Ludhiana, September 8
Lawyers here today struck work to express solidarity with their colleagues in Lucknow, who were beaten by the police a few days back. Work in courts was affected.

The lawyers staged a demonstration in the New Court complex.

Led by the District Bar Association, Mr B.K. Goyal, the lawyers were joined by senior colleagues, including former minister and general secretary of the Shiromani Akali Dal, Mr Mahesh Inder Singh Grewal, former District Bar Association president Harish Dhanda and Taxation Bar Association president P.C. Garg.

The speakers condemned the police action on agitating lawyers in Lucknow, who had taken out a peace march.

The speakers demanded action against those who had resorted to “unprovoked” lathicharge on peaceful lawyers, injuring several of them. The lawyers also demanded an independent inquiry to identify the culprits so that they were duly punished.

The DBA president, Mr B.K. Goyal, thanked his colleagues for cutting across party lines to join the protest.

He pointed out that the lawyers had shown unity and solidarity in this critical hour.

Ludhiana, September 8
The Punjab State Committee of the Marxist Communist Party of India (MCPI) today condemned the lathi-charge on lawyers in Lucknow by the police.

Mr Kuldip Singh, state secretary of the party, said the act was barbaric, uncivilised and against norms of justice and rule of law. Police brutality had crossed all limits while dealing with the peacefully agitating lawyers, he said.

The incident was a blot on the image of the police and had exposed its real face. In fact, it had reinforced the observations made by Justice A.N. Mulla of Allahabad High Court long time back: “There is not a single lawyers’ group in the country whose record of crime comes anywhere near that of an organised unit known as the Indian police.”

While expressing solidarity with the cause of the Avadh Bar Association, the MCPI demanded action against the erring police officials.

The unit also urged the High Court and the Supreme Court to take suo motu notice and direct the government to take action against the guilty so that it acted as a deterrent in future, he added.

Dollo Kalan (Ludhiana), September 8
Friendship with an undertrial proved costly for a family in this village when six of its members, including three women, were drugged and looted by him last night.

The victims consumed a drug-laced milk cake offered by him after dinner last night at their house in this village. They were found lying unconscious this morning.

The victims — Balbir Singh, his wife Harjit Kaur, his son Pawan, daughters Neeta, Simarjit and Raj (husband of Simarjit) — were admitted to the civil hospital by neighbours. They had not gained full consciousness at the time of filing of the story and were yet to be declared fit for giving statement to the police. Neeta was eight-month pregnant.

The sadar police has pieced together bits of information provided by the victims. Sources said Pawan had spent some weeks in Central Jail here after being involved in a street fight case. He had become friendly with an undertrial, Ajay Kumar, in the jail. The police is yet to know the details of his criminal background.

Ajay Kumar frequently visited the house to meet Pawan after his release on bail from the jail. Soon he become quite friendly with other members of the family. Last night after having his dinner with them he offered milk cake to the unsuspecting victims. The milk cake was laced with some drug as the victims fell unconscious after consuming it.

A neighbour, Ms Krishna Devi, was the first to spot the trouble in the house. She said this morning she found that the doors of Balbir Singh’s house were open while no one was seen. When she went inside she found some of the victims were lying on the floor and others on the bed.

She raised the alarm and called other neighbours. The victims were taken to a local dispensary and then to Civil Hospital.

The police has registered a case. Raids were being conducted to nab Ajay. The police is hoping that Pawan would provide them with clues about him once he gained consciousness.

Balbir Singh and his sons were employed in a local factory and owned small piece of land.

Ludhiana, September 8
The Australian High Commissioner in India, Ms Penelope Wensley, will visit Punjab Agricultural University tomorrow to review the projects being undertaken by the countries on the campus.

She will review programme of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research Funded project — permanent beds for irrigated rice-wheat and alternative cropping system in north-west India and South East Australia. The varsity is collaborating with the CSIRO, Australia on this subject. Drs Liz Humphireses and Yadvinder Singh are the Australian and Indian project leaders, respectively.

Ms Wensley is a senior career officer with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Prior to her appointment to India, she was Australia’s ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva.

Ludhiana, September 8
Since 18 long years he has been fighting for the possession of his agricultural land in Dhandra village ,near here, but thanks to bureaucratic wranglings and redtapism, he has not been able to get a copy of the revenue record showing possession of the land, which is worth crores.

Mr Bhajan Singh, a 70-year-old resident living in Santokh Nagar area here, is the owner of the land worth Rs 2 crore but till he gets a ‘‘farad’’ showing ownership of the land, he cannot claim possession.

Forced into penury, Mr Bhajan Singh is one of the frequent visitors to various offices of the mini secretariat. His pleas to officials fall on deaf ears.

The Tribune has championed his cause during the past four years. everytime his tale of woes appears in newspaper, his case is either taken up in earnest for some days or is thrown out of their offices for going to the press.

Some months ago, Mr Bhajan Singh had applied for a copy of the "farad" by depositing Rs 100.

He was told to bring the "khasra" and "khatauni" numbers of the land in question from the register with the circle patwari. His request for these numbers was registered two months ago, but is yet to get the revenue record showing these numbers.

Again, he has been making the rounds of offices for getting these numbers, but to no avail. He alleges that some revenue officials do not want to provide him with the record as they have allegedly tried to change the record in connivance with some claimants on the land.

He claims he was given the possession by the Commissioner, Patiala Division, years ago and if he was given the changed ‘‘farad’’, these officials feared that he would raise a voice against them.

He claimed that the land was given to his wife by his mother-in-law, who had died some years ago. ‘‘I have been moving from pillar to post to get a copy of the farad from the patwari concerned but even after four years of struggle, I am not able to get the same.’’ said Mr Bhajan Singh.

Claiming that the copy of the revenue record in his possession was part of a major scam in the revenue department, Mr Bhajan Singh said if the matter was probed, then names of many employees and senior officials would figure in it .

Now he has filed a complaint with the Vigilance Bureau, which has been sent to the head office .

‘‘Last time I was given a copy but they gave me the old record while I had asked for the new record. ’’ he said.

In an affidavit he furnished to the officials concerned, a copy of which is with the Tribune, Mr Bhajan Singh has claimed that as per the revenue records while the "intakaal number 219" of agricultural land in Dhandra village is in the name of Jaswant Kaur, Angrez Kaur, Naginder Kaur, Ram Singh and Chhinder Kaur, the owners of the land, in the copy of the 'farad' given to him the owners are Ram Singh and Gurvinder Singh.

The revenue officials claim that the man has lost his mind and is on a wild goose chase. They claim that whenever they provided him with a copy of the record, he refuses to take it ,stating that it is a fudged document and not the original one. 

Ludhiana, September 8
An atrocious rail journey is not unheard of. And in case you happen to start it from the Ludhiana railway station, it will prove to be a nightmare.

Passenger’s woes start right from the entry at the enquiry counter. The enquiry number 131 is either never answered or is perpetually engaged. At the railway station too, announcements are made about only those trains that are stationed at the platform and not those which are to arrive.

Passengers are never informed about the status of a train on whether it is on time or is late and if it is, by how long. The announcer keeps repeating information about those trains that are already at the station.

Passengers generally seek information about those trains that are scheduled to arrive at the station. With telephone enquiry not working, passengers are forced to travel to the railway station and wait at there for hours in case the train is late.

With no announcement about the arrival of trains, they have to walk from various platforms to the enquiry counter to know their status. Railway officials have not evolved any system to make periodic announcements about the trains scheduled to arrive in short period. Instead, they make announcements only when the train actually arrives at the platform, leading to chaos.

Similarly, no proper information about reservations is provided. The reservation charts are seldom found intact. A few pages are invariably missing and passengers have to depend on railway officials to confirm their reservations. Railway officials however maintain that some passengers tear away the charts, causing inconvenience to others.

A senior railway official claimed that announcements about the arrival and departure of trains were made regularly. The official said information was also given about those trains that were late or were scheduled to arrive within a couple of hours. He however admitted that delay in announcement about the arrival or departure of a particular train did occur, but only in those cases where information from other stations had failed to arrive. “Whatever (information) that is available here is made public instantly,” he claimed.

On phone enquiry issue, the official maintained that there were three service numbers — 131, 2745977 and 2744454 — on which people could get information round the clock. But, he pointed out that given the number of enquiries made in the city, with a population of over 20 lakh, there was likelihood of these numbers remaining busy for sometime.

Ludhiana, September 8
After Mohali it is now the textile industry in Ludhiana that will benefit from the cluster model approach. Post-sanctioning of Rs 50 crore for the purpose, the textile industry is fast gearing up to form the cluster.

Recently, a meeting of the apex committee formed for allocation of funds, was conducted at New Delhi in this regard.

“The formation of cluster, by providing support services under one roof, will give cost and time benefits to the textile industry. It would help industry emerge competitive as expert services would be available,” said Mr Rakesh B. Mittal, chairman, CII, North.

Ludhiana was selected as one of the 19 clusters for development of infrastructure by the Ministry of Commerce. In consultation with the Federation of Knitwear, Textile and Allied Industries Association (FEKTAA), Ministry of Commerce and Industry, under the Industrial Infrastructure Upgradation Scheme, sanctioned a multi-utility complex (MUC) project so as to form a textile cluster here.

The multi-utility complex will provide a single-window support services required by the value chain of the Ludhiana textile cluster. These services would include an R&D centre, an information centre, a training centre, a design centre and an exhibition centre.

“The project would help the cluster by providing it easy access to information in a focused and customised manner. While the common R&D centre would help save units on costs on capital, operations and maintenance, training would enhance technical knowledge base of workers and their skills, resulting in increased productivity and reduced costs,” said Mr Vinod Thapar, president, Knitwear Club.

The design centre would provide information on international fashion trends and forecast apart from exploring product diversification possibilities for the raw material available in the Ludhiana cluster. The proposed exhibition and business centre, that would be used to organise the buyer-seller meets, trade fairs, exhibitions and fashion shows, could become a hub to attract importers, buying houses and domestic buyers.

As the complex would be professionally managed, it would being in professional efficiencies contributing towards overall improvement in performance for product diversification, he said.

Apart from providing benefits of expert services, formation of ‘clusters’ would help industry present its concerns in a collective and comprehensive manner. It would also have a multiplier effect as it would facilitate generating more resources from the available schemes, Mr Mittal said.

While the industry would be required to invest 15 per cent of the project cost, 10 per cent would be contributed by a financial institution and the remaining 75 per cent shall be borne by the government. As soon as the funds were released, for which meetings were on, work would begin and the textile industry here would soon have world-class infrastructure, said Mr Thapar.