SJOBA rally from March 29
Our Sports Reporter

Chandigarh, March 15
The SJOBA-Thunderbolt Sub- Himalayan Open Rally-2003 will enter its 16th year when the two-day rally is held on March 29 and 30. It has been a nursery to rally champions such as Hari Singh, Vijayant Chowdhry, Amrinder Sandhu and Sunny Sidhu, to name a few. According to Mr Anoop Sood, president of the St John’s Old Boys Association (SJOBA), the rally will be flagged off on March 29 from St John’s School. The route has been changed this year. The total prize money is Rs 1.5 lakh..

North Zone TT

AG, Bihar, and AG, Bengal, will clash in the men’s final of the North Zone Inter-Zone Table Tennis Championship at the Sector 23 TT hall. Results: semi-finals: AG, Bihar, b AG, Himachal, 3-1 (Santanu Banerjee b Partho Choudhry 11-7, 7-11, 11-9,11-4; Sanjeev Shankar b Saurabh Sharma 16-14, 11-8, 11-7; S. Prasad b Som Nath 8-11, 5-11, 6-11; Santanu Banerjee b Saurabh Sharma 11-3,11-7,11-5); AG, Bengal, b Delhi Audit 3-0 (Samit Biswas b Shyam Kumar 11-7,12-4,11-6, 11-3; Saurav Sengupta b Joginder Bisht 11-4,11-6,11-7; Basab Choudhary b Prashant Bhambri 12-10,13-11,10-12,11-6).

Cricket meet

Good batting by Vishal Sahni, who scored 52 not out, and Vaneet Chawla, who scored 41 runs, enabled Godrej Cricket Club beat Punjab Civil Secretariat by six wickets to win the final of the Haryana Civil Secretariat Cash Prize Cricket Tournament at the JR Institute of Cricket Technology at Barwala, near here, on Saturday. Brief scores: Pb Sectt XI: 135 for 9 (Vishal Gupta 32, Ricky Singh 30, Chandan Puri 21, Amit Kakria 3 for 18, Satish Chaudhary 3 for 19, Madan Lal 3 for 21); Godrej Cricket Club: 138 for 4 in 22.3 overs (Vishal Sahni 52 n.o., Vaneet Chawla 41, Umesh Kashyap 32, Ricky Singh 2 for 16, Sunil Kumar 2 for 22).

ADMINISTRATION

College site dropped from auction
Tribune News Service

Panchkula, March 15
The Haryana Urban Development Authority has decided not to keep the college site in Sector 14 for its next auction scheduled for March 26. The site was offered in HUDA’s auction on Wednesday, even as the state Chief Minister had announced the allocation of the site for a girl’s college in his Sarkaar Aapke Dwaar programme.

Sources said the HUDA headquarters had asked the Administrator, Headquarters, who is officiating as the Administrator, Panchkula, to examine the HUDA policy on allotment of land for a second government college and the application of the CM announcement in this regard.

The HUDA policy clearly states that 50 per cent of the educational institution sites have to be developed and handed over to the Education Department.

HUDA reviews policy on sites
Ruchika M. Khanna
Tribune News Service

Panchkula, March 15
Bogged down by its repeated failure to sell school sites here, the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) has been forced to rethink its rules and regulations for the allotment of these sites.

The authorities have failed to get any response for the school sites — be it nursery, primary or high schools — in the successive auctions organised by HUDA over the past year. According to information available, only one school site has been auctioned off during the past three auctions organised by HUDA during the past six months. Senior officials in HUDA say that they are now thinking about changing the policy for auctioning off these sites.

Sources said none of the school sites kept in the past two auctions, including the one held on Wednesday, failed to attract buyers. Though the sites kept in all these three auctions were the same (High school site in Sector 21, a nursery school site and two primary school sites in Sector 25, and three primary school sites in Sector 26), none of these sites drew any response even for bidding.

In fact, at an auction of school sites and nursing home/ clinic sites on August 7 last year, only one nursery school site (of a total of nine sites offered) was sold. Seeing the poor response, the authorities were forced to postpone the auction, which also did not improve the situation.

Sources said HUDA rules and regulations, especially the ones with regard to having 10 per cent of the seats reserved for merit by means (students from economically weaker sections); site norms ( size of sites are specified by HUDA: nursery school site is 800 sq metres, primary school site is one acre and a high school site is of five acres), and more importantly, the high reserve price, had disillusioned buyers.

The reserve price fixed by HUDA for school sites is very high — between Rs 2,429 to Rs 3,000 per sq metre. This is almost double than the reserve price offered by neighbouring Chandigarh, though the floor area ratio offered in Chandigarh is less than in Haryana.

It is worthwhile to mention here that earlier sites for educational institutions were allotted to the institutions, as is the present policy in Chandigarh. Almost a decade ago, 11 institutions were allotted sites by HUDA, but following a litigation in this regard, decided by the apex court, the policy of allotment has been changed and sites are now sold in auction.