P R A D E S H
Wednesday, April 28, 1999
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H I M A C H A L P R A D E S H |
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Wednesday, April 28, 1999 |
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spotlight today's calendar |
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Sukh Ram will not be
taken back: PCC |
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SHOs directed to supply
copies of FIRs
Water supply scheme for town
sought Rohtang Pass thrown open to
traffic
Jwalamukhi forest fire spreads No chaos at seminar, say Cong
leaders Sangh withdraws agitation |
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Sukh Ram will not be taken
back: PCC SHIMLA, April 27 — Mr G.S. Bali, Secretary of the Pradesh Congress Committee PCC, has ruled out any possibility of the Congress taking Mr Sukh Ram, President of the Himachal Vikas Congress (HVC), back into the party fold. Talking to mediapersons here today, he said reports appearing in the Press in this regard were baseless and the party had not contacted him. Moreover, Mr Sukh Ram himself had said he would not rejoin Congress. He said Mr Sukh Ram owed his present position in politics largely due to the Congress and as such he should refrain from criticising the party. His party, the HVC, would be wiped out from the political scene after the next elections. Mr Bali said the HVC was equally to be blamed for the anti-people decisions of the Dhumal government. Being a coalition partner, it was party to the power-tariff hike. He also criticised the Dhumal government for its failure to deal with the drought-like situation in the state. He welcomed the economy measures and expressed surprise over the fact that the ministers had been kept out of their purview. If the government was sincere about curtailing unproductive expenditure the measures should be enforced right from ministers to the block-level officers, he added. He claimed that the
Congress would win all four seats in the Lok Sabha poll. |
Cong for simultaneous
elections SHIMLA, April 27 — The PCC President, Mr Sat Mahajan, today supported the offer the Chief Minister, Mr P.K. Dhumal, to hold assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh along with those to the Lok Sabha. Mr Mahajan, who was briefing newsmen on the deliberations at a meeting of office-bearers of the PCC, said that fresh assembly elections were necessary because of the fractured mandate in the House. He said the Dhumal government was unstable and was surviving with the support of the Himachal Vikas Congress and an Independent, Mr Ramesh Dhwala. He challenged Mr Dhumal not to run away from his offer and seek fresh elections to the assembly. Earlier during the day, Mr V. Hanumantha Rao, chairman of the pradesh election authority and its two members, Mr Mangat Ram Sharma and Mr Kunjbehari Lal Butail, met the office-bearers to oversee the arrangements for the organisational elections in the state. Mr Mahajan said the PCC also adopted the amended constitution of the AICC. He said the BJP government headed by Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee collapsed under its own weight as its own constituents withdrew their support to the government. He held Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav responsible for the mid-term poll. Mr Mahajan said the AICC chief, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, was clear right from the beginning that the experiment of running coalition governments would be a failure. A resolution rejecting the coalition formula as adopted at the AICC session at Pachmari. He alleged that the austerity measures announced by the state government were merely eye wash. While a ceiling had been put on telephone calls to be made by the Director General of Police, who had to tackle terrorism, no such restriction had been ordered for politically appointed chairpersons of various boards and corporations. The PCC chief said the Dhumal government was the "weakest" government so far. He described it as financially, politically and administratively bankrupt. He said the decision of the government to make recruitments only on a contract basis was to benefit BJP and RSS activists. The Subordinate Services Recruitment Board was set up recently to rehabilitate certain BJP activists, he alleged. Earlier, Mr Hanumantha Rao said that as of today there was no move to postpone the organisational elections. Mrs Sonia Gandhi was keen that the elections should be held in a free and fair manner. Mr Mangat Ram Sharma
said the PCC had been asked to enrol a good number of
women as members so that the 33 per cent reservation
policy could be implemented in letter and in spirit for
them. |
Project to stabilise population
launched SHIMLA, April 27 — Mrs V.S. Rama Devi, Governor, today launched the reproductive and child health project which is aimed at realising the objective of population stabilisation by adopting an integrated approach and focusing on the health status of women and children. In her inaugural address, Mrs Rama Devi underlined the need for involving non-government organisations in the implementation of such projects, the success of which depended on the intensity of interaction with people at the grassroots. She said the government could not reach the people effectively and thus the desired success was not achieved. On the other hand, genuine non-government organisations, which had greater access in the community, were in a much better position to deliver the goods. Appreciating the concept of involving the entire family, with focus on mother and child, the Governor said for the success of such programmes one had to take care of educational needs, vocational training, cultural ethos and all other aspects which helped enrich the quality of life. She said in Himachal the empowerment of women was in fact leading to their exploitation. Their workload had practically doubled. Along with empowerment of women, it was essential to ensure that men shared the burden of work equally with them. In her view the lack of personal hygiene was one of the main factors responsible for numerous diseases afflicting women in the state. The German Ambassador, Dr Henrich D. Dieckmann, said the involvement of non-government organisation was most essential as government agencies tended, to impose programmes which the people might not like. NGOs maintained a close rapport with people and could make a programme acceptable to them. Mr J.P. Nadda, Health Minister, said the country had taken more than four decades to realise that the focus had to be on the family for making the population control programme a success. In the traditional Indian concept the family unit was given the maximum importance but it was a pity that the country did not evolve programmes based on its own cultural ethos and adopted programmes formulated by Western countries. Similarly, there had been strong community involvement in the development of society all through and it was only after Independence the concept gained ground that development was entirely the responsibility of the government. It was good that finally the role of NGOs had been recognised. The project is being implemented by the SNS Foundation, the social development arm of the Anand group of industries, which has been accorded mother NGO status by the Government of India for Shimla, Solan, Sirmaur and Kinnaur districts which are being covered in the first phase. The reproductive and
child health project has replaced the family planning
programme. It incorporates the component covered under
the child survival and safe motherhood programme and
includes two additional components, sexually transmitted
diseases and reproductive track infection. |
Widow seeks relief, job for
son SOLAN, April 27 — Poonama, widow of Padam Singh, a watchman at Forest Training School, Chail, has been running from pillar to post for the grant of insurance and other benefits for the past over one year. Padam Singh, who had served the school as a daily-wage employee for over 10 years, had received orders of confirmation as a permanent government employee on January 3, 1998. Unfortunately, he died while undergoing the medical examination, a mandatory exercise for obtaining the physical fitness certificate, at the district hospital here on January 11, 1998. Since then Poonama had been making rounds of various government agencies for obtaining her dues under the Janata Personal Insurance Scheme as well as for getting her son a government job, to which he was entitled as per the present government rules. Poonama stated that her husband had gone for the medical examination on the orders of the state government, and hence must be treated as having died while on duty. She added that Padam Singh had been making regular contributions to the scheme. A colleague of Padam
Singh, who had been trying to help his widow get the
relief, said in case there was some technical hitch in
granting the insurance money to her, the government could
at least help her by giving some job to her unemployed
son. |
SHOs directed to supply
copies of FIRs UNA, April 27 — Mr I.D. Bhandari DIG Police said yesterday evening that all SHOs had been directed to provide copies of FIR's to the complaints and also explain whether complaint could be looked into by the police or not. He said that he had also directed police officials not to entertain complaints of civil nature and call parties to police stations to force them to have compromise there. Mr Bhandari added that now the police had been deployed in Chamba district along with Jammu border to control the situation. The DIG said that with
increase in population and ten-fold increase in traffic
crime had gone up in Una district. To the question that
Chintpurni, Pondoga and Santohgarh police posts were
operating without sanctioned police force, he said that
police personnel had been posted there from existing
staff of other police stations of Una district and said
that government had been approached to sanction these
police posts and shortage of police staff in Una district
would end soon. |
Water supply scheme for town
sought SOLAN, April 27 — Mr Himendra Singh Thakur, joint secretary of the Himachal Vikas Congress, today urged the government to sanction water supply augmentation scheme for Solan town, parts of which had been reeling under acute shortage of water for the past several months. He told reporters here today that availability of water in Ashni khud, sources of the town's existing water supply, had been decreasing with recent commissioning of several lift irrigation schemes, upstream. Also population of Solan had almost doubled from the day the first augmentation of water supply scheme carried out in 1994. Thakur said the water of
Ashni khud was also heavily polluted by effluents of
Shimla which were discharged into it. He demanded that a
new scheme based upon pure water of Giri Ganga, which
flowed only 4 km from the present location of water
supply scheme of the town should be sanctioned. |
Jwalamukhi forest fire spreads JWALAMUKHI, April 27 — The forest fire which engulfed about 5 square km of forests here, three days ago, has spread to the adjoining Majheen, Gummer and Amb-Pathiar near here under the Jwalamukhi forest range. Hundreds of pine and bamboo trees have been burnt and the fire is feared to have taken a heavy toll on many wildlife species. The situation here is alarming with about 20 incidents of forest fires having been reported. The other affected areas are Tihri, Lagru and Phakloh. These fires have even engulfed some of the villages and caused extensive damage to private property. Recently, a woman and two oxen were burnt alive at a village. Meanwhile, more than 25
forest officials, led by Jwalamukhi Range Forest Officer,
Mr J.R. Khatla, were trying to control the fire and
prevent it from spreading to other areas. |
Rohtang Pass thrown open to
traffic MANALI, April 27 — The 13,050 foot high Rohtang Pass, the gateway to Lahaul and Spiti, was reopened to vehicular traffic here today after a gap of five months. Rohtang Pass, which closed in mid-November is usually opened only in June. But this year snow-clearing operation commenced on February 21 against March in other years. With the early opening
snow-clearing on the Keylong-Sarchu stretch (Manali-Leh
road) can also pick up momentum and the road to Leh may
also open earlier. Rohtang's opening will save money both
for the Border Roads Organisation as well as the Himachal
Pradesh Government which operated helicopter services to
tribal areas in Lahaul and Spiti district until the road
opened. |
No chaos at seminar, say
Cong leaders SHIMLA, April 27 — Two senior Congress leaders, Mr Gangu Ram Musafir and Mr Raghu Raj, have alleged that an attempt is being made to tarnish the image of the party by certain elements who are claiming that there was chaos at the Panchayati Raj seminar organised by the PCC at Baddi on April 19. The two leaders issued a statement here today saying that the conference lasted six hours in a peaceful atmosphere. They said there was no question of a test of strength at the seminar by Mr Virbhadra Singh, CLP leader, who enjoyed mass support in the state. The two leaders claimed
that the opponents of the Congress were in because of the
success of the seminar and were, therefore, trying to
spread false reports of chaos and vandalism. |
Freedom fighter dead BILASPUR, April 27 — Pandit Gangaram (86), a freedom fighter and member of the Indian National Army, died at Snowdon Hospital at Shimla on Sunday. His body was cremated at Laghat village on Monday. He is survived by his
wife. |
Sangh withdraws agitation HAMIRPUR, April 27 — The Himachal Classical and Vernacular Teachers Sangh has decided to withdraw its agitation in view of the decision of the state government to grant them two special increments. This was stated here
today by Mr T.C. Guleria, chairman of the state action
committee of the sangh. |
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