& V I C I N I T Y
Wednesday, September 23, 1998
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C H A N D I G A R H & V I C I N I T Y |
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Wednesday, September 23, 1998 |
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spotlight today's calendar |
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Torrential rain lashes city |
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 Drive on to spruce up Sector 17 CHANDIGARH, Sept 22 — With a view to maintain the existing infrastructure in the shopping centre of Sector 17, the Chandigarh MC has launched a drive to spruce up the area. |
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Pensioners
to meet on Sunday Ambala
gets Internet node today Panel
meets safai karamcharis ‘Speak
up, Akalis’ |
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Torrential rain lashes city CHANDIGARH, Sept 22 — Torrential rain lashed the city and its surrounding areas since today, leading to a disruption in normal life. The roads were flooded, leaving several vehicles and citizens stranded during the evening hours. This afternoon rainfall had started after a respite of a few hours this morning and it resulted in a sharp drop in the temperature. Heavy rainfall had lashed the city yesterday evening and continued intermittently throughout the night. This morning the skies were cloudy and it drizzled at a few places. However, the downpour started only around 1:30 pm and continued till the late evening hours. So sharp were the showers that visibility was reduced to a few metres, making driving dangerous. Children returning from schools were caught in the showers. Youngsters, returning from colleges could be seen walking with their two wheelers in knee-deep water. A similar fate awaited people returning from offices in the evening. Several cars and other four-wheelers were also stranded in 2 feet to 3 feet of water. The slip roads on Madhya Marg were flooded and vehicles had to turn from the roundabouts, leading to traffic congestion. At certain low-lying points like the sectors 34, 35, 43 and 44 roundabout, about 4 feet of water had collected. Calculating from yesterday, the local Meteorological Department recorded 6 cms of rain till 8.30 pm today. While markets and other places of entertainment had few visitors the roadside mechanics, rehriwalas, vegetable and icecream sellers also lost out on business. At several places, rain water entered the houses and drains flowed backwards leading to flooding inside the bathrooms of many houses. As usual, the southern sectors faced the fury of water the most. All roads south of the Dakshin Marg were like little rivulets. In the labour colonies, several jhuggis were damaged. Bapu Dham witnessed the maximum damage as the water level of the Sukhna choe went up. The Met office has
predicted that moderate to heavy rain at most places in
Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana and at a few very
heavy rainfall in the next 48 hours... |
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BJP government 'bribing MPs to
stay on' SAS NAGAR, Sept 22 — The artificial and steep rise in prices has crippled the common man and is due to the BJP-led government at the Centre "taking money from hoarders to buy MPs to keep the government in the saddle." Stating this at a press conference here today after a dharna against price rise organised by local Block Youth Congress in front of the SDM's office, Mr Jasbir Singh Dimpa, Punjab Youth Congress President, wondered how potato prices could rise 20 times in four months. He put the blame on hoarders, one of whom he alleged was a brother of BJP leader Madan Lal Khurana. The protesters were led by Mr Joginder Singh Jogi, PYC president. The PYC leader said on the one hand foodgrains were being destroyed by rats in godowns while on the other the poor were not even getting two square meals a day. There was total mismanagement of foodgrains by the government. Farmers, the growers, were resorting to suicide. In Punjab, two factories in Ludhiana and one each in Patiala and Bathinda were detected making fake insecticides and pesticides but no action had been taken. He said the PYC would organise a "kisan maha panchayat sammelan" in Jalandhar on October 14 which would be addressed, among others, by Mr Amarinder Singh and Mr Rajesh Pilot. At the sammelan farmers would be administered the oath that they would never commit suicide but fight the government and compel it to change its policies. Mr Jasbir Singh flayed the Badal Government for ruining the state's economy and said all its major decisions, including those relating to focal points and adarsh schools, had played havoc with the state treasury. Industrial growth in Punjab had gone-down and inflation had risen from 5.5 per cent to 12 per cent. He said a protest march and a blood donation camp would be organised here next month. The PYC president also accused the Badal government of failing to create job avenues for the youth or frame a specific policy to help them go in for self-employment. He said 52 anganwari centres had been scrapped, resulting in the retrenchment of 10,000 to 12,000 women workers. Ad hoc teachers and RMPs had earlier met a similar fate. Increasing the retirement age from 58 to 60 had affected 40,000 youth per year. Such steps of the government would be opposed. Mr Jasbir Singh said Mr Badal's social welfare schemes, like the shagun scheme and pension for widows and old persons, too, had gone haywire. In Amritsar district alone only 2,000 persons had got the benefit of the shagun scheme while the cases of 15,000 others were pending. Mr Badal, he said, had
secured a berth in the Union Cabinet for his son at the
cost of Punjab's interests. In Punjab, he said, it took
people five to 10 years to get an LPG connection against
a much shorter period in the cases of HP, Delhi and Jammu
and Kashmir. |
Roadways told to pay Rs 5,000 to
passenger CHANDIGARH, Sept 22 — The UT Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum (II) has ordered Haryana Roadways to pay Rs 5000 as compensation to a local passenger whose bus was stranded for an hour during his journey without any valid reason. Mr R.P. Bajaj, president, and Mr H.S. Walia and Mrs Kamlesh Gupta, both members, gave the order on a written complaint filed by Mr S.K.S. Bedi, a resident of Sector 38. Mr Bedi in his written complaint alleged that he was travelling from Ambala to Chandigarh on August 20, 1992. On the way the driver and the conductor took the bus to a workshop at Ambala where it stood for an hour. The bus, which started around 8 .15 p.m. and was expected to reach its destination at 9.15 p.m. reached an hour behind schedule. At the workshop repeated requests of passengers to restart the bus "fell on deaf ears." Roadways staff allegedly misbehaved with passengers. The roadways in its reply said the bus was taken to the workshop for 10 minutes for refuelling. The forum found the version of the roadways to be motivated. It noticed that passengers " were made to wait in the bus at an inconvenience place in humid atmosphere for one hour". The roadways wanted to escape liability, the forum said. The forum held the roadways "guilty of grave deficiency in service because it delayed the stoppage of the bus at the workshop for unusually long time, causing inconvenience, harassment and mental agony" to passengers. The forum ordered the
roadways to pay Rs 5000 to Mr Bedi within a month of
receipt of the copy of the order. |
Drive on to spruce up
Sector 17 CHANDIGARH, Sept 22 — With a view to maintaining the existing infrastructure in the shopping centre of Sector 17, the Municipal Corporation, Chandigarh (MCC), has launched a drive to spruce up the area. The main emphasis under the drive, launched as a prelude to a full-fledged "Maintenance and beautification drive" for the sector, is on maintaining the existing infrastructure without taking up any additional work. The civic body had already written to the Chief Architect of the Chandigarh Administration for sanctioning the plans for the integrated development of the sector, according to sources. As part of the drive, defective streetlights have been replaced. And the fountains, which had not been working for the past many months, have been activated. Besides this "malba" lying at different spots in the area is being removed. Over five truckloads of "malba" is removed daily, said an official. Apart from this broken slabs on the steps leading to the corridors are also being replaced in certain parts of the shopping centre. The sources added that the number of dustbins had been increased. They highlighted the point that with privatisation of the sanitation work after the approval the house of the corporation later this month, the situation was likely to improve further. It may be mentioned here that Punjab and Haryana High Court had taken a suo motu notice of the poor upkeep of the shopping centre following a report published in The Tribune last month. The civic body was subsequently served notice by the court. The poor upkeep of the
sector was highlighted in a regular column of the
newspaper under "Chronic problems" following
which the MCC seems to have taken the initiative for
starting the sprucing up work. |
Plea defending paid parking
filed CHANDIGARH, Sept 22 — Mr Vikas Walia and one more advocate today filed an application in the court of Mr K.C. Garg, Judicial Magistrate, for defending the decision of the Chandigarh Municipal corporation for converting the Sector 8 and Sector 17 parking lots from free parking zones to paid parking zones. they pleaded in their application that the municipal corporation would not be able to discharge its duties effectively if the revenue which was to be generated from the parking lots was denied. To begin with an application contesting the levy of parking fee was filed by Mr Manpreet Singh Chahal, President of the Punjab Civil and Consumer Welfare Front. The magistrate adjourned
the case to October 7 for arguments. |
Pensioners to meet on Sunday CHANDIGARH, Sept 22 — The Government Pensioners' Association will organise a pensioners' meet at the Indira Holiday Home at 10 a.m on Sunday to distribute option forms for pre-January, 1986, pensioners free of cost. Mr Chandan Singh, general
secretary of the association, said advise would be given
to pensioners regarding consolidation of pension from
January, 1996. |
Ambala gets Internet node today CHANDIGARH, Sept 22 — Mrs Sushma Swaraj will inaugurate the Internet node at Ambala cantonment telephone exchange on Wednesday. The node will provide access to Internet to citizens of Ambala and nearby areas. According to an official
press note, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited has provided a
direct link from Ambala to New Delhi, as a result of
which the people of Ambala will have Internet linkage on
the pattern of the four metropolitan cities. |
Panel meets safai karamcharis CHANDIGARH, Sept 22 — A two member bench of the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis comprising Mr Tulsi Ram and Mr Sardip Singh assessed the implementation of the national Safai Karamchari Finance and Development Corporation and the socio-economic and educational status in the city here today. The members met various karamchari unions led by Mr Harphool Singh, Mr Amar Nath Sarhadi and Mr Veer Udesh Kumar Pohal and were told about the workload and the insufficient number of sweepers in the city. There are only 1,800 sweepers while the demand is for 3,300 sweepers. Many among them also daily wagers, and have put in more than 10 years of service. The major demands put before the members were regularisation of the services of daily wagers, more housing schemes for them, abolition of the contract system, grant of health risk allowance and compulsory medical check-up at regular intervals. Members assured the
delegation that the demands would be taken up at the
highest level. |
‘Speak up, Akalis’ CHANDIGARH, Sept 22 — The Secretary of Punjab CPM, Mr Balwant Singh, today urged the Akalis to speak up on the dismissal of the Rabri Devi Government in Bihar. He said: "It was quite intriguing that the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), which has been very vocal on the use of Article 356 has remained silent so far. It is a testing time for Mr Parkash Singh Badal, who heads the SAD and the state government. He has been asking for the scrapping of this Article." "It is time for the
SAD to at least raise its voice of protest and not be
scared of the BJP leadership," he added. |
CHANDIGARH , Sept 22 — Teaching work will resume in Panjab University from October 6 onwards following a long break. Teaching work will remain suspended following Special Olympics followed by weekend and subsequently the autumn recess. The academic session on the campus has not really caught up ever since the teaching work started this year. The month-long teachers' strike was soon followed by students' body elections which also ate up a few days. Students will definitely look forward to the implementation of the assurance by teachers that they would take extra classes in case the syllabi lagged behind. Meanwhile, 50 residents in each of the hostels on the campus will be expected to vacate their rooms for the Special Olympics. The Dean Student Welfare, said a majority of hostels had provided the needed space for accommodation of guests .A meeting in this regard was scheduled for this evening. Book released: The Dean, University Instructions, Dr I.B.S. Passi, on Tuesday released "An elementary Book on Environmental Education" published by the Publication Bureau of Panjab University. The book has been authored by Prof J.S. Yadav, Prof R. C. Sobti and Prof R.K. Kohli. It has been prescribed for BA, B.Sc, B.Com (general and honours) students as a compulsory qualifying subject from the 1998-1999 session. The book has been prepared
as per the syllabi and guidelines laid down the committee
under the chairmanship of Justice Kuldeep Singh. |
CHANDIGARH, Sept 22 — A well-heeled thief was nabbed and four stolen cars — all Marutis — have been recovered from him, the police said today. The cars had been stolen from various parts of the city in the past one month. The arrested person, Rupinder Singh Waraich, a resident of Sector 11, is a postgraduate in physics from Jawahar Lal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. He was running an educational coaching centre in the same area, according to police sources. Rupinder Singh was nabbed when a team of the Sector 19 police station laid a trap. It so happened that Rupinder stole a Maruti car from the parking area at Sukhna Lake on the evening of September 20. He had actually kept his old car in the parking and took away the car (DNV-7372) owned by Mr Jaspreet Singh. From the documents of the vehicle, he was able to locate the house number of Mr Jaspreet Singh and subsequently the phone number too. Yesterday Rupinder gave a call to Mr Jaspreet Singh, telling him that he was aware of the whereabouts of his stolen car and demanded Rs. 2,000 to provide him information. Mr Jaspreet Singh agreed to the suggestion. Rupinder told Mr Jaspreet Singh to deliver a sum of Rs 2,000 to him near the ISBT at the appointed time. Mr Jaspreet Singh passed on the information to the SHO Sector 19 police station and a trap was laid to nab Rupinder. On preliminary interrogation, Rupinder got this stolen car (DNV-7372) recovered from the PGI parking stand. On further interrogation, he disclosed that he had stolen three other cars (CHK-5670 and CH-01-E-0153) from Sector-22 and one car (HR-01-F-3138) from Sector-17. All the three Maruti cars were recovered on his instance. Rupinder took to stealing cars last year, after the death of his wife, Mona Passi, who had committed suicide. He suffered a setback in the coaching business, resulting in his financial condition deteriorating. Finding no alternative to cope with the crisis, he started stealing cars since last month. The modus operandi adopted by him was he would open the car with a duplicate key and take it away if there was no extra steering wheel lock on the vehicle. In case the vehicle had an extra steering lock, then he would take away the documents so that the number could be displayed on other stolen cars. The police has recovered documents of 12 such cars which he could not steal due to extra steering lock fitted in them. Booked: An Executive Engineer, an SDO and a Junior Engineer of the UT electricity department have been booked for allegedly cheating the department to the tune of Rs 10 lakh. Three city based contractors have also been booked with them. Sadhu Singh, Om Prakash and Shiv Kumar, Xen, SDO and JE, respectively, of the department were in charge of installing generators at Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Sector 32. The contract for the same was awarded to three contractors — Y.P. Saggi, M.S. Saggi and Virender Kumar. As the work was to be executed in phases, thus the payment was also to be released in instalments. In 1997, an instalment of Rs 2.50 lakh was to be paid to the three contractors. The trio from the engineering department connived to add the figure ‘1’ ahead of the figure of Rs 2.50 lakh, thus making it look as Rs 12 .50 lakh. The sum was released to the contractor . Interestingly, according to sources the case came to light when a team of the Income Tax department raided the houses of the Saggi contractors. The team found a receipt for a payment of the said sum having been received by the Saggis on account of work carried out at the GMCH. The IT sleuths sent the receipt for verification to the company that had supplied equipment. The company clarified that the goods supplied were worth Rs 2.5 lakh. The matter was handed over to the UT vigilance department which investigated and lodged a complaint with the police. The police has registered a case under Sections 420, 467, 468, 471, 120-B of the IPC. Two cases of cheating: Two persons have been arrested for their alleged involvement in separate cases of fraud and cheating. A resident of Patiala, Kuldeep Singh, was arrested for allegedly practising in the local district courts by using the licence of a dead lawyer by the same name. The Bar Council had lodged a complaint in this regard and a case was registered on July 13 under Sections 419, 420, 467, 468 and 471 of the IPC . Meanwhile, Suresh Dhawan has been arrested for his involvement in a property deal in Sector 22. Last week the police had registered a case against three persons, and Dhawan is one of them. Held for dowry demand: Three persons, including two women, have been arrested for allegedly harassing Darshana Rani to bring more dowry. Rani was married to Suresh Chand and she used to be allegedly harassed over the issue of dowry. Besides her husband, her mother-in-law, Charna, and sister-in-law Surinder, have been arrested. Stolen: A motor
cycle and two bicycles have been stolen from the city. A
Yamaha motor cycle (DL-8-SK-0851) owned by Rajinder Singh
of Sector 22 was stolen from the Sector 20 market.
Bicycles of Mansa Singh of Sector 29 and Dalip Singh of
Industrial Area were stolen in separate instances. |
CHANDIGARH, Sept 22 — A Division Bench consisting of Mr Justice H.S. Bedi and Mr Justice Swatantar Kumar directed the Punjab School Education Board to give average marks to Kanchan Kumari considering her marks obtained in other subjects. The petitioner, Kanchan Kumari, had challenged her result in the 10+2 examination on the ground that her answer sheets had been tampered with. The petitioner, who belonged to Badla village in Hoshiapur district, had averred that, her papers in two subjects — Hindi and Political Science — had been tampered with allegedly by officials of the Punjab School Education Board, because in the matric examination, the petitioner had scored 470 out of 650 and passed in the first division. In the plus two exam she got 49 out of 75 in English and in Punjabi 63 out of 75 marks and in History 57 out of 100 marks. Whereas, in Hinid she was given 13 marks and just 5 marks in Political Science and was declared as failed. On receipt of the result card, the petitioner applied for a recheck of the answer sheets and simultaneously filed a writ petition in the High Court. In pursuance to the notice of motion, the respondents appeared and filed an affidavit mentioning that on her applying for rechecking on July 16, it was found that answer books had been tampered with. "It must have been done at the level of the centre from where she appeared as a regular candidate. Hence an inquiry had been ordered by the chairman to take action against the supervisory staff, etc as stipulated in Rule 27 of the calender Volume II". Ex-servicemen’s posts; reservation challenged A Division Bench comprising Mr Justice G.S. Singhvi and Mr Justice Iqbal Singh issued notice of motion to the Chairman of the Punjab Public Service Commission for December 8 on a writ petition filed by Major P.P. Singh of Patiala challenging the reservation of vacancies for Scheduled Castes and backward classes for PCS (Executive) and other allied services posts in the reserved category of ex-servicemen. Counsel for the petitioner
contended that the rules for the reservation of
ex-serviceman in Punjab State Civil Services were framed
under Article 309 of the Constitution and these could not
be over-ruled by any government instructions as had been
done in this case. |
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