Amritsar, July 26
Scores of commercial and residential dwellers on the properties of the Amritsar Improvement Trust (AIT) have not paid their dues causing losses to the AIT in crores of rupees.

Meanwhile, the trust in order to fund as many as seven infrastructural projects of the city has launched a campaign to recover the amount. These projects were envisaged to widen a railway overbridge, flyovers to ease traffic, improve civic amenities and to install security apparatus. It would need Rs 250 crore to finance these projects.

Sanjiv Khanna, Chairman, AIT, said the trust had initiated a campaign to recover these dues from defaulters of commercial and residential properties.

As per the first list of the defaulters, The AIT is to recover dues of Rs 30 crore. These defaulters include original allottees, buyers and occupants staying on rent.

About 13 shops located near Chitra Talky outside Hall Gate were recovered from illegal occupants. Sanjiv Khanna, AIT chairman, said during his routine checking he came to know that these shops had been occupied illegally. He said the trust had now occupied these shops.

A large number of original allottee defaulters were at Nehru Shopping Complex situated at upscale Lawrence Road market, he said. Billed as one of the most advanced shopping plazas of the city in the 90s, the multi-storied shopping complex, have 376 shops.

Khanna said a large number of allottees had not paid the remaining sum after depositing the initial installments. He said the list of such defaulters had been prepared and the noose would be tightened to recover the entitled amount.

There are plenty of defaulters at Dharam Singh market, one of the oldest commercial projects of the AIT. Situated near Jallianwala Bagh, the market is close to oldest cloth and green team market Katra Ahluwala.

He said majority of the defaulters had not paid their rent dues. He said officials of the trust would be pressed into service to recover them.

He said a major defaulter was the company running petrol pump opposite Guru Nanak Dev University. He said the company was yet to pay Rs 5.11 crore to the trust. He said the people unable to pay the rent and remaining cost of the trust property would be dislodged as per norms.

Amritsar, July 26
Chopping of about 75 trees to make way for the construction of multi-lane flyover on Upper Bari Doab Canal (UBDC) in the place of Tara Wala Bridge on the Amritsar-Jalandhar road has hurt environmentalists and citizens concerned.

Environmentalist Deepak Babbar, Executive Director, Mission Aagaaz Earth and Resources Care Group, said modern techniques had made it possible to transplant the entire trees with roots from one place to another. He cited the instance of Jaipur where many trees had been transplanted successfully. He said the similar method could had been adopted here.

Trees being chopped include pipal, bohar, talhi, tareg, safeda, shisham, mango, sagwan and others.

He said some of these trees were about five decades old. He said the state Assembly at one time was mulling to accord heritage status to pipal and bargad. He said these trees were invaluable and the loss could not be plugged by paying money or planting more trees as these trees would take decades to grow. He said caretaking of saplings was a gigantic task and the law was silent for fixing responsibility.

District Forest Officer Wlibert Samson said there was no guideline of transplanting trees from the Forest Research Institute at Dehradun. He said some private companies were doing this activity, but the success rate was to be looked into.

He said his department had received about Rs 4.75 lakh under the Compensatory Forest Station Scheme and saplings would be planted on over two acres land at a village near Raiya. He added that the department would plant nearly 25,000 saplings from Amritsar-Jalandhar bypass to India Gate Criss-Crossing, the major parts of the city.

Following manifold increase in traffic over a century-old Tara Wala bridge had turned into a major traffic bottleneck for its inadequate width. Consequently, traffic jams had become order of the day.

In order to redress the problem, multi-lane flyover was found to be the only answer.

The bridge will consist of four parts. First part is the three-lane bridge for straight traffic from Amritsar to Jalandhar while second part is the two-way bridge for right-turning traffic from Amritsar city to Tarn Taran. The third part is the two-lane high-level bridge for left-turning traffic from Tarn Taran side to Amritsar city and the fourth part is a three-lane flyover for traffic from Jalandhar side to Amritsar city.

About Rs 23.65 crore will be borne as the cost of the multi-lane bridge by the Punjab Infrastructure Development Board (PIDB) and work is being executed through the PWD. The bridge is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

Amritsar, July 26
The Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) has given its nod to the government-run TB hospital in Amritsar on having a power hotline. The arrangement will be made after the hospital deposits the requisite amount with the department.

Confirming this, Dr Nirmal Kajal, Deputy Medical Superintendent, TB hospital, said the department had received written communication on the issue and it had been forwarded to the Principal of Government Medical College (GMC).

He said the department had to deposit Rs 95,000 for getting the hotline.

GMC Principal Dr SS Shergill said the process had been started and money would be deposited with the department soon.

Dr Kajal hoped that the hotline would be connected by next month.

It may be recalled that the local PSPCL authorities had strongly recommended the case of a power hotline to TB hospital with the higher-ups as the hospital was in the urgent need of it.

Earlier, the hospital authorities had written to PSPCL that the hospital would bear the expenditure of installing the transformer and power hotline as demanded by the authorities.

During power shutdowns, the hospital management finds it difficult to run the ventilator system in the ICU and they have to shift patients to Guru Nanak Dev Hospital in the case of emergencies. Similarly, getting the X-ray done at the hospital is also a tedious task in the case of power cuts as generators cannot bear the load of machines and sensitive instruments. The poor patients had to be shifted to private hospitals in the absence of this facility.

Amritsar, July 26
Industrialists and food scientists have welcomed the Punjab Government’s move of extending concessions for setting up integrated sugar complexes in border districts.

The Badal government notified the new concessions for sugar complexes on July 20. Besides Amritsar, concession would be provided in Tarn Taran, Gurdaspur and Ferozepur.

As per the package the incentives would be given to sugar complexes with minimum fixed capital investment of Rs 200 crore.

A sugar complex will essentially comprise of a sugar mill with minimum capacity of 3000 TCD, power generation unit of minimum 15 MW, a distillery of 30 KL, brewery, second distillery (optional and if requested) which may be grain-based or sugarcane-based ethanol distillery.

Suneet Kochar, Chairman of CII Amritsar Chapter and Director of Khanna Paper Mills, which is among the top 10 paper mill production houses in India, said the step was a move in the right direction.

He added that since the state was predominantly agrarian state it was visionary step to establish agro-based industries.

He cautioned that offering of incentive for setting up the complex was one side of the story. He said many factors were involved in making the proposal a success.

He said the prime need was of uninterrupted supply of raw material. He said unless the government came out with a policy to ensure sufficient supply of sugarcane, industrialists would not be forthcoming.

RSS Kaler, head, Department of Food Science and Technology, Guru Nanak Dev University, said there was enough profit in byproducts of sugarcane.

These byproducts are molasses, ethanol, bioorganic manure rich in nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium and iron.

Power is generated from molasses. Alcohol is drawn out from ethanol and it is also used in automobile fuel.

He said the students were trained with sophisticated techniques in sugarcane technology. He said the students of his department were placed in leading sugar mills and complexes of the country. He said boom in the industry would offer them opportunity to serve in their state.

Harkamaljit Singh, Senior Professor of the department, informed that there were nearly four sugar mills, two distilleries and a sugar complex in the four border districts.

Of these, he said, a distillery was lying closed and all the three cooperative sugar mills were under utilised. He said the government must also come out with a plan to revive these mills and incorporate technologies to harness power, alcohol, ethanol and bio-organic manure.

Amritsar, July 26
Amritsar lad Amit Sharma got the opportunity of performing with “Lagaan”-fame actress Gracy Singh in an under-production Punjabi film “Appan Pher Milange”.

His role was to dance opposite the lead actress. As a skilled dancer he has already proved his capability in famous dance shows “Boogie Woogie” and “Aaja Nachle”.

“I have been raring to switch over to acting arena while utilising my dancing acumen”. For the break, he attributed to destiny and said he effortlessly got the role. Thankful to almighty, Amit said producer of the movie Satish Aggarwal happened to see his poster at the house of one of his students. He contacted him and he lapped up the opportunity.

He said the performance with Gracy Singh had brought the much-needed professional change as directors and producers of serials and soap operas started taking him seriously. He said he was in talk with a few directors for a role in these serials.

A dance teacher by profession, Amit performed with the lead actress for a song “Tu Te Ma Ik Ho Jaiya” in Punjab film “Apa Pher Milange”. The song was picturised in a garden.

The picture is expected to be released at the fag end of this year.

At present, he is teaching dance at DPS and also running a dance academy. A natural dancer he never learnt the art from any master. He said he had never thought that his childhood passion for dance would gradually become a full-time profession.

His mother recalled that “Amit used to watch dances on television with utmost sincerity and rehearsed steps for hours”. As parents we occasionally reprimanded him fearing that he would waste his precious study time.

His dancing skills soon became a talk of his locality and the students started pouring in to learn the dance form. “The number of the students kept growing and I established an academy to accommodate them,” he reasoned.

Things started looking up for him when he took part in “Boogie Woogie” in 2007. “Performing at a national dance programme brought much-needed recognition and acknowledgement from my family.

“The same year he made it to the final rounds of ‘Aaja Nachle’, a dance show beamed on Punjabi music channel Mh 1.”

Amritsar, July 26
A 10-member delegation of the Border Security Force (BSF) headed by C Vasudevan, Deputy Inspector-General, BSF, today crossed over to Pakistan for India-Pakistan quarterly coordination meeting in order to discuss various border-related issues.

Interacting with the media before crossing over to Pakistan, Vasudevan said the BSF would discuss the matters pertaining to defence constructions, drug trafficking, firing incidents, infiltration, inadvertent border crossings and smuggling of arms and ammunition from across the border and various other issues necessary for border management.

Answering the media queries, he said it would also take up the issue of construction of a dam on the Ravi in Pakistan which could result in the flooding of various border villages.

Other members of the delegation include DIGs (BSF) of Jammu, Punjab, Rajasthan Frontiers, BSF headquarters from New Delhi, besides representatives of the Narcotics Control Bureau.

The Pakistan delegation would be headed by Brigadier Wali Muhammad, DIG (Pak rangers), besides sector commanders and senior officers of Pakistan rangers headquarters, Lahore, and senior representatives of the Pakistan Anti-Narcotics Force.

Tarn Taran, July 26
The process of planting saplings along both the sides of the 7 km Tarn Taran-Jandiala Guru road by Kar Sewa sect, Khadur Sahib, was inaugurated by Satwant Singh Johal, Deputy Commissioner (DC), at Khabbe Dogran village, 6 km from here today.

Baba Sewa Singh, head of the sect, presided over the work. More than two lakh saplings have already been planted along different roads, common places and other places by the sect.

Baba Sewa Singh had been honoured with the Padma Shri Award by the Government of India for his selfless work of planting saplings to save environment.

The DC while addressing on the occasion appreciated Baba Sewa Singh for the planting trees.

Baba Sewa Singh urged people to come forward to save environment by planting saplings on a large scale. He said the move of the sect had been financed by donors from the world.

Baba said 2,000 trees would be planted on this 7-km-long road from Tarn Taran to Khabbe Dogran village.

Tarn Taran, July 26
The row over the Lakir Sahib Gurdwara here has reached to National Commission for Scheduled Caste (NCSC), New Delhi, which has sought a detailed report from the SSP regarding the alleged harassment of several persons, including the chief sewadar of the gurdwara, within 15 days.

The deputy chairman of the commission will also be visiting the gurdwara on July 28 to have the first-hand information.

According to information collected by The Tribune here today, a case under Sections 295A and 298 of the IPC has been registered against seven persons, including four relatives of late Baba Joginder Singh Yogi. The main accused nominated in the case was Harjit Singh, son of Yogi, member of Dalit, Scheduled Caste (SC) community.

The case has been registered on the statement of Jaswant Singh Padda, president of the local committee.

Baba Yogi expired in December last and on his bhog ceremony several Sikh organisations had presented “dastars” (turbans) to Baba Harjit Singh.

Rajinder Singh, son-in-law of Baba Yogi, in a complaint to the district police some days back had alleged that Harjit Singh was ousted from the gurdwara by the Padda faction as he belonged to the Dalit community.

The NCSC has also instructed the local SSP to find the factual position of the gurdwara along with the action taken report within 15 days.

The historic gurdwara had its great devotion among the people of the area. Baba Yogi served this gurdwara for more than 32 years.

Amritsar, July 26
Even if the proposal to introduce CCTV cameras outside liquor vends in the holy city could not see the light of the day even after six months, the Amritsar administration has fixed the timings of the vends to 12 am to check lawlessness around the vends.

But one thing that the administration has failed to take notice of is the mushrooming of illegal liquor vends in rural areas.

It seems that these illegal vends continue to enjoy the immunity of the administration, police and the Excise Department.

The main areas, where these vends flourish, are Maqboolpura, Bangla Basti, Fatahpur and Tung Bala area on the Majitha road.

A visit to these vends revealed that these vends thrive on daily wagers and small time traders.

Meanwhile, the inhabitants of these areas avoid raising their voice as it would bring them in direct confrontation with the vend operators who have got large goon support.

It has been learnt that these vends were basically the subsidiaries of the ‘legal contractors’, who apparently in connivance with the administrative officials, open up their sale points in the rural areas.

The contractors pay under-hand money to the excise officers and certain political leaders, who manage to provide official protection.

On action against these vends, the administrative officials too avoid getting themselves involved because of the liquor contractors’ close proximity with the political circle.

Deputy Commissioner Rajat Aggarwal said, “The lawlessness around liquor vends is a grave issue, that’s why I have fixed their timings. As far as illegal liquor vends are concerned, we would take action against them.” On the installation of CCTV cameras around vends, he said the matter had to be checked with the police. “Only after gauging the legality of the proposal, it would be implemented,” he added.

Amritsar, July 26
Maintaining law and order situation in the border district, curbing drug menace and better coordination among various agencies would be my priorities, said Gurdev Singh Sahota, Inspector General of Police, Border range after taking over the charge as IG here.

Talking to The Tribune, he said he would hold meetings with district police chiefs of the border range to assess the actual situation in various areas.

“Special emphasis would be given on eradication of drug addiction in the border districts,” he said while adding that special squads, which were formed to combat this menace would be reactivated. These squads would be exclusively working to gather information, follow ups and nab the culprits. In the police districts, where these squads were non-existent, these teams would be formed.

“Being a range consisting of districts having close proximity with Pakistan borders, it is necessary to break the supply line of narcotics and I would try my best to snap the line by identifying the culprits and bring them to the book,” said Sahota.

He said the control room which was established in the IG office to receive information and strictly deal with smugglers and drug peddlers would be made high tech. Yesterday, after talking over the charge he paid obeisance at Golden Temple.

Amritsar, July 26
Social Welfare Minister Laxmi Kanta Chawla gave a grant of Rs 10.50 lakh to Amritsar Sewa Samiti here.

She said the grant would be used to install sophisticated machines for conducting operations of eyes and ear, and cell operator machine for separating cells of the patients suffering from dengue and chikanguneya diseases. She said she offered the grant to the samiti as it had been serving patients from economically weaker families for the past nearly 87 years. She said the samiti, in order to reach out to maximum people, had opened 65 branches.

She said it also offered clothes, quilts, bed sheets and other necessity items to the needy families.