Sampla (Rohtak), February 10
Expressing concern over the miserable condition of farmers all over the country, the United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA) has decided to stage a protest demonstration at the Parliament House on February 26. This was stated by former Haryana Chief Minister and INLD chief Om Prakash Chautala while addressing a “kisan sammelan” organised to commemorate the birth anniversary of Deenbandhu Sir Chhotu Ram here today.

As many as five former Chief Ministers - former Uttar Pradesh CM and UNPA chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, former Andhra Pradesh CM and UNPA convener Chandra Babu Naidu, former Jammu and Kashmir CM Dr Farooq Abdullah and former Jharkhand CM Babu Lal Marandi - addressed the gathering.

Speaking on the occasion, Chautala alleged that the successive Congress regimes had pursued pro-industrialist and anti-people policies. He reiterated the UNPA’s resolve to fight for farmers’ rights.

Hinting at a major farmer movement, Chautala recalled the instance when Chhotu Ram had asked the farmers to set their crops afire in case they did not get a reasonable price. He asserted that his party would not allow the transferring of “even an inch of farmers’ land” to the industrial houses.

Other UNPA leaders also blamed the Congress for the pitiable condition of the farmers across the country. They demanded the implementation of the Swaminathan Committee’s recommendations to ensure that the farmers got a good price for their produce.

Naidu asserted that the Left parties, including the CPI and the CPM, had also extended support to the protest. The UNPA leaders maintained that the cost of farm inputs had increased manifold during the recent years, but the farmers were not getting remunerative price for their produce.

INLD general secretary Ajay Chautala conducted the stage while the party’s state president Ashok Arora and senior leader and former Haryana finance minister Prof Sampat Singh, besides Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh were also present.

Kurukshetra, February 10
Uttarakhand Governor B.L. Joshi has exhorted students and the National Institutes of Technology to strive hard to cultivate values like intellectual integrity, courage and scientific knowledge and encourage individuality, variety and dissent within a climate of tolerance. He was addressing the fifth convocation of the National Institute of Technology (NIT) here today as the chief guest.

Joshi said, “In the modern world, moral values like honesty, loyalty, tolerance, truthfulness, justice and sincerity play an important role. These inculcate in us a sense of unity and obedience. Discipline is necessary not only in schools and colleges but in all walks of life.”

Joshi further emphasised that the education system should be equipped with making a continuous, critical and objective assessment of its own performance and also to change itself adequately as the occasion demand.

In his presidential address, chairman of the Board of Governors C.B. Mathur lauded the efforts of the faculty in imparting quality education. He expressed happiness over infrastructure development and beginning of new courses in management and information technology.

Presenting NIT’s achievements in his annual report, NIT director M.N. Bandyopadhyay said new courses in MCA and MTech in VLSI Design were introduced under the computer engineering department. A new boys’ hostel with a seating capacity of 350 was near completion. Another boys’ hostel with a similar capacity was under construction while the quality of roads on the institute campus had improved a lot.

The NIT, Kurukshetra, has benchmarked itself not only as an institute of excellence in the country but also internationally. The institute has signed an MoU with the University of Concordia, Montreal, Canada, with an objective to promote academic linkages.

As many as 286 degrees in BTech, 80 degrees in MTech and three degrees in PhD were given away at the function. Besides, 56 meritorious students were given medals and prizes.

Vipin Dalal was adjudged the best all-rounder student for 2006-07. Aman Arora was conferred with the Sh Shyam Sunder Dingda medal. Ashish Kumar Dabas and Achint Mittal won the Dr R. P. Singh medal while Sharwan Kumar, Shruti Kamra, Nitin Jain and Anurag Goyal won O. P. Jindal Engineering and Management scholarships.

Panipat, February 10
The Karnal police has claimed to have arrested the third accused today in connection with the attack on the convoy of the head of the Dera Sacha Sauda near Nilokheri on February 2. But the police is still clueless in locating the prime accused, Bakhsheesh Singh, a former Khalistan Commando Force (KCF) activist.

DSP (city) Surinderpal, also the investigating officer in the case, informed The Tribune today evening that Jaswant Singh of Pipal Khan village in Jind district was allegedly instrumental in providing information on the movement of the cavalcade of the Dera chief on the day of attack.

Earlier, the police had arrested Mahinder Singh of Karnal and Swaran Singh of Mansa districts in this case.

He dismissed the media reports that Pinda, the brother-in-law of the blast mastermind Bakhsheesh, was detained or arrested by the police. Jaswant was arrested from Dachar in the district, the police claimed.

But reliable intelligence sources said Jaswant was detained on Friday and interrogated by the investigators. He is stated to be the relative of Mahinder Singh, who was allegedly driving the truck from which the explosion was detonated.

The DSP further added that more names were cropping up in the case but refused to share the details.

Jind, February 10
The teaching staff of government schools in Haryana seem to be dissatisfied with the present policy regarding the educational set-up in the state, infrastructure and the overall attitude of the authorities concerned towards the growth of the education sector here.

This was visible in the state-level rally organised here yesterday by the Haryana Rajkiya Adhyapak Sangh, an affiliate body of the Sarva Karamchari Sangh, Haryana. The sangh has announced to adopt an agitational mode by staging a sit-in demonstration outside the residence of the education minister of Haryana from April 1. It has taken up several demands, including filling of about 28,000 vacant posts of teachers and setting up a separate cadre for teachers in the state.

Addressing the teachers who assembled from various districts here, the leaders of the sangh made a scathing attack on the education policy. They claimed that due to “wrong decisions and a lopsided policy”, the dream of the present government to make the state number one in the matter of overall development in the country may not come true. They described the efforts so far as farcical and ‘hollow’.

Revealing the plight of the government schools and the quality of education, the speakers said while the entire blame for poor results was normally put on the teachers, there had been no genuine effort made so far to go into the real causes.

While admitting that the number of students had been going down in government schools despite the nominal fee structure, a veteran teacher claimed that undue political interference, unavailability or shortage of subject teachers and non-teaching work had taken a toll on the overall performance of many schools.

He said vacancy of about 28,000 teaching posts and need of a large number of teachers in government schools speak the poor state of affairs. It was suggested that the student- teacher ratio should be brought down drastically so that students could get due attention and guidance. President of the sangh Satyapal Siwach said there was an urgent need for overhauling the system so that it became sensitive and responsive to the emerging requirement and changes and could compete with the challenges thrown up by the private sector.

Coming down heavily on the reported decision of the authorities concerned to disengage the guest teachers from February 15 onwards, he said it would adversely affect the interest of the students who face their annual board exams from this month end.

He claimed that the teachers would launch a campaign to get the issues highlighted and create awareness among the masses from March 17 onwards. Stating that the schemes of Edusat, DTH and Semester system had been good and helpful, but required a follow up and corrective measures for better results.

The other demands included opening of a plus two school with science faculty in all the 119 blocks, creation of new posts, selection on merit basis, removal of pay scales anomalies and development of relevant infrastructure.

Chandigarh, February 10
The forthcoming academic session will mark a new beginning in computer education for students of nearly 200 government schools of Haryana. After the computer education programme initiated by the previous government gradually fizzled out, the education department has begun with renewed vigour and chalked out its plan on making students IT-savvy.

Under this all-new programme, the department has identified the biggest 200 government schools in terms of the strength of classes XI and XII in the schools following a comprehensive upgrading exercise.

The idea is to incorporate computer education in the curriculum of these classes to make it a mandatory subject at the level of senior secondary education. A separate period will be allocated for imparting training in use of computers in the timetable.

“The project is an attempt on the part of the education department to build computer proficiency among students to help them get absorbed in the job market. For the purpose, we will recruit new teachers and create computer labs in each of these schools,” explains education secretary Rajan Gupta.

He adds that the syllabus of the entire programme for the students at the plus-two level of education is being prepared in consultation with the industry. This is an attempt to prepare the students for the job market and teach them according to the requirements of the industry. The exam for this course, like other subjects, will be conducted by the Haryana Board of School Education.

A similar exercise will be introduced for colleges too where a large number of plus-one and plus-two students study. To add value to what is being taught in colleges, this programme, too, will be designed in tune with the requirements of the industry.

Officials of the education department maintain that they are hopeful this programme will achieve the desired results unlike the one initiated previously. Plagued with paucity of staff, the computer education programme had failed since there were no full-time teachers employed to impart computer training.

All computers provided in schools had not been networked in that programme, introduced as a part of a Government of India scheme. Since it was not part of a regular curriculum and exams were not conducted for the same, computer education was taken lightly by the schools, staff and students.

Chandigarh, February 10
The Haryana College Teachers Association, an organisation representing teaching staff of private colleges, which receive 95 per cent grant from the state, has demanded that the system of paying the grant to the colleges should be changed to avoid delay in payment of salaries to the college staff.

In a letter written to Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, general secretary of the association Ranbir Prashar said at present the grant-in-aid was being sent to the Department of Higher Education, which further allocated it to individual colleges as per their salary bills. This involved unnecessary delay because of a lot of paper work.

Prashar said the government should send the grant directly to the treasury. The college managements, which were already paying their share of 5 per cent of the salary, should be asked to do so. The teachers should be paid their salaries directly from the treasuries.

He said this alternative mode of salary and pension through treasury would unburden the department of higher education as well as all the concerned colleges from a lot of unnecessary labour. In addition, this would lead to an improvement in the working conditions of the teaching fraternity of the government-aided colleges. He said this system was already prevalent in states like Uttar Pardesh, Himachal Pardesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Orissa and Kerala.

Welcoming the government’s decision to celebrate 2008 as “Education Year”, Prashsar regretted that there was no medical security for the teachers. Quoting the example of states like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Karela, he said Haryana should also frame a comprehensive medical scheme for reimbursing the cost of treatment of major diseases as its basic feature.

Among other demands of the association are the provision of leave encashment and enhancement of retirement age from 60 years to 62 years. These facilities, the association said, were already available in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Pondicheri.

Panipat, February 10
In a tragic incident, a man was feared drowned in the Delhi parallel canal located on the Gohana road near here this morning where he, along with family members, had gone to immerse the ashes of a relative.

According to sources, Alok Jindal and his father Praveen Jindal had reached the canal along with their family members and relatives.

While completing the rituals of immersing the ashes of his brother, Praveen lost control and fell into the canal.

In an attempt to rescue his father, Alok jumped in the waters and managed to take out his father. However, Alok lost control and was swept away by the waters. Praveen later died while Alok, who was swept away, was untraced till the evening.

Rohtak, February 10
A micro-endodontic workshop was organised on the premises of Government Dental College here today. Nearly 300 dental specialists from different dental colleges located in Haryana as well as other states participated in the workshop.

“The objective of the event was to train and update the dentists in the use of operating microscope,” college principal Prof Sanjay Tewari said.

It may be pertinent to note that the Government Dental College here is the only dental college in the north India having this microscope. The operating microscope, which was purchased at a cost of Rs 18 lakh by the college authorities a few months ago, is effectively used in the treatment of various complicated diseases.

Eminent endodontist and microscope expert from Mumbai-based Lillavati Hospital Dr P.D. Joshi was the main speaker on the occasion. Dr Joshi gave live demonstration of the use of this microscope in teeth models as well as in patients.

Gurgaon, February 10
A five-day Bharat Nirman Public Information Campaign will be launched by the Press Information Bureau (PIB) at Mewat on February 12. Communication officer of the PIB Sapna disclosed this here today while talking to mediapersons.

She said this was the fourth Bharat Nirman Public Information Campaign in Haryana, which was scheduled at Yasin Meo Degree College, Nuh, as the Mewat district had been identified under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and also having concentration of minority population.

She said during the campaign, the departments of Central and state governments along with PSUs, banks and NGOs would put up about 25-30 information stalls.

She said, earlier, in Haryana, the PIB had conducted three such campaigns in the districts of Sirsa, Mahendergarh and Ambala and conducted over 150 campaigns all over the country.

Sapna further said the main focus of the campaigns under Bharat Nirman was upgraded of rural infrastructure and to highlight the flagship programmes of the Central government like National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), National Rural Health Mission, Sarv Shiksha Abiyan, Jawahar lal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, Right to information Act, Women Empowerment, Integrated child development Services, PM’s New 15-point programme for the welfare of Minorities and Bharat Nirman. 

Panipat, February 10
At least two persons died and nine others sustained injuries when a car collided with a jeep near Israna, near here this evening.

One of the deceased has been identified as Sandeep of Rohtak district. Sources said the car was going from Panipat whereas the speeding jeep was moving towards the township when the vehicles had a head on collision.

Out of the nine injured, three had been referred to the PGI, Rohtak, sources added.