New Delhi, February 11
Eight persons were killed and four injured when a four-storey residential building in a thickly populated Madipur slum cluster in Punjabi Bagh collapsed due to heavy rain here today.

Fire fighters pulled out 16 persons from rubble of the structure in the slum cluster and rushed them to nearby Sanjay Gandhi and Maharaja Agrasen hospitals.

Eight of them, including three children, have succumbed to injuries while the condition of others is stated to be critical.

The identity of the deceased and injured persons was not immediately known.

More people were feared trapped under the rubble as there was factory on the ground floor of the building. At the time of the collapse around 4 pm, at least half a dozen labourers were working.

The rescue operation was on and apart from the local police and the fire brigade personnel, people were helping in rescue operation. Due to the impact of collapse, a nearby electricity pole was uprooted, electricity in the area was then snapped. This hindered the rescue operation for a short while, area DCP Robin Hibbu said.

Three cranes were pressed into rescue operation. Initially the administration summoned only one crane and as the people agitated, two more cranes were immediately summoned, said a local resident. 

New Delhi, February 11
All India Tax Advocate Forum has strongly criticised the Delhi government for not bringing about amendments to some of the most draconian provisions of Delhi Value Added Tax Act which are causing ‘unnecessary’ and ‘totally avoidable harassment’ to the trading community in general and to small traders in particular.

The president of the forum, Mr M K Gandhi, urged the government and the legislators cutting across party lines to ensure that the legitimate concerns of traders are addressed by bringing in suitable amendments in the act in the forthcoming budget session.

An offence against VAT laws is basically civil in nature and deserves to be treated as such. The traders are simply harassed by the department and threatened that their business premises would be sealed, he said.

One of the aims of bringing in VAT regime was to reduce the paper work. However, this is not happening. It is unfortunate of forcing the traders with more than Rs 5 crore turnover to furnish monthly returns instead of quarterly returns. Such a provision does not exist in any other state where VAT regime has been implemented, he said.

To overcome these problems, the tax period for monthly and quarterly returns should be made six-monthly like Service Tax. Mutual consultation by the government with the trading community will result in optimum revenue collection and growth of trade in the Capital, he added. 

New Delhi, February 11
Challenging the decision of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here to reserve 50 per cent seats in the hospital’s super-speciality departments, four resident doctors from the institute have moved the Delhi High Court and sought its intervention in the matter.

Justice Kailash Gambhir issued notice to AIIMS, Medical Council of India (MCI) and the Centre on a petition filed by the doctors—Dharmesh L Khatri, Prashant, Nidhi Moda and Pankaj Khandelwal—and directed the institute not to release the appointment letters to the selected candidates for reserved category till the pendency of this case.

Justice Gambhir, however, declined to stay the recruitment policy, 2005, for the post of senior resident doctors in the super-speciality departments of the institute.

Filing the petition through their counsel M L Lahoty, the petitioners stated that they had qualified through the merit list for three-year-long post of senior resident doctors. Two super-speciality departments requiring candidates for these posts were orthopaedics and gynaecology, they added.

Faridabad, February 11
One of the biggest achievements of the Hooda government in the first two years of its tenure has been a corruption-free rule and balanced growth of all sectors in the state. The government will provide the report card of this period at the state-level Navyug Rally to be held at Sirsa on February 25. The Congress president, Ms Sonia Gandhi, will be the chief guest. This was stated by the party spokesperson, Mr Ved Prakash Vidrohi, here today.

He said the decision of the Congress chief to attend the rally was an indication there was no doubt about the satisfaction of the high command with the performance of the government. It was also a signal that Ms Gandhi wanted Mr Hooda to set an example of unprecedented development in the state, resulting in all-round wealth and happiness. He said it was perhaps for the first time that there was no misuse of official machinery for the rally. Every MLA or MP of the party made efforts and utilised resources.

He said the government would place the report card of its achievements at the rally and it would renew its pledge for fast track development of all areas of the state without any political bias or discrimination. He said the state had been turned into a family fiefdom prior to March 2005 for a period of six years. The present government had provided much needed relief to the people, who had been caught up in an unholy nexus of corruption, inefficiency and lopsided development, besides hopeless law and order situation in the state.

Mr Vidrohi said there was a complete change in all spheres of life in the state in the past two years and the people were now getting what they deserved. While measures had been taken to contain the problem of employment, the Hooda government had dedicated all its energies to tackle the acute power crisis faced by the state for the past several years by launching work on setting up power generation plants of a capacity of about 4500 MW, which had been higher than the entire generation capacity of 4000 MW achieved in the past 40 years. He said Haryana would be a surplus state within a period of three years. He claimed the budget for development of various sectors had raised remarkably and there had been no instance of any misuse of funds at government level in the past two years.

There were proposals of foreign investment of Rs 55,000 crore in this period against the total investment made in the past 40 years, which would generate about 10 lakh jobs in the next one decade. Making a dig at Mr Kuldeep Bishnoi, dissident party MP, he asked him to to resign from his post and contest the election on his own steam to get a taste of his ‘popularity’.

Gurgaon, February 11
Cheesed off by the local administration and the alleged failure of the police to make any breakthrough in the theft of 10 ancient idols from a Jain temple, which took place about a fortnight ago, a mahapanchayat of members from all sections of society and adherents of all religions was convened and later a protest march held.

The mahapanchayat came down heavily on the district administration and the local police in their failure to prevent the theft and inability to make any breakthrough in the case.

The mahapanchayat and the protest march were organised by the local unit of the Jain Sabha.

The fortnight-long relay fast by members of the community at Mahavir Chowk was called off following an assurance made by the All India Digambar Jain Tirth Protection Mahasamiti to the community members here that the state government would be persuaded to refer the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The national president of the organisation, Mr Nirmal Kumar Sethi, addressed the mahapanchayat.

Leaders here said the state government would be approached to hand over the cases of recent thefts of idols from Palwal and Rohtak along with the theft of the ones in Gurgaon to the CBI for investigation.

The participants at the mahapanchayat later staged a protest march from the affected Jain temple to the venue where the relay hunger strike was in progress. The protesters also raised slogans demanding the immediate recovery of the idols.

The speakers, including local leaders from various political parties and representatives of various social and religious organisations and business and trade, made critical reference to the law enforcing agencies.

Members of the community cautioned the follow-up measures by the police in tracing the idols would be keenly watched. Direct protest action by the community could not be ruled out in case of failure of the police.

New Delhi, February 11
After having been rapped on the knuckles by the Delhi High Court for failing to construct segregated tracks for cyclists, the state authorities are now busy preparing a cycle plan for National Capital Territory of Delhi.

Delhi Chief Secretary R Narayanaswamy has sent a letter to all the departments concerned directing them to create cycle tracks along city roads wherever possible.

There has been a steady rise in the road mishaps involving cyclists which is hampering the smooth flow of traffic in the absence of separate tracks for them, said an official from Delhi Public Works Department entrusted with the task.

He, however, admitted negligence on the part of the government to implement the bicycle master plan prepared by the IIT, Delhi, a few years back.

Now the Delhi government in an affidavit in the High Court during the next hearing of a PIL pertaining to the safety of cyclists on roads is submitting a plan detailing separate cycle tracks on various roads to segregate motorised traffic.

“We have already constructed tracks from Shastri Park to Wazirabad in East Delhi where over two lakh cyclists travel every day, said the official.

New Delhi, February 11
The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation has achieved the distinction of becoming the first metro train service provider in the country to get a berth in the elite Nova Benchmarking Group (NBG), the exclusive consortium of medium-sized metro systems from around the world.

The DMRC became the 15th member of the NBG. The other 14 members of the NBG are: Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Glasgow, Hong Kong, Lisbon, Milan, Montreal, Naples, Newcastle, Rio de Janerio, Santiago de Chile, Singapore, Taipei and Toronto.

With the NBG tag, the DMRC would enable to rate itself against international benchmarks and pave the way for technology transfer for its metro service. The

Nova Benchmarking process uses 31 key performance indicators (kpis) which measure the performance of organization through six categories like background, assert utilization, efficiency, reliability/service quality, safety and financial performance, a DMRC release said.

Ghaziabad, February 11
Three persons are accused of having sacrificed a 12-year-old boy under the influence of tantriks in the Sehramau South police station area. The boy’s body was thrown in a sugarcane field. His tongue had been cut and the neck slit.

Laxmi Chand, 12-year-old son of Pati Ram, a resident of Negava village, had gone out for playing near the primary school on February 7. He never returned. After Pati Ram reported the matter to the police, the latter flashed the news on the wireless to all police stations of the area.

News came yesterday that the body of a boy had been sighted in the sugarcane fields of Ram Saran at a little distance from the village. Pati Ram identified it as that of his son Laxmi Chand. On getting the news, the CO Sadar and the SO of Sehrmau police station reached the spot and interrogated Pati Ram. The tongue and the throat of the victim had been slit by the killers and vermilion was sprinkled on his face. The police expressed the apprehension that the boy had been killed as offering to a deity.—OC

Greater Noida, February 11
The pulse polio campaign in Gautam Budh Nagar suffered a setback yesterday when a one-and-half-year-old child died soon after being administered pulse polio drops in Sector P-3 here under the Kasna police station.

As soon as “Do Boond Zindagi Ke” dose was given to him by a team of three medical nurses, the boy dropped to the ground unconscious. He was immediately rushed to the hospital where he died soon after.

The Kasna police have registered a case of unintentional murder against 10 persons, including a team of three which administered the pulse polio dose to the child.

Hiri Lal, originally of Garhi Chhatisgarh, lives in a jhuggi cluster at the back of Anad Ashram residential society in Sector P-3. The pulse polio team had given pulse polio drops to his two daughters before it administered the pulse polio drops to his son. But the boy fell on the ground after drinking the polio drops. He was rushed to Kailash Hospital here where he was declared brought dead.

At this, the jhuggi dwellers started an agitation, alleging that the team had given poison to the child as a result of which he had died. The police soon reached the spot and took the team into its custody.

A deputy director from Meerut rushed to the site to conduct an on-the-spot inquiry. The District Magistrate is reported to have said the death of the child had possibly occurred due to some other cause.

Deputy CMO A. K. Dhawan said it would be established after the inquiry whether the child had died due to the pulse polio medicine or some other cause. 

New Delhi, February 11
Austerity is not one of the characteristics of the members of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), it seems. Some of the councillors of this civic body have mooted a proposal to gift themselves new mobile connections.

Three councillors, belonging to the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), moved a resolution that they along with MCD officials and journalists covering the civic body, should be provided with Reliance phone connections.

The rationale given by them for proposing Reliance connections was that some of the MCD engineering staff have already been provided with the cell-phone service by the civic body for helping them coordinate their work more efficiently.

Calls between two Reliance connections are cheaper than calls made between a Reliance phone and another connection, said Harsh Vardhan Sharma, one of the members who moved the resolution, explaining the reason behind demanding the particular cell-phone service.

The resolution said engineers—junior, assistant and senior—of the engineering department who were overseeing development projects had already been provided with Reliance connections by the MCD.

However, the resolution moved as part of discussions on the civic body’s budget for 2007-08 did not get approval.

The proposal, however, did not find favour with the MCD’s administrative wing, which cited severe financial crisis as the reason for not agreeing to it, after which it was rejected by the MCD House.

The resolution had been moved by BJP members Surender Singh, Narayan Singh and Harsh Vardhan Sharma during the budget session of the civic body.

Besides the engineering department, the resolution said works of other departments were also of importance in the development of the city and therefore officers from those sections should also be provided with similar facilities.