Dharamsala, November 8
The Churan Khud bridge being constructed on the Dharamsala — Palampur road has blocked the way to over a 10 commercial complexes, resulting in huge financial losses to the local traders. The approach road to most residences and agricultural plots has also been blocked and the bridge has become a major cause of inconvenience for residents of the area.

Since the structures had been duly approved by the Town and Country Planning Department, the ‘abnormal’ height of the bridge has come as a bolt from the blue for the traders and residents alike.

The Public Works Department (PWD), on the other hand, maintains that they have no option but to bring the bridge to the level of the road, even if it leads to blockade of the entire ground floor of these commercial complexes.

Mr Ravi Bhatia, owner of Bhatia Complex, rued that the way to 10 of the total 14 shops in his complex have been blocked by the bridge, bringing business to a standstill. He complained that the PWD did not even care to give prior information about this to the local traders.

He added that a delegation of traders had met both the Chief Minister and the local MLA, Ms Chandresh Kumari, in this regard but to no avail. The bridge, he said, was being constructed for public utility, which could not be at the cost of their business.

Mr Rajesh Malhotra, another local, said if the level of the bridge was not lowered, the traders will have no option but to sell off their property at throwaway prices. It had become impossible to take our cars to the garages and tractor-trailers to the fields in Barol village, he said.

All this, said Mr Ravi Bansal, owner of a showroom in the area, reflected the absolute lack of co-ordination between the PWD and Town and Country Planning Department. When all residents in the area, he said, had got no-objection certificates to start construction, the PWD has no right to block their way.

When contacted, Mr R.S. Kanwar, Chief Engineer, PWD, said the bridge had been constructed on government land and there was no question of making modifications in the plan. The Town and Country Planning Department had issued no-objection certificates on the basis of entirely different parameters and there was no provision for giving notices to the local residents in such a situation.

Shimla, November 8
The BJP today demanded a CBI inquiry into the illegal appointments made during the last Congress tenure, alleging that fair vigilance inquiry was not possible while Mr Virbhadra Singh was the Chief Minister.

Addressing a press conference here today state BJP chief Suresh Bhardwaj said that the High Court verdict, terming the appointments as illegal, was a vindication of the BJP accusations that merit had been ignored and appointments made on recommendatory chits of politicians.

He said owning moral responsibility, Mr Virbhadra Singh should no longer remain in office as the High Court decision has once again proved that there was rampant corruption and nepotism during the Congress regime.

"With Mr Virbhadra Singh being in charge of Home Department, it is not possible to have a fair and independent inquiry," he remarked.

He said that the BJP, after seeking legal opinion, would request the court that the matter be handed over to the CBI.

The BJP chief said that reports of the Harsh Gupta and Abhay Shukla committee had said that these appointments, made during 1994-98 when the Congress was in power, were done in violation of the rules and regulations.

"Since merit was ignored and employment exchange bypassed, the Chief Minister should take a cue from the way in which External Affairs Minister, Mr Natwar Singh, has been divested of his portfolio," said Mr Bhardwaj.

The BJP chief said that to ensure that the probe into appointments made during Congress regime was not a political vendetta, it was decided that no action would be taken against the beneficiaries who had been given jobs.

Meanwhile, former Health Minister and BJP leader, Mr J.P. Nadda, demanded that in light of the High Court verdict, the Chief Minister, Mr Virbhadra Singh, should resign on moral grounds.

"Circumstances suggest that appointments were made on the recommendations of the Chief Minister," said Mr Nadda.

Shimla, November 8
The government today refuted the allegation that people of Kinnaur were unhappy over the slow pace of flood restoration works and asserted that news reports appearing in a section of press were not based on facts.

An official spokesperson said that relief and rehabilitation works had been carried out on war footing and completed in a record time. Mr Virbhadra Singh, the Chief Minister, personally monitored and reviewed the progress from time to time and himself visited the affected areas several times. Even Ms Sonia Gandhi, the UPA Chairperson and Mr Shivraj Patil, the Union Home Minister, visited the affected places soon after the disaster and sanctioned a special assistance of Rs 100 crore over the above the normal allocation of Rs 75 crore.

The affected families in 125 in Leo village, 17 in Skiba and 6 in Sangla had been allotted four biswas of land each for construction of new houses in safer places. Besides, relief of Rs 25,000 to each household. Rs 4.12 lakh had been provided to 18 homeless persons. A special sanction of Rs 5,70,500 had been given by the state government at the rate of Rs 27,500/- per household for construction of new houses to 21 families.

In all 183 helicopter flights were operated to evacuate stranded people, besides supplying essential commodities.

During his recent visit to Kinnaur, the Chief Minister directed the PWD to completed the restoration of Tangling-Powari road within 2 months and reconstruct Leo bridge by April, 2006. He sanctioned one primary health centre at Leo and one wool-carding plant machine at Yangthang.

Reckong Peo, November 8
The district administration of Kinnaur for the past few days has banned entry of all private vehicles and buses in town’s limit during day time at district’s in Reckong Peo.

Even tourists, schoolchildren, patients and mediapersons are not allowed to enter the town or pass through it in private vehicles though there is sufficient space to pass through roads and park vehicles at two places designated by the administration.

This attitude of the district administration today resulted into the death of Rajinder Singh a jawan of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police Force (ITBPF). Traffic restrictions delayed in taking the ill fated jawan to the hospital where he was declared brought dead.

The police station officer here told The Tribune that the exact reasons behind the death of the jawan were not known but preliminary investigations revealed that one of his colleagues Sanjay Kumar took him to the hospital this morning where he was declared brought dead. The post-mortem report of the deceased jawan was also not available at the time of writing the news report.

Dr Amandeep Garg, District Magistrate of Kinnaur, said that he had imposed traffic restrictions due to tribal festival. However, even after one week of the concluding of the tribal festival traffic restrictions had not been lifted.

During morning, vehicles carrying schoolchildren are allowed to leave the students in the Central School and the ITBP Public School — two main schools of the town but in the afternoon the schoolchildren have to travel on foot for kilometres in the hilly terrain with heavy burden of bags as no vehicle is allowed to bring the children back home from these schools. More than 1000 children study in these two schools and they come from far-off places of the town and nearby villages.

Tourists are also suffering a lot due to this problem. Tourist vehicles are stopped at the entry points of the town by the police. They are asked to travel on foot with bag and baggage to the hotels.

Vehicles of mediapersons and newspaper vehicles that bring newspapers to the town are also not an exception. Bundles of newspapers are left at a distance of at least one kilometre from the office of the news agency from where porters carry them to the news agency’s office adding financial burden on the news agent. This also delays in the delivery of newspapers to readers.