Chandigarh, June 5
There is a ray of hope now for those who are facing the threat of demolition along the national highways and other scheduled roads in Haryana.

The threat emerged after the Town and Country Planning Department prepared a list of unauthorised buildings along these roads in pursuance to the directions of the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

The department also directed its field officers to be prepared to demolish such buildings at a short notice. This spread panic along the national highways and the other scheduled roads.

A delegation of the affected persons led by Congress MLAs of Panipat and Karnal Balbir Pal Shah and Ms Sumita Singh met Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda here on June 3 and urged him to save people for being ruined.

Hooda directed his Additional Principal Secretary Chhattar Singh to discuss the issue threadbare with representatives of the affected persons.

Chhattar Singh along with the Director, Town and Country Planning S.S. Dhillon met six representatives of the affected persons for over two hours here today.

Sources say the meeting was "useful and positive". The officers, obviously under the directions of the Chief Minister, showed their keenness to find a legally-tenable solution to the problem.

The sources say during the discussion it was found that there were several types of buildings which faced the threat of demolition.

While there is no escape for those buildings which exist within 30 metres of the road boundary, a solution, it was felt, could be found about the other buildings.

It was decided to hold another meeting on June 20, when the representatives of the affected persons would submit a list of the categories of buildings facing the threat of demolition.

The senior officers also issued instructions to the field staff not to be "overzealous" in starting the demolition operations.

Despite this, the Railways seems to be in no mood to come out of its “hilly” hangover.

Chandigarh, June 5
Wheat producing farmers of Hisar region in Haryana have done what farmers all over the country will love to ape.

These farmers have set an example in curtailing the dropping yield of wheat due to crop fatigue and adverse affect of weather in grain due to the effects of global warming by adopting simple scientific agricultural practices.

Haryana today retains its number two position, after Punjab, in terms of contributing wheat to the central food pool.

Over the past few years the State has seen the production of wheat decline.

Farmers of Hisar - a traditionally wheat producing region, were the worst affected in terms of their reduction in income.

Besides dwindling income, the situation also threatening the food security of the country.

This become possible only after the State and farmer bodies decided to involve local communities and educated them about the issues like sowing on time, following a set cropping pattern, etc.

For this a campaign was designed to involve rural schools as it was felt that most students in such schools are fully aware of the cycles of crops and boosting their knowledge about how and what to do to get maximum production.

The staff of the Agriculture Department visited and covered all the schools of the district to educate the school children of the need for early sowing (by November 15th) with healthy and certified seeds as well as the application of nitrogen at that time.

During 2005-06, as much as 2.03 hectares of land in Hisar district was brought under wheat cultivation. A total of 7.52 lakh metric tonnes of wheat at the rate of 37.04 quintals per hectare was produced during that year.

The challenge, therefore, was to increase the wheat production so that first the farmer rediscovers agriculture as a remunerative occupation and then continues to contribute to the central food pool.

Scientists involved with the project pointed out that during the successive years wheat sowing was getting delayed due to a number of factors resulting in the wheat grains getting affected by the effects of the rise in the day temperature when they were just about maturing.

As result the grains remained shrivelled and weak and even when it appeared that the crop was satisfactory, the end result fell much too short of the expectations.

Nukkar Sabhas were held all over the district where panchayat were also involved.

For the first time all the members of the village community were engaged in one way or another in educating the farmers about the proper and timely application of technology to get increased yield from the fields.

The result of the campaign was extremely encouraging. During the year 2006-07, as much as 2.12 hectares of land was brought under the cultivation of wheat.

With 8.5 lakh metric tonnes of total wheat production in the district there has been a record 44.85 quintals of yield per hectare.

The same experiment would be replicated in other wheat producing districts this coming winter.

Ambala, June 5
The district administration will start the demolition of illegal constructions on the National Highway No 1 (Ambala-Amrisar road) following the order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

Deputy commissioner, Ambala, R. P. Bhardwaj, said a meeting of district officers had been summoned on Saturday to finalise the strategy of demolition.

He said the District Town Planner had submitted the list of 116 constructions which had violated the norms.

He said the demolition notices had been served to the owners of those properties which include dhabas, petrol pumps and residential houses.

Bhardwaj said the order of the high court would be implemented at every cost and police force would be provided to the demolition squads.

He said the National Highways Authority of India would also accompany the district administration in the demolition campaign.

He said the JCB machines would be used in demolition work.

According to information five petrol pumps, three known restaurants, three religious places, one public school, one bank and three transport offices and a number of residential buildings have been served notices for the demolition.

Some of the affected building owners met former minister Vinod Sharma, who said that the state government would hounour the court order but however it would try to find any legal way to save the interests the affected persons.

Panchkula, June 5
Introspect - that’s the advice Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda had for the headmasters and headmistresses of primary schools from all over the state, gathered at the Indradhanush auditorium, Sector 5, for a state-level seminar on education here today.

“We increased the budget for education by more than 50 per cent in the first year, initiated the semester system and even introduced EDUSAT to ensure that quality learning reaches the state. We have provided infrastructure and an environment conducive for academic excellence. The rest, however, depends on you,” he said, appealing to the teachers to assess why government schools lag behind vis-à-vis private ones in the state.

Stating that in the coming years, competition would not be limited to generating power or laying better roads, the Chief Minister said that progress would be measured in terms of education and the educated.

“You should be role models for the staff and they will follow suit because headship is not just a perfunctory post but has an element of social responsibility as well because the fate of future generations depends on you alone,” he stated.

Admitting that educational standards had shown improvemernt in the last two years, he said the desired results were yet to be achieved.

Sirsa, June 5
Its high-tech means which the Dera Sacha Sauda has adopted to tackle the situation since the conflict between dera and the Sikh high priest surfaced.

There are many techniques, which no one ever heard about the dera or could have anticipated before May 13 controversial advertisement of dera chief Baba Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh appeared in the newspapers.

The dera chief has followers mostly drawn from rural areas of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

However many who visited the dera to cover the events were surprised by the fact that the dera was equipped with high technology with its followers having good knowledge of audio, video, print, electronic and internet here.

There is class of dedicated intellectuals, as followers, many of whom are AIIMS doctors, and members of core committees of the dera, which has been handling the critical situation.

The different committee includes political, spiritual and the administration and security to deal with the issues.

The expertise of the dera management could easily be understood from the fact that officials of the state and centre government through backdoor diplomacy had a marathon exercise during talks with dera committee to convince them to reach a compromise.

As a result the dera released two press notes, one of “regret” on May 19 and another of “apology” on May 27, stating these in a large interest of humanity which, to some extent, eased out the tension between the dera followers and Sikhs.

However from the well-placed official sources it is learnt that before press releases were issued by the dera to the media, government officials involved in the negotiations discussed the contents with the Punjab Chief Minister, Parkash Singh Badal.

During the crisis, besides the deputy commissioner, V.Umashankar, SP Vikas Arora, the Commissioner, Rohtak Division, N.C. Wadhawa, DGP R.S Dalal held talks with dera.

The senior official of intelligence bureau too remained there to monitor the situation.

Besides the Centre, chief secretaries of both the states were constantly monitoring every development.

It’s the dera chief spokesman, Dr Aditya Arora, who was authorised to brief the media while others members of the core committee remained silent.

Even video recording was done when newsmen from print or electronic were interviewing any of members of the committee or dera spokesman.

To facilitate the newsmen, immediately after the press conference, the teams of the experts had the facilities to provide CDs of the audio and video.

Besides other records, the photographs of everyone who went to interview the dera chief were also taken.

The records of everyone meeting the dera chief too were maintained. Even the photographs of every reporters while they were interviewing the dera chief were captured.

Rewari, June 5
Two cases of robbery had been reported in the district in the past 24 hours.

In the first incident, two motorcycle-borne youths looted Rs 20,000, gold ornaments, a motorcycle and a mobile phone from Nahar Singh Yadav and his sister-in-law Santosh Yadav, wife of Hans Raj Yadav, on the Rewari-Mahendragarh road near Buroli village, 16 km from here, on Sunday.

The incident took place when Nahar Singh along with Santosh was returning to their Dhana village near Mahendragarh, after meeting Sarita Yadav, daughter of Hans RajYadav, who was admitted in a private hospital.

On a complaint of Nahar Singh, the Khol police has registered a case of robbery.

In the second incident, five armed men, in a white pickup, reportedly looted Rs 25,000, a truck (RJ-14-2-G-2171) and a cell phone from its driver Jai Ram Meena and cleaner Mukesh Gujjar on the Rewari-Bawal road near Karnawas village, 7 km from here, in the wee hours yesterday.

The men intercepted the truck, dragged the driver and the cleaner out, tied both of them to a tree in a nearby field and fled.

On a complaint of truck owner Ramji Lal Yadav, the Model Town police has registered a case of robbery under Section 392 of the IPC.

Karnal, June 5
A team of central investigating agencies nabbed two unidentified Kashmiri suspects at toll tax plaza today morning.

The suspects were travelling in a private luxury sleeper bus from Katra (Jammu) to New Delhi.

Despite repeated attempts, SP Sibash Kaviraj was not available for comment.

A source confirmed that the CBI sleuths had laid a trap to nab certain suspects.

The investigating officers took a female and a child accompanied with the two male members away to an undisclosed destination, a local police source said.

An official said the special team had landed at the toll plaza at 3 am and laid a trap around the plaza.

The team accompanied with the armed policemen checked almost all buses.

The sleuths had successfully identified the suspects from the bus bearing the registration number of Uttar Pradesh.

The investigating party took the four off the bus in two private vehicles.

They had reportedly recovered certain items, including six mobile phones, from their possession, said a source.

Chandigarh, June 5
The Haryana Government has decided to shift the cooperative sugar mill at Panipat to Chhajpur village.

A new mill would be set up at a cost of Rs 140 crore having 35000 tonnes cane per day crushing capacity along with a distillery of 15 kilo litre per day capacity.

An eight MW power plant would also be set up on the mill premises at a cost of Rs 32 crore.

This was decided at a meeting held under the chairmanship of the Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda here last evening.

Shifting of location and its upgradation was expected to make the mill financially viable. In order to attract private entrepreneurs to buy the 69.5 acres land of the existing site of the mill, it was decided to convert the land from industrial zone to special zone.

After converting the land use to special zone, tenders would be invited by Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) on behalf of Haryana Sugarfed to fetch maximum price for the land.

Finance minister Birender Singh, who was present at the meeting, suggested that the village panchayat Chhajpur be compensated for the acquisition of their land for the project.

The government also decided to shift the site of the cooperative sugar mill at Rohtak to Bhali village.

The existing land of the mill at Rohtak would be developed by HUDA as a residential-cum-commercial complex.

It was decided to waive off infrastructure development charges for the residential-cum-commercial complex project with the condition that the supervision of civil works of the upcoming sugar mill would be looked after by HUDA free of cost.

Under the rules, the security cover is provided either by the Centre or the state government.

Bishnoi has taken this cover from both. Hence, Haryana may withdraw its personnel from the security cover of Bishnoi.