Chandigarh, September 15
Mrs Vidya Devi, widow of former Haryana Chief Minister Bansi Lal, today alleged that her daughter-in-law, Mrs Kiran Chaudhary, was not allowing her access to the house of her late husband.

In her petition, which came up for hearing today before a Division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Mrs Vidya Devi also alleged that misusing her position in the government, her daughter-in-law had kept unidentified armed persons in the house so as to prevent her and her son, Mr Ranbir Singh Mahendra, a former President of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), from entering the same.

She also alleged that in order to retain her illegal control over the property, which is located in Vijay Nagar in Bhiwani district, Mrs Chaudhary has also got large number of police personnel stationed there.

Mr Mahendra, who is the elder son of the late Chief Minister, is also a petitioner in the writ.

It may be recalled that a bitter dispute had erupted over the house of late Bansi Lal with Mr Mahendra claiming that as per the will of his late father, the house would belong to the Bansi Lal Trust, of which his mother had been nominated president.

On the other hand, Ms Chaudhary, who is the Tourism Minister of Haryana, and her daughter, Ms Shruti, have alleged that they had fallen victim to a conspiracy and attempts were being made to oust them from the house.

Ms Shruti has even filed a writ in a local court against Mr Mahendra, challenging the validity of the purported will.

In fact, on September 10, a mahapanchayat, held at the village, had decided in favour of giving possession of the palatial house to Mrs Chaudhary.

The panchayat had declared that if any of the two parties did not accept its decision within seven days, one more panchayat would be convened and decision would be taken for action against that party.

Chandigarh, September 15
Mr Ranbir Singh Mahendra, elder son of Mr Bansi Lal, has got support from unexpected quarters in his fight with his sister-in-law, Mrs Kiran Choudhary, over the dispute over the Bhiwani residence of the former Chief Minister.

The Khap Panchayat of Golagarh, the native village of Mr Bansi Lal, had recently decided that Mrs Choudhary, wife of late Mr Surender Singh, and her daughter, Ms Shruti, had a right to stay in the house. Mr Mahendra had refused to accept this verdict.

About 100 advocates of the Punjab and Haryana High Court yesterday issued a joint statement supporting Mr Mahendra’s stand. They said the Golagarh Khap Panchayat had no role to play in a dispute pending adjudication before a court of law.

“The one-sided decision of the panchayat has no sanctity in the eyes of law as it cannot act over and above the Constitution and court of law,” the statement said.

The advocates said the interference by the Khap Panchayat in family disputes was wholly unconstitutional and against all social norms.

Chandigarh, September 15
The dispute among members of the family of the late Chief Minister Bansi Lal has sucked in rank outsiders.

Initially, the dispute had started over the house in Delhi, in which Bansi Lal used to live. Now it has extended to his Bhiwani house. The latest phase of the dispute started when Bansi Lal's elder son, Mr Ranbir Singh Mahendra, MLA from Mundhal, announced the formation of a trust in memory of his father and also his intention to set up a memorial in the Bhiwani house.

Mrs Kiran Choudhary, widow of Mr Mahendra's younger brother, the late Surender Singh, moved a Bhiwani court, claiming that she along with her daughter, Shruti, were in possession of a part of the house and they should not be dispossessed. The court ordered status quo. She or Shruti were not made trustees of the Bansi Lal Memorial Trust.

Perturbed by the unsavoury happenings in the former first family of the state, the khap panchayat of Golagarh, the native village of Bansi Lal, took the initiative and decided to work for a compromise. After listening to Mr Mahendra and Mrs Choudhary, who is the Minister of State for Forest and Tourism, the panchayat held that the mother and the daughter had the right to stay in the house. Mrs Choudhary is the MLA from Tosham, the traditional Assembly constituency of Bansi Lal's family. The panchayat left the issue of title to be decided by the civil court.

While Mrs Choudhary was happy over securing a "moral", if not legal, victory, Mr Mahendra refused to accept the panchayat's verdict. His supporters say that the panchayat's decision was one-sided and it had not allowed those who had gone on behalf of Mr Mahendra to speak.

Mr Mahendra got a boost when Mr Surat Singh, president of the Meham Chaubisi, criticised the decision of the Golagarh panchayat. He said the Golagarh panchayat had no authority to give any verdict. The Chaubisi had become famous after the "Meham mayhem" of the 1990s when Mr Om Prakash Chautala had contested the Assembly byelection, which was countermanded after large-scale violence.

Now, the president the Golagarh panchayat, Mr Anant Ram, and its secretary, Thakur Umed Singh, have joined issue with Mr Surat Singh. In a joint statement issued here today, they said Mr Surat Singh's statement was politically motivated and biased. "A person, who was neither present at the meeting of our panchayat nor was aware of various aspects of the issue, should not have raised a finger at our decision. Being the president of the Meham Chaubisi, he should have shown a more mature and judicial mind," they said.

Mr Mahendra is also not alone. More than 100 advocates of the Punjab and Haryana High Court had yesterday issued a statement criticising the Golagarh panchayat's decision and supporting him.

Meanwhile, a writ petition filed on behalf of Mrs Vidya Wati, widow of Bansi Lal, before the High Court seeking certain directions pertaining to the dispute, was dismissed as withdrawn.

Hisar, September 15
The Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Mr Sukarm Pal, extended the remand of Rishi Sagar Vishwas, Director of Vishwas Senior Secondary School, till September 18.

The Director, accused of sexually exploiting girl students, was produced in a local court today. The police counsel requested for extension of police remand of the accused.

The police counsel maintained that the accused used to call girl students to his office on the pretext of giving them certain guess papers and then subjected them to sexual harassment.

Accepting the request, the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Mr Sukarm Pal, extended Rishi Sagar's remand.

Meanwhile, the Deputy Commissioner, Mr Phateh Singh Dagar, has directed the managements of all educational institutions to constitute committees comprising at least 50 per cent women members to look into the complaints of sexual exploitation.

The direction was issued after holding a meeting of intellectuals, parents, teachers and other prominent residents. Following the meeting, Mr Dagar maintained that the academic activities would soon be resumed in the Vishwas Senior Secondary School.

The Deputy Commissioner has also directed the Sub-Divisional Magistrate and the District Education Officer to conduct a fact-finding inquiry into the entire episode and submit a detailed report in this regard.

Mr Dagar said the final decision on the control of the school would be taken after the committee submitted its report.

Fatehabad, September 15
Former Haryana Minister, Sampat Singh today pooh-poohed the Haryana Chief Minister’s promise of equitable distribution of water in Haryana.

Talking to mediapersons at Hasanga village in the district today, Mr Sampat Singh said people of the state had been lamenting for the past 18 months that there was virtually no distribution or very poor distribution of water and power in the state.

He said the rotation of water supply in various distributaries from the Tohana head in the district was for two weeks during the Indian National Lok Dal regime, but the supply had come down to one week of supply during the present regime. He alleged that the government had been misleading people on the issue of Hansi-Butana canal. He said the government had been claiming that the waters of the Ravi and Beas would be taken to south Haryana through this canal.

Mr Sampat Singh said the government should make efforts to construct the Sutlej Yamuna Link Canal. Though the Supreme Court had given directives to the Central Government to construct the canal, the matter was hanging fire due to lackadaisical attitude of the state government, he added.

Mr Sampat Singh maintained that the state government was going ahead with the Hansi-Butana link canal despite the fact that there were several technical and legal flaws in its construction. He said that the level of the canal was such water would not reach its destination and would become a lake. He said the governments of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, besides the Central Water Commission and the Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB) were involved in the supply of water to the canal from the head. He said the state government had neither sought permission from the Central Water Commission, nor from the BBMB or from the other states.

Mr Sampat Singh addressed a series of public meetings at villages of Fatehabad Assembly constituency today with regard to the September 25 rally of the INLD at Meham. Mr Amir Chawla, former Chairman of the SS Board, Haryana, Mr Nishan Singh and Ms Swatantar Bala Chaudhary, former MLAs, and Ms Krishana Poonia, president of the Women’s wing of the INLD, were present during the meetings.

Chandigarh, September 15
The INLD supremo, Mr Om Prakash Chautala, will once again be absent from the session of the Haryana Assembly beginning here from Monday.

The INLD leader has written to the Speaker regarding his inability to attend the session due to his stay abroad for health reasons. The Assembly, elected last year, has had five sessions so far and Mr Chautala has attended none of these. On each occasion he had sent a letter citing ill-health as the reason for keeping away from the House.

Staunch anti-Chautala members of the Assembly, who hold the former Chief Minister responsible for their travails during the previous INLD regime, rue the fact that Mr Chautala avoids facing them in the House. In the last session of the House in March, the Speaker had asked the members to express their views on the letter sent by Mr Chautala asking for the grant of leave. Some fiery speeches were made on the occasion before the request was eventually accepted.

Discussion on Mr Chautala’s absence from the House is on the cards again when the House meets here on Monday.

On September 24, Mr Chautala is slated to arrive in India from the USA and the following day he will address a public meeting at Meham on the occasion of the birth anniversary of his father, the late Devi Lal. The INLD leader’s programme will enable his detractors to reiterate the allegation that Mr Chautala cites illness only when it comes to attending the Assembly.

However, an MLA who misses the session for 60 consecutive days can be disqualified from the Assembly. Mr Chautala is quite safe on that count.

Official sources said seven Bills would be tabled in the Assembly session, which the government has proposed to wind up on Tuesday.

The Bills are the Value Added Tax (Amendment) Bill, the Panchayati Raj Act (Amendment) Bill, the Bhagat Phool Singh Mahila University Bill, the Municipal Committee Act (Amendment) Bill, the Municipal Corporation Act (Amendment) Bill, the Private Universities Bill and the Members’ Allowances and Pension (Amendment) Bill.

The first three Bills have been already brought into force in the state in the form of ordinances and these will be now ratified in the Assembly.

Sirsa, September 15
The Chief Information Commissioner of Haryana, Mr G. Madhavan, has asserted that the Right to Information (RTI) Act has brought about transparency in administrative functioning and made government officials accountable to masses.

Addressing a seminar on the Right to Information organised by the district administration and local media here today, Mr Madhavan pointed out that to ensure the success of the Act, it needed to be popularised in the rural areas.

The Deputy Commissioner, Mr V. Umashankar, who is also a Master Trainer at the Haryana Institute of Public Administration, remarked that the Act had ushered in a new era of administrative reforms.

The Vice-Chancellor of Chaudhary Devi Lal University here, Dr K.C. Bhardwaj, observed that smooth exchange of information was must to ensure corruption-free administration.

Prof B.K. Kuthiala, Chairman of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra, maintained that in the modern era, information was power and a fundamental need of every human being.

Fatehabad, September 15
The District Literacy Committee (DLC) has completed the task of identifying total number of illiterate persons between the age group of 15 to 35 years, for the purpose of launching its literacy campaign.

According to a survey conducted by the volunteers of the District Literacy Committee, as many as 30,497 persons, between the age group of 15 to 35 years, were still illiterate in this district. The number of illiterate women in this district is only slightly more than the number of illiterate men. The District Literacy Committee aims to literate all these illiterate persons with an aims to educate complete literacy in this district.

According to Ms. Mamta Monga, district coordinator of the DLC, campaign for identifying the illiterate persons in the district was launched in all five blocks of the district.

Volunteers of the NSS and other NGOs joined hand with the DLC to complete the task of identifying illiterate persons. She said the block wise number of illiterates was 4,072 in Jakhal, 7,143 in Rattia, 6,993 in Bhattu Kalan, 4,744 in Fatehabad and 7,545 in Tohana.

The Deputy Commissioner, Mr O.P. Sheoran, informed that the DLC had identified 60 villages of the district for the first phase of the literacy drive.

He said master trainers from each village had been identified and were provided training for their job by the key resource persons, who themselves got training from the State Resource Centre, Rohtak.

The master trainers, in turn, will train ‘Akshar Sainiks’ in each village.

Rewari, September 15
A middle-aged woman, Rajwanti (42), was done to death with a sharp-edged weapon allegedly by her husband Bir Singh Sharma (45) at Gindokhar village, near here, last night.

Immediately afterwards, the husband also ended his life by consuming celphos.

It is stated that Bir Singh was a habitual drunkard and frequently thrashed his wife.

On a complaint lodged by Rohit Sharma, a son of the deceased, the Sadar police here has registered a case of murder under Section 302 of the IPC against the accused, Bir Singh, who too was now dead.

In a second such incident, a young woman, Bala Devi (32), wife of Rajesh Yadav, was allegedly beaten to death by her in-laws at Naya Gaon Daulatpur village, near here, yesterday.

In a critical condition, the woman was admitted to the local Civil Hospital where the doctors referred her to Safdarjung Hospital, Delhi, where she succumbed to her injuries.

The body was immediately brought back to the Civil Hospital where the doctors, who conducted the post-mortem examination, said her death was caused by the injuries.

On a complaint lodged by her father Lal Singh Yadav, a resident of Mastapur village, near here, the police has booked her husband Rajesh Yadav, mother-in-law Vidya Devi, brother-in-law Davender Yadav and sister-in-law Anita Yadav for murder.

It was alleged by the complainant that their greed for more money eventually took away her daughter's life.