Chandigarh, February 24
Nature and man-made things should be in harmony with each other as conflict between them leads to destruction, said Mr Nek Chand, the creator-director of the world-famous Rock Garden, at Abhipur village, about 25 km from here in Ropar district today.

Interacting with students of the Indo-Global College of Architecture, he said the urban and industrial waste could be used to create better living conditions and aesthetic environment for society. He recalled how he maintained secrecy and singularly toiled hard for about 20 years on his bicycle for the collection of about 20,000 natural rock forms and sculptures for the creation of the Rock Garden.

He explained that he did not prepare any formal plans and drawings and followed the dictates of his heart for the creation of the garden. He urged the students to channelise their energies for creative arts, originality and aesthetic pursuits. Earlier, the principal, Mr S.S. Sekhon, while welcoming Mr Nek Chand, hoped that the interaction would go a long way in inspiring and generating creative skills and appreciation of arts among the students.

Chandigarh, February 24
A philanthropic effort will now make every slum child, eligible to receive first class education in a school that will give fierce competition to the high-fi public schools.

Sikhya— as the name suggests, will provide wholesome education and not just make slum students literate. It aims at enabling these students to compete with others who have been more fortunate to be born in affluent families.

To be inaugurated on Saturday, the school, located in Sector 46, is the brainchild of 72-year- old industrialist, Gurpreet Singh, and will have all modern teaching aids like electronic boards etc. These state of the art educational facilities that are available in select schools in the country, will be made available to slum children from the region absolutely free of cost.

As many as 1,000 children in the age group of 5-15 years will be admitted to the school. The first batch of 300 students has already been enrolled and the academic session begins in the first week of March.

The school, spread over an area of 4.5 acres, has a 25-metre swimming pool, air cooled rooms equipped with the latest flat-screen televisions, electronic blackboards, wi-fi environment, activity labs, a modern canteen, on campus doctors, besides scores of gaming activities.

The entire funding for the school has come from Mr Gurpreet Singh’s family-owned Guru Nanak Vidya Bhandar Trust that was formed in Lahore, prior to Partition.

Mr Gurpreet Singh is the founder and chairman of two leading companies — Continental Devices India Limited (for semi-conductors) and Deltron Ltd (contract manufacturing) — Singh has been on the board of Governors of Washington University, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, and Indian Institute of Management (IIM). Bangalore.

Pinjore, February 24
To honour students of their achievements in academic and co-curricular activities, Delhi Public School Pinjore organised a prize distribution function here today.

The chief guest Mr M.L. Toora, Chief Manager, HR, Indian Oil Corporation. Tinytots of the School presented a “Pooja Dance” to invoke the blessing of Goddess Saraswati.

The programme was studded with a foot-tapping western dance, a song in praise of the God Almighty — ‘All things bright and beautiful and a Haryanavi dance.Pro-vice-chairman, Dr D.R. Arora, and Dr (Ms) B. Arora graced the occasion. 

Chandigarh, February 24
The Chandigarh Administration yesterday clarified its stand on the recent announcement of making it mandatory for all schools to reserve 15 per cent seats for the children belonging to the families of the low income group.

It has been pointed out that the Administration’s committee comprising eminent educationists included the Principals of St Kabir, Carmel Convent, St Stephens, DAV Public schools, who represented various private schools to examine the issue of 15 per cent reservation in detail. The committee after due deliberations unanimously decided that all the schools would make provisions for reserving 15 per cent seats for the children of economically weaker section.

This decision was taken to remove any discrimination and bring the children of the economically weaker section on a par with the children of affluent families. The issue of reservation had featured certain schools raising the question regarding the adaptability of the students in the private schools.

The experiment in this regard has already been carried out in St John’s High School and Sacred Heart Senior Secondary School wherein the children of the low income group families and affluent families are being imparted education on an equal footing and the efforts of these schools have proved immensely productive and rewarding.

Instead of welcoming the decision, which embarks upon creating a social scenario of inter mingling of the children at an early stage irrespective of their social status, biased and unfounded apprehensions are being raised and much ado about a relatively non issue has been created.

In a way the schools will be doing a social service by creating equal opportunities for the development of future generations. The intermingling of children of weaker and affluent families either in government or private schools will definitely bring rich dividends in the long run.

The reservation of seats for the children of low income group families has been taken under the “Allotment of Land to Educational Institutions (Schools) etc on lease hold basis in Chandigarh” Scheme 1996 under clause 18 applicable to 50 schools, which have been allotted land after the introduction of the scheme in 1996.

Chandigarh, February 24
Training to sensitise teachers regarding health and ailments of schoolchildren was organised under the School Health Scheme by the Department of Health, UT, at the General Hospital, Sector 16, here yesterday.

The Joint Director, Health-cum-Medical Superintendent, Dr Usha Bishnoi Kapoor, motivated teachers to improve the health status of school-going children. Doctors from different faculties of the General Hospital along with Dr JS Thakur, Assistant Professor, Community Medicine, PGI, addressed the teachers.

Awareness on common diseases, first-aid, and those faced by adolescents was imparted to teachers so that they could disseminate the health message among children and their parents.

Chandigarh, February 24
Panjab University today received the Government of India’s notification regarding the grant of pension to university employees. The notification dated February 16, 2006, was received by the Vice-Chancellor’s office today.

The notification states that the pension regulations will be effective from October 10, 2005. All PU employees eligible for pension will get pension from this date onwards.

The notification states that, “The employees who retired before October 24, 2005, may, if they so desire, opt to be governed by these pension regulations subject to the conditions that they refund the university’s CP Fund contribution, including interest thereon, as received by them from the university for being credited to the University Pension Fund (corpus). The university will neither charge any interest on this amount of the university’s share of the CP fund received by a retiree for the period from the date of his retirement up to the date of joining the pension scheme nor will pay any arrear of pension. The pension may be made available to the employees from the date they deposit their university share of the CP fund, including interests thereon.”