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New MC presidents toothless
District Cong secy quits
Fresh snow in upper Manali region
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State eyes 1.5 crore tourists this year
Poor GPRS services harass customers
Panchayat poll hits job scheme
Many re-elected village chiefs sans canvassing
Chief Secretary for pro-active approach
IIT-Mandi to adopt villages
PowerGrid to provide access to small projects
Tourism meet in Bangalore on Jan 15
Pulse polio drive on January 23
‘Paryawaran rath’ to collect polythene
Don’t raise retirement age, staff to Dhumal
Labourer dies of cold
Engineers ready to join HPPCL
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New MC presidents toothless
Dharamsala, January 9 The only power enjoyed by a directly elected council president is that he cannot be removed from his post for the next five years. Since presidents of councils have been elected directly, the council will not have the power to remove them. Earlier, the presidents of councils were elected indirectly from among the elected ward members. Any ward member who could muster majority in the council was declared as the president. This also resulted in frequent changes of presidents with change of governments resulting in changes of loyalties by the councillors. Such a council president, elected indirectly, could be removed with a 75 per cent majority. However, now directly elected council presidents have created a piquant situation in many a municipal council. The Dharamsala municipal council will be a classic illustration of the fact. In Dharamsala, an Independent, Kamla Patial, has been elected directly as president of the council. However, the BJP has won a majority of seven wards out of 11 in Dharamsala council. The BJP has also won the seat of vice-president. The situation is that the president will not have the support of the council in her functioning. She will have to work according to the wishes of the majority in the council as the Act does not provide her any special powers. In Nagrota Bagwan also, an Independent, Himandari Soni, has been elected directly as president of the council. The directly elected president will have to act according to the wishes of the Congress-dominated council to get the development works through in the absence of any special powers.
As per the Municipal Council Act the president has the power to preside over the meetings of the council in which major decisions regarding the development of towns are taken. Under the present regulations of the Act, the president does not have any executive powers. The executive powers rest with the executive officers appointed by the government in municipal councils and with commissioners in municipal corporations. The officials dealing with local government departments, while talking to The Tribune, said the government would have to bring in further amendments in the Municipal Council Act to define the powers of presidents elected directly. If directly elected presidents are not provided with executive powers, the basic purpose of direct election would be defeated. However, since the ruling party has lost almost half of the posts of presidents of municipal councils, it might not carry out the amendment to empower directly elected presidents with executive powers. The government might continue with the existing practice in which the executive powers of local governments are in the hands of bureaucrats. |
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Inaction against DCC chief for using foul language
Mandi, January 9 Addressing a press conference here today, Bains made a CD that recorded the threats and foul language Puran Chand had used against them and against Union Steel Minister and Mandi MP Virbhadra Singh and AICC member GS Bali, while talking to them on their mobile phone. “I have got primary evidence to support my charges in the CD and will move the court if the police does not lodge an FIR. He said, “I am sending the CD to the party high command Sonia Gandhi and AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi and Virbhadra Singh and GS Bali”. He said Puran Chand used the foul language naming his late mother and his elder sisters and issued life threats to him and his brother. “He abused my brother and called him a BJP agent”, he alleged. He said he had written to state president Kaul Singh Thakur, but he had not taken any action against Puran Chand. “I have quit the party post as I cannot work under Puran Chand who has no respect for senior leaders and party office-bearer”, he alleged. Meanwhile, Thakur claimed that he had taken up the matter with state president Kaul Singh Thakur as his charges were baseless.
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Fresh snow in upper Manali region
Manali, January 9 Tourists were elated to see the upper Manali areas of the region covered with fresh snow. They rushed to Kothi and Solang valley to see the snow. A thin layer of snow also covered the Manali-Rohtang road between Nehru kund to Solang valley and Kothi. The traffic on the Manali-Rohtang road was disrupted between Nehru kund and Kulang village, 5 km from here, this morning. Tourists and local residents had a tough time driving their vehicles from Manali to Solang and Kothi. All vehicles going for a sight-seeing tour to Kothi and Solang valley were diverted via Buruwa link road to Solang valley. The famous ski slopes of the Solang valley, which are used for skiing courses, also experienced a fresh spell of snowfall yesterday. The higher reaches of the Manali region, including the Rohtang Pass, Bhrigu ski slopes, Hamta slopes, Beas kund, Dhundi and Chanderkhani also received fresh snowfall last night. However, the sun came out today and local residents and tourists got a relief from the cold wave conditions.
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State eyes 1.5 crore tourists this year
Shimla, January 9
The increase is 16.38 per cent over the last year and 25 per cent over 2008. The number of foreign tourists also increased from 4,00,583 to 4,54,851 over the year, an increase of 54,268 (13.55 per cent ). Most foreign visitors came from the United States, Canada, Australia and England. According to Director of Tourism Arun Sharma, the state has set up a target to attract 1.50 crore tourists this year and as per an estimate, additional income around Rs 300 crore is likely to be injected into the state economy every year through the tourism sector. If the present growth continues in the coming years, the sector will contribute over Rs 1,250 crore to the GSDP by 2015. The popular tourist destinations of Kullu, Kangra and Shimla districts accounted for 50 per cent of the tourist traffic and Shimla, Manali, Dharamsala, Dalhousie and Kasauli were preferred by both Indian and foreign tourists. The highest 17,03,757, including 47,735 foreign tourists, visited the state during June 2010 followed by 14,86,074 (41,420 foreign) in May and 7,13,890 (19,462 foreign) in December 2010. A total of 39,03,721 tourists visited the state during these three months as compared to 33,50,187 tourists visited in the corresponding last year. These three districts accounted for almost half of the total tourist arrivals. The tribal districts recorded the highest number of 85,944 foreign visitors visiting Kinnaur, while 65,515 foreigners visited Lahaul Spiti during the year.
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Poor GPRS services harass customers
Solan, January 9 The Garkhal area should ideally be covered by the adjoining BTS tower located at Kimmughat, which is barely at a distance of 500 m, but customers receive signal from the Jagjitnagar-C BTS which is at a distance of 12 km. Therefore, being at the fag end of the Jagjitnagar-C BTS tower, customers in Garkhal region failed to get uninterrupted GPRS services. Moreover, with scores of users in the number of resorts located near Jagjitnagar also using the GPRS services its signal was as low as two to three bars in the distant Garkhal area. The lack of synchronisation and handshake between adjacent BTS towers had left the customers of the BSNL services harassed as in the absence of signal from Jagjitnagar they fail to receive signal of the adjoining Kimmughat BTS tower. Not only were the GPRS services suffering but also the network remained busy in the evenings and it was difficult to even make calls for hours together with repeated message of call not allowed being flashed. Even the short message service was often disrupted in the evenings. Interestingly, officials in Solan often failed to even acknowledge such complaints, thus, leaving the customers to opt for alternative cellular services. DGM BSNL Harsh Kumar when apprised of the poor services did assure that he would get it checked.
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Panchayat poll hits job scheme
Shimla, January 9 December to March is the peak period for employment but during the months only 20,000 persons worked under the scheme as against 2 lakh in the same months last year, thanks to the preoccupation of pradhans with the polls. As the new elected bodies are yet to take over, the employment generation has further gown down in January, the figures for the first week reveal that only about 6,000 person were on rolls as against 2.25 lakh in the same month last year. The figures have been far below the monthly average of 1.5 lakh persons. The state, which has been doing exceedingly well under the scheme, is likely to fall short of the target for job creation under the scheme by a huge margin this year as the performance in the preceding months had been affected by a prolonged and intense monsoon. The spending under the scheme was more than doubled from Rs 256 crore in 2008-09 to Rs 556 crore in the last financial year and the state achieved the highest percentage of coverage in the country by issuing 9.90 lakh job cards last year, out of which over five lakh persons actually availed the employment opportunity. Going by the past performance, Rs 909 crore was earmarked under the scheme for the current year but the utilisation of funds has been far short of the target in the first nine months, though the number of job card holders increased to 10,10,649 covering more than 80 per cent of the total rural families in the state. So far, only Rs 370 crore had been spent and in all only 3.40 lakh persons have taken advantage of the scheme. The utilisation has been almost at the last year’s level which means that the total spending will be around Rs 550 crore, around 60 per cent of the allocation for the year. Senior officers point out that heavy rains virtually grounded development activities for almost four months and even the rain-shadowed tribal areas recorded abnormal precipitation. Further, a low daily wage of Rs 110 under the scheme against the market rate Rs 150 is also making employment unattractive for the jobless. Normally, field activities pick up after October and maximum funds are utilised in the last quarter of the financial year, but it will be different story due to polls this year. Thus, despite a number of new activities being included under the scheme, including maintenance of roads and construction of water harvesting structures, the utilisation of the fund will be far short of the target. |
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Many re-elected village chiefs sans canvassing
Dharamsala, January 9 In addition to that, the wives of many sitting pradhans also got elected in villages where the seat of pradhan was reserved for women candidates. The Tribune tracked the reason for their getting re-elected. In some of the villages as Upper Barol near Dharamsala, the sitting pradhan won without making any efforts. As compared to flamboyant election campaign of his opponents sitting pradhan of Upper Barol village, Sandeep, who is popularly known as Bobby in his village did not carry out any election campaign. He even did not set up camp in front of polling booth to guide the voters regarding his election symbol. However, the results surprised everybody as Bobby won by a convincing margin of about 800 votes. Inquiries revealed that the effective implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) was the basic reason that helped sitting pradhans getting re-elected without making much efforts. A few re-elected pradhans also attributed their win to the effective implementation of MNREGA. Under the scheme, unemployed villagers were earlier provided three-month employment that was now been increased to six months. The maximum beneficiaries of the scheme are women. The women in the rural areas, who were earlier financially dependent on their husbands, are now getting at least Rs 3,000 as monthly wages for six months by serving under MNREGA. The most village pradhans, who have been re-elected, were liberal in providing employment to village women under MNREGA. A few re-elected pradhans, while talking to The Tribune, said they did not deduct salaries of women working under MNREGA even when they failed to come to work due to domestic chores. Political observers say the beneficiaries of MNREGA have developed trust in sitting pradhans.
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Hydropower Potential
Shimla, Janaury 9 Addressing a conference of IPPs and senior officers here, she said the power producers were equal partners in the process of development and the government was extending all possible assistance for completing the codal formalities and procedures were also being simplified. Single Window Clearance and Monitoring Committees had also been constituted at the district level to ensure speedy clearances and effective monitoring. She stressed that meetings of these committees should be held regularly for speedy clearances, redress of grievances and inter-departmental coordination for grant of no-objection certificates. She said the IPPs should ensure providing 70 per cent employment to Himachalis and submit quarterly reports to both Labour and Employment Department and HIMURJA. The Principal Secretary, Non-Conventional Energy Sources, Ajay Mittal, said HIMURJA had allotted 485 projects with a capacity of 1,214 MW to IPPs and so far 35 projects (138 MW) had been commissioned. He said 27 projects (105 MW) were commissioned in 2009, 24 projects (93 MW) would be commissioned in the current financial year and 21 (66 MW) next year. |
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IIT-Mandi to adopt villages
Mandi, January 9 Talking to The Tribune here, Director, IIT, Mandi, Prof TA Gonsalves, said, “We have designed our syllabi and faculty programme focusing on the sustainable development of resources in this part of the Himalayas. Students and faculty will come out with models for management and sustainable development in the key economy areas like apple economy, tourism, roads and house designing in the region so that the public can benefit.” He said, “The IIT will adopt certain villages here where students will go and find ways to improve their farm management practices and ways of living in the eco-friendly environment and improve make landslide-free roads in the hills.” Prof Gonsalves did his BTech from IIT Chennai, MS from Rice University in Houston and PhD from Stanford University. He had stints as an Assistant Professor at Massachusetts but he returned to India and served at IIT Chennai for 21 years since 1989 in the department of computer science and engineering. He joined as Director of the IIT Mandi on January 15, 2010. Spelling out IIT’s priorities, Prof Gonsalves said, “The state has a vast potential of green and solar energy lying untapped. We are building designs on how to use solar energy in green buildings that will make an optimum use of sunlight and other materials so that the houses, unlike these are today, are warm and sunny in winter and cool in summer months.” He said the state has a vast Rs 3,000 crore apple industry, but farmers face management and transport problems, including fluctuating markets and pre-harvest and post-harvest management problems. “We endeavour to develop pre-harvesting, post-harvesting management, supply and cool chains using information and communication technology to improve the present system and available infrastructure that will benefit farmers,” he added. Prof Gonsalves observed that the building architecture in the town and other parts of the region did not use the “green energy” to its advantage. “We are building eco-friendly IIT campus at Kamand using sunlight and other materials to make houses cosy in summer and warmer in winter so that others, including hospitality industry, can replicate the designs and technology,” he added. Talking about the “trash crisis” that plagues this hilly state and about government efforts at making Himachal polythene-free state, Prof Gonsalves said, “We are finding ways how to recycle the trash that will make it easy for the common public and the government agencies to use the trash and junk to produce “green energy” or its products.” The Director said, “The IIT will be a design house with world standards for industry in India and have tied up with the HFCL, Solan, to build and design cheap electronic products which are cost-effective and affordable for the common man. “The research and design efforts are enriched by the visiting faculty, renowned scientists from across the world and through videoconferencing here,” he added.
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CERC Regulations
Shimla, January 9 The commission has also put the onus of providing connectivity to the projects with the capacity ranging between 50 MW and 250 MW on the corporation and even to cluster of small projects if the aggregate capacity exceeds 50 MW to facilitate hassle-free evacuation of power. The new regulations have brought a relief to both public sector agencies and independent power producers who were worried about the evacuation of power because of the failure of the state government to start work on the master plan for the construction of transmission lines for the 13,000 MW of power from projects likely to come up by 2022. The standing committee of the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) accordingly approved the revised proposals for the construction of transmission lines from the Pabbar basin where seven projects are coming up and the 450 MW Shong Tong and 243 MW Kashang project early this week. The PGCIL will construct the entire line from Shong Tong up to Wangtu for further evacuation using the transmission line constructed by the Jaypee Company for Karcham Wangtu project. The power from Kashang will also be injected in the grid at Wangtu. The plan for the Pabbar basin has been changed totally and instead of constructing a line via Paonta to Dehradun the power will be brought to Pragatinagar and injected into the transmission line of the Sutlej Jal Vidyut Nigam which evacuates power from the 1500 MW Nathpa Jhakri project.
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Tourism meet in Bangalore on Jan 15
Shimla, January 9 Arun Sharma, director, Tourism and Civil Aviation, said here that in the meet the tour operators and travel agents would be acquainted with the key selling points of HP and a presentation on new destinations of the state would also be given. |
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Pulse polio drive on January 23
Shimla, January 8 Chief Secretary Rajwant Sandhu, who presided over a meeting in this regard, emphasised the need for identification of clusters for immunisation. “Mass awareness campaigns should be intensified by involving NSS, NCC, Youth Clubs, Mahila Mandals and students in colleges and schools, besides all departments, to ensure that not even a single child is left uncovered,” she said. She said a survey should be conducted, especially in the industrial areas, to identify the children in the age group of 0-5 years who should be immunised during the campaign. |
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‘Paryawaran rath’ to collect polythene
Palampur, January 9 He said a vehicle named “paryawaran rath” would collect polythene from different parts of the town and adjoining panchayats on every Sunday. Thakur said the NGO had come forward to save the environment of the town. The vehicle would collect polythene from the doorsteps of the residents and later handover it to the Public Works Department for use in metalling of roads in the state. He said the NGO had already launched a campaign to make the city green and clean by removing garbage from the upper areas of the town. Thakur said Himachal had been adjudged the best state in the country as it had succeeded in complete eradication of polythene. A team headed by senior officials of the Union Ministry of Environment would visit the state from January 11 to 13 to conduct spot survey in this regard, thereafter Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would honor Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal. Thakur appealed to the local residents to help the state government in keeping the city green and clean. He expressed concern over drying up of deodar trees in the town and said efforts should be made to save them. He said perhaps Palampur was the only hill station in the world where deodars were grown at the height of 4,000 feet. He asked the Forest Department to check why a number of deodars trees were drying up in the town. If any serious disease was affecting the trees, the state government could take assistance from experts of the Forest Research Institute (FRI) at Dehradun.
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Don’t raise retirement age, staff to Dhumal
Shimla, January 9 In a memorandum to the Chief Minister, the confederation pointed out that the state was the biggest employer and raising the age of superannuation would deprive the youth of employment avenues. It also demanded the release of arrears on account of revision of pay scales in one go as an inordinate delay granting the benefit was causing resentment among the employees. It drew attention of the government to the notification dated April 18, 2007, regarding the applicability of the condition for qualifying the departmental examination after one year was not just. It had deprived promotional benefits to the seniormost employees who had attained the age of 5 years by revoking the provision of relaxation. The confederation demanded withdrawal of the notification in toto in the larger interest of the employees.
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Labourer dies of cold
Solan, January 9 Night temperature in the Baddi area had fallen to as low as 3-4°C and the situation had been aggravated with the presence of dense fog which had reduced the visbility to mere 50 m. “The prevailing inclement climate has made driving an arduous task and as against the usual time of 20 to 22 minutes from Pinjore to Baddi the journey takes over an hour,” opined a production manager of an industrial unit at Baddi. With the sky remaining overcast today, the industrial area of Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh was experiencing colder weather than prevalent elsewhere in the district comprising hilly areas like Solan, Kasauli, Chail, etc, where bright sunny days dominated the day. — OC |
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Engineers ready to join HPPCL
Shimla, January 9 The general body meeting of the association held here yesterday passed a resolution to this effect that being the only association affected by the decision, it should also be associated in the process for finalising the terms and conditions of the cadre in the new organisation. The association will soon submit a memorandum on the proposed terms and conditions to the government and the managements of the HPSEBL and HPPCL. The association also elected its new office-bearers. Ajay Patial was elected president and M.K.Sharma general secretary. The other office-bearers included senior vice-president D.K.Sharma and vice-president Ajay Bisht. Joint secretaries were RK Kaundal, Davinder Singh and Sunil Kumar, finance secretary R.K.Dogra, press and publicity secretary PM Nanda and organising secretary Rakesh Bhardwaj. |
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District Congress secretary Yudh Chand Bains today resigned from the post in protest as he and his brother, Gulab Singh Bains, posted as BDO, Paddar, could get justice neither from the party nor from the district administration
The entire upper Manali region experienced a fresh spell of snowfall last evening, renewing the cold wave conditions in the region. The snowfall in lower parts of the area was mild and it melted away within a few hours.
Himachal Pradesh is among the few states that has allowed direct election of municipal council presidents.
An estimated 1.32 crore tourists visited the hill state in 2010, surpassing the figure of 1.14 crore recorded in 2009.