Chandigarh, January 20
Even as the magisterial inquiry into the Khushpreet murder case has led to the suspension of three police officers and transfer of a DSP, the 26-page report seems to be as shoddy as the police investigation as it fails to address certain vital issues.

The report by ML Sharma, who is a Punjab Civil Service officer and whose primary responsibility is Director Transport, leaves several critical questions unanswered.

Chandigarh, January 20
In an apparent display of apathy, UT Administrator Shivraj Patil today refused to accept a memorandum from Khushpreet’s father, Lakhbir Singh, expressing dismay at the magisterial inquiry report following which three policemen were suspended and a fourth transferred to the Police Lines.

Attached to the memorandum was the UT Administration’s cheque for Rs 1 lakh as compensation for the death of the five-year-old boy, which the magisterial report has attributed to abject incompetence on the part of the police.

Neither the Administrator nor the Administration offered any explanation on the refusal to accept the memorandum. Patil’s insensitivity was evident as he “woke up” days later to direct the Administration to pull up its socks and get to the bottom of the gruesome killing preceded by the kidnapping of the boy.

Patil had remained silent not only through the 16-day episode (December 21 to January 5), but also for 12 long days after the victim’s body was recovered.

Lakhbir Singh later told reporters that Patil seemed irked by the presence of a “self-professed” leader, Pal Singh Pandhi, who accompanied him.

In the memorandum, Lakhbir Singh has demanded a fresh probe by a sitting Punjab and Haryana High Court judge while alleging that the inquiry report by the officiating SDM (Central), ML Sharma, had been “conditioned” on the advice of UT police personnel.

Khushpreet’s father has been demanding a fresh probe into police ineptness and registration of an FIR against the guilty police officers.

In the memorandum, Lakhbir also expressed dismay that no one represented the Administration at Khushpreet’s bhog ceremony.

The memorandum, which appeared somewhat politicised, bore signatures of five political organisations in addition to the market welfare committee, Burail.

Chandigarh, January 20
The ongoing flip flop on age eligibility criteria in city’s four minority schools has left hundreds of parents a harried lot and they have demanded a written assurance from the UT administration that their wards get a fair chance in admission in addition to restoration of the old criteria which was being followed for years.

With this memorandum being submitted today, the controversy surrounding the age eligibility criteria for nursery admission to St, John’s School, Sacred Heart School, Sector 26, St. Annes, Sector 32, and Carmel Convent, Sector 9, seems to have further worsened. Two days after the UT Administration rolled back its arbitrary directive changing the criteria hours before the sale of forms, it has sought another meeting with schools to discuss parents’ objections to the current criteria being followed.

“With this RTE controversy, I am not sure whether my child will be eligible next year or not. These schools have since ages followed the September-October criteria. This year again it was expected to be September 2006 to October 2007, but the UT Administration got it changed to March 2006 to April 2007. What about those children who turn four after April 2007? They were not eligible last year for being under age and will not get a chance next year for being overage while many others who got a chance last year have got another chance,” said Dr Anuj Kaushal, a parent.

Patiala, January 20
A tattoo on his back helped cops ascertain his criminal connection with Punjab. Considered dead, and cases against him closed and pending, the Punjab police is now waiting for the interrogation of Pritpal Singh, alias Paras Soni.

The Patiala police has sought a production warrant for Paras Soni, the brain behind the recent Tanishq dacoity at Mani Majra. Soni is a proclaimed offender and is wanted in murder, robbery and theft cases.

Sources in the police department stated that Soni, with numerous cases registered against him in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, had proved himself dead. “His picture with the Punjab police was almost 10-year-old and was of a little help,” they added.

“Despite the arrest of Soni, the Chandigarh police was not sure that Paras Soni was the same gangster who was wanted in three states, till a tattoo on his back proved helpful to establish his true identity as Pritpal Singh,” claimed a senior Punjab police official.

Later, a team of police officials was sent to Jalalabad with his latest picture and the police came to know that Soni, arrested in the 10-crore heist, was actually Pritpal Singh. “In Jalalabad, Pritpal had proved himself dead and his family members had organised a bhog ceremony as well,” claimed an officer.

Sources confirmed that whenever Pritpal Singh was arrested he would give fake family background credentials which meant cases in Punjab were never taken up and linked with Soni.

Pritpal Singh had escaped from the custody of the Rajasthan police in 2003 and is wanted in over a dozen criminal cases by the Punjab police.

Patiala SSP Gurpreet Singh Gill told The Tribune that they also needed Pritpal Singh in a case pertaining to theft at a bank in SST Nagar. “We will soon seek production warrant against him and interrogate him to know more about his connections in Patiala,” Gill stated.

Soni was the mastermind in the Tanishq showroom dacoity at Mani Majra, Chandigarh, on the intervening night of January 11 and 12.

Chandigarh, January 20
SK Sehgal, chief general manager, State Bank of India (SBI), Chandigarh Circle, today honoured star performers, who were part of the GMADA-Aerocity Scheme. 

Chandigarh, January 20
Living up to its promise, the ongoing TFT National Theatre Fest brought yet another different genre of realistic drama with “Tamar Patra” staged by the Nat Bundhele Troupe of Bhopal under the direction of thespian Alakhnadan at the Tagore Theatre here today.

Operating at the intellectual level, the play written by Devashsish Majumdar recovered some explosive realities about the fraudulent means used by politicians to woo sympathisers and strengthen their vote bank. Driven by penury, the honest bookbinder, Twishamapati approached a politician and MP for the employment of his son, who suggested and helped him to get fake nomination and certificate of a freedom fighter for the award of a Tamar Patra, a national pride and entitling him to a pension.

Meanwhile, obsessed by the honour, the protagonist studied the lifestyle of freedom fighters, imbibed their true spirit, which later made him realise about the perfidy and double standard of contemporary corrupt politicians. Unable to get his noble soul and mind corrupted, he returned to the life of an honest bookbinder. Aloke Chatterji excelled as protagonist, as also Priynaka Thakur, Shilpa Shukla, Ajay Srivastav and Anshprayan Sinha.

Earlier, the TFT academy honoured playwright Jatinder Brar for his incredible service to the promotion of theatre in Punjab. Dr Atamjit introduced the theatrical genius of Brar.

Chandigarh, January 20
The UT architecture department should speed up the process of clearing plans of major civic projects as many of them had been hanging fire for the past four years, Mayor Ravinder Pali Singh impressed upon UT administrator Shivraj V Patil at their meeting held today.

Patil assured him a meeting of the UT adviser along with the MC Commissioner would be convened shortly to discuss pending MC projects and begin work on them as soon as possible.

During the meeting Ravinder Pali referred to the major projects that had yet to take off, including multilevel parking lots, construction of community centres in the city’s various sectors and land for community parking in the southern sectors. “Due to the delay in clearing the proposals work on not even a single project has commenced during the last four years”, he averred.

Ravinder Pali said that even the drawings of extension plans of the MC’s own building had been lying pending for the past five years with the chief architect and nothing had been done about it till date.

“Similarly drawings of the six proposed multi-level parking projects, which were approved in 2005, only drawing of single parking has been approved till date and drawing of another parking project is in the pipeline”, the Mayor added.

“The master plan for Manimajra, where 500 acres of land are still vacant, and which was submitted to the UT architecture department a decade ago, has yet not been approved by the UT administration till date”, he said. He also took up the need for setting up more wedding and banquet halls in the city.

Suggesting the size of the community centers proposed to be built in various sectors should be increased, Ravinder Pali requested Patil to issue instructions that the architect department should redesign these centres so that they could also be used by city residents for holding wedding functions. “The senior deputy mayor as well as the deputy mayor should be empowered to utilize some of the powers and facilities in the corporation”, he argued.

Pali requested the UT administrator to issue instructions to the architect department to redesign the community centre so that it could be used for marriage purposes also by the residents.

Chandigarh, January 20
Election to the post of chairmen of 12 sub-committees of the Chandigarh municipal corporation will not be held, as councillors have filed a single nomination paper for each committee.

On the last date, Brig Kuldeep Chandpuri filed his nomination for the post of chairman of arts, culture and sports committee and for the rest eleven committees, candidates filed their papers yesterday.

Mayor Ravinder Pal Singh said a meeting would be convened tomorrow in which chairmen and vice-chairmen of all committees would be announced.

On January 12, the Mayor had constituted 12 sub-committees, including those of road, water, supply and sewerage disposal, electricity, environment and city beautification, house tax, apni mandi, sanitation, fire and emergency services, arts, culture and sports, enforcement, women empowerment and slum development.

Meanwhile, a meeting of the art, culture and sports committee will be held tomorrow to decide on the marathon schedule. 

Chandigarh, January 20
The hearing of election petition challenging mayoral elections filed by the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation (CMC) independent mayoral candidate Jagjit Singh Kang was postponed to January 28 as the Deputy Commissioner (DC) was away to Delhi today.

MC Mayor Ravinder Pali Singh will file his reply to the notice of the election petition sent to him by DC by January 28. BJP councillor Rajesh Gupta, another respondent in the election petition, also appeared in person today.

It may be mentioned that Kang had challenged the election of Mayor Ravinder Pali Singh on the ground that the Congress councillors were asked by Pawan Kumar Bansal, Union Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, to take a photograph of their ballot paper after casting their votes in favour of the Congress candidate.

Kang had also pointed out in his petition that when the presiding officer Brig. Kuldeep Singh Chandpuri had asked the councillors not to take their mobile phones inside the polling booths, it was violated by Bansal by saying that ‘no body can stop him from taking his mobile phone inside the polling booth. I will take my mobile phone with me. You do whatever you want to do”. Kang had alleged that the secrecy of the ballot was breached by Bansal with ulterior motives.

Panchkula, January 20
A large number of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha activists will take out a rally to hoist the National Flag at Lal Chowk, Srinagar on January 26.

Former Ambala MP RL Kataria said a delegation led by Anurag Thakur, MP, and the national BJYM president would reach Ambala on Friday at 3 pm and the rally would further proceed to Srinagar.

Kataria said more than a lakh BJP supporters would join the rally which would be addressed by national leaders, including LK Advani, Nitin Gadkari, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley. He lashed out at the ruling Congress government.

He also flayed Ambala MP and Union Minister Kumari Selja for failing to bring funds for the development of her constituency. He said long-pending demand of the residents of Panchkula, Yamunagar and Ambala for setting up a railway line from Ambala to Naraingarh has not been fulfilled.

He added that a recent statement of the state finance minister Capt Yadav praising Chief Minister of Gujarat for his corruption-free governance had exposed chinks in the Congress party. He said policies initiated by Modi should also be implemented in the state.

Senior local leaders, including Gianchand Gupta, Arun Guleria, Deepak Sharma, Varinder Garg and BB Singhal also spoke on the occasion.

Mohali, January 20
The Mohali municipal corporation has decided to set up four zonal complaint centres for sanitation work.

As the town has been divided into four zones for sanitation work, complaint centres will be set up in each zone, where employees will be available to register complaints of residents. These complaint centres will be equipped with telephones. Sanitary inspectors of the four zones will be available at these centres from 9 am to 1 pm. The centres will be set up at Silvi Park in Phase X, Rose Garden in Phase III-B 1, fire station in Phase I, Industrial Area, and one in Phase VII, Industrial Area.

As the office of the corporation is located in Sector 68, residents find it hard to reach there and register complaints in connection with the sanitation work.

The town has been divided into four zones for cleaning purposes. Zone one consists of Phases I, II, III, IV and VI,

Zone two has Phases III A, III B 1, III B 2, VII and VIII, Zone three comprises Phases IX to XI, Sector 48-C and Phase IX, Industrial Area, while Sectors 70, 71, Phase V and Phases VII and VIII, Industrial Area, fall in Zone IV.

The Mohali civic body has still not outsourced the sanitation work for another year, even as the two-month extended period is going to expire on January 25. Contractors have been given a one-month extension.

Chandigarh, January 20
Replicating the “University Business School (UBS) model of placements” in all departments of Panjab University, an initial exercise was done today by the central placement cell in the English auditorium for the language departments of the university.

In the event that was hosted by the English department, students and faculty members of UBS gave presentations on aspects involved in the placements and students of Hindi, Punjabi and English department exchanged their ideas about seeking placements.

“UBS has had a record numbers of placements this time. The central placement cell members wanted that UBS students and teachers must share their placement experience with us. Central placement committee members felt that the model should be replicated in all departments. We wanted to sensitise students towards job fair that would be held in March. It was an opportunity to motivate students today,” said Deepti Gupta, placement coordinator, English department.

“The students from the arts fraternity had never imagined that they could get placed in the corporate sector. Hence, the students were motivated to develop some extra skills, besides the masters degree they were pursuing,” she added.

The departments have already formed core committees comprising students and faculty members for placements. “This is just the initial process and the system would gradually fall into place. We are in the experimenting stage and the placements scenario in arts departments will surely fall into place.

We encouraged the students to think about jobs like event management, etc. In the workshop, the arts department students told us about their areas of interest and the kind of jobs they are interested in doing like publishing houses, journalism, etc,” said a CPC member.

The central placement cell would be holding workshops in the hotel management institute, fashion technology, law and UIAMS.

Panchkula, January 20
Pallavi, Aishwarya and Nirwan Goel, students of Chaman Lal DAV Senior Public School, Sector 11, here have made the city proud as three science projects of the same school won gold medals at the 18th National Children’s Science Congress (NCSC), which recently concluded at Chennai.

State coordinator Narinder, who assisted the teams at the science congress, informed that the panel of experts at the science congress has selected two of its school projects among the best 30 projects from all over the country.

He said the selected projects would further be evaluated by the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, for their effective implementation. The first science project on “Water purification” was a major breakthrough for its special features of being economical and eco-friendly, he added.

The state coordinator said the second project was “Invention of bio-pesticides for killing cockroaches, termite, mosquito and larva and pests of vegetable crops”. He said the effect and efficiency was tested with teams of experts, officials of industry and in slum areas.

School principal Anjali Marriya said the names of three students had been recommended to the Deputy Commissioner, Panchkula, for recognition of their effort on the Republic Day celebrations.