manager, while addressing a press conference here on Saturday. He said the centres would be opened at Amritsar, Rohtak, Kurukshetra and Shimla. Mr Abhishek Tyagi, territory manager of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, said ICFAI had been in the forefront in offering innovative educational programmes, research, consultancy and publishing services. A one-day faculty training programme will be organised on October 19, 2003.

SAMMELAN: Akashvani Sangeet Sammelan — an evening of classical music was organised by All India Radio at Tagore Theatre on Saturday. The sammelan is being organised in major cities in India. Starting the programme Vidushi Veena, an artiste from AIR, Mumbai, rendered rare raagas and bandishes in vilambit teen taal. It was followed by Dr N. Ramani’s flute recital.

HARYANA

AMBALA
Jhankar-2003: Jhankar — 2003 culminated at Kalpana Chawla Government Polytechnic for Women, Ambala City on Friday. In group dance competition, Sama group got the first prize, Fusion got second prize and City Girls group was third. In Punjabi Group dance, “Jee Aya Nu” was first. In dance competition, Aman and Bhawna were first, Vani and Meenakshi were second while the third prize was shared by Deepti and Bhawna and Sonia and Reema. In solo-song competition, Manpreet was declared first, Manjeet second while Uma and Neha were declared joint winners of the third prize. In skit, “Jahaad” won the first prize, “Anpad Aurat” second and “Ek Kadam Aur” third.

Elected: Mr P.L. Mongia was elected the president of Vikas Vihar Welfare Association, Ambala City on Saturday. The other office-bearers were: Vice-president — K.S. Cheema; general secretary — H.R. Batra; joint secretary — Balram Garg; — treasurer — A.P. Mehta; and auditor — B.L. Gulati. N.K. Chandok, N.K. Bedi, B.S. Bhatia, Ravinder Singh Bhatia and Satpal Sharma were elected the members of executive committee.

Disease:The Additional Deputy Commissioner, Mr M.L. Kaushik, said no cases of Japanese Encephalitis had been reported in the district during the past 24 hours. He said the civil hospitals PHCs and CHCs had been directed to take the cases of fever seriously and provide all medicines to the patients. A team of senior doctors of the Haryana Health Department visited the affected villages in Ambala district to assess the situation. A senior doctor from PGI, Chandigarh, also visited Ambala and met the doctors.

YAMUNANAGAR
ACCIDENT: One person was killed and two injured when a mini-truck collided with a motor cycle at Bhambholi village on the Ambala-Jagadhri highway. According to information Siya Ram, Vinod and Manish, resident of Bhambholi, were coming on their motor cycle towards Jagadhri when it collided with a minitruck. Siya Ram died on the spot. The driver of the truck has absconded. A case has been registered.

SUICIDE: Gopal (42), a resident of Bharat Sewak Nagar Colony, Jagadhri, immolated himself in his house on Friday. It is stated that Gopal was in depression.

HIMACHAL PRADESH

NAHAN
RENUKA FAIR: The Sirmaur Deputy commissioner, Mr M.L. sharma, at a meeting in connection the state-level Renuka fair, said folk artistes from different parts of the state would participate in cultural evenings to be organised from November 3.

NURPUR
MEMO SUBMITTED: The Nurpur Press Club on Friday submitted a memorandum to the Chief Minister, Mr Virbhadra Singh, through the local administration demanding an independent probe into the beating up of Mr Rajesh Pathania, a correspondent of a Hindi daily from Rehan in the presence of the local police on October 15 by a few taxi operators. Meanwhile, the Nurpur police has arrested and bailed out Tipu Khan and Sher Khan against whom the scribe had lodged an FIR.

SHIMLA
DENIED: A state government spokesman on Saturday said that a news item appearing in a section of the Press saying that Mr Gopal Dass Verma, self-styled leader of the employees, was running a CMO by proxy was wrong and mischievous. The spokesman said the government recognised only the elected representatives of the union. Allegations regarding victimisation of employees were also wrong as the present government was employee-friendly and had maintained cordial relations with them.

APPEALED: Mr S.K.B.S. Negi, Deputy Commissioner, on Saturday said that 100 per cent enrolment of every child between the 6-14 age group should be ensured in the district under the Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan. He was presiding over a meeting of Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan here on Friday evening. The Deputy Commissioner said Rs 1.66 crore would be spent on the construction of 191 additional rooms and providing toilets and water facilities under the scheme.