Hisar, December 1
The call for a day-long bandh in protest against the Centre’s decision to allow FDI in the retail sector had no impact in the district today.

All the main shops, business establishments, banks, educational institutions and government offices functioned as usual. Even the kiryana shops remained open and did brisk business, today being the beginning of a new month.

No organisation of traders and shopkeepers had endorsed the bandh call. The markets opened at the usual time. Reports from nearby towns of the district said there was no impact there, too.

Rohtak: Ignoring the call given by various trading organisations for the bandh, almost all the shops, commercial institutions including the banks here conducted business without any protest or disruption.

Though a protest was lodged by the CPM against the government’s move to allow FDI in retail trade at various places across the state, no organisation connected with the trade bodies or association came out on the road to lodge a protest or support the call of the nationwide bandh today on the issue.

According to the state secretary of the Haryana unit of the CPM, Inderjit Singh, dharnas and street-corner meetings were held by the party supporters and workers at Hisar, Rohtak, Tohana, Jind, Karnal, Faridabad and other places denouncing the decision of allowing the FDI, which, he claimed, was highly damaging for almost all sections of society.

Kurukshetra: BJP and HJC workers jointly burnt an effigy of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh near the old bus stand here on Thursday in protest against the proposed FDI Bill. Addressing the workers, the BJP Haryana State Communication Cell president Dhuman Singh Kirmach said that the latest law of FDI, which is going to be passed as a Bill by the Congress, will ruin the small shopkeepers, retailers as well as the common customers of our country.

Karnal: The bandh call evoked a lukewarm response in Karnal, Kurukshetra and adjoining districts. Most of the traders protested by keeping the shops and other establishments open. There was almost no effect of the call and life remained normal.

The traders said that the matter pertained to them and they would fight it out and accused the political parties of politicising the issue to serve their own interests.

Sirsa: The bandh call evoked a lukewarm response at Sirsa. Though some shops remained closed in the morning, the markets functioned as usual for most part of the day. Gurdev Singh Rahi, district president of the BJP, said the response to the bandh was “mixed”.

Panipat: The bandh call generated a mixed response from the local traders in Panipat district on Thursday. Even as shopkeepers and retailers in some of the busy markets of the city did pull down the shutters for some time, later they opened their establishments and did business as usual. Besides, BJP workers, under the leadership of state convener of the industrial wing of the BJP Rajiv Ahuja, also took out a procession in the city markets and later assembled at the Lal Batti Chowk. 

Chandigarh, December 1
Super-speciality treatment at affordable prices is set to be within the reach of the common man with the Haryana Government starting advanced medicare in seven district hospitals across the state.

With necessary infrastructure in place in seven district hospitals -- Faridabad, Gurgaon, Bhiwani, Rohtak, Sonepat, Hisar and Panchkula -- the super-speciality treatment for the common man is around the corner. This coupled with the training of state government doctors at the Pt. Bhagwat Dayal Sharma Postgradulate Institute of Medical Sciences, Rohtak, the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, and the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, which was in final stages, should enable us to start super-speciality treatment in certain diseases soon, Dr Narveer Singh, Director-General of Health Services, told The Tribune today.

To begin with, the Health Department is planning to start dialysis, endoscopy, laparoscopic surgery and eye surgery in the seven district hospitals. Depending on the success of these surgeries, the Health Department will go in for starting more such advanced procedures in these and other government hospitals, sources said.

Dr Narveer Singh said as part of the skill upgradation of the state government doctors, the Health Department had chalked out a comprehensive plan for organising continuing medical education (CME) programmes on Saturdays and Sundays where renowned experts in different branches of medicine would deliver talks and address seminars.

On the need to start advanced healthcare facilities in the government hospitals, a senior health official highlighted that private healthcare was a costly proposition for a majority of the population in the state. The super-speciaility treatment in the government sector would go a long way in providing healthcare to the common man at reasonable prices besides reducing the patient load in the referral government hospitals in the region.

Besides, the state government spent a huge amount by way of reimbursement of the medical bills of the government officials raised in private hospitals for conducting these super-speciality procedures. The money saved by conducting these advanced medical procedures in the state-run hospitals could be used for the creation of more health infrastructure in the state, the health official argued.

Ratia, December 1
A day after the polling concluded for the Ratia byelection, candidates of various political parties spent their day meeting party workers and attending social obligations.

Congress candidate Jarnail Singh was beaming with confidence when The Tribune caught him in his election office.

“I will win this election by a minimum margin of 10,000 votes,” said Jarnail Singh.

He claimed that Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s promise of development in the next three years, the hard work by party workers and the support of the Dera Sacha Sauda followers had all worked in his favour.

INLD nominee Sarfi Bai, however, did not visit her office in Ratia town. Instead, Ramesh Singla, the district vice-president of the INLD, met the party workers to prepare for the December 4 counting. Sarfi Bai’s son Raj Kumar Odh, alias Raju, who picked his late father Gian Chand Odh’s mobile phone, said, “Ask me whatever you want to ask?” when asked to give the phone to his mother. He posed a counter question when asked about his assessment of the poll outcome, “Aap batao, aap ko kya lagta hai?”

BJP candidate Mahavir Parshad went to attend the bhog ceremony of a close kin of one of his workers and later met the party workers in the election office. “People have voted silently this time, and I have not lost hope,” he said.

Hisar, December 1
After gruelling campaigning for over three weeks, the three main contenders for the byelection to the Adampur Assembly seat spent the day with their families and party workers discussing the nuances of the whole exercise.

The HJC-BJP nominee Renuka Bishnoi said she woke up around 6 am, half an hour later than her normal routine. After prayers and morning chores, she and her husband, Kuldeep Bishnoi, left for Delhi with their children.

Before leaving, both had an hour-long meeting with their campaign managers and party workers at which they roughly calculated the number of votes that might have been cast in Renuka’s favour.

Renuka said she was not at all tired due to campaigning, adding that being a member of a political family she was used to all this. She thanked her supporters and voters and said she was certain of victory. “A win is assured. We now have to wait till the counting is over to know the margin of victory”, she added.

INLD nominee Ram Singh Baswana said during the campaign he used to wake up at four in the morning. He said he woke up at the same time this morning, too. “But I lolled around in the bed for an hour. So, I had an extra hour of sleep today, so to say,” he added.

Baswana, too, had a long meeting with his supporters at which they discussed the voting trends in various pockets of the constituency. Baswana also said he was sure to win the seat. He spent the day with his family members at his house in the village.

Kulbir Beniwal, the Congress nominee, said he had an extra half hour of sleep today. “ I have never been tired all my life. Even after the campaign I was feeling as fresh as ever. But, yes, I loved that bonus of 30 minutes of extra sleep today”, he said.

Beniwal, too, had a similar routine today. He met with his workers and discussed his winning chances with close friends in the morning. He also spent the day at home with family members. 

Deeghal/ Barhana
From November 23 till December 2, actors of Shuruat Samiti, an NGO, trained by National School of Drama (NSD) Repertory Company, are touring villages of Jhajjar district, using chaupals and schools to stage shows with a message - treat girls with love, they, too, have a right to live.

After Acts and legislation failed to bring about improvement in the gender ratio of this district, the Department of Health, Haryana, and the National Health Rural Mission decided to go back to the “social medium”, to theatre, to seek solutions. With the help of NSD Repertory Company, scriptwriters and actors were picked from Haryana by Shuruat Samiti that produced scripts to sensitise people in rural Haryana about the ill-effects of female foeticide. In October 2010, a two-week workshop was conducted at Panchkula, which resulted in production of three plays, based on the shared experiences of people from the affected regions. The scripts of “Maa” and “Janmotsava” were written with the help of the rural women, who voiced their concerns through theatre, while “Sadhana” was based on a short story by Nasira Sharma.

All three plays were then staged at 10 district headquarters of the state during the summer of 2011. Later, it was felt that the real need to tell the truth of gender disparity was in the villages, especially in the villages of Jhajjar district, where the sex ratio was the lowest in the country.

Kamlesh, an ANM worker, who has come to see the plays at Deeghal, says, “ The PNDT Act punishes women who want sex detection of the foetus, but she is under pressure, she has no voice in making a choice. It is common knowledge in this region that clinics open early morning to foretell the future of a foetus.” Then, there are mobile vans equipped with ultrasound machines, meant to help people living in the remote areas, but pressed in discreet service to help people with money to decide if their girl child should see the world. The actors will cover all villages of the district by December 2, after staging shows at Bhindwas, Beri, Bahadurgarh, Chhara, Deeghal and Barhana, they will be joined by artists from across the country, who will paint for the sake of girl child.

At Deeghal Senior Secondary Boys School, the actors begin their show with staging of “Maa”, which is set in a lighter tone in Haryanvi, to arouse the audience interest. Then they move on to stage “Saadhna”, which raises some crucial issues about the identity of a middle-class married woman, with seemingly enviable status, but who lacks the right over her fertility. The helplessness of a beautiful and educated Saadhna, who is forced to abort three daughters, stands in contrast to Manjari in “Janmotsava”, who, despite being a poor labourer Mangtu Ram’s daughter, wins a medal in wrestling at the Commonwealth Games. The scripts uncover complex social realities of the region to give a message.

After each show, locals are asked to prepare an impromptu presentation to make the exercise interactive. At Barhana, the audience prepared a song, at Bhindwas, a ragini was sung by Rajender Singh and at Deeghal, students from girls’ school presented a skit based on what they watch around them. “Our effort is to help them confront the truth and feel agitated about it,” says Reeta Ranjan of Shuruat Samiti.

Rohtak, December 1
A 30-year-old woman in a live-in relationship was found murdered and her body dumped here by the accused, including the boy whom she proposed to marry. While the police has booked four persons, including the boyfriend of the victim, two persons reported to be close friends of the main accused have been arrested in this connection.

The body of the deceased, Kamlesh (30), hailing from a colony here but currently residing with her boyfriend Ravi and belonging originally to Sampla town in the district, was found with gunshot injuries near a drain close to Singhpura village this morning. The investigation by the cops revealed that the victim, who had been married to a resident of Sampla a few years back, got divorced from her husband and had an affair with another resident in the neighbourhood. According to police sources, problems arose in the relationship after the boy insisted on carrying it on as a live-in relationship while the woman wanted to marry and settle down.