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Monday,
September 29, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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High Court
order poses problems BJP party
chief’s poll an acid test Dhumal
consults confidants on elections Need to
rationalise timber distribution rules Villagers
oppose ropeway |
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Dwindling
forest wealth rings alarm bells Employees’
welfare tops agenda, says CM Accused in
theft case commits suicide Villagers oppose ropeway Seminar on
knowledge system Water
scheme inauguration tomorrow
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High Court order poses problems for BRO Istingri, September 28 “We should be exempted from this order as the Border Roads Organisation is involved in the maintenance and construction of roads in the strategic areas of the state,” said Mr P.K. Mahajan, Commander of the 38 BRTF, which is in charge of this sector along with 80 RCC. “We have asked the higher authorities, including the Himachal Chief Secretary, to intervene in the matter and place the perspective of the BRO before the High Court and plead for the vacation of stay for the organisation,” he said. Mr Mahajan said “the BRO is not involved in any commercial activity, nor is constructing dams, which would involve huge quantity of crushed stones. What we need is stone-crushers near the construction and maintenance site. If we have to seek clearance each and every time we move the crushers, then we would spend time running around officials rather than carrying out our work.” A Division Bench of the Himachal Pradesh High Court on September 17 had directed the closure of all stone-crushers in Himachal as a state-level committee had failed to find the zones for the stone-crushers in the hill state. The court, however, modified its order on September 24, by exempting the NHPC, the HP Electricity Board and the BBMB from the purview of this order while setting up a district level committee to study the state of crusher units and submit its report on November 15. There are over 300 crushers operating in the state. Noise, air and water pollution by them was pointed as the reason by the petitioners to seek their ban. More than 13 writ petitions from all over the state have been pending on this matter in the High Court since 2001. Mr Mahajan told a group of visiting newspersons that the High Court order had already affected work and would escalate the maintenance and construction cost of the roads in this sector. The roads in this sector remain closed for seven to eight months due to heavy snowfall and the BRO gets about two months to carry out works. “It costs Rs 50,000 each year to maintain a kilometre of road in this sector. With the High Court order, the cost could go up considerably,” said Major Samardeep Singh, the officer commanding the 80 RCC. He said “With the existing manpower, we can crush the stone by hand and meet 20 to 30 per cent of our requirements. For the rest of the needs, we would have to depend on the stone crushed by contractors outside the hill state and would hike the cost exorbitantly.” “We have crushed stone stocks to meet maintenance requirements in some sections of the roads, but it would be difficult to meet the demands next year,” he explained. The order has affected the double-laning of the Manali-Leh road, which is the gateway to Lahaul, Spiti and the Pangi Valley. The 474 km long Manali-Leh road runs through four high-altitude mountain passes — Rohtang, Baralacha la and Lachulanga and Tangalang la. Due to heavy snowfall, blizzards and avalanches, the road remains closed for seven to eight months in a year. |
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BJP party
chief’s poll an acid test Shimla, September 28 The strong reaction of the leaders of the Shanta faction, which had been at the receiving end for the past five years, to the reports that Mr Dhumal was himself a candidate for the post is being seen as a disturbing signal for the party. The high command is taking no chances this time and it has decided to settle the issue by consensus to avoid the repeat of the Jwalamukhi episode, which had brought the party on the verge of a vertical split during the 1997 organisational poll. Selected leaders from both factions are being invited to the meeting to be held in Chandigarh on October 2 where Mr Sanjay Joshi, national general secretary in charge of the organisational matters, and Mr
O.P. Kohli, national returning officer for the ongoing organisational poll, will be present. According to party sources, in all about 15 leaders of both camps will be invited. Mr Joshi and Mr Kohli will ascertain the views of the leaders collectively and individually. In case possibility of consensus on some names emerged, the two central leaders will hammer out the issue in the final session of the meeting. The high command is aware of the fact that having lost power to the Congress, it will not be easy to retain the present tally of three seats in the Lok Sabha poll if factionalism continued to plague the party. The organisational poll has provided an opportunity to rejuvenate the party. Given the present mood of the leaders of Kangra, the biggest and politically most important district , there is a remote possibility of unanimity on the name of Mr Dhumal or even his prominent supporters like Dr Rajiv Bindal and Mr Ravinder Ravi. The tag of being anti-Kangra, which Mr Dhumal had earned as the Chief Minister, is likely to cost him dear as the district had been traditionally a strong hold of the BJP. Moreover, the party high command had given a free hand to Mr Dhumal to run the government and the party, and the result of which was all too visible in the last Assembly election which saw the party’s vote share plunge to the lowest and its candidates relegated to the third and fourth positions in as many as 14 out of the 68 seats. Worse, it was for the first time that the party lost the electoral battle on the issue of corruption, which it had been using to whip the Congress all these years. While the choice of the state president will be made by the high command in consultations with the prominent leaders, the three party MPs, Mr Suresh Bhardwaj, Mr Suresh Chandel and Mr Maheshwar Singh , have emerged among the front runners. Besides Mr
K.D. Dharmani, Mr Khushi Ram Balnatah and Mr Kishori Lal are also among strong contender for the post. |
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Dhumal consults confidants
on elections Dharamsala, September 28 According to reliable sources, the meeting was held to formulate a strategy for the forthcoming Kangra district BJP president elections and also for state president’s elections to be held early next month. Mr Dhumal had come in the morning to the Radha Soami Dera at Parour here where the head of the sect was to deliver a sermon. Though this was the declared purpose of the meeting, Mr Dhumal along with former minister and strong contender for Kangra BJP presidentship, Dr Rajan Sushant, former HPTDC Chairman Rakesh Pathania, Rajya Sabha member Kirpal Parmar, Rajgir MLA Capt Atma Ram and Mr Ganga Ram Teja, a Dalit leader, held a meeting at Maranda. According to sources, the meeting decided to challenge the leadership of former Union Minister Shanta Kumar in Kangra by fielding Dr Rajan Sushant as candidate for the district BJP presidentship. The leaders also formulated a strategy for the state president’s election. |
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Need to rationalise timber distribution rules Shimla, September 28 As per the record of the Forest Department 2,10,934, green trees with a standing volume of 5,49,484 cubic metre were sanctioned to right holders between the 1994-99 period. Trees of valuable species like the deodar, kail, chil, fir and spruce were worth about Rs 275 crore, but these were given to right holders at the highly subsidised rates of Re 1 to Rs 6 per tree. The department realised only a paltry sum of Rs 2.13 lakh. In fact, trees are being sanctioned at the rates fixed during the forest settlement in 1873. On an average, 1.10 lakh cubic metre of timber is being granted to the right holders annually as against 63,041 cubic metre in 1966-67. In 1985-86, the level of removals from the forests under TD had reached 1,76,000 cubic metre. The provision meant to help poor villagers to build modest houses was grossly misused by influential people for building palatial houses and hotels. The wide difference in the TD rates and the market rates was mainly responsible for the misuse of the facility. Even those who did not require timber got trees sanctioned and sold these to builders. The TD rates were fixed at 20 to 25 per cent of the market rate more than 125 years ago, but these were never revised even though the market rate increased several thousand times over the period. The ratio of TD rates to the market rates for deodar which was 1:5 about 100 years ago, increased to 1:9000 by the year 2000. Similarly, in case of chil it has gone upto 1:8 in 1867 to 1:15,000 and for kail to 1:3,000. The issue of rationalisation TD has been considered several times over the past three decades, but no government has shown the courage and political will to carry out the exercise. The result — dense forests with over 40 per cent canopy cover in the state are fast degenerating into open forests. The area under dense forests came down from 9565 sq km in 1995 to 9,120 in 1999, mainly on account of removals under TD. The department has once again proposed to rationalise the TD and suggested steps like linking the TD to the market rates, restricting the quantity of timber and regulating the periodicity of grant of trees more stringently and supplying converted timber to the right holders instead of trees to save forests. However, the moot question is will the government pick courage to take a decision which could have an adverse political fallout. |
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Villagers
oppose ropeway Solan, September 28 The Chief Minister, Mr Virbhadra Singh, is to lay its foundation stone on September 30. Citing religious and cultural sentiments as a reason for opposing this project, the villagers contended that it would lead to an influx of outsiders to their religious places. This would give rise to “anti-social” activities. The permission for the project, a venture of K.K. Ropeways, Jabli, was first sought in 1993 but was struck down in 1995. A panchayat resolution in 1996 opposed the construction of the highway. Permission for the ropeway was finally cleared on September 17 this year. With most of the panchayat land being surrendered to other departments like the Industry, Electricity, Housing Board, Warehouse and Telecom, there was virtually no land left for pastures, lamented the villagers. Panchayat representatives, including Ms Asha Devi, Mr Madan Lal and Mr Vijay Thakur, said if the permission to the ropeway was not cancelled, they would launch an agitation and wear black badges on CM’s arrival. |
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Dwindling
forest wealth rings alarm bells Chamba, September 28 Sadly, the flora and fauna in the hillsides of Jot is under serious threat, but nobody bothers, says Mr Navneet Chowfla, an environmentalist. He demands that steps should be taken to analyse the causes for disease affecting trees. The top fertile alpine soil of this area is also getting affected. One can see nullahs full of fallen trees. It is high time for the state Forest Department and the local administration to take corrective measures. Officials of the department, however, maintain that since the forest falls under the Kalatop-Khajiar wildlife sanctuary, the salvage wood cannot be extracted from the habitat in the light of a Supreme Court ruling. The salvage trees in the forests also shelter the wild fauna, he asserts. |
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Employees’ welfare tops agenda, says CM Shimla, September 28 Speaking at a function organised by the state Government Drivers and Conductors Association here today, he said he had always settled the demands of the employees through talks and given them their due. They were the backbone of the administration and played a significant role in the implementation of the policies and programmes of the government. He lauded the contribution of the employees posted in tribal, difficult and hard areas for the contribution made in the development of these areas. Some corrective steps like excluding non-Plan expenditure from the Annual Plan had already been taken. The non-Plan expenditure was wrongly included in the Plan to artificially increase its size. |
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Accused
in theft case
commits
suicide Kangra, September 28 Kangra district additional police chief Santosh Patial said here today that the Una police had communicated to the Kangra police about the suicide. A suicide note was also found, expressing “shock” over the happenings. He said a stolen car was recovered from the site. Vijay Kumar in his suicide note had said that he had abandoned another stolen car without a number at a particular place in Una district. The Kangra police had smashed an inter-state gang of burglars in Bagli village on Thursday following a theft in the office of the SDM, Kangra, on September 25 night. |
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Villagers
oppose ropeway Solan, September 28 Citing religious and cultural sentiments as a reason for opposing this project, the villagers contended that it would lead to an influx of outsiders to their religious places. This would give rise to “anti-social” activities. The permission for the project, a venture of K.K. Ropeways,
Jabli, was first sought in 1993 but was struck down in 1995. A panchayat resolution in 1996 opposed the construction of the highway. Permission for the ropeway was finally cleared on September 17 this year. With most of the panchayat land being surrendered to other departments like the Industry, Electricity, Housing Board, Warehouse and Telecom, there was virtually no land left for pastures, lamented the villagers. Panchayat representatives, including Ms Asha Devi, Mr Madan Lal and Mr Vijay Thakur, said if the permission to the ropeway was not cancelled, they would launch an agitation and wear black badges on CM’s arrival. |
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Seminar
on knowledge system Shimla, September 28 Prof B.M. Hegde, Vice-Chancellor of the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, will deliver the keynote address at the seminar to be inaugurated by Governor V.S. Kokje. Main disciplines of knowledge to be deliberated during the seminar are governance, law and justice, psychology, medicine and life sciences. |
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Water scheme inauguration
tomorrow Solan, September 28 Funded by HUDCO a Rs 27.44 crore has been approved for its first phase. A provision of Rs 10 crore has been provided for the current year. With present water requirement of 10.07 MLD against the available 6.27 MLD there exists a huge gap between demand and supply of water. The scheme will bridge the same gap, said executive engineer Sanjiv Kaul. |
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