Chandigarh, September 9
Torrential rains in Haryana today left 60 villages in Yamunanagar district flooded, even as the situation in other parts of the region worsened with rivers flowing above the danger mark.

Army personnel along with civilians were engaged in rescue and relief operations in flood-hit areas of Yamunanagar.

A 20-ft breach has occurred on the Yamunanagar-Poanta Sahib national highway 73 near Urjani and Yakipur village following which traffic has been suspended on the busy road connecting Haryana with Himachal.

The Ambala-Saharanpur road has been inundated near Kalanaur and Mandoli villages, affecting traffic. People living close to the Yamuna banks have been asked to shift in Sonepat, Ambala and Karnal districts.Two boys drowned in rainwater

Jhajjar: Two teenaged boys were drowned in rainwater at Goriya village in the district. Identified as Praveen and Naveen, the two were schoolmates. The bodies were fished out in the evening. 

Panipat: With the Yamuna waters entering some low-lying areas in the district, the administration today evacuated residents of Rahimpur village.

According to a spokesman for the administration, the river was carrying 5 lakh cusecs of water in the evening. Some fields along the river got inundated. A team of senior civil officials, including Deputy Commissioner JS Ahlawat, visited low-lying areas in the district to assess the situation. Later, the officials held a meeting with Commissioner Rajeev Dalal, who had come here to oversee the arrangements.

The Deputy Commissioner said boats had already been dispatched to some of the places in the district to meet any kind of eventuality.

SONEPAT: In view of the threat posed by the Yamuna waters, the district administration has arranged 25,000 bags of sand at sensitive points. Besides, it has also made arrangements for ration, kerosene, mechanised boats and other safety equipment to meet any kind of emergency situation.

According to Deputy Commissioner Ajit Joshi, besides deputing duty magistrates in all 26 sensitive villages located in the Yamuna belt, tehsildars, BDPOs and naib tehsildars had been instructed to remain present in the area to monitor the situation round the clock. Five vehicles fitted with halogen lights had been pressed into service to monitor the water flow at night, he said.

The Deputy Commissioner, along with officers of the Irrigation, Revenue and Police departments, on Thursday inspected all sensitive points at Tonki, Giaspur, Mimarpur, Ghasoli and Pabnera and asked the gram panchayats and villagers to remain vigilant.

Karnal:Karnal town, which was submerged in water yesterday, has started limping back to normalcy.

The discharge of water which came down from 7.60 lakh cusecs yesterday to 2.80 lakh cusecs this morning again rose to 5 lakh cusecs, causing panic.

Four houses were reported to have collapsed in Nabibabad due to heavy. The residents have taken shelter in a gurdwara. Karnal SDM Dinesh Yadav visited affected areas and distributed relief. 

Rohtak, September 9
In the wake of shortage of power supply, the state government has launched a scheme to provide an individual solar power plant at all households in the state. A subsidy of Rs 90,000 has been announced for anyone who opts for the scheme to partially fund the cost of the project, which is Rs 2.5 lakh per unit.

The scheme can help meet the need of round-the-clock power supply as the solar plant can provide more power backup than a battery-charged inverter for a household or a commercial establishment.

Stating this, a spokesperson for the state government said here today that the project had been launched under the union government-financed scheme - Jawaharlal Nehru Rashtriya Urja Solar Mission - under which any household could take the benefit of the scheme for which the government would meet about 30 per cent of the total cost of the solar plant.

The plant could be set up on the rooftop of the house and it required an area of 10 sq m. The total cost that the customer would have to bear would be around Rs 1.60 lakh per plant, he added.

Meanwhile, the Deputy Commissioner announced that farmers could now opt for the facility of solar power-based tubewells for which the government would provide a subsidy of 30 per cent of the total cost.

The last date for the submission of application for installing solar plants in Rohtak district is September 15.

Sirsa, September 9
General hospitals in Sirsa, Fatehabad and Tohana are among five government hospitals that have been served show-cause notices by the Haryana State Pollution Control Board for endangering public health.

A notice has also been served on Janata Maternity Hospital, a charitable hospital in Sirsa, for violation of the Environmental Pollution Act with regard to proper disposal of biomedical waste.

Sumit Amrohi, regional officer of the board, has asked the hospital authorities to show cause within 15 days as to why action should not be taken against them for violations.

Amrohi, during surprise checks, had found the hospital authorities dumping their biomedical waste in “the most casual manner.”

A worker was seen carrying placenta on a trolley to be dumped in the open in Fatehabad Model Town area in utter disregard of public health.

Amrohi took photographs of the violations. He said notices had been issued to Hansi and Hisar general hospitals. Dr Ajaib Singh Chahal, chairman of the board, has issued instructions to his field staff to ensure that laws regarding disposal of biomedical waste in Haryana were followed.

The board has also issued a notice to Synergy Wastes Management, service provider, for initiating criminal proceedings.

It is mandatory for all government and private hospitals to keep the hospital waste in three different bags provided to them by the service provider.

The service providers later collect these bags from hospitals for disposal. The red bags are meant for plastic wastes, which are autoclaved, chemically treated and sliced up before being sent to the scrap dealers.

The yellow bags are meant for packing items like placenta, infected bandages, cotton and body parts, which are incinerated at the facilities installed by the service providers at a temperature between 850 degrees to 1100 degrees Celsius.

The blue puncture-proof containers are used for packing sharp-edged items such as needles and glass bottles.

The hospitals that have been sent notices had been flouting rules, thereby endangering public health.

Sirsa, September 9
Cotton leaf curl virus (CLCV), also called “patta maror” in local parlance, has beset cotton crop in large areas in Sirsa and Fatehabad. With the “cotton-picking season” drawing near, farmers are worried at the threat posed by the virus that damages leaves by twisting these, resulting in withering away of the plant.

The agriculture authorities admit that cotton crop in three districts in the state, the third being Hisar, has been affected by the virus.

“Almost the entire crop sown on 12 acres by me has been affected by the virus. We came to know of the infection, as white flies that spread this infection were visible on the crop. We sprayed an insecticide thrice, but every time it was washed away by rain,” said Gurdial Chand, a farmer from Dabwali.

Similarly, Des Raj, a farmer from Dariyapur village in Fatehabad, complained that his crop had been badly affected by “patta maror”.

A high humidity level has been aiding the virus to spread. Farmers have been praying to the rain god to spare them for the next few days, so that they are able to bring their crop to the market, as more rain is likely to deteriorate the conditions further. “The white fly, an insect one-thirtieth the size of a housefly, serves as a carrier for the CLCV, which damages cotton crop by curling its leaves,” said Ravi Chander Punia, Joint Director (Cotton), Agriculture Department, Haryana.

“Once the crop is affected by the virus, veins of the leaves swell extraordinarily and slowly the leaves bend, resulting in damage to the entire plant,” Punia added. However, he claimed that the effect of the virus was not widespread and it had hit the crop only in Sirsa, Fatehabad and Hisar.

Punia claimed that of the 4.45 lakh hectares under the cultivation of cotton, only 60,000 hectares had been affected by the virus.

“Of the 116 varieties of Bt cotton permitted for sowing in Haryana, only three or four are susceptible to the virus,” Punia explained. He said in some other varieties, the effect of the virus had been found to be minimal, not more than 10 to 15 per cent.

Punia advised farmers to follow guidelines issued by the agriculture field staff in this regard. He also warned them against using the same pesticides repeatedly.

Chandigarh, September 9
Haryana Shiromani Parbandhak Committee (ad hoc) president Jagdish Singh Jhinda’s plea challenging the provisions of the Sikh Gurdwara Act prohibiting those under the age 21 from voting in the SGPC elections has failed to find favour with the Union of India.

In an affidavit placed before the Punjab and Haryana High Court Division Bench of Chief Justice Mukul Mudgal and Justice Mahesh Grover, Under Secretary in the Union Ministry of Home Affairs KRN Tagore asserted that “Article 326 of the Constitution, amended by the 61 Amendment Act, 1988, shows that it is primarily concerned with the lowering of age of voters from 21 to 18 for elections to the House of people and the Legislative Assembly of every state. It nowhere provides that this lowering of voting age is mandatory for all statutory bodies”.

In his petition against the Union of India and the states of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, along with Chandigarh, Jhinda had sought quashing of Section 49 of the Gurdwara Act, “wherein it gives right of voting only after obtaining the age of 21”.

This, he had claimed, was ultra vires the Constitution. 

Panipat, September 9
People of the region need not criss-cross the notoriously busy Delhi roads. They will soon be able to get on the Jaipur highway (that connects Delhi with the Jaipur) via a six-lane road that will link Panipat with Bawal in Rewari district.

Work on the Rs 1800 crore project, which has been approved by the Centre, will kickstart in three months.

Its foundation stone will be laid by Union Transport Minister Kamal Nath. Chief Minister’s son and Member of Parliament from Rohtak

The road (Panipat-Bawal) would be about 190 km long. It would meet National Highway 8, also known as the Jaipur highway, at Bawal. 

Jhajjar, September 9
Taking a step forward in providing better medical facilities to women, the state government has decided to provide free-of-cost ambulance facility to women for transporting them back home immediately after their delivery under the referral transport scheme (RTS).

The free-of-cost transportation will also be given in case of abortion after certification of the same by the medical officer concerned.

Moreover, the facility can also be availed if an expectant woman is brought to a hospital with false labour pains and requires to be sent back home if the doctor concerned certifies in writing.

With the execution of this decision, the government has withdrawn its earlier instructions according to which the facility was available to the women after staying in a hospital for at least 48 hours after the normal delivery.

Disclosing this in a press note issued here today, Haryana Health and Education Minister Geeta Bhukkal said in case of poor people, free-of-cost transportation by ambulance would be provided if a medical officer on duty certifies that the patient was poor. Besides, patients from jail could be transported free-of-cost to tertiary care hospitals such as the PGIMS, Rohtak, if a patient was referred to such hospitals, she added.

“If the distance of the tertiary institute in the nearby state is less than or almost equivalent to the distance of the tertiary institute within the state, transportation will be provided for referral to tertiary institute in the nearby state. The medical officer can also refer the patient directly to the PGIMS, Rohtak, and the PGIMER, Chandigarh, and the ambulance will be provided for the same,” said the minister.

Hisar, September 9
A bid to forge a compromise between Dalits and upper caste villagers in Mirchpur has failed. A meeting of an all-caste peace panel constituted for the purpose was held in the presence of police officials yesterday.The members underlined the need for restoring brotherhood in the village for lasting peace.

The Dalits complained that they were unable to find work in the village. Since no agreement could be reached, it was decided to make a fresh attempt sometime later.

Meanwhile, the police has arrested all accused in the case. Sanjay, was arrested today, bringing the total number of arrests to 112. The apex court had set September 10 as the deadline for the same.

Four persons were let off after they were found innocent during investigations.