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Govt will complete its term, reiterates CM
Fire Tragedy
Fire victims of Mohini village, where 48 houses were gutted in the wee hours on Wednesday.
— Photo by Subhash Sharma
No notes, no books to
prepare for exams
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Kangra
Ensure proper identification of outsiders: Vikas sabha
Over 7 lakh kids to get polio drops
80,000 Birds of 60 Species Sighted
Corruption a matter of concern in India: Jurist
Bhisham Agnihotri, an NRI and eminent lawyer in the USA, addresses a press conference at Palampur.
Photo by Ravinder Sood
248 New Centres Approved
Congress keeps distance from Mahajan’s move
Preparations on for counting of votes
16 get President Police Medals, awards
Reckless driving claims life
‘UPA govt committed to growth of state’
Minister denies quitting Virbhadra govt
It’s a conspiracy, says expelled YC leader
New BSNL schemes
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Govt will complete its term, reiterates CM
Shimla, December 22 Addressing a press conference here today, he said he was confident that the Congress would get majority, but even then the present Vidhan Sabha would complete its term till Match 9. “Reports that I will resign on December 28 are totally wrong as my government will complete its tenure and hold the winter session before the expiry of its term,” he asserted. He said in charge of BJP affairs in the state Satya Pal Jain was making misleading statements that were against the Constitution. “The Governor has no right to dissolve the Assembly without the recommendation of the Cabinet and our government is all set to complete its tenure,” he said. He said the statements of Jain would be brought to the notice of the Election Commission of India that had clearly stated in the past that the 11th Assembly could complete its term. “There is already a similar precedent in case of Tamil Nadu, where the ruling party completed its full term despite the fact that people had given a mandate against it,” he said. In reply to a query about the petition filed by Revenue minister Sat Mahajan requesting postponing of the counting of votes, he said he had moved the court in his individual capacity although he agreed with the plea as it was the most logical. Virbhadra Singh said the entire chaos had been created because of the announcement of early elections by the Election Commission of India, which could have easily averted the situation by readjusting dates. “The code of conduct has been in force for so long that all routine and development works have practically come to a standstill,” he said. He said the situation was even worse in tribal areas as the code of conduct had come into effect much earlier there. “Although the poll results were yet to be out, BJP leader P.K. Dhumal is already behaving like a Chief Minister and talking in a threatening tone as if he has already assumed office,” he remarked. |
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Govt approaches high court on TD issue
Tribune News Service
Mohni (Banjar), December 22 KULLU: Ishwar Dass, MLA from Ani, who visited the spot on Friday, had said that the government would approach the high court for allowing the Forest Department to allow “timber distribution” (TD) to fire victims of Mohini village where 48 houses were gutted and 230 persons rendered homeless on Wednesday night. He had said the relief according to the government manual was not enough and he would request the Chief Minister to release additional relief from the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund. He also urged voluntary organisations to extend help to the victims. It may be recalled that the high court had banned TD. The felling of even dried trees on private land is not allowed. The TD rights were given to the people of Kullu during the British rule, while Anderson’s settlement report proposed that the rights of timber, grazing, collection of herbs and minor forest produce would be allowed to the villagers in their respective forest areas in lieu of their duty to protect the forests. At least one member of the family had to participate in firefighting in forests, according to the proposal. The same was effective and all right-holders from 1911-12 were given forest rights. Earlier, the loss in the recent fire was estimated to be around Rs 6.5 crore, but now the revenue authorities have assessed it to be around Rs 10 crore. Abhishek Jain, deputy commissioner, confirmed that the loss was assessed to be around Rs 10 crore. He said the District Red Cross Society would also extend help to the fire victims. Meanwhile, the Rotary Club, Kullu, the Malana Hydro Power Company and the Dainik Jagran Group gave blankets, quilts and other material to the fire victims today.
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No notes, no books to
prepare for exams
Mohni (Banjar), December 22 “We have no books and notes for the board examinations commencing in the winter closing schools from December 24. It is very difficult to prepare for the papers at hand”, rued Nelu and Anita, students, who are among over 100 children who have yet to come to terms with the fire trauma, leave alone preparing for examinations. The children looked traumatised and their mothers said “They find it difficult to study and the government should give them some other time to take their examinations”. Though the local administration has identified over 41 fire victim students studying in different schools in the area, but they are yet to hear any relief being given to them. The Kullu deputy director has not forwarded any request to the HP board so far in this regards. Some benefactors have given note books and copies to some students but they are not mentally prepared to take their examinations in the coming days, said the fire victims. The aid in both cash and kind for the fire victims in the village has started coming in. The Rotary CVlub, Kullu, Dainik Jagran, Malana project and local politicians have given cash and clothes to the fire victims on humanitarian ground. Banjar subdivision, SDO (civil) P.R. Verma and his team of officials, who today monitored the rehabilitation of fire victims in the village said: “I will take up the matter of students with the HP school education board to give them some kind of relief as they have lost their books and notes in the fire. As of now we are rehabilitating the villagers in local houses and have given them rations, quilts and blankets donated by the NGOs and the local people”. Chairman HP Board of school education B.R. Rahi said the Kullu administration has not approached the board so far. “We will provide free books as per the students demand. Even if they can not take up the board examinations on December 24, then we will allow them to appear in the summer closing school examination in March or so”, he added. Kullu deputy director (elementary) Neel Chand said nobody had brought this matter to his notice so far. The schoolchildren said they studied in different classes in secondary schools at Gara Gushain, Pujali and a local high school, which fell in both summer and winter closing schools. Over 230 villagers rendered homeless in the freezing cold by the fire have been accommodated in over 22 houses that survived the blaze ignited due to fire in the dry grass (pracha) stocked in a house on Wednesday night. |
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Unabated mining a threat to 30 water supply schemes
Ravinder Sood
Palampur, December 22 Situation in Palampur, Baijnath and Jaisinghpur subdivisions of this region is no better as over 20,000 hectare of land has seriously been affected by mining, quarrying and other construction activities resulting in drastic reshaping of landscape. The mining and quarrying has posed serious threat to the existence of over three dozens of irrigation and drinking water supply schemes. The existence of Kirpal Chand Khual passing through this town feeding over 20 panchayats comprising 100 villages of Palampur, Bhawarans, Daroh blocks, Charnamati and the lower Baijnath kuhals feeding 15 panchayats of Baijnath block is in danger because of continuous mining in its catchments areas. In the absence of any mining policy in the state, the large-scale illegal and unscientific mining in this region is not only creating environmental imbalances but also causing huge loss to the state exchequer every year. At present, the state has no stringent law to deal with the situation. The increasing political interference in functioning of the state mining departments has made the matter worse. In the present scenario, the state government is loosing revenue worth crore of rupees every year. Official sources confirmed that in most of the cases the persons involved in these illegal activities have no legal rights to extract sand, stone, bajri and other raw material from these khads and quarries, but because of political protection to the offenders, the administration has become a silent spectator. Officials are liberally granting them no objection certificates for extraction of stone, sand and other raw material. If no timely action is taken, over two dozens drinking water supply schemes in Kangra would go dry in the next five years, which get water from Neugal, Binwa and other khads. Water level of not only Neugal but also other khads like Binwa, Gaj, Baner, Awa, Bathoo, Mol and Bhiral has also gone down in the past five years. These khads are the major source of drinking water for 200 water supply schemes of Kangra district.
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Ensure proper identification of outsiders: Vikas sabha
Bilaspur, December 22 Sabha convener A.P. Sharma said here today after the meeting of the sabha that they appreciated the step of Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh as he had raised the issue of ensuring proper identification of thousands of Nepalese and Tibetans living in the state, but said the Chief Minister should have also detailed the security measures his government had already taken to make the state secure from trouble shooters, who were not foreigners but were Indians. The sabha also welcomed regular notifications of the DM here who ordered that all outsiders from the state should get themselves registered in their police stations of residence but actually it was found that most of these people did not observe this order and had been found without any identity cards. The sabha said the district administration and the police had concluded that some of these outsiders were found indulging in illegal and unlawful activities and there was no reason to believe that any of them were not harbouring any criminals or others of serious nature, including those involved in activities like terrorism and extremism. The sabha urged the government to take up the matter urgently and ensure that any illegal and unlawful activities of outsiders were curbed. |
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Over 7 lakh kids to get polio drops
Kumarhatti, December 22 Disclosing this here yesterday, a top official of the Health Department said the state had made remarkable progress since the introduction of polio eradication activities. He said the campaign was started in 1995 while the acute flaccid paralysis surveillance was started in 1997. With this, the state was now poised to completely check transmission of the disease in the near future, official asserted. He said in the upcoming campaigns, additional doses of OPV would be given to all children in addition to routine OPV vaccine schedule. “In the rural areas, it would mainly be booth-based activity on the first day and house-to-house activity on subsequent days till the left-out children were administered drops. About 7.32 lakh children would be administered polio drops through 5,855 IPPI booths, besides 93 mobile teams and 86 transit teams, to cover remote and inaccessible areas of the state, the official maintained. About 25,000 persons would be deputed to carryout the campaign effectively. Each booth would be manned by four persons, two technical persons from the Health and Ayurveda Departments and rest two will be deployed from other departments. The official further said to make the campaign successful, instructions were being issued to all the chief medical officers to map brick kiln sites, jhuggis and labourers in industrial areas and project sites, nomadic population and other migratory labour. Mobile teams would be given list of these sites for coverage during the campaign. |
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80,000 Birds of 60 Species Sighted Rajiv Mahajan
Nurpur, December 22 The migratory birds which throng the lake with the onset of every winter are making it eco-friendly. Until December 20 census conducted by the Wildlife Department as many as 80,000 birds of 60 species have been sighted at the wetland. These include different types of migratory birds from Siberia, Mongolia, Tibet, China, Pakistan and Iraq. They have started descending on the wetland since November after covering a distance of thousands of miles. A large number of birds arrived here at the beginning of this month. These birds return to their native countries in March just with the onset of spring. The main migratory birds include pintails, coots, black and white ducks, brahminy ducks and pochards. Pong wetland, which was re-named as Maharana Pratap Sagar about five years back has Ransor Island in the middle of the lake. The migratory birds fly over the lake in flocks during the day adding glamour of the lake. They stay at night on the island in the middle of the lake. Keeping in view their frequent and seasonal stay, the state government has declared the lake as a wildlife sanctuary. During the previous BJP government the lake had got the world recognition when it was declared the International Ramsor Site. However poaching is strictly prohibited under the Wildlife Act, but the poachers kill these birds by serving poisonous food grains to birds and sell them for their meat at the rate of Rs 30 to 50 each. According to S. K. Guleria, the Wildlife Department is vigilant to check the poaching in the Pong Wetland. He said the department used to set up 10 special checking posts (chowkis) on the vast periphery of the lake despite forming 40 village development committees which assisted the department to check poaching. “Apart from this, the staff of the department is conducting group patrolling to nab the poachers,” he added. He also informed that the department had recorded the arrival of 1.11 lakh of migratory birds last year which was likely to touch the same figure this year.
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Corruption a matter of concern in India: Jurist
Palampur, December 22 Agnihorti, who is an NRI and is settled in the USA was addressing a news conference here this afternoon. He said the NRIs all over the world were deeply worried over the deterioration of law, lack of good governance and administrative failures in India, which had resulted in problem like unrest among the youth, unemployment and corruption. He said, a person who comes from abroad finds it difficult to get used to the Indian system as the situation in the US and the UK was entirely different. Situation was quite alarming in India as the number of this country had gone up in the list of corrupt countries in the past few years. Agnihotri said if serious efforts were made all these problems could b easily checked and solved but nothing could be done without the cooperation of public and the leaders who run this nation. Agnihotri, who is also a leading lawyer in the USA said the piling up of cases in the Indian courts was another matter of concern. He said the Indian Government should come out with a legislation for the speedy disposal of the cases in the lower as well as in higher courts so that justice was not delayed. He said the Indian Government should follow the US pattern where the disposal of all cases in lower and upper courts were under a time bound plan and no one could create hurdles in the speedy disposal of all cases. |
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248 New Centres Approved
Dharamsala, December 22 Chairman of the board B.R. Rahi said question papers and other material had reached the examination centres. The superintendents and deputy superintendents would report at their places of duty by tomorrow evening, he said. To avoid clash with election dates, the board had earlier postponed the examinations by three weeks following interference by the Election Commission. More than six lakh students would be appearing in these examinations and approximately 5,000 teachers would be on exam duty apart from the supporting staff in as many as 500 examination centres. Rahi said flying squads had been constituted to keep a check on the use of unfair means. “The board will take stern action against the students found using unfair means,” he said. If there was any report of mass copying, the school concerned would lose affiliation, besides inviting legal action, he added. Some pending issues also came up for discussion during the meeting. It was decided to set up 248 new examination centres across the state, besides allowing employees of the board to pursue higher studies for improving their qualifications. Other decisions included the extension of the date of accepting examination forms of private students for the March-April examination from December 15 to December 31, waiving off application fee of Rs 250 in case of private schools seeking board affiliation. New syllabus of plus-two classes was also approved for 2008-2009. Rahi said four students from Sirmaur and Shimla districts had been allowed to sit in the examinations in March-April instead of December because they were going to Bangalore to participate in the national volleyball championship. “The date of tournament and the examinations are clashing due to which the board has taken a sympathetic decision in this regard,” he said.
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Congress keeps distance from Mahajan’s move
New Delhi, December 22 While the state Congress leaders said it was an individual decision of the minister, who has not contested the election, the party’s central leadership said it has not been consulted on the move. Senior party leader R.K. Dhawan, who is in charge of the state, told The Tribune that he had no knowledge of the move and had come to know of it only through media reports. Dhawan said he had not spoken to the state leaders on the issue. Mahajan, in his petition filed a day after the polling ended in the state, sought directions from the court to the Election Commission that the scheduled counting for December 28 be deferred till March to enable the existing House to complete its full term, which ends on March 9. He has raised constitutional question whether the EC has powers to send a note to the Governor to constitute a new Assembly on the completion of poll process even before the five-year tenure of the existing House comes to an end. After the EC announced the dates of Assembly polls in October, the Congress had sought a change in the dates for reasons of extreme weather conditions and constitutional principles. However, the EC had rejected the Congress demand and instead offered to advance the poll by 15 days to accommodate the school examinations. |
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Preparations on for counting of votes
Dharamsala, December 22 Additional deputy commissioner K.D. Lakhanpal said the EVMs had been kept under tight security at the respective counting centres. He said the rooms in which EVMs were kept had been sealed properly. The Central paramilitary forces were maintaining a round-the-clock vigil at these centres, he said. He said the counting of the votes of the Nurpur and Gangath constituencies would be held at Nurpur; for Jwali and Guler at Jwali; for Jaswan, Paragpur and Jawalamukhi at Dehra; for the Thural constituency at Jaisinghpur; for Rajgir, Sulah and Palampur at Palampur; for the Baijnath constituency at Baijnath; for Kangra and Nagrota Bagwan at Kangra; and for the Dharamsala and Shahpur constituencies at Dharamsala. The ADC further said the postal ballots received till the morning of December 28 would be included in the counting. He appealed to the employees to send their postal ballots well in time so that they could be included in the counting as valid votes. The postal ballots were being safely kept at the post office. These would be brought to respective counting centres on the day of counting. As per the guidelines of the Election Commission, the postal ballots would be counted first and the counting of the votes in the EVMs would be done only thereafter, he added.
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16 get President Police Medals, awards
Shimla, December 22 I.D. Bhandari and B. Kamal Kumar, both IGs, R.L. Sood, DIG, and Dalip Singh Bhatia, DSP, were honoured with the Presidents’ Police Medal for their distinguished services. Shivpal Singh Verma, commandant (IRB), Jai Pal Singh, ASP, Bakshi Ram, inspector, Sansar Chand, inspector, Padam Dass Thakur, Dhabe Ram, Bhagwan Dass and Shakuntla Devi, all Sis, were awarded police medals. D.R. Sharma and C.L. Thakur, sub-fire officers, were given fire service medals. Sonu Ram of village Sandour, Rohru tehsil, was given the Jeevan Raksha Padak for saving two persons from drowning in the Pabbar river. Lady Governor Leena Kokje, Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, senior ministers and officers were present on the occasion.
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Reckless driving claims life
Kangra, December 22 C. R. Mahajan, a senior citizen and co coordinator of the Vivekananda Kendra, was hit by a motorcycle on the Dharamsala Road, when he was on his way home from the bus stand on foot. According to the eye witnesses, the motorcycle hit him leaving his legs fractured and with serious head injury. He was immediately rushed to Dr. R. P. government Medical College Hospital at Tanda where he was provided medical treatment and referred to PGI, Chandigarh, as the medical college hospital was devoid of facilities and machineries. Mahajan succumbed to his injuries near Una on the way to PGI and was cremated here this afternoon The residents today demanded that police must try to keep control on those indulging in rash and negligent driving by youths in the town from college road to the bus stand.
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‘UPA govt committed to growth of state’
Nurpur, December 22 Talking to The Tribune, he said the UPA government was committed to carrying the fruit of this growth to the grassroot level. He said the government had achieved 12.3 per cent growth each in manufacturing and industry fields whereas annual economic growth had remained 3-9 per cent. Giving clean chit to the Virbhadra government, the minister claimed that the state government had ensured balanced and overall development in the state and there was no question of discrimination in the upper and merged areas as alleged by the Opposition. He said under the present UPA government, the country had emerged as 10th most powerful economy in the world and would become third most powerful economy by 2025. Talking about the achievements of the Virbhadra government, he said it was the performance and good governance of the government, which had ushered the state in line of the best performing states. “It was only with the intervention of the AICC president Sonia Gandhi and keen interest of the Prime Minister, the state had got renewed its industrial package for further five years,” he disclosed. He claimed that the Congress government in the state would win the assembly elections recently held with absolute majority.
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Minister denies quitting Virbhadra govt
Shimla, December 22 “There is no truth in this (that I have resigned from the government),” he said here. “I am a disciplined soldier of the Congress and have accepted the high command’s decision with all humility,” said Ram. He said he had no plans to quit the ministry to embarrass the Chief Minister. “I have very cordial relations with the Chief Minister and the party.” The minister also denied using offending language against the Chief Minister’s family. This “wrong information” seemed to be the handiwork of “my political opponents who want to tarnish my image”, he said. The Congress had fielded former SPG commando Nand Lal from Rampur (reserved) constituency.
— PTI |
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It’s a conspiracy, says expelled YC leader
Nurpur, December 22 He said he would take up the issue on party platform after receiving communiqué from the PCC office. |
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New BSNL schemes
Hamirpur, December 22 GM of the BSNL, Hamirpur, S.L. Singh told mediapersons here today that they had introduced STD and ISD calling cards named “Call Now Cards”. These would be available in the denomination of Rs 100, 300, 500, 1,000 and 2,000 with validity ranging from one month to three months. The subscriber would be able to make STD and ISD calls at very low rates through these cards. |
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Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh today said at Shimla that the state government had sought special permission from the high court to sanction TD to the fire-hit villagers.
Palampur, December 22
