Shimla, May 10
Concerned over the increasing number of bus accidents, the government has decided to make an annual medical check-up and a refresher training course mandatory for drivers of vehicles used for passenger transport.

It has been decided to bar drivers from carrying mobile phones and any such device will not be allowed to be within their reach while they are occupying the driver’s seat.

It will be mandatory to display in the vehicle copies of the driving licence, insurance papers and the bus route along with its timing.

Drivers will have to undergo training at a recognised institute and centres set up by the Himachal Road Transport Corporation (HRTC) will be strengthened for the purpose.

An annual medical test will be compulsory for drivers of all commercial vehicles. Some private doctors will be empanelled to issue medical certificates as there is a heavy rush at government hospitals.

The conditions will be incorporated in the route permit and it will be the responsibility of the transporter concerned to ensure compliance.

Any violation of the conditions will attract a severe penalty, including minimum imprisonment for six months and route permit cancellation.

Transport Minister GS Bali said in case of accidents taking place due to negligence, action would be taken against the erring transporter and the driver under relevant sections of the Motor Vehicles Act and the Indian Penal Code.

Referring to long-term measures, he said the HRTC would acquire 42-seater buses instead of 52-seater ones for plying on narrow roads in interior areas of the state.

He said the HRTC had initiated the process of acquiring 300 buses and had told Tata and Ashok Leyland to provide readymade buses instead of chassis of the vehicles.

He said the two major suppliers had been told to come with models so that the HRTC could have the right type of buses suited for hilly areas.

He said the government was pursuing the matter with Tata for transfer to the HRTC of technology to fabricate bodies so that those could be built within the state in the future.

He claimed that steps taken over the last three months had increased fuel mileage and the income of the HRTC in the first nine days this month had increased by Rs 1.59 crore compared to the corresponding period last year.

He said the government has decided to implement a uniform colour scheme for local and long-route buses to ensure easy identification and construct bus stands at Manali, Dhalli near Shimla, Chintpurni and Nurpur on a build-operate-transfer basis.

getting tough

* Drivers will not be allowed to have mobile phones within their reach when they drive

* Displaying copies of driving licence, insurance papers, route with timing to be a must

* Annual medical test will be compulsory for drivers of all commercial vehicles in the state

* Conditions to be incorporated in route permit with violation thereof attracting severe penalty

Shimla, May 10
State BJP president Satpal Singh Satti announced the state election committee yesterday.

Besides Satti, who will head the committee, the other members include PK Dhumal, Shanta Kumar, Jagat Prakash Nadda, Anurag Thakur, Pawan Rana, Vipin Singh Parmar, Rajeev Bindal, Jai Ram Thakur, Suresh Bhardwaj, Khimi Ram Sharma, Ritu Sethi, Virender Kashyap and Rajeev Bhardwaj.

Randhir Sharma will be committee secretary. — TNS

Shimla, May 10
With thousands of unauthorised structures awaiting regularisation, the government is contemplating the Himachal Pradesh Regularisation of Deviation and Unauthorised Construction Act which may not only give one-time relief but legalise many illegal structures raised by real estate agents and colonisers as well.

The government has directed the Town and Country Planning (TCP) Department to draft the Act which may pave the way for a one-time settlement. The TCP Department has started preparing the Act which may be tabled in the Assembly during the monsoon session.

The extent to which deviation by house owners will be regularised is not certain but no concession will be allowed in case the structure has come up on encroached upon government or forest land or is in violation of the National Highway Roadside Control Act.

About 40 per cent deviation is allowed under the last retention policy but even then thousands of structures do not qualify as those have flouted several norms.

“We propose an Act which will help regularise structures built in violation of norms as a one-time settlement,” says an official. It remains to be seen whether the Act will cover only violations undertaken by private individuals for personal use or several high-rise structures built by realtors in violation of norms as well.

The government is keen to regularise over 15,000 structures in planning areas and special areas under the jurisdiction of the TCP Department and local municipal bodies but with the court having a strict view, bringing about yet another retention policy might not be possible.

In some cases construction has been done without getting building maps approved from the competent authority. The government has brought in six retention policies in the past and has pointed out that stringent action including criminal punishment will be incorporated to make it a strong deterrent. Apprehensions are being expressed about the move.

It is being felt that regularising unauthorised structures encourages violators who have been able to get away with it each time. The rapid haphazard urban growth in rural areas adjoining major towns has added to the problem with people violating norms in the hope that the government will finally regularise the structure.

Dharamsala, May 10
The Mehatpur-Amb express highway is nowhere near completion as the state government has not been able to decide on the contract of constructing the 30 small and big bridges on the 50-km stretch of the road. This is likely to delay the completion of the road that was once planned as express highway, with assistance from the World Bank.

A bridge under construction on the Mehatpur-Amb express highway in Una district. Photo by writer

The construction of the road was entrusted to a Chinese company Longjian, after a global tender was floated. As per the terms and conditions of the tender, the road was to be completed till December 2010.

With the justification for expediting the construction of the road, the work outsourced to an Indian company, Gupta Constructions. This was done by the Chinese company with permission from the state government.

However, the Indian firm managed to construct just two bridges on the said road. The company left the job incomplete last year and reportedly blamed the Chinese company for the delay in construction.

Since the government had not been able to decide as to who would complete the construction of bridges on the said road, the Chinese company had requested the government to take over the work. However, no decision could be taken over the matter.

The sources said the state government had invited the top officials of the Longjian Company for deliberations over the construction of bridges on the highway. The Chinese company was seeking extra cost in case it was handed over the construction work. The initial cost of the construction of bridges was about Rs 47 crore, comprising of about 40 per cent of the total project cost.

Meanwhile, the construction of the road has started after the new government took over, much to the relief of the people of Una district. Bitumen has been laid on most of the portion of the road.

However, the road has failed to fulfil the denomination of an express highway. The sources here said many design changes were made during the course of construction. The previous government did not allow the Chinese company to remove encroachments within the town, reducing its width by more than a metre, vis-a-vis the original design.

The bus lay-byes that were present in the original design would not be there along the road as the state government has not acquired the land required for the purpose.

Palampur, May 10
The Irrigation and Public Health (IPH) Department has made no efforts to repair a large number of leaking pipes in different parts of the town, till date. Requests made by the Public Works Department (PWD) in this regard to the IPH authorities have also gone unheard.

Leaking pipes of the IPH department are causing losses worth lakhs of rupees to the PWD in Palampur every year, as most of the roads recently metalled by the PWD have developed potholes at many points because of these leaking pipes. However, the IPH authorities seem unconcerned about the situation.

Official sources said the IPH department failed to follow the norms while laying water supply pipes as most of the pipes are open. These are leaking and directly affecting the PWD roads, causing losses to the state exchequer and inconvenience to the general public.

As per the norms notified by the state government, minimum depth of the pipes should be one feet but these norms were openly flouted by the IPH department.

Roads leading to Bundla, Neugal Park, Sugar, Aima and Lohana are the worst affected as water is flowing openly on the roads. Near Neugal Chowk, half a dozen water supply pipes are leaking and the road has developed big holes. The road leading to the Lohana and Sai Garden is worst affected as it has turned into a drain.

Because of the leaking pipes, the residents of Aima, Bundla, Ghuggar and SSB Chowk are forced to consume contaminated water, resulting in diseases like jaundice, hepatitis and other water-borne disease. If no steps were initiated it could turn into an epidemic, they feared.

The residents said they had brought the matter to the notice of the Executive Engineer, IPH, time and again but no steps had been initiated to repair the leaking pipes.

Meanwhile, a senior officer of the PWD said since the water was flowing on the road, the department was unable to repair the roads. Leaking pipes were not only causing losses to the PWD but was also leading to heavy wastage of the valuable resource of water.

Shimla, May 10
Advising former Chief Minister PK Dhumal to have patience and wait for the investigation to complete in a chargesheet filed against the previous BJP regime, Forest Minister Thakur Singh Bharmouri and Urban Development Minister Sudhir Sharma said the anxiety of the BJP leaders indicated that they were worried that their (BJP leaders) misdeeds would be exposed.

In a joint statement issued here today, they said the government knew about the course of action to be taken to unearth the acts of commission and omission of the previous government and it didn’t need any advice from the BJP leaders. The government had repeatedly stated that the state investigating agencies were capable to probe the criminal offences and Dhumal should not be impatient when the investigations were in progress as per the laid down procedures and law.

The ministers said the BJP got as many as 33 cases probed by the State Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau against their political opponents during its regime and now they were stressing for a probe by the sitting judge of the high court. It seemed that they don’t have faith in the state investigating agencies anymore or they were creating a hue and cry to catch the attention of public for gaining cheap publicity.

They said an impartial inquiry would be conducted without any prejudice and the guilty would be brought to book so that no one dared to indulge in the acts of omission and commission in future.

They said the BJP had a habit of indulging in blame game and framing false charges against the opponents and officers to gain political mileage. They said the people of the state were aware of its intentions and for that very reason they ousted the party from power in the recent Assembly elections.

The people were fed up from the tyrannical rule of the BJP and used to feel suffocated due to their oppressive policies, completely ignoring the development of the state while in power, they alleged.

Shimla, May 10
Former Chief Minister PK Dhumal today criticised Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh for failing to get an increase in the Special Plan Assistance in the Annual Plan for the year 2013-14, which had been reduced by Rs 50 crore.

In a statement issued here today, Dhumal said the Special Plan Assistance in the Annual Plan 2012-13 was Rs 1,400 crore and it has been reduced to Rs 1,350 crore in the Annual Plan of 2013-14 by the Planning Commission. “This has happened because the Chief Minister failed to properly present the case of Himachal Pradesh before the Planning Commission in the meeting of the Chief Ministers with the Planning Commission on April 10,” he said.

He said it was unfortunate that Virbhadra Singh had failed to maintain the present level of the Special Plan Assistance and agreed for a cut of Rs 50 crore. He said as the Chief Minister he was able to get a Special Plan Assistance of Rs 1,400 crore in the Annual Plan of 2012-13, which was an increase of Rs 400 crore over the Annual Plan of 2011-12.

He said the Congress government was raising a loan of Rs 2,448 crore to fund the Annual Plan of 2013-14 and the loan liability of the state had increased during the Congress rule as they had no resource mobilisation plan.

“The BJP government has paid all the arrears of pay revision, pension and DA liabilities of the state employees and the total loan raised from 2008-09 to 2012-13 was Rs 7,272 crore,” he said.

“The Annual Plan has always decreased during the Congress rule in the state as in the year 2007-08 the plan was reduced to Rs 342 crore from Rs 524.75 crore in 2002-03 when the BJP was in power,” he stated. Dhumal said the Congress regime in the state had always failed to protect the financial interests of the people of Himachal.

“On the contrary, during the BJP regime there has always been an enhancement in the Special Plan Assistance and it was increased to Rs 450 crore in 2008-09 from Rs 342 crore in the previous year, witnessing an increase of Rs 108 crore,” he said.

Shimla, May 10
Accusing PK Dhumal of patronising corruption while in power, the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief Sukhwinder Singh said the former Chief Minister commercialised politics and sold out vital resources and economic interests of the state.

Addressing a workers meeting at Kullu today, he said the state saw an all-round decline during the previous BJP regime and it earned notoriety for the emergence of mafias in every sphere, including education and sports. Shady land deals had become the order of the day. The Congress government had already cancelled one such deal through which over 97 bighas of land donated by the Maharaja of Patiala for setting up a children park in the Sadhupul area was allotted to yoga guru Ramdev’s Patanjali Yogpeeth.

The government was inquiring into various other deals and all the allegations contained in the Congress chargesheet against the Dhumal government would be pursued and taken to the logical conclusion.

He said the Dhumal government threw all norms to the wind and even didn’t hesitate from spying on not only the political adversaries but even the BJP leaders as evident from the report of phone tapping. It was a serious issue involving the privacy of individuals.

He asked the workers to remain ready for the possible byelection to the Mandi Lok Sabha seat and underlined the need to maintain discipline. He said notices had been issued to some leaders against whom complaints were received during the recent Assembly elections to enforce discipline.

He said the party and the government were functioning in unison and the Virbhadra Singh regime had taken a number of decisions for the benefit of the people.

He also visited a local hospital and enquired about the well-being of the victims of the bus accident near Jhiri, which claimed 39 lives.

Bilaspur, May 10
As many as 12 students of Government Senior Secondary School, Bhedi, near Barthin, were taken ill after they were administered iron tablets under the state-level School Nutrition Programme yesterday.

Reports said as soon as iron tablets were given, the children complained of ache and burning sensation in their stomach. The school staff rushed the students to nearby Community Health Centre, where they were treated.

This is at least the third instance when students were taken ill after taking iron tablets within the last few weeks in the district.

People have been expressing concern regarding the quality of these iron tablets, which might have been purchased in bulk from a supplier, thus affecting its quality. They are also apprehensive that the Health authorities might have failed to inform schools regarding the precautions to be taken while administering these tablets. 

Nurpur, May 10
The Indora police today recovered the body of Raj Kumar (58), son of Gopi Ram of Hara, from a pond at Gheta. According to information, the deceased was missing since Wednesday. The family of the deceased along with local villagers today spotted his body in a village pond and informed the police.

A team of three doctors of the local Civil Hospital conducted a postmortem of the body.

Nurpur DSP said the body was handed over to the family. He said Dr Minakshi, a forensic expert, also examined the body and the spot from where it was found to rule out any foul play. The police has registered a case under Section 174 of the CrPC. 

Chamba, May 10
Coming down heavily on the previous BJP government for abolishing the timber distribution (TD) rights of Chamba urban residents, the Chamba Welfare Association has made a representation to state Forest Minister Thakur Singh Bharmouri for restoring their TD rights.

The association has alleged that the BJP played havoc with the riparian rights of the urban residents of Chamba town, as timber is granted only to those residents who got settled in Chamba town prior to 1939.

President of the association RK Mahajan and general secretary YR Sehgal revealed that the BJP regime through a notification in January, 2010, had abolished the century-old TD rights of the residents of Chamba town (urban area).

In its representation submitted to the Forest Minister recently, the association stated that the residents of Chamba urban area had been getting the timber under TD rights since almost 100 years and the revenue and forest settlement working plans of the respective forest divisions had the record of such rights.

“The state and the Central governments have approved the working plan of Chamba forest division and earmarked the forests from where dry and dead trees under the salvage marking will be provided to the right holders of Chamba’s urban area,” the association said.

The association said as per the approved working plan of Chamba forest division, the requirement of timber could easily be met from Chhabaru and Jatkari demarcated protected forests of the Chamba forest division.

The association said the timber sale depot at Chamba had been maintained by the Forest Department since 1916 and the timber was sold to various right holders on the basis of applications duly sanctioned by the Divisional Forest Officer at concessional rates approved by the Conservation of Forests, Chamba.

After the nationalisation of forests in 1982, this depot was getting timber extracted out of the salvage-marked trees through the HP State Forest Corporation, the association said.

In view of poverty and limited livelihood resources in this part of the state, the association has sought the restoration of TD rights of the Chamba urban area by stating that this move would discourage the illicit felling of trees by the ‘van mafia’ prowling in the area.

Kangra, May 10
All the chemist shops in the town today remained opened and functioned as usual, hinting towards cracks within the Chemists and Druggists Association of the district.

The chemists had given a call for day-long closure of their shops, in protest against FDI investment in the pharmacy trade which, according to them, would adversely affectthe business prospects of the industry.

The chemist shops remained open in Kangra town and at Tanda, near the DRPGMC Tanda and other outskirts of the town.

President of the Chemist and Druggist Association denied any cracks within the association. He, however, confirmed that the shops remained open in Kangra town and its outskirts, despite a call  given by the Association for daylong strike.

According to the sources, the retail chemists were getting profit to the tune of 22 per cent but with the coming of the FDI, the margin of profit would reduce down to less than 10 per cent. 

Kangra, May 10
More than 130 sweepers resorted to a ‘lighting strike’ at DRPGMC Hospital, Tanda, in the morning today. They held a meeting and protested on the college premises, demanding their salary, scheduled to be paid before the 7th of this month.

Work suffered in the 500-bed hospital when class IV sweepers abstained from work, leaving sanitation conditions of the hospital in a mess.

Rajni, president of the DRPGMC Tanda CITU unit, alleged the contractor did not pay their monthly salary, supposed to be paid by May 7.

She said they were earlier forced to protest on May 16 and July 12 last year after which their arrears were deposited in their accounts.

The working in the hospital suffered because of the strike, but the contractor managed to run a ‘skeleton service’ for emergency, labour room and operation theatres.

Rajni alleged that there was no change room for the sweepers in the hospital. She said the sweepers had no place to have their lunch or dinner and even the college management was not allowing them to have lunch in the lawns of the college.

The protesting sweepers called off their strike in the afternoon when the contractor, Susheel Kumar, put their salaries in their bank accounts.

The sweepers did not resume their work even after calling off the strike as the contractor told them their one day’s salary would be deducted for today’s strike, Rajni said.

Kumar said the sweepers went on the strike without any intimation and prior information.

Dr Dinesh Sood, Medical Superintendent, said the strike was called off after their salaries were put in their accounts. He said the DRPGMC had outsourced the sanitation activities of the medical college and hospital and were disbursing more than Rs 12.00 lakh every month to the contractor for disbursement among the sweepers.

Resentment prevailed among the patients and their attendants against such protests which left the patients in a lurch. They demanded that the government must take effective steps to avoid such strikes.

The Himachal Pradesh High Court had, in a recent direction, prohibited holding of general body meetings and protests within 500 mt parameter of educational institutions.