Gurgaon, December 24
Five cases have been registered against two officers, including one HCS, for misappropriating panchayat land by the CM flying squad. The investigation into these cases has been given to police officers of the rank of ACP.

According to deputy commissioner Rakesh Gupta, when a case of misappropriating 182 kanals in Badshahpur village came to his knowledge, he got the matter investigated from the vigilance department.

After the inquiry, it was ascertained that the then SDM-cum-assistant collector Vivek Padam Singh decided the cases pertaining to the panchayat land by using powers not vested in him and the land, costing crores, was misappropriated with the help of the sarpanch and other officials of the revenue department.

The panchayat was devoid of its land. A case was registered for this alleged fraud.

He said after the Badshahpur panchayat land case, similar cases also came to light in Tikli Sakatpur, Balola, Daultabad, Abhaypur, Bandwari and Ghata villages for which he wrote a letter to then chief secretary Prem Prashant to get these matters probed by the vigilance department.

In his letter, the deputy commissioner said the then SDM-cum-assistant collector (first class) Vivek Padam Singh had decided the cases of panchayat land of Tikli Sakatpur, Balola, Daultabad, Abhaypur and Ghata villages in such a way that it had benefited the land mafia and the village panchayats were deprived of their valuable land.

The land involved was 1 bigha and 20 bishwas in Tikli village in three different cases, 35 kanals and 15 marlas in Balola village, 51 kanals and 8 marlas in Daultabad village, 2,599 kanals and 17 marlas in Sakatpur village, 72 kanals and 11 marlas in Abhaypur village and 33 kanals and 17 marlas in Ghata village for which the then SDM passed orders using the powers not vested in him.

Similarly, a decision by the then DDPO V.S. Malik for panchayat land measuring 1,219 acres in Bandhwari village also allegedly benefited the land mafia.

Cases of corruption and forgery have been registered against the then SDM-cum-assistant collector Vivek Padam Singh under sections 420, 467, 468, 469 and 12-B and section 13(1)D of the Anti-corruption Act 1988 in police stations of Sectors 5, 56 and Sadar.

Similarly, a case has been registered against the then district development and panchayat officer V.S. Malik at the Sector 56 police station under the same charges. 

Kaithal, December 24
The Additional Sessions Judge Dr Neelima Shangla awarded life imprisonment to four accused persons, all residents of Badsikri village of this district, after convicting them under Section 302 of the IPC in a murder case.

On April 5, 2003, Takhat Singh ( who died during the trial) and Chattar Singh came to the house of Amrit Singh (deceased) and told his family that they suspected that Amrit had stolen Rs 500 from the pocket of Takhat Singh.

However, when they searched Amrit Singh, they did not find any money, but they told his family members that they were taking Amrit Singh to “confront” a man who had seen him stealing money.

When after two hours, Amrit Singh did not return home, his family members went in his search. When they reached the cattle-shed of Takhat Singh, they found Amrit Singh tied with a rope and being beaten with sticks. He was strangulated to death by the assailants.

Later, the accused were arrested by the police. After arguments put up by the prosecution and defence, the court held Darshan Singh, Gurmeet Singh, Chatter Singh and Jitender Singh guilty of murder.

The court also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on the four accused with a direction that the recovered fine amount be paid to Harbans Kaur, the widow mother of the victim.

Bhiwani, December 24
Haryana Janhit Congress (BL) president and Bhiwani MP Kuldeep Bishnoi has alleged that Congress ministers and leaders had started opposing the Chief Minister for “his loose grip over the administration and bogus announcements”.

He said the “remarks” of union minister of state for defence Rao Inderjit Singh at the “nav vikas rally” held at Gurgaon yesterday was indeed a matter of shame for the state leadership of the Congress.

By posing the question “Vikas ka paisa kahan gaya”, Rao Inderjit Singh had proved that the money had been misappropriated, he alleged.

He sought the resignation of Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, stating that many leaders of the Congress had lost faith in Hooda.

Meanwhile, the INLD has decided to launch a “pol kholo” drive from the new year. Public meetings will be held to highlight the “failure” of the Congress government on all fronts.

This was stated by district INLD spokesman Ramesh Bansal here today.

Bhiwani, December 24
Over 1.47 lakh households have so far been issued job cards under the national rural employment guarantee scheme in Haryana and an expenditure of more than Rs 60.18 crore has been incurred since its implementation.

Chief parliamentary secretary Dharambir Singh today said initially the scheme was launched in all gram panchayats of Mahendergarh and Sirsa districts on February 2, 2006 and it was extended to two more districts of Ambala and Mewat during the current financial year.

He said employment of 42.46 lakh man days had been generated in rural areas since the implementation of the scheme. Out of these, 25.75 lakh man days were generated for members belonging to Scheduled Castes and 14.69 lakh for women.

An expenditure of Rs 23.94 crore had been made and 42,865 families had been provided employment under the scheme during the current financial year, he said.

He said 90 per cent of the funds were being provided by the central government and 10 per cent by the state government for the implementation of the scheme.

Dharambir Singh said the scheme aimed at enhancing livelihood security in rural areas by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteered to do unskilled manual work.

The scheme had been implemented in only rural areas.

Bhiwani, December 24
Protesting against the proposed traffic regulating system to be adopted by the district administration in three phases to ease traffic congestion, local auto-rickshaw drivers and rehriwallas staged demonstration and sat in dharna outside the residence of local MLA here today.

The district administration had recently announced its new traffic policy to smoothen vehicular traffic and decrease congestion in markets. Under the policy, action was proposed against the violators.

The system is to be implemented by the next month.

For years, the city has been facing inordinate traffic system and the administration had to face protests for not enforcing traffic rules properly.

Now, the administration has framed a new policy, following which warnings have been issued to auto-rickshaw drivers and rehriwallas.

Under the policy, routes will be allotted to auto-rickshaw drivers and rehriwallas.

Members of the Three-wheeler Drivers’ Association and the Rehri Union gathered outside the ‘sabzi mandi’ today and demanded ESI facility for them.

They said they should be provided with rehri and footpath markets at all main crossings of the city.

Leaders of the rehri union said the administration should provide them with rehries on a monthly-installment basis as they had to hire rehries at higher rates.

Leaders of the Three-wheeler Association said the administration had fixed 20 routes, which would add to their difficulties.

They said the city had only 3 km radius and the new system would act as a loss for their business. They demanded a fix day for issuing licence.

Expressing concern over the rough attitude of police personnel, they demanded three-wheeler stands at main crossings. They also demanded BPL cards for auto-rickshaw drivers, besides providing them 100 sq yard plots. They said the maximum penalty should be of Rs 100 only.

Faridabad, December 24
The police has failed to make any breakthrough in the murder of two sisters of Prithla village who were students of Aggarwal College in Ballabgarh near here.

Relatives of the victims have alleged that the police appears to have come under pressure as one of the three youths of the village arrested in the case is said to be the brother of a person has links with the All India Congress Committee (AICC).

The police has also arrested a girl student of the college, who is said to be a friend of the victims. The three youths and the girl student are on 12-day police remand. They were produced in court on December 20.

The bodies of the two sisters were found on a railway track on December 18 after they did not return from college on December 17.

While one body was beheaded, the post-mortem report has hinted at rape and murder.

Residents of Prithla have already staged two demonstrations against the police for its “lax” approach.

Meanwhile, villagers allege that the youth who has AICC links, along with another one arrested in the case, were often seen teasing girls of the village.

Chandigarh, December 24
Kurukshetra district was on the top in arrival of paddy in all districts of the state with the arrival of 7.20 lakh tonnes of paddy followed by Karnal with 6.66 lakh tonnes and Kaithal with the arrival of 5.05 lakh tonnes.

Haryana Deputy Chief Minister Chander Mohan said 26.13 lakh tonnes of paddy was leviable and 15.66 lakh tonnes was non-leviable. He said 41.79 lakh tonnes of paddy had arrived in the mandis and six government procuring agencies purchased 17.84 lakh tonnes of paddy so far.

HAFED procured 7.19 lakh tonnes of paddy, food and supplies department procured 5.64 lakh tonnes, agro industries corporation 2.23 lakh tonnes, Confed 2.05 lakh tonnes, Haryana Warehousing Corporation 60,194 tonnes and Food Corporation of India 10,431 tonnes. Paddy would be purchased by procurement agencies till December 31.

Sirsa, December 24
Pradeep Godara, an accused in the murder of prominent Congress leader of Dabwali, Chander Singh Brar, today surrendered before a local court in Dabwali. He was sent to a day’s judicial custody.

Brar was shot dead on April 29, 2006, near Dabwali town. A group of armed persons had approached Dabwali Youth Congress leader Brar on the pretext of some property deal. The assailants took away Brar on the excuse of showing him some property.

The body of Brar was later found near Gauriwala with serious bullet injuries. The police has alleged that Godara, along with his two associate Shah Alam and Vinod Arora, had murdered Brar. The three had been declared absconders and the police had also announced a reward of Rs 50, 000 on each head.

Jhajjar, December 24
Two persons were killed in road accidents on the National Highway 10 in the district in the past 24 hours. According to information, a lecturer at the PDM College of Engineering in Bahadurgarh died when the car he was travelling in collided with a Ganganagar-bound private bus near Sector 6 in Bahadurgarh town last night. The deceased has been identified as Arun Malik of Sonepat. He was coming from Rohtak.

In another incident, a person died when the car he was travelling in collided head-on with another car near Rohad village today morning.

The deceased, who has been identified as Seeta Ram, was going towards Rohtak.

Two girls identified as Nidhi Sharma, a student of the PGIMS in Rohtak, and Mona received injuries in the accident.

Gurgaon, December 24
For some, life’s aim is not only to enjoy its comforts or convenience, but also to look for new challenges and frontiers that help them find their calling and also contribute in actualising their full potential.

Archana Kapoor, a documentary filmmaker, belongs to that category. Despite having produced more than 250 short and long video films and travelling extensively in the country and abroad, she was looking for something more.

She felt that she was not making a difference to the lives of many people whom she met during this journey.

As most of her films were on social development themes, she was exposed to the real India.

She was disturbed by the suffering, poverty and squalor around her and decided to work with them rather than just document their stories and move on. She started an organisation under the rubric of Seeking Modern Applications for Real Transformation (SMART), whose mandate was to work with the marginalised and try to improve their lives.

She was driven by the belief that individuals could make a difference to their environment if they were driven by passion and determination to reach their objectives.

Recalling her early days in this new avatar as a social activist, she recalls that in 2002, the secretary (education), Government of India, asked her to use her experience of documenting the success stories of the literacy programme in South-East Asian countries in some of the most difficult and backward districts of the country.

She was given the choice between Kishangarh in Bihar or Mewat in Haryana, which at that time was not a district but a part of Gurgaon and Faridabad.

As she had no previous experience of working in the field, she thought she should initially pick up a place near Delhi before approaching other parts of the country. Archana opted for Mewat, not only for reason of proximity to Delhi, but because it was also considered to be the most difficult.

On her first visit to Mewat, she was taken aback by the low level of literacy and general squalor.

“I had travelled all over the country, but after my visit to Mewat I came to know the real meaning of backward area”, said Archana.

When her NGO, SMART, started its pilot projects in five selected villages of Mewat she was advised by some well-wishers to not work here, as the people were very suspicious of outsiders and resisted change.

Initially, Archana says, she was dismayed and was not sure whether children would come to her centres due to their traditions, which discouraged formal and modern education. “We remembered that ‘Rome was not built in a day’; so we went about our task step by step. The big challenge was to build up trust with the community, which we did with the help of local people,” she says.

“With the sincere and dedicated efforts by my team, the number of centres, which was only 10 in 2003, has now gone up to 80 for children and 10 exclusively for women.

What is heartening is that 40 centres are for girls only. Earlier, getting two girls for the centre was a challenge, today due to paucity of space and the policy of the government to only register 25 children per centre, we have to refuse enrolment.

Even today over 60,000 children are out of school and this is very disturbing,” she adds.

Archana has also completed a two-year project post-Tsunami in Tamil Nadu and has given vocational training to 500 women who are now engaged in economic activities through cooperatives of five women each. With her Austrian partner, “Women without Borders”, Archana has taught women in the coastal areas how to swim, as they realised that despite living at the coastal area, women did not know how to swim.

Despite the hard work put in by Archana and her team, life has not been easy for SMART.

Bureaucratic bottlenecks, general slow pace of decision-making in a tradition-bound society has prevented her, as many other social activists, from reaching their desired goals.

It is due to this reason and more that Mewat is lagging behind other parts of Haryana.

Many of Archana’s programmes have suffered or lagged behind due to the unusual delay in receiving funds from the government.

She says though NGOs are penalised for not keeping commitments, nothing is done about government officials who do not meet deadlines.

The government’s fondness for “tokenism” is another challenge that has frustrated her.

However, she is unfazed by these setbacks and tokenism. She realises that the road is long and bumpy, but she is determined to bring about a change.

Her endeavour is to somehow link Mewat with the growth that is taking place in Gurgaon and neighbouring areas.

She is convinced that if people of Mewat are imparted literacy and skills then it may be possible to get high-value jobs in all these special economic zones that are coming up in Haryana.

She has found support in her vision from a section of the enlightened bureaucracy and she is hopeful that things will change for the better in the coming days.

“I am confident that in the next five years Mewat will be a different place provided that we all work with zeal and commitment.”