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Bhardwaj files nomination for state BJP chief BJP chief’s election after organisational poll Board Secy told to
take action against official HC notice to Chief Secy in ADGP’s case |
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Shimla to get 70 roads
next year Balh valley bears
brunt of BSL project Industrial panel to set up body on waste disposal A neglected freedom fighter Minister announces grant for college Rs 8 crore for art school at Nagar Probe sought into appointments BJP chief flays case Engineers’ plea on promotion quota
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Bhardwaj files nomination for state BJP chief Shimla, December 27 His candidature was sponsored by all factions of the party. In all, six sets of nomination papers were filed. Prominent party leaders, including Mr P.K. Dhumal and Mr Shanta Kumar, Mr Maheshwar Singh, Mr Suresh Chandel and Mr Khushi Ram Balnatah, the three other contenders for the top post, Mr Kishori Lal and Mr Roop Singh were present on the occasion. The papers were filed in the presence of Mr Ram Kirpal Sinha, the central party observer, and Mr O.P. Kohli, national secretary and in charge of party affairs in Himachal Pradesh. The formal announcement of Mr Bhardwaj’s election as president will be made tomorrow. The four delegates for the national council will also be elected unopposed as only one candidate filed his nomination papers from each parliamentary constituency, namely Mr Ram Chand Bhatia from Kangra, Mr Jaikrishan Sharma from Hamirpur, Mr Roop Singh from Mandi and Mr Roop Das Kashap from Shimla. |
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BJP chief’s election after organisational poll Shimla, December 27 Talking to mediapersons here today, he said elections in 19 states had already been completed and by the time the National Executive of the party met at Hyderabad from January 11 to 13, the process would be over in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and some other states. The schedule for the election of the national President would be in all probability announced during the meeting, he stated. He said it was a big achievement of the party to complete the organisational elections by and large through consensus. He said while all state presidents had been elected through consensus, there had been some exceptions at the district and constituency levels. During the National Executive meeting, the party will chalk out its poll strategy and agenda for the ensuing Lok Sabha elections, he said, adding that the performance of the party in the recent elections would also be reviewed. |
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Board Secy told to
take action against official Solan, December 27 Mr Negi said investigations revealed that the changes made in the form of overwriting for showing more experience were done at a time when the official noting of the applications was done by board officials prior to the interview. In a letter written to the board, Mr Negi has directed the Secretary to take action against the official for
indulging in this illegal act. Mr Munish Kumar has already being indicted in the matter for producing false experience certificates to get employed in the laboratory. The
SP said while no criminal case had been made out against the other
three scientists, it was however, found that officials who had
considered their inappropriate experience for the post had acted
contrary to the norms. While an administrative inquiry is being
conducted against the other three, a challan has already been filed
against Mr Munish Kumar in the case. The department is inquiring into
the appointment of four scientists since April this year after
irregularities were pointed out in these recruitments. |
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HC notice to Chief Secy in ADGP’s case Shimla, December 27 Contentions were raised that the special judge failed to appreciate the provision of Sections 226 and 239 of Cr PC why lay down that the trial court can look into the material document sought be placed on record by the accused, demonstrating his innocence before fixing the date for framing the charges. The petition says that Mr Thind is allegedly involved in financial irregularity when he was Managing Director Agra Industry Packaging India Limited (AIPIL). Which involves Rupees 11.5 lakh paid in advance to a Delhi-based firm for supply orders to AIPIL but no order was received by the AIPIL. The Court has issued notices to the Chief Secretary, and other four private respondents directing them to file reply. |
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Shimla to get 70 roads
next year Shimla, December 27 Mrs Savitri Kashyap, chairperson of the parishad, while presiding over a meeting here today said that out of these 70 roads, 13 roads were in Rampur, 11 in Narkanda, six in Theog, seven in Mashobra, five in Chopal, eight in Rohru, five in Chhohara and six in Jubbal Kotkhai block. She said that 17 schemes had been sanctioned for the district by the Government of India during the current financial year under the Swajaldhara project. She urged members of the zila parishad to give their priorities under the scheme for the next year as such schemes would be finalised by the government on the recommendation of the parishad. Mr Maheshwar Singh, MP, Mr Sohan Lal, Mr Subhash Manglet and
Mr Rohit Thakur, all MLAs, were present at the meeting. |
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Balh valley bears
brunt of BSL project The BSL project has diverted 4,716 million cubic metres of Beas waters into the Sutlej by constructing a dam at Pandoh. The water has been taken to the Sutlej through a 38-km water conductor system, the largest in Asia, comprising two tunnels and a reservoir. As a result, the river goes dry during the winter causing environmental degradation downstream of Pandoh. The fall of water into the Sutlej has been utilised for generating 990 MW of hydel power at Dehar Power House, which is generating 1.5 crore units of power daily catering to the needs of the entire region. However, residents of Himachal Pradesh are intrigued by the fact that their state is not a partner in the project built on its land and financed up to 90 per cent by the Central Government. They hold the Centre responsible for this gross injustice as the state at that time was a union territory. All that came to the share of Himachal are the perpetual woes that defy solution till today. It is an irony that the gigantic BSL project executed 26 years ago linking the two mighty rivers of the Himalayas ushering in an era of prosperity in the beneficiary states of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan has left a trail of misery on the land where it was executed. The then Chief Minister, Dr Y.S. Parmar, had stated that the Himachalis were prepared to make sacrifices in the larger national interest but paradoxically his gesture has not been appreciated by the BBMB by restoring the colossal damage caused to the state. Those uprooted by the project were not rehabilitated properly for decades and many were still languishing in far-off areas like Rajasthan. The problems of the Bhakra and Pong Dams oustees remain unsolved. The
BSL project has hit Mandi district the most. Its sprawling Balh
valley, the granary of the district, is fast converting into a “veritable
desert” by the ejection of the silt from the open hydel channel and
reservoir over the past 26 years. A few years ago the BBMB referred the problem of silting of the Balh valley to the National Engineering and Research Institute, Nagpur, for recommending a solution. It sent a 14-point report about three years ago, suggesting short-term and long-term solutions. The institute had categorically recommended that the only lasting solution was to release the silt into the Sutlej by constructing a tunnel. The BBMB authorities have not initiated any steps in this direction so far. Dehar Power House was virtually on the verge of closure following a blanket ban imposed two years ago by the State Pollution Board for ejecting silt into the Balh valley. The ban was lifted on the BBMB assurance to take up the construction of a tunnel without delay. The construction of the proposed tunnel has not been taken up so far. The
local Citizens Council presented a four-page memorandum against the
BBMB to the State Human Rights Commission last week urging it to take
cognizance of the violation of their human rights by making the river
dry and exposing the people to environmental hazards, besides
depriving them of taking dips in the sacred Beas at the elegantly
built ghats in the town of temples known as mini-Kashi and causing
pollution. The council urged the commission to direct the BBMB to take
remedial measures by releasing some water into the river and
constructing a small lake to partially restore ecology damaged by
impounding the Beas waters at Pandoh. |
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Industrial panel to set up body on waste disposal Solan, December 27 In a recent meeting of the stake holders, the association had decided to manage the site proposed by the state Industries Department for the purpose. While all stake holders would be offered membership of the body it had been proposed to enter into a joint venture with a technically-experienced entrepreneur for the task. The association also decided to approach the State Board of Environment Protection and Pollution Control for an advisory role and financial participation. With the state Industries Department already having allotted an area of 191 bighas at Majra village in Nalagarh for the purpose, the association had now decided to approach the department for transfer of the identified land for the purpose. Financial assistance from various schemes of the state and Central government would also be sought. Earlier an 11-member team comprising the Chief Secretary, Government of HP, Secretary Environment, Secretary Industry and Member Secretary of the board of pollution control, on a visit to Australia had made a study on setting up a common effluent treatment plant. A project report was prepared in consultation with AUSAID (Australian Aid Agency). A study of Environment Protection and Research Institute, Hyderabad, was also made by the board for the purpose after which research and development was undertaken. A remedial action plan for setting up a CETP and toxic solid dumping facility was instituted by the board. The government also sanctioned a sum of Rs 1 crore for setting up this plant to the Industries Department. With a heavy concentration of industry in the area the need for setting up this plant was being increasingly felt by |
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A neglected freedom fighter SOLAN: He was perhaps the lone scholarly freedom fighter who had probably sacrificed the most for Indian freedom and yet the powers that be did not bother to even erect a single brick in his memorial at the place where he died and was cremated unceremoniously in 1962. Yes it is so. And this is the story of Dr Bhagwan Singh Gyanee who served as President of the Ghadar Party for over six years after exit of Lala Hardyal, spent several years organising Indians abroad for the cause of freedom of his country or in jails of different countries, and was instrumental in declaring an “open warfare” against British rule in India after a meeting of the Ghadar Party at its San Francisco headquarters on August, 15, 1914. Not only that Dr Gyanee was allegedly neglected after his death, he was not issued a passport by the Indian Government for over two years after the country attained freedom in 1947 and he had to return to his motherland in 1958 after getting an invitation from the then Punjab Chief Minister Partap Singh Kairon. Dr Gyanee was also a close associate of great Indian freedom fighter Rash Behari Bose and his Irish counterpart Davelera. Since he had been actively involved in revolutionary activities after being appointed lecturer in Sikhism at Updeshak College, Gujjranwala (Pakistan) and had developed close contacts with freedom fighters like Ajit Singh, he had to leave India in the aftermath of the arrest of Lala Lajpat Rai in 1908 and had to leave for Burma under an assumed name. From that day he travelled to Siam, Hongkong, Shanghai, Hawana, USA, Germany and Canada, and could never meet his family for the next over 45 years. His wife (who never met him after he left the country in 1908) died in his absence in the early fifties. “For our family it is a saga full of bitter feelings. He was never accorded recognition as a freedom fighter,” said Mr S.P. Singh, grandson of Dr Gyanee, while showing the place where Dr Gyanee was cremated in 1962. After reuniting with his family Dr Gyanee had bought some property on Spatu road here which is still with the family. Mr S.P. Singh, who has settled in the USA was on a brief visit to this place. “It is not that he did not know his fate. He was aware what usually happens with freedom fighters. Just listen to one of his last audio tapes where he tells that Ghadar Party freedom fighters were neglected,” said Mr S.P. Singh, while switching on the tape of Dr Gyanee which the latter got recorded in 1959 in presence of his secretary. “You don't acknowledge those who died for the country or those who died and on the basis of whose sacrifices the Congress got roots in Punjab.....some noise.” “What to talk of any memorial, none came to attend his cremation even as after his return to India he stayed at the Punjab Chief Minister's guest house for some years. It was only that his bhog was attended by Mr Partap Singh Kairon. I think he was punished for opposing Nehru's “Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai” slogan and his “Panchsheel” policy which proved to be a failure soon after prediction made by Dr Gyanee before his death,” rued Mr S.P. Singh, while showing Dr Gyanee's pictures with Pandit Nehru and other leaders. Mr S.P. Singh said not only Dr Gyanee's wife died in his absence, his daughter (S.P.'s mother), who once made up her mind to approach the government for some pension in view of the family's poor economic condition, was frustrated by the authorities. “They asked her bluntly as to whether she had ever been imprisoned? Even my nana (Dr Gyanee) was told to submit proof that he was an Indian if he wanted to get an Indian passport after 1947,” he said. Asked about the desire of the family, Mr S.P. Singh said the only wish of the family was a suitable memorial to Dr Gyanee. Dr Gyanee, who was born at Wiring village of Amritsar district on July 27, 1884, travelled on a feigned identity to Honkong and settled there in 1910 after which he was appointed a “granthi” of the gurdwara there by the Sikh Temple Committee and was arrested twice there in 1911 and 1912. After this he migrated to Canada in April, 1913, where his anti-British activities and objection to it by Hopkinson, an immigration inspector, led to his deportation to India, but he managed to escape to Japan to reunite with Maulvi Barkatulla, a professor of languages at Tokyo's Imperial University. As the need to fetch arms forced him to leave Japan for Germany, he was discovered by a British while he was travelling by a ship near Shanghai, but he escaped and landed at San Francisco along with Barkatullah on May 23, 1914, where he was made president of the Ghadar Party, which declared an “open war” against the British rule in India and to make it a “free and sovereign republic” on August 15, 1914. There he met Irish freedom fighters and Indian freedom fighter Rash Behari Bose. In 1917, he was arrested in the “San Francisco Conspiracy Case” with 19 other Indians and sentenced to two years imprisonment. After leaving the party in 1928, he wrote a number of books on diverse tops, including “The Art of Living,” “Science of Perpetual Youth,” “The Ideal of Friendship,” “The Humanology Notes”, “Paths to Perfection”, “Why Men Fail”, “Jang aur Azaadi”, “Concentration”, “Love, Marriage and Divorce”, “Mysteries and Functions of the Subconscious Mind”, “Yogi Exercises”, “The Greatest Enemy of Man”, “Food That Makes and Breaks You”, “Creative Wisdom” “Self Culture” and “Food Chart”. |
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Minister announces grant for college Nurpur, December 27 He announced a grant of Rs 3 lakh for the construction of a canteen, Rs 1.60 lakh for toilets and Rs 1 lakh for the retaining wall of the college. The minister distributed prizes to the meritorious students. A cultural programme was also presented by the students on this occasion. |
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Rs 8 crore for art school at Nagar Kulu, December 27 He confirmed that rupees five crore would be released for an amusement park at Solang valley. |
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Probe sought into appointments Chamba, December 27 Talking to mediapersons here yesterday, Mr Lakshmi Dhar Sharma, district president of the DCC, said he would reveal the misdeeds of BJP leaders. He requested the Chief Minister to conduct raids on the property of former members of the HPSSSB. |
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BJP chief
flays case Shimla, December 27 He said the Virbhadra Singh government was adopting dictatorial tactics to crush the voice of opposition, which did not augur well for the state. He said the BJP workers were staging a peaceful protest and had planned to burn the effigy of Mr Virbhadra Singh, Chief Minister, which was their democratic right. |
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Engineers’ plea on promotion quota Shimla, December 27 The council demanded that vacant posts of assistant engineer, assistant executive engineer and senior executive engineer (diploma cadre) to end stagnation. It also said the promotion quota from junior engineer to assistant engineer should be increased from 32 per cent to 40 per cent, assistant engineer to assistant executive engineer from 22 per cent to 40 per cent and assistant executive engineer to senior executive engineer from 25 per cent to 30 per cent. |
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Potato growers warned of blight disease Shimla, December 27 The prevailing weather condition was highly conducive to outbreak of disease. The growers have been advised to spray their crops with Mancozev (2.5 kg per hectare) as a protective measure. A sticker like Triton could be mixed with it to avoid washings off by the rain. As the disease first appears in the lower leaves the fungicide should be applied in such a way that all leaves, particularly lower ones, were fully covered. Once the disease is noticed another spray of Metalaxyl based fungicides be sprayed on the crop. Subsequent, sprays should be need based. |
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7 hurt in road mishaps Kangra, December 27 Additional police chief Santosh Patial said here today that a Jeep (HP 02 B104) overturned at Nagni village leaving five occupants of the Jeep injured. He said the driver of the Jeep, Hari Singh was driving negligently when the accident took place. The injured were admitted to the Community Health Center, Thural. The police registered a case under Sections 279 and 337 of the IPC. In another incident one person was injured when his motorcycle was hit by a van at Jawalamukhi today. The injured has been identified as Ravinder Kumar Sharma of Devitar. The driver of the van (HP 55 1771) Rakesh Kumar of Dool village was arrested by the police. |
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Man’s body found hanging from tree Kumarhatti, December 27 |
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MANDI: No solution has been found to mitigate
the woes of residents of this district perpetrated by the construction
of the Beas-Sutlej Link Project. These woes have been highlighted in
Parliament and the Himachal Pradesh Vidhan Sabha from time to time,
but nothing positive has come out so far allegedly due to the “evasive
attitude” of the BBMB.