APPOINTED: Former MP Satya Pal Jain has been appointed as the national convener of the Legal and Legislative Business Cell of the BJP by its president Rajnath Singh. A senior advocate of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Mr Jain is the counsel for the former BJP presidents, Mr L.K. Advani and Dr Murli Manohar Joshi, before the Liberhan Commission probing the demolition of Babri Masjid.

SEMINAR POSTPONED: A seminar on the Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of victims) Bill 2005, scheduled to be held on February 18 here has been postponed. The seminar was to be organised by the Chandigarh Administration in collaboration with the Union Ministry of Home Affairs to invite public response on the Bill.

POWER THEFT: Random checking is being carried out by the field officers and the enforcement cell of the Engineering Department of the Chandigarh Administration to detect comsumers using unauthorised load or indulging in theft of electricity. Around 203 cases of unauthorized load and 59 cases of power thefts have been detected during November and December last year.

Panchkula
TRADE FAIR OPENS: The Panchkula Trade Fair with 130 stalls opened at the Parade Ground here on Friday. SP Balbir Singh inaugurated the fair. The exhibition, which is being organised by the Exhibition Movers and scheduled from February 17 to 22, has turned to be a big draw on the opening day.

RESENTED: Residents of over 50 houses of Sector 18 here strongly resented the delay in repairing the main sewerage line which had been lying choked for the past ten days. Mr V.P. Vasudev, general secretary, residents’ association, said the matter was reported to the SDO on February 7, but the work was moving at a snails pace, he alleged.

STUDENTS EXCEL: Students of Hansraj Public School have achieved good results in the Key English Test (KET) and the Preliminary English Tests (PET) conducted by Cambridge University through the British Council. All students who appeared secured a result of above 85 per cent while Shreshta Padhi, Tanya Verma, Apoorva Ohri and Ashisha Mittal secured exceptional grades. Principal Vijay Kumar lauded the efforts of teachers Ms Sushmita Padhy and Ms Savita Narang. 

WELFARE PROJECTS: The Shivalik Development Board will spend Rs 4 crore on welfare projects in the Kalka area during the financial year. The projects include construction of 63 bridges and surface dams and repair of roads. These projects were reviewed and cleared by Deputy Chief Minister Chander Mohan.

His name has been included in the 2006 edition of the Limca Book of World Records for this notable achievement.

Mehta, 24, claims that he has also broken the earlier national record of Mahavir Jain by recalling the page numbers of 25 random words at an average speed of 13 seconds.

The young teacher, who completed his computer engineering from PDM College of Engineering, Bahadurgarh, asserts that his next target is to memorise the location and series of all words of the Oxford dictionary.

Meenakshi Arora, a gold medalist from Panjab University, is writing her dissertation on the river waters dispute between Punjab and Haryana.

Instead of choosing a ‘soft’ topic, this girl from Khanna in Punjab has chosen to do research on this contentious issue.

Presented with the gold medal recently by the Chief Justice of India, Mr Justice Y.K. Sabharwal, for topping in M.A. Political Science, she is now doing her M.Phil in Delhi.

She was also given a cash award of Rs 1,000, instituted in the memory of Shankuntla Mehta and Goverdharan Mehta.

Having won many scholarships for her shining academic record, she says that since a scholarship is given in recognition of a student’s performance, the condition of linking it to his/her family income should be waived. This debars students from higher income families from certain monetary benefits, she adds.

Return to roots

Malik Mohammad Naeem with his wife, Shagufta, a descendant of the late Hoshiar Khan, after whom Hoshiarpur was named, on a recent visit to the town.

The desire to visit the land of their ancestors has brought this German couple to Hoshiarpur.

Born and brought up in Lahore, Shagufta Naeem, who claims to be a descendant of the late Hoshiar Khan, a commander in the Army of Mughal Emperor Akbar, after whom Hoshiarpur was named, recently visited the town along with her husband, Malik Mohammad Naeem. Both belong to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamat and had shifted to Germany from Lahore in 1986. Naeem was a child when his family shifted to Lahore from Quadian in Gurdaspur district.

Shagufta said that they had specially come to see the land and buildings donated by her great grandfather, Sheikh Mehar Ali, to the Sanatan Dharam Sabha in 1896 for running educational institutions. Emperor Akbar had gifted the land to Hoshiar Khan, who was a great fighter and scholar, she claimed.

“We plan to visit various shrines in Delhi, Agra, Chandigarh, Punjab and Haryana. We want to visit other places associated with our ancestors,” said Naeem.

“Our dream to see the Golden Temple in Amritsar and the Taj in Agra came true only due to the improvement in relations between India and Pakistan. We want there should be no line (Line of Control) or barriers between the people of both the countries,” the couple said.

Besides paying obeisance at a historic building where the founder of Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamat, Mirza Gulam Ahmad, had worshipped for 40 days, the couple visited S.D. School, Hoshiarpur, and other sites donated by Shagufta’s great grandfather. The school management honoured the couple. —Contributed by Sunit Dhawan, Sarbjit Dhaliwal and Bipin Bhardwaj