The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Thursday, August 15, 2002, Chandigarh, India

THE TRIBUNE SPECIALS

50 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE

TERCENTENARY CELEBRATIONS

R E G I O N A L B R I E F S

REGIONAL POTPOURRI

HP scheme to meet potable water requirement
No takers for net phone
Widely used road in pathetic state

PUNJAB

AMRITSAR
VANAMAHOTSAVA: The ‘Amritsar Vikas Manch’ along with the Punjab State Science and Technology Council on Tuesday celebrated vanamahotsava by planting saplings in Gurudwara Idgah at the Sahibjada Jujhar Singh Avenue here. Mr Sunil Datti, mayor, was the chief guest.

HOSHIARPUR
MISHAP: Ghaniya died on the spot while Kapil Kumar and Vikas, all from Ludhiana, received serious injuries when a truck (PBW-2587) hit their scooter (PIQ 5492) at the local Government College chowk here. The three had been going from Ludhiana to Chintpurni for participating in the Sawan Ashtmi fair. Kapil and Vikas had been admitted to the local Civil Hospital. The truck driver managed to escape after leaving his vehicle on the spot. A case has been registered under Section 304A of the IPC.

‘DASTAK’ PROGRAMME: More than 250 persons from the Garhshanker subdivision participated in a “Dastak” programme organised by the district police at Garhshanker on Tuesday. Out of 16 complaints received at the last ‘Dastak” programme 14 were redressed. Eighteen new complaints were submitted to Mrs Gurpreet Deo, SSP, who presided over the programme.

JALANDHAR
LABOURER KILLED: A migrant labourer was crushed to death while another received serious injuries when their cycle was hit by a tractor-trailer, near Suranassi, on the Jalandhar-Amritsar road, here on Tuesday. According to police sources, Ashok of Lal Kurti Bazar died on the spot while Sanjay of Kapurthala district was admitted to the local Civil Hospital. A case has been registered against the driver of the tractor who has absconded.

PATHANKOT
MEMORANDUM: The Construction Works Federation of India, in a memorandum to the Deputy Commissioner, Gurdaspur, alleged that the local police had been forcibly evacuating migrant labourers from the district. The memorandum stated that more than 4000 migrants had either returned to their states or shifted to Himachal Pradesh or Jammu and Kashmir.

SANCTIONED: The Central Government has sanctioned Rs 188.52 lakh for the economic and social development of the Dhar block. The Centre and the state government have released Rs 25.92 lakh and Rs 2.36 lakh, respectively, as first instalment. This was stated on Tuesday by the Deputy Commissioner, Gurdaspur, Mr K.A.P. Sinha.

TARN TARAN
ELECTROCUTED: Gurpal Singh, an employee of the Punjab State Electricity Board and posted at Jeobala, was electrocuted on Tuesday while doing some repair work. The Manochahal police post has registered a complaint in this connection. A post-mortem examination of the body was held at the local Civil Hospital. In a separate incident, Gurmeet Singh (22), a resident of Naurangabad village, died due to excessive drinking.

CHANDIGARH

OFFICE-BEARERS: Prof Ravinder Dogra of DAV College and Mr Saurabh Joshi from the Department of Law, Panjab University, have been elected as the president and secretary of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. The other office-bearers include president — Sunil Kumar Sharma; vice-president — Pooja Kachroo, Sanjeev Rana, Padmakant Dwivedi and Amit Sharma; secretary — Kanwar Shailender Singh; joint secretaries — Isha Gupta, Mili Jaswal, Ravinder Sheoran, Satyam and Ashok Goyal, cultural secretary — Parul Sharma; sports secretary — Ashish Negi; and executive members — Vineet Kumar; Vinod Rathore; Ankush Goel; Vishal Mahat, Anchal Gupta, Digvijay Singh Negi and Ashu Bhatia.

SPORTSPERSON AWARDEES: Three eminent sportsmen, Chiranjeev Milkha Singh, Dinesh Mongia and Yuvraj Singh, have expressed their inability to be physically present to receive awards during the Independence Day function of the Chandigarh Administration going to be held tomorrow morning at Parade Grounds, Sector 17. This year, UT Administration had decided to honour five sportspersons on August 15. The other two considered are, Ms Saba Anjum, a trainee of the Sports Training Centre, Sector 18, who was a member of the gold medal winning Indian women hockey team in Commonwealth Games-2002. Fifth one is Nirmaljit Singh, a powerlifter of repute.

TEACHER BEREAVED: Ms Rattan Kaur, mother of Prof M.S. Johal, Zoology Department Panjab University, suffered a heart stroke and passed away in early hours on Wednesday, an official release said here on Wednesday. She was residing in the USA. Prof K.N. Pathak, the Vice Chancellor, expressed shock at the sudden demise and consoled the bereaved family.

COMPLAINT: Residents of Sector 39 living near the Sector 39 gurdwara in a complaint to the senior officials of the Chandigarh police have lamented that nihangs, who were in possession of the gurdwara, were harassing the residents of the area. They lament that the nihangs has assaulted a family living in the locality and there was scare in the residents as the police of the Sector 39 Police Station had not taken any step to check it.

HIMACHAL PRADESH

KUMARHATTI
ROAD MISHAP: Kewal Krishan from Kusampatti, near Shimla, died on way to the PGI, Chandigarh, after he was injured in a road mishap on Tuesday on the Kalka-Shimla highway, near Pratha Mour, about 10 km from Solan. The mishap occurred when his scooter, which was being driven by his son Gaurav, collided with a truck on a curve. Gaurav sustained minor injuries. Sukhdev Singh, driver of the truck, has been arrested.

SHIMLA
ACCIDENT: One person was killed and six others were injured when their truck fell into a gorge at Kotighat, near Kumarsain, in the district on Tuesday. The injured were taken to a hospital in Kumarsain.

TARGET EXCEEDED: Himachal Pradesh has exceeded the target of cataract operations set under the National Society for the Prevention of Blindness. As many as 16,843 operations were performed as against the target of 16,000 during the last financial year. Stating this while presiding over the meeting of state steering committee of the project of the Health Minister, Mr J.P. Nadda, informed that 6.06 lakh students were screened for eye ailments and refractive errors against the target of 5.68 lakh. The Health Minister expressed concern over the slow pace of progress in implementation of blindness control programme in some of the districts.

REGIONAL POTPOURRI

HP scheme to meet potable water requirement

The Himachal Government has been laying special emphasis on providing hygienic drinking water to the people. As per the 1991 census, all 18,721 villages and 54 towns have been provided with potable water in phases.

According to the district public relations office in Nurpur, an average of at least 40 litres of drinking water is being provided daily to every resident in the state. The state government had entrusted the task of providing potable water to the Irrigation and Public Health Department created by the then government headed by Mr Shanta Kumar.

Recently, Rs 48 lakh was spent in the Nurpur assembly segment area to instal 63 handpumps. Apart from this, Rs 534 lakh had been spent to complete 85 drinking water schemes and Rs 168 lakh earmarked for various schemes to irrigate 237 hectares of agricultural land.

The state government had sent a potable water plan to the Union Government to meet the needs of the growing population of Nurpur. The Union Urban Development Ministry cleared water augmentation scheme and sanctioned Rs 328.68 lakh for it. The scheme is a joint venture between the state and central governments with costs shared equally. Sums of Rs 41.75 lakh and Rs 42 lakh have been sanctioned by the central and state governments respectively.

This scheme, to meet the potable water needs for 35 years, has been planned to provide 120 litres of water per head daily. Harnora Gharat would be the water source in the first phase, while Jabber and Chakki rivulets would be the sources in the second and third phases respectively.

No takers for net phone

The hype over cheapest ever international telephone calls through Internet seems to be over in Bathinda as providers of the facility find only a handful of residents using the net phone.

The much-publicised net telephony do not have many takers in the city for which various reasons are given. While the customers and cyber cafe owners blame the facility providers who had not provided good quality, the net phony providers say that the reason for low use of the services was ignorance among people.

All those who are in business of net phone are unanimous on one point that lack of awareness among residents was the major reason for the poor response. They said people preferred spending tidy sums on making telephone calls through ISD but were not ready to use the net phone.

When the government had allowed the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to offer Internet telephony in April, many had expected that it would be a turning point in international calls. Cyber cafe owners expected that long queues would start turning up for making an international calls through net phone. But this has not happened.

As per a report only 15 of the 350 ISPs have sought a licence for net telephony till May. The reason for this could be tough competition among the companies.

Till may, 15 companies that got the licence were Infoway, Data Access, Icenet, Dishnet DSL, Track Online, Worldphone Internet Services, HCL Infinet, Estel Communication, Patriot Automation, Surana Telecom, Comsat Max, Serv India, Data Infosys, Primus Telecommunications and Direct Internet. Even after getting the licence not all of these companies had started functioning.

Widely used road in pathetic state

The road outside Khajuri Gate in Batala, which turns right and leads to Mr Ashwani Sekhri’s residence, is in a dilapidated condition.

Mr Sekhri, Minister of Tourism, Culture and Industries, is the legislator representing Batala in the Vidhan Sabha.

When there is rain or a sewer line is blocked, dirty water stands two to four feet deep.

This road leads to three colleges, including one girls college and six schools. About 1,000 students use this road daily. The condition of the road is so bad that students, especially girls, during the rainy season do not attend school or college till the water on this road dries up.

Even the street lights on this road are few and far. There is no light on a stretch of the road at the moment and the road has many potholes, which has caused many an accident.

Surprisingly, the President of Batala Municipal Council, Mr Gian Chand, also uses this road to go to office. But he does not seem to care about the road condition. As he uses a jeep he may not feel the bumps on the road.

Contributed by Rajiv Mahajan, Jaswinder Paul and Balraj Mahajan