Bathinda, April 17
Accompanied by his father and former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and wife Rishma Kaur, Raninder Singh filed his nomination papers for the prestigious Bathinda seat today.

Amarinder warned Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal of “tit-for-tat” in case the ruling SAD indulged in show of muscle power during the polling. Rishma filed papers as covering candidate.

Amarinder opted to keep the occasion a low-key affair as he and a couple of his close relatives accompanied Raninder to the mini-secretariat. Raninder’s mother Preneet Kaur didn’t reach as she was busy with campaign in Patiala.

Loyalists of CLP leader Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, Harmandir Singh Jassi (MLA) and Tehal Singh were present during the filing of the papers, but they were not seen at the residence of Jeet Mohinder Sidhu, MLA, where Amarinder interacted with the media.

Raninder had said he would keep the occasion a low-key affair as he did not want to disturb farmers, who were busy with harvesting of wheat crop.

Amarinder loyalist MLAs Ajaib Singh Bhatti, Makhan Singh and Ajeetinder Singh Moffar were present.

He would not seek support of Dera Sacha Sauda whose followers faced the wrath of SAD activists following the assembly elections of 2007 when the Congress swept most seats in the Malwa belt. “I don’t want to again create problems for the dera followers by seeking their support,” he said.

Regarding the media reports that SAD candidate for the seat Harsimrat Kaur had threatened at her election rallies that the grants to panchayats voting for the Congress would be stopped, Amarinder said the matter would be taken up with the EC.

Chandigarh, April 17
A bureaucracy discharging “additional charges” seems to be running the Punjab government.

With both the Chief Minister and his deputy proving to be very “picky and choosy” about which officers to trust, a handful of IAS officers have been laden with key posts and additional charges while many other senior officers are virtually “workless”.

Out of the top 60 officers of the state (1972 to 1990 batch), 15 officers are holding 40 posts! Topping the list of officers who have been overloaded with key posts is Chief Secretary Ramesh Inder Singh. He is also Principal Secretary, Personnel, General Administration, Vigilance, NRI Affairs and Elections.

Satish Chandra, a 1985 batch IAS officer, is a close second. He is the Secretary, Planning, and also heads the National Rural Health Mission and the state AIDS Control Society. He is also the Director, Food Safety and has recently been given additional charge of Secretary, Medical Education and Research. With Satish away to Orissa for election duty, not much is happening in any of these five departments.

Navreet Kang, a 1983 batch IAS officer, is Principal Secretary, Home, and has the additional charge of Financial Commissioner, Development, two of the most important posts in the state. He is also the Secretary, Employment Generation and Training.

Referred to as “ACE” (additional charge expert) Kang has been given the additional charge of at least six departments in the past six months! Interestingly, this ACE bureaucrat had employment generation as his sole charge but as elections draw near, Kang has suddenly emerged as the most “favoured” bureaucrat of the state.

Administrative lopsidedness, in fact, begins with Chief Minister’s Office. Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister DS Guru, a 1980 batch officer, is also the Secretary, Public Relations. Gagandeep Singh Brar, Additional Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister, is the Director, Public Relations, and is also the Director, Civil Aviation.

Vishwajeet Khanna, Principal Secretary to the

Deputy Chief Minister, is also the Secretary, Civil Aviation. Whatever little time he is left with, he works as Secretary, Science Technology and Environment. Narinderjit Singh is the Secretary, Information Technology; nodal officer for citizen charter and has the additional charge of MD, Punsup.

PS Aujla is the Secretary, Water Supply and Sanitation, and when he is finished dealing with pipes and fittings, the 1990 batch officer is supposed to pick up basketballs and hockey sticks to deal files as Secretary, Sports and Youth Services.

At the other end of the spectrum are senior IAS officers who have virtually nothing to do. The senior-most IAS officer of Punjab is GS Cheema, a 1972 batch officer, and all he has been asked to do is head the Punjab State Technical Education Board!

Similarly, BK Srivastava, a 1977 batch officer, has been made the head of a public administration institute. Sarvesh Kaushal, a 1982 batch officer, is member secretary of the Women’s Commission. Karan Avtar Singh, a brilliant officer of the 1984 batch, is heading the PSIDC, an almost defunct corporation.

Bathinda, April 17
Congress candidate for the Bathinda Lok Sabha seat Raninder Singh, his spouse Rishma Kaur and dependent children together have property worth Rs 15.04 crore. This has been stated in the affidavit filed by both in their nomination papers here today.

Individually, Raninder has total assets worth Rs 7.28 crore while Rishma has assets worth Rs 6.47 crore. Meanwhile, their children own Rs 64.34 lakh, including deposits, investment policies and agricultural land.

Raninder has three vigilance cases against him regarding cheating and bribery, corruption and possession of disproportionate assets. In one case registered at Ludhiana on March 23, 2007, the challan has been presented but the court has not framed the charges yet. In the rest of the cases, registered at Patiala on June, 20, 2008, and at Mohali on February 11, 2009, even the cognisance is yet to be taken.

The family has three SUVs: Toyota Qualis (Rs 8.54 lakh), Land Cruiser (Rs 5.5 lakh) and Ford Endeavor (Rs 14.46 lakh).

Raninder has 306 grams of jewellery, including stones and diamonds worth Rs 4.13 lakh, while Rishma has 5.212 kg of jewellery worth Rs 93.81 lakh.

The family owns 177 bighas of agricultural land in Kandaghat (district Solan), Himachal Pradesh, worth Rs 5.23 crore. As per the affidavit, Raninder has no non-agricultural land while Reshma has two plots in the Doon area of Uttarakhand, measuring 5785 square yards and 6257 square yards, worth Rs 1.45 crore each.

The couple does not own any commercial or residential building, while Raninder has a house at Jor Bagh, New Delhi, measuring 375 square yards worth Rs 2.01 crore.

Raninder has cash worth Rs 4.40 lakh and bank and non-banking deposits worth Rs 26.45 lakh and bonds worth Rs 1.35 crore, while Rishma has only Rs 5,000 in cash, bank and non-banking deposits worth Rs 31.34 lakh and bonds worth Rs 34.55 lakh.

Raninder has investment policies worth Rs.1.34 lakh and other assets such as value of claims and interest worth Rs 1.98 lakh, while Rishma has nothing under these heads.

Mohali, April 17
Educated and young section of the voters has caught the attention of the two major political parties — the Congress and the SAD-BJP combine.

Using an effective media of road-side hoardings to communicate with the targeted section of voters, the parties have bought the most sought after locations in the city to carry on there ad campaign.

“In the coming Assembly polls, the parties are aware that a large section of the electorate would be the young voters and it is comparatively a cheaper mode of communication as compared to the electronic media,” observed a senior Congress leader.

While projecting their prime ministerial candidates, the parties are talking about development issues and the nation’s stability.

If the SAD-BJP combine is claming to connect Punjab with the world by domestic and international airports, wide roads and populist schemes like “atta-dal scheme”, the Congress is talking about unity, stability and communal harmony. The BJP is also separately focusing on national issues of unemployment and stable government.

Sources in the district administration said the paid advertisements had been allowed after seeking permission from the Election Commission.

“In Mohali, the most visible hoarding site have been paid for certain days and the location is being regularly changed as per the campaign strategy,” said an official of an ad agency which was booking space for the parties.

Faridkot, April 17
Bibi Paramjit Kaur Gulshan, sitting MP from Bathinda, who was shifted to the Faridkot (R) constituency by the ruling SAD this time, filed nomination papers before VK Meena, District Magistrate-cum-returning officer, here today.

An educationist-turned politician, she is the wife of Justice Nirmal Singh, at present posted in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court. She entered politics after quitting teaching job in 2004.

She was accompanied by Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal and Chief Parliamentary Secretary Sheetal Singh.

Gulshan has Rs 20,000 cash, Rs 8 lakh bank deposits, Rs 2.7 lakh in savings, one 2006 model Indica car, 350 gram gold worth Rs 3.8 lakh, two houses valued at Rs. 60-lakh at Rampura Mandi and Rs. 55-lakh at Bathinda. A loan of Rs 21.85 lakh was standing against her. 

Sangrur, April 17
In the presence of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, SAD candidate from the Sangrur parliamentary constituency Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa today filed his nomination papers before Deputy Commissioner VK Ohri here.

State PWD Minister Parminder Singh Dhindsa, state president of the Punjab unit of the BJP Rajinder Bhandhari accompanied Dhindsa.

Dhindsa has declared his and wife’s assets worth Rs 3.11 crore compared to Rs 1.4 crore shown as their combined assets in 2004 parliamentary elections, when he was elected MP from Sangrur.

Dhindsa has deposits in banks totalling Rs 31,14,345 (self) and Rs 5,44,140 (wife), bonds/shares Rs 3 lakh (self), jewellery worth Rs 1.20 lakh (self) and Rs 20,51,750 (wife), other assets worth Rs 4.50 lakh (self), agriculture lands (six) Rs 99 lakh (self) and agriculture lands (four) Rs 41 lakh (wife), non-agriculture land worth Rs 16 lakh (self), four commercial and residential buildings worth Rs 46 lakh (self) and Rs 42.50 lakh (wife). Dhindsa has a jeep, a revolver, a gun and a carbine.

Patiala, April 17
If the Congress candidate from Patiala Maharani Preneet Kaur and his family’s worth in terms of landed property, cash, residential property and jewellery is just over Rs 39.5 crore, her arch rival and SAD candidate Prem Singh Chandumajra and his family owns property, cash and jewellery worth around Rs. 3.5 crore.

Interestingly, while Chandumajra, as per furnished affidavit regarding his moveable and un-moveable property, does not own any vehicle, Preneet Kaur owns one Qualis, one Toyota Corolla while her husband Capt Amarinder Singh has one Ford Endeavour. While, Preneet has shown that her family owned 33 acre sprawling Moti Bagh palace was worth about Rs 35 crore, Chandumajra has claimed that his family’s agriculture land was worth just around Rs 28 lakh.

Preneet and her “Hindu Undivided Family” (HUF) owned, as per the affidavit furnished by her before District Returning Officer Deepinder Singh, cash, money in banks, NSS certificates and LIC policies worth around Rs 59,42,29. She, along with her family, owned 472.36 gram gold jewellery, including, diamond-studded jewellery, precious stones worth Rs 68,12,826, claims and interests worth Rs 22 lakh and agriculture worth Rs 1,58,80,000. Preneet has also disclosed the worth of her family’s Dubai-based flat as Rs 80 lakh. The Dubai flat of the royal family had already invoked criticism from the Opposition even as Amarinder had asserted that he had purchased the flat after getting due permission from the Central government.

On the other hand, Chandumajra has disclosed that he and his family has cash worth Rs 1.43 lakh, jewellery worth Rs 65,000, money in banks around Rs 7 lakh, non-agriculture land, including a plot in Yaadvindra Enclave and an SCF at Mohali about Rs 2.5 crore. Chandumajra’s family agriculture land was at Chajjumajra and Jatwar villages in Ambala district. Besides, he owned a piece of land at Basantpura in Rajpura.

Preneet and her family has their agriculture land at Kandiali village in Shimla district and lease hold land based at Bhupatwala in Hardwar and at Bahadurgarh near Patiala. They also have a piece of land in Kandhaghat in Solan district. The family has also disclosed about a piece of disputed 26 kanal non-agricultural land at Tripadi Sadan in Patiala. Interestingly, Preneet’s affidavit was more exhaustive than that of Chandumajra, having each and every detail of her and her family’s property.

Chandigarh, April 17
It is not only Income Tax but also the Department of Customs and Central Excise where 14 of senior IRS officers have been promoted Chief Commissioners. PK Sirohi, who worked in the Chandigarh Commissionerate some years ago, is among the promoted officers. The youngest of them, Praveen Mahajan, has been appointed Director-General, Export Promotion.

The Ministry of Finance has taken a decision a few years ago to link promotions with annual transfers so as to coincide with the start of the new financial year thus giving the officers sufficient time to achieve their targets.

In fact, the actual targets would be set and known only after the union Budget is presented in Parliament by the new government after the Lok Sabha elections.

KC Singh, RM Ramchandrani, KK Srivastava, PK Sirohi, Biswajeet Dutta, Rajendra Prakash, Praveen Mahajan, Balmiki Ram Tripathi, Chander Mohan Mehra, Ahmed Hussain, Sheila Sangwan, Renuka Mann and KR Bhargava are the new Chief Commissioners in Customs and Central Excise.

Sreela Ghosh becomes the Chief Commissioner, Central Excise, Delhi. In fact, Delhi Customs and Central Excise Commissionerates will have new chiefs. MC Thakur will be the Chief Commissioner, Customs, in Delhi and the TAR wing will have PK Sirohi as its Chief Commissioner.

AC Buck will now head the Directorate-General of Central Excise Intelligence while the Chief Commissioner of Customs (Preventive) will be Jasdeep V Singh.

KK Srivastava will be the Director-General, Service Tax.

Shiela Sangwan moves to Mumbai as Chief Commissioner, Customs (Preventive).

Vijay Lakshmi Sharma has been made Chief Commissioner, Customs, at Ahmedabad in place of Subash Chander who moves to Bangalore as Chief Commissioner, Central Excise, while Renuka Mann will be the new Director-General of Human Resource Development. Meanwhile, Pawan Parmar Singh has taken over as Director Investigation in the Chandigarh Commissionerate of Income Tax. She was earlier the Commissioner, Audit.

Jalandhar, April 17
Application forms printed by Punjab Technical University (PTU) for admission to the engineering and pharmacy courses through the Combined Entrance Test (CET) this time have certain errors that have resulted in a lot of confusion in the minds of thousands of applicants.

The very first point in the OMR form leads to an ambiguity. It reads “Applying for: CET, 10+2 merit base, engineering, pharmacy and architecture”. Most believe that when they are filling up the form for appearing in CET, there is no need for giving the first two options and only the last three options should have been mentioned. Officials agree to it as they say that the first two options are irrelevant and the students only need to fill up one or more streams they wish to apply for from the last three choices.

The fifth point about the date of birth is again confusing. In the month section, the second column with numbers 1, 2, 0 should have been in the first place, while the first one with numbers 1 to 9 and 0 should have been at the second place. Those with the date of birth from January to September get confused for they fail to realise that they do not need to darken any number in the second column.

Again, there is no column for those applying in the general quota. Such candidates are coming up with a common query as to how they need to go about it. Jaspal Singh from the admission cell, PTU, responded saying, “Since applicants from the general category will leave the sixth column on the reserved category empty, it will automatically become clear that the candidate is applying for the general seat.”

Since the help line numbers mentioned in the admission brochure include the mobile numbers of a few officials, they revealed that they were getting as many as 600 SMSes a day as queries and a phone call every other minute.

Meanwhile, PTU registrar Sarojini Gautam Sharda said the counters for receiving CET forms on the Jalandhar campus would remain open on Saturday and Sunday.

Jalandhar, April 17
It was perhaps a lack of coordination between “secrecy” and “result preparation” branches of PTU that led to discrepancy in the result of more than 100 B Tech students of the seventh semester.

While secrecy officials involved in paper setting and printing devised a new code ID for each subject, this reportedly was not conveyed to the result preparation branch that had been using a different subject code in its software. VC Rajneesh Arora said the result was being revised and put on the website daily.

Since the new code ID was printed on the question paper, most of the students wrote it down in the OMR sheets of answer sheets. The scanners recognised a different subject code because of which the result was shown as RLA (result late) and P (student present). “Since some students interpreted it as RP (reappear), they felt aggrieved,” explained Jaspal Singh, deputy registrar, examination. 

Chandigarh, April 17
A 1989 case challenging the selections of constables has culminated with the Punjab and Haryana High Court holding that the state of Punjab and other respondents “could not have reserved for more than 50 per cent of the posts”.

The high court has ruled 50 per cent ceiling included the posts in “carry forward position”. Justice MM Kumar also ruled the rights of two general category candidates could not be denied to them, as they were found to be in the “zone of consideration, having been selected at serial numbers 100 and 96 out of 101 posts meant for general category”.

In a bunch of two petitions, directions were sought for quashing the selection of constables belonging to Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes and backward classes, beyond 25 per cent reservation in accordance with an advertisement.

Directions were also sought to consider the petitioners for appointment as constables on the basis of general category merit list.

Issued on June 28, 1989, the ad had invited applications for direct recruitment of constables/driver constables in the districts of Patiala, Ludhiana, Sangrur and Ropar. It was provided in the advertisement that 25 per cent of the posts would be reserved for Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes, 14 per cent for ex-servicemen or their dependents, 5 per cent for backward classes and 1 per cent for children/grand children of freedom fighters.

The remaining 55 per cent were kept apart for the general category. The name of petitioner Bhupinder Singh figured at 95 and petitioner Sukhwinder Singh at 100. Third petitioner, also named Sukhwinder Singh, was at 96 on the merit list.

The petitioners felt aggrieved by Sangrur senior superintendent of police’s action of recruiting just 82 candidates from the general category and same number of candidates from the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe category, whereas the total number of posts were 202.

The respondents explained out of 202 posts, 38 were kept apart to fill up the backlog vacancies. As such, only 164 posts for current recruitment were available. During the course of hearing, it was pointed out that Bhupinder Singh was found medically unfit.

After hearing the arguments, Justice Kumar ruled the case of the other two petitioners was squarely covered by the nine-Judge Constitution Bench judgment of the SC and “the respondents could not have reserved for more than 50 per cent of the posts, which was to include even the posts in carry forward position”. 

Hoshiarpur, April 17
With the efforts of the Malta Boat Tragedy Probe Mission (MBTPM), a court in Italy has sentenced Trab Ahmed Sheikh and Jarvodakiz, two members of a gang of international human traffickers who were involved in the Malta Boat Tragedy, to 30 years of imprisonment.

In a press statement here today, chairman, MBTPM, Balwant Singh Khera stated that Trab, who belonged to Pakistan, was married to a woman from Malta. He was running a restaurant at Malta, while Jarvodakiz was a resident of Lebanon. They had purchased a ship used in World War II to ferry passengers.

As many as 565 passengers of a number of countries, including India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, boarded the ship from Malta shore on December 25, 1996, for Italy. But the ship sank the same night, killing 290 passengers.

The court has held the two responsible for the tragedy and for not providing any compensation to the kin of the victims.

It may be recalled that the court had already sentenced captain of the ship Yusaf Alhalal to 30 years of imprisonment and ordered that compensation be paid to the families of the victims.

A case has already been filed by the CBI against 27 Indians accused in this tragedy in the Tees Hazari court of Metropolitan Magistrate, Delhi.

Responding to the demand for speeding up the case, the Delhi High Court had ordered that proceedings should be held daily. The first phase of the case would be heard daily from April 23 and is expected to be completed before May 15, 2009.

Out of the accused, two were police officers.