Ludhiana, May 12
Principals of several schools yesterday addressed mediapersons at Nav Bharati School, Civil Lines, here. They demanded that the police should expedite its proceedings and release the Director of Guru Angad Dev School, Sukhpal Singh.

A Class XII student of the school, Satnam Singh, had committed suicide on April 15 as he and a young teacher of the school were allegedly found exchanging love letters. When the letters were intercepted, the teacher was fired and the boy was asked to return the love letters by Sukhpal Singh as the girl’s parents insisted on getting the letters back. The boy committed suicide by consuming celphos tablets in the afternoon.

Angry people of Kot Mangal Singh where the school is located burnt the school and Sukhpal Singh was arrested. At a meeting presided over by Mr Rajinder Sharma, president, Principal Association of Affiliated Schools, and attended by Mr Pawan, president, Private Schools, Mr O.P. Arora, president, Aided Schools Principal Association, Mr Teja Singh, a former president, Aided Schools, Punjab, and Mr D.M. Dutta, general secretary, Association of Punjab School Education Board Affiliated Schools, and many other principals said Sukhpal Singh was languishing in police custody for no fault of his own.

He had assured the parents that he would let the boy complete his Class XII and allow him to appear for the examinations. An argument cropped up with the family later on and the boy took his life. The birth certificates and school leaving certificates of over 300 students have been burnt.

Mr Rajinder Sharma said they had arranged a meeting with the DIG but he had to rush to Chandigarh. The principals were of the opinion that at times they had to deal strictly with the students and arresting the principal was not the right step. They said if within 15 days the police did not take any action, principals of private schools would close the schools and start an agitation.

Ludhiana, May 12
The Postgraduate Department of Commerce, SCD Government College, added another feather to its cap in the cap when Prof Ashwani Bhalla of the department got a research grant from the UGC for undertaking a research project titled “Housing finance system in India — Problems, prospects and challenges” under the faculty improvement scheme of the UGC.

While interacting with the media here today, Prof Bhalla his study was designed to find out about the problems of the formal system of housing finance in India so that a model could be developed to make the system more consumer-friendly, specially for the lower strata of the population.

The basic objectives of this research project are : to study the development of housing finance system in India, pre-and-post liberalisation era, to evaluate the performance of housing finance institutions with regard to loan disbursals, loan recovery, asset quality, meeting customers’ expectations, profitability, customer services, etc. with special reference to the post-liberalisation period, to identify and analyse the level of competition in the housing finance sector, to study the impact of taxes, subsidies and other policies on the housing finance sector, to study the perceptions of those who avail of housing finance with regard to 1) type of housing products to be financed 2) type of services to be provided and to identify the probable measures to be adopted to develop an efficient housing finance system in future.

Professor Bhalla has already presented research papers at various national and international conferences on varied topics like financial services, housing finance, managerial issues and corporate social and environmental responsibility. 

Ludhiana, May 12
Harprabhjit’s maiden audio album ‘’Edhi Kedhi Gal Ae’’ was released by S. Jagdev Singh Jassowal , president, Vishav Punjabi Cultural Manch, here today at a hotel.

Talking to the Ludhiana Tribune, Harprabhjit said he had sung one song ‘’aaja, aaja kardi rahi’’ with famous playback singer Jaspinder Narula in this album and another one with Harsh Deep of Mumbai. The rest of the six songs had been sung solo by him. The title song was written by Gurnam Gama while other lyrics had been penned by Shama Surejwal. The music of his album had been given by Ravi Pawar and Inder Brothers of Touch World had launched the album. It was made in Mumbai. Incidentally the video is being released today at Mh1 and ETC Channel .”

Harprabhjit said ,”My album provides good clean fun. Most of the songs are traditional and can be viewed with the family.”

He said he was awarded by Chief Minister Amarinder Singh ar Surtal Competition held at Patiala. He said that he did his graduation and postgraduation in vocal music from Patiala and his guru was Jabbar Jang Singh.