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Smuggling racket busted
Govt insensitive to disabled children’s needs
30,000 employees on election duty
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Campaign trail
Four held for bid to grab NRI’s property
Poll training of micro-observers held
Entrepreneurship
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Smuggling racket busted
Jalandhar, January 19 One of the arrested suspects is a Punjab Police employee and presently posted as a head constable at Kapurthala. The accused were indulged in the cross-border smuggling of drugs and fake currency since long, said Opinderjit Singh Ghuman, AIG, CI, Jalandhar Zone. In a release issued here today, the AIG said that acting on a tip-off, raids were conducted at suspected hideouts of the accused in Jalandhar and Kapurthala He said the accused have been identified as head constable Rattan Singh and Avinash Kumar. While Avinash Kumar, a resident of Gaggomahal village in Amritsar district, was residing at a house in Guru Amardass Colony near Verka Milk Plant in Jalandhar, head constable Rattan Singh of Badshahpur village in Kapurthala district was residing in Mohalla Guru Nanak Pura in Kapurthala. A case under Sections 489-, 489B, 489-C, 420 and 120-B of the IPC and the NDPS Act has been registered against them at the operation cell police station in Amritsar. Ghuman revealed that Avinash was nabbed for possessing Rs 6,15,500 fake currency notes. Avinash has links with Pakistan smugglers, he added. In 1986, he was arrested in Pakistan and was imprisoned for two-and-a-half years. During his sentence, Avinash developed links with Pakistani smugglers, he added. He was again arrested with six kilograms of opium in 1994 and then with six kilograms of opium and a rifle by the Ajnala police in 1996. The very next year, he was arrested with heroin by customs department in Ramdas and then with five kilograms of heroin in Jammu, Ghuman claimed. After remaining in jail for 10 years in theses cases, Avinash completed his term in 2008. The CI team also nabbed Rattan Singh at his Kapurthala accommodation and seized Rs 9,27,000 fake Indian currency notes. The AIG revealed that during interrogation, both the accused admitted to have obtained the consignment of six kilograms of heroin and fake currency from Sukhraj Singh, alias Raju, a resident of Sourian under the Amritsar (Rural) police. |
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Govt insensitive to disabled children’s needs
Jalandhar, January 19 Parents complain that none of the schools in the city are equipped with facilities keeping in mind the needs of the disabled. Perturbed at the “indifferent” attitude of the authorities, parents of physically challenged children want disability to be taken up as an election issue. Amarjit Singh Anand, zonal secretary (North) of the National Confederation of Parents’ Association for Special Children and president of the Chanan Association said they had already received a green signal from district SAD president Gurcharan Singh Channi on the issue, but are awaiting a positive response from the other parties. Anand, who also represented Punjab for the 2011 Census on behalf of the disability group, said: “February 28, 2011, was the last day for enumeration and till then, two of our schools and the Red Cross School for the deaf and dumb hadn’t been accounted for. There were similar reports from such institutions in Patiala and Bathinda. As many as 300 children of a school for the deaf and dumb in Patiala hadn’t been accounted for. It was then that I approached the Additional Commissioner, Census, and the left out institutions were covered. But such incidents show how serious the government is about such institutions.” The government-run and other schools for special children in the district have a common complain about specialised staff. Many existing private schools do not seriously adhere to the guidelines regarding the admission of 25 per cent special children in their schools. Some special schools in the district do not even have adequate aids for children and the staff of one of such schools is without salaries for months. The schools and public places commonly lack special ramps, toilets, railings or rooms to suit special or disabled children. And on top of it, even the state ministries do not have any special provisions or guidelines regarding disabilities or special needs. Schools, colleges sans facilities
The government has to start from zero. There is neither education nor care for the disabled in the city. In a normal school, they run a chance of being stigmatised and the existing schools do not even have the staff to attend to their needs. While in the West, the government helps to make special rooms and infrastructure for the disabled, even at homes, but there is no such agenda here. Also, there is no special transport facility for the disabled. There is no adaptive clothing either. Government buildings and malls are not accessible to the disabled. Such children can never imagine of taking up social activities. Rather everything around them is guaranteed to make them feel more bound, because their needs have never been
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30,000 employees on election duty
Jalandhar, January 19 While a total of 1,800 state government employees, most of whom are schoolteachers, have been on the job for over a year for registration of voters and distributing voter ID cards, 250 sector officers and 200 sector magistrates have been appointed to supervise their work now. The BLOs have also been given a new task of distributing voter slips to the candidates, an exercise which will begin in a few days. Each of the nine returning officers has over 200 persons deputed as supporting staff. The staff has been working in shifts round the clock with various teams including surveillance teams, static teams and videographers, seizing unaccounted cash, liquor, taking complaints on phones, preparing daily reports, following the candidates, watching video CDs of their rallies, calculating expenditure and then even comparing it with the candidates’ registers. For each of the total 1,771 polling booths, four persons have been deployed as polling staff. The election office has also appointed nearly 20 per cent of reserve staff and kept them on standby. The presiding officer has been given the additional job of sending in hourly reports on SMS. The central government employees even have been taken as micro-observers who would keenly monitor polls on the Election Day. Besides, the staff from Press Information Bureau and district press relation office has been entrusted with the job to scan media reports and check any biased or paid news in papers and TV channels. There are certain offices such as election office, National Informatics Centre, Deputy Statistics and Economics Officer, stenos and telephone linemen who are working for over 15 hours a day. Many employees complain, “We just get a night to go home and sleep and get back the next day. Thank God, there are just 10 days left now”. Many offices have even arranged for beddings and the employees coming from other districts prefer to sleep in the office rooms in the night. Couples complain
Several couples who are working in government departments are a worried lot as both of them have been assigned poll duty. Many such couples are seen outside the office of the DC daily with a request to cancel the duty of at least one of them. Some couples are also seen bringing in their children along to plead their cases. However, there has been no solace for them as DC Priyank Bharti is seen telling them: “I too have a kid and we both are working and on duty.” The NIC’s video-conferencing centre is busy these days, for the election office is holding daily meetings with the DEOs and observers. The meeting went on for four hours on Wednesday.
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Campaign trail
Jalandhar, January 19 While sitting MLA Chuni Lal is looking forward for his second innings as an MLA, Suman Kaypee, wife of Jalandhar MP Mohinder Singh Kaypee, is banking on the anti-incumbency factor. Even as there are many other candidates in fray from the seat, the direct fight is being witnessed between these two candidates. Both Suman Kaypee and Chuni Lal are seen canvassing along with a battery of their supporters to garner the support of the electorate. Jalandhar Tribune takes a look at the campaign style of the both the candidates.
Greenhorn candidate Suman Kaypee may be a new entrant in politics, but her experience of canvassing for her husband Mohinder Singh Kaypee in the past is helping her in reaching out to the masses. “For me, campaigning is not confined to timing. I am meeting voters 24X7 through door-to-door campaigning and nukkad meetings. Apart from male voters, I am also taking the women voters along to ensure that they too get a chance of getting heard,” she added. This afternoon, she campaigned at the local Gha Mandi, Kot Mohalla and New Model House locality of her constituency. “I am also taking the help of the local councillors who are leaving no stone unturned in making my campaign a success,” she said. Suman, who has taken premature retirement from Punjab National Bank, has always remained an active support for her husband in previous elections. “My husband is not only canvassing for me, but for other Congress candidates too,” she said. On the other hand, Bhagat Chuni Lal is seeking votes from the electorate on various development projects and works done by the SAD-BJP government. Bhagat is sure of making a comeback in for the second term and stating that a vote cast in his name would be a vote for the SAD-BJP combine. Bhagat along with his son Mahinder Bhagat, BJP district president Subhash Sud, media wing in charge Bhagat Manohar Lal and the BJP women cell is leading the campaign in the constituency. “My party as well as the voters have faith in me. I have divided my campaign schedule. In the morning, I hold door-to-door campaigning and in the evening, we conduct nukkad meetings and meet party workers,” he said. Chuni Lal said it was his clean image which fetched him the coveted post of Deputy Speaker of Vidhan Sabha. “During the past five years of my tenure, I had been available for the electorate of my constituency round the clock,” he maintained.
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Four held for bid to grab NRI’s property
Phagwara, January 19 Nanda told mediapersons here this evening that Pyara Singh of Hadiabad, posing as the owner of a 10-marla plot, having a prime location in the town, came to him along with the purchaser, Jinder Singh, and presented fake documents before him, but he got suspicious and started investigation and after the efforts of half an hour both the seller and purchaser confessed to their involvement in the fraud. The seller, Pyara Singh, disclosed that the purchaser, Jinder Singh, struck a deal of Rs 70,000 with him to appear before the Sub-Registrar as the seller so that he could purchase the plot worth crores of rupees without making any payment, whereas Jinder Singh told the Sub-Registrar that he did not know about the fraud, while he had purchased stamp papers of more than Rs 2.75 lakh. Mehnga Ram, lambardar, and Lakhbir Singh, agriculture assistant in the local BDO Office, were being produced as witnesses. Nanda said all the four persons involved in the fraud were handed over to the police.
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Poll training of micro-observers held
Jalandhar, January 19 The mock exercise of polling for the nine Assembly constituencies of the district was held at Red Cross Bhawan this morning where 490 micro-observers, all Central Government employees, were acquainted with the poll process to be adopted on the day of polling. Separate counters of all the constituencies were erected and the usage of the electronic voting machine (EVMs) and the recording of votes in the control and ballot unit were depicted manually. Returning Officer, Jalandhar (Central)-cum-SDM-I Iqbal Singh Sandhu, who gave training to the micro-observers, informed them about their role of “simply observing” the poll process. “The micro-observers have been deployed by the Election Commission of India to strengthen the system of observation of the election process,” he added. They were apprised of giving “vigilant and quick response” in case the poll process was being vitiated for any reason. “All the micro-observers need to immediately bring such issues of booth capturing, attempts of vitiating the poll process and certain political workers trying to dominate the poll proceedings to the notice of the general observers, through whatever means of communication, whether mobile phone, land line phone of wireless system. The motive is to conduct free and fair elections in the state,” he said. The micro-observers were also trained about their crucial role of handing over the report of polling at their respective booths after the poll process was over. “The micro-observers were supposed to hand over their reports personally in sealed envelopes at the collection centres. And if they had witnessed anything important during the polling, it was supposed to be informed for the sake of fair conduct of election,” he maintained. On the issue of consideration of re-poll or disciplinary action against the polling staff, Sandhu said, “General observers will go through the reports submitted by the micro-observers and if any further clarification is required, the micro-observers are supposed to give further details. It is after checking these details that a decision on re-poll or a disciplinary action against the delinquent polling staff will be finalised.” District Nodal Officer Rajeev Sekhri maintained that the deployment of the micro-observers played a crucial role in recording the poll procedures, noting down the particulars, maintaining the secrecy of voting and conduct of the polling staff. “Today was the first phase of the training and now they would gather for the second one around the Assembly elections,” he added. |
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Entrepreneurship
Jalandhar: The entrepreneur development cell of the CT Group of Institutions in collaboration with Punjab Technical University (PTU) organised an awareness programme on its Maqsudan campus in which students who intended to be become job providers in future participated.
Deepindera Malhotra, Managing Partner of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE) was the key speaker. Malhotra emphasised that students should not look at placement cells to have a good salaried jobs, rather they should also start their own business to provide employment to others. He suggested the students to become tech savvy and take help from search engines like Google and Yahoo. |
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Jalandhar, January 19
Jalandhar, January 19
