J A L A N D H A R

Fake DTO arrested
Phagwara, October 12
The police arrested Sukhpreet of Tajpur village for impersonating as district transport officer (DTO) and collecting money from various vehicle drivers in the name of checking their documents near the Saprod bus stand today.

Power tariffs: BJP wants high command to intervene
Phagwara, October 12
The Punjab BJP has urged Lal Krishan Advani and party president Rajnath Singh to intervene and convince Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to roll back the hike in power tariff in  urban areas.

Digital look for police stations
Phagwara, October 12
To increase the efficiency of the force and make it more transparent as many as thirtyone important police stations of the state would be computerised in the first phase.

Distributors question oil firms’ criteria
Hoshiarpur, October 12
With the onset of winter and festival season, the demand of LPG cylinders has started to increase, while the supply is not being matched.

ETHNIC TOUCH

A stall-owner displays hand-made ethnic goods during an exhibition by JCI in Jalandhar on Friday.— Tribune photo by Pawan Sharma

Technical fest begins at NIT
Jalandhar, October 12
Tech-NITi, a three-day inter-college annual technical festival, began at the Dr B.R. Ambedkar National Institute of Technology here today. Around 11 colleges from Jalandhar, Phagwara, Chandigarh, Patiala and Indore are taking part in the event. A few local schools have also got themselves registered for a science model exhibition.

Fake DTO arrested
Our Correspondent

Phagwara, October 12
The police arrested Sukhpreet of Tajpur village for impersonating as district transport officer (DTO) and collecting money from various vehicle drivers in the name of checking their documents near the Saprod bus stand today.

Giving details, Phagwara DSP H.P.S. Khakh said the accused, along with Amandeep Singh, a resident of Bajan village, was standing with a Tata Sierra having a blue light beacon. The accused were stopping vehicles and collecting money from the drivers on the pretext of checking their vehicle documents.

The police nabbed Sukhpreet while he was checking the registration certificate of a Qualis. However, his co-accused Amandeep escaped. He said Sukhpreet was produced before the judicial magistrate who sent him in the police remand for one day. 

Power tariffs: BJP wants high command to intervene
Our Correspondent

Phagwara, October 12
The Punjab BJP has urged Lal Krishan Advani and party president Rajnath Singh to intervene and convince Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to roll back the hike in power tariff in 
urban areas.

If not done, it could give wrong signals to the voters who were preparing for the next mid-term Lok Sabha poll, said the delegation, comprising in charge of the Punjab BJP affairs Balbir Punj, Punjab local bodies minister Manoranjan Kalia and state party president Rajinder Bhandhari.

The delegation, which also included four BJP ministers Tikshan Sood, Swaran Ram, Master Mohan Lal and Lakshmi Kanta Chawla, met these leaders at the residence of Advani in New Delhi last evening and apprised them of the latest development in the state.

Giving details of the meeting, Kalia told The Tribune over the phone that the delegation explained its stand on power tariff hike and said that the state unit had unanimously passed resolutions to urge the Chief Minister to take care of the additional burden of power tariff hike in urban areas as it was merely Rs 292 crore in comparison with the total subsidies of Rs 2,548.73 crore being given to the various sections.

Kalia said though the Punjab BJP had tried to persuade Badal but no fruitful results had been achieved till now. Kalia explained that the previous (Congress) government had issued subsidies of Rs 1,486.82 crore, but the subsidies had been increased by the SAD-BJP government and now the CM should think about the interests of urban voters who would play a pivotal role in the coming elections which seemed to be just at hand.

Kalia said the price rise in every sector was becoming a matter of concern, and sympathetic steps from the state government were the need of 
the hour.

Digital look for police stations

Phagwara, October 12
To increase the efficiency of the force and make it more transparent as many as thirtyone important police stations of the state would be computerised in the first phase.

This was stated by Jalandhar Range DIG Narinder Paul Singh while talking to The Tribune here today. The DIG said five police stations of the district, including city and sadar police stations of Phagwara and Kapurthla, besides Sultanpur Lodhi would be computerised in few days. DIG said the residents could get information on criminal cases, their progress, stolen and recovered articles, vehicles with just click of a button. Stressing on the need for making police more people-friendly, he said the community police officers would be appointed soon. — OC

Distributors question oil firms’ criteria

Hoshiarpur, October 12
With the onset of winter and festival season, the demand of LPG cylinders has started to increase, while the supply is not being matched.

Claiming this in a memorandum submitted to deputy commissioner D.K. Tiwari here yesterday, the Punjab unit of the All-India LPG Distributors Federation (NWR) (AILDF) partly blamed the oil companies for the situation.

This has created a backlog in the market which would give rise to complaints, the AILDF added. Meeting the deputy commissioner, the federation representatives, led by president Harsimarjit Kaur, highlighted several other problems.

They stated the supply of LPG from the oil companies is based on pro-rata basis which doesn’t take enrolment of new customers into account. According to such estimates, a distributor having 10,000 customers is supplied around 5,000 cylinders per month, said the federation.

It also alleged that the oil companies are forcing the distributors to sell items like hot plates, rubber hoses, tea leaves, rice, lighters, sweets, fire extinguisher apparatus, etc., to the customers. “The monthly quota for the items is in the region of approximately Rs 1 lakh per distributor. Most of the distributors have unsold items worth lakh of rupees and if a distributor wants to liquidate the stock by selling these items to customers then it is misconstrued as forced sale.”

They cited the commercial use of subsidised LPG (domestic cylinders) by hotels, restaurants and dhabas for the shortage of LPG. “The consumers of gas geysers and small cylinders have added to the problem.” The members urged the deputy commissioner to form a district-level advisory committee under his chairmanship along with the representatives from oil companies and distributors to resolve any issue which may arise from time to time and to formulate guidelines.— OC

Technical fest begins at NIT

Jalandhar, October 12
Tech-NITi, a three-day inter-college annual technical festival, began at the Dr B.R. Ambedkar National Institute of Technology here today. Around 11 colleges from Jalandhar, Phagwara, Chandigarh, Patiala and Indore are taking part in the event. A few local schools have also got themselves registered for a science model exhibition.

Debates, technical quiz, paper presentations and case study contests were held on the first day. Major crowd-pulling events, including junkyard wars, F1 race, computer hacking and robotics will be held over the next two days. A workshop on robotics organised by experts from Mumbai also drew good participation from students today. Eminent personalities like Dr Srinivasan from BARC will address the 
students tomorrow. — TNS