Bhai Rupa, March 30
“If it is proved that I sought support from Badal government to exonerate myself from the funds embezzlement case, I will pay no second thought to resign from the portfolio I possess,” said Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, leader of the opposition and chief of Congress Legislature Party (Punjab) refuting the allegations regarding her relation with the ruling party. She was here to attend the Bhog ceremony of Gurinderjeet Singh Kukku, the grand son of the former President of the India, late Giani Zail Singh.

Lashing out on CM Parkash Singh Badal and his son Sukhbir Badal, chief of the SAD (B), she said, “Both have been misusing the funds on the fields of their interests. But as the leader of the opposition I have raised voice against them during the Vidhan Sabha session.”

While talking to media persons, she criticised the state government for trying to suppress the fourth estate, the Press. She was referring to the incident that took place in Bathinda on March 25.

She termed the media boycott as a shameful incident for the chief minister.

Taking serious note of the ill-treatment of women anganwari workers in the presence of the CM, she said, “The CM has forgotten the Sikh rituals and sentiments, as in his presence even baptized women were dragged from hair by policemen.”

Alleging the involvement of the SAD (B) in the Shiromani Gurudwara Parbandhk Committee (SGPC), she said, “The leaders and the workers of the SAD have been enjoying the funds of the SGPC and have politicised the religious administrative committee for self-interests.”

On Dera-Sikh controversy, she said the Congress was committed towards the constitutional rights of people but the ruling party had been instigating the issue, which only expressed their displeasure for getting no votes from the Dera-followers.

Jagmeet Singh Brar, Avtar Singh Brar, Harminder Singh Jassi, Gurpreet Singh Kangar, Ajit Singh Mofar, Jeet Mahinder Singh, Bir Devinder Singh, S.S. Channi, Hardeep Singh Randhawa, IAS Raminder Singh, and IAS Iqbal Singh were among the other dignitaries present at the ceremony.

Whereas, Sukhbir Badal, for whom all the security arrangements were made, could not attend the ceremony, as his chopper failed to take off from Amritsar.

Mansa, March 30
“The arrangements for the purchase of wheat have been completed in the markets across Punjab,” stated Ajmer Singh Lakhowal, chairman of Punjab Mandi Board, in a press conference held at Mansa.

He informed that in the coming season, no farmer would be harassed at the time of wheat purchasing in the markets. For the purpose, all arrangements, including material, drinking water and seating, had been completed, he added.

No irregularity would be tolerated. To ensure fair deal to the farmers, nearly four to five flying squads had been formed to check any irregularity in the markets at the time of purchasing wheat, the chairman informed.

Lakhowal also informed that a meeting of Bharatiya Kisan Union would be held in New Delhi on March 31. Representatives of farmers from 20 foreign countries would also participate in the meeting where a discussion would be held on the farmer-related problems.

Earlier, Lakhowal participated in the function organised on the retirement of Bhupinder Kaur, district education officer (primary) Mansa. He praised the services of the retiring DEO. 

Abohar, March 30
Punjab BJP president Rajinder Bhandari today promised to take up the issue of payment of daily wages to the workers through market committees with Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal tomorrow.

Speaking as the chief guest at the state-level Dhanak Sammelan here in the Dr Ambedkar Chowk, Bhandari agreed that victimisation of labourers, most of them belonging to the Dhanak community, should come to an end. Hitherto the labourers had been getting wages through the commission agents or loading contractors in the grain markets. He also assured that the Dhanak community would be included in the Scheduled Tribes list if the BJP is voted to power in the next Lok Sabha elections. He responded well to the charter of demands presented by the Punjab Dhanak Samaj and blamed the Congress for denying the genuine benefits as the party. Bhandari claimed that future of dalits was bright only with the BJP because the party was not a victim of the family-rule.

The function was convened by a former municipal council president Babu Ram Arya but his contemporary Thakur Dass Siwan virtually stole the show. District BJP president Mohinder Partap Dhingra said the party high command had directed that such community-based functions should be held in each district before beginning of Lok Sabha elections while the state BJP secretary Kamal Sharma said the party did not believe in caste-based politics.

Rajya Sabha member from Bhopal Narayan Singh Kesari, Rashtriya Dhanak Samaj president Prem Chand Kirad, general secretary Sita Ram Maurya and state president B R Bagri blamed the UPA government for sky rocketing price rise in essential commodities which might deprive the daily wage earner of two-time meals even, they feared. Kesari regretted that Parkash Singh Badal had availed his services to influence 10 lakh voters of Dhanak community during last Vidhan Sabha elections but did nothing for them during past 12 months.

The guests lighted a lamp before Bhagat Kabir’s portrait and garlanded life-size statue of Dr B R Ambedkar. They were welcomed by Yuva Morcha district vice president Shiv Raj Goyal, district BJP secretary Arun Narang and others with garlands.

Bathinda, March 30
Observing that globalisation is the eventual phase of transition, the academicians from different colleges of education in Punjab today, however, expressed their concern that this global phenomenon had badly hit the education and other essential services among the poor and weaker sections in the country.

The two-day seminar on ‘Globalisation and Education’ concluded today with the debate over the compulsion of accepting the global phenomenon and facing its challenges while dealing with the country’s economic, social and cultural fabric.

Debating with the help of facts and figures, the scholars participating in the seminar lamented that the country’s ruling politicians and the bureaucracy had failed to derive any benefit from the atmosphere and conditions created by the institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and even the UNESCO, for the cause of masses in the education sector.

Deliberating on ‘Globalisation and school education’, Dr Pyare Lal Garg, Registrar at Baba Farid University of Medical Sciences, said that education was becoming not only costlier day by day but the government was also shying away from its responsibility to provide affordable and quality education to the common people adding to their woes.

“About 200 poor students amongst the general category as well as the scheduled category could not enter medical colleges despite their merit and instead their seats went to the rich general and SCs as they could afford the high fee,” Dr Garg said.

“In the medical colleges, the strength of students coming from rural areas has come down to 22 per cent though most of them had their schooling in the urban areas. About 95 per cent who made to these courses have availed private coaching and 50 per cent of them belonged to a very high income group who can afford to spend Rs 5 lakh per annum throughout the course for five years,” Garg said.

Dr Kuldeep Singh from the State College of Education, Patiala, pointed out that the Latin countries like Venezuela had imposed taxes on the industry owners. They revenue thus earned was spent on education. On the other hand, capitalists in India were being given tax holidays and were allowed to flow their capital in the open market to earn personal multiple profits.

Another scholar was of the viewpoint that though India could not accept the Cuban model of socialism in totality due to different historic, social and economic background but there were several universally-accepted theories of socialism which could be adopted to provide education and healthcare to the poor.

Strengthen the Panchayati Raj Institutions in school education system was the alternative given by Garg to counter the privatisation of the school education at the grass root level in villages.

Dr Jaswinder Singh Brar of Punjabi University, Patiala, explaining the positive side of globalisation, said the importance of the job-oriented skilled courses were realised by and large in our country, in the backdrop of the growing demand of the skilled labour. 

Bathinda, March 30
The army authorities who had detected possible scam of pilferage of petroleum products by contract carriage tankers in Punjab and Rajasthan are peeved over ‘casual’ approach of Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) authorities in taking prompt action against the erring tanker owners and also finding out if there is any nexus between the tankers owners and the IOC officials.

Pilferage of petroleum products was unearthed by the Army more than two months ago (January this year) and the matter was immediately brought to the notice of the IOC authorities, but the guilty had not been booked.

The case was being considered only ‘tip of the ice berg’ and the slow pace of enquiry being conducted by the IOC raised suspicion that certain vested interests did not want the lid off the scam.

The IOC authorities had informed that action was in progress in all the cases under the Corporation Transport Discipline guidelines and the same was likely to be completed by March 15, 2008.

‘The enquiry is still in progress’ is all the IOC has informed the Army and nothing about the progress of action initiated has been told.

The IOC did not rule out malpractices by tanker owners and admitted that in two cases the samples did not meet the specification, in one case one the concerned firm was black listed while in two cases the supplies of tankers RJ 19G 5070 and RJ 04 G 1727 were sent back.

General Manager, Rajasthan State Office of IOC, DSL Prasad in his letter of February 15 told Army authorities that action was in progress and the Chief Terminal Manager, Salwas (Jodhpur) had been advised to be more vigilant and conduct surprise checks more frequently.

Chief Terminal Manager, Salwas also informed the Army that the transporters had been issued show cause notices on the basis of joint inspection report and their replies were awaited while the samples drawn from the BPLs were being tested at the labotary.

The modus operendi adopted by Tanker owners was to bypass the main outlet in petroleum tankers and pilfer petrol and diesel en route without tampering with the ‘seal’.

The Army found that pilferage of petroleum products by bulk petroleum carriage operators were common but there was no check whether the tankers transported petrol and diesel the as per specification laid down by the IOC.

The Army had intercepted a large number of tankers carrying bulk petroleum supplies and reportedly found several irregularities which included modifications in the rear valve box and compartments to bypass the security features installed by the IOC, alteration in sealing system to enable the compartments to be opened without breaking the seals and breaking the rod locking the compartments with the bottom valve box, facilitating the opening of box without tampering with the seal.

Bathinda, March 30
Tall claims made by Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB) that the state produced addational power almost after a gap of nine years at Guru Hargobind Thermal Plant (GHTP) at Lehra Mohabbat don’t seem to bear any fruit. Highly placed sources on the condition of anonymity at GHTP informed, “Unit 3 of the thermal plant was closed down at 8.15 am on March 20 due to leakage in its boiler tubes and it took three days to restart the power production. Boiler tube leakage on this new unit has once again raised question mark on construction quality of Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL).”

In spite of incompletion of many essential systems the unit was started on coal firing on February 5. “Since then the unit has not stabilised and is tripping time and again. It tripped 19 times in February and 22 times till March 27. This has caused a loss of crores to PSEB due to excessive consumption of furnace oil and generation loss, sources informed.

A total of 6000 Kilo Liters (52 ml per unit of electricity) of oil worth Rs 16 crores have been used so far in February and March, along with coal. “In normal course, oil consumption is less than one ml per unit, even for new units this is of the order of 8 to 10 ml during stabilization period. The main reason for this is that testing and commissioning of equipments have not been done properly neither by BHEL nor it has been got witnessed from PSEB engineers,” a member of PSEB Engineers Association said.

He further said, “Many of the systems like control and instrumentation, alarms and annunciations, water treatment plant, chlorination, thermal insulation, fire fighting, air conditioning and ventilation are not complete. Not only this, very critical equipments like unit auxiliary transformers (UAT), De-aerator, HP heaters, ultra filters have not been commissioned so far.

Even the communication means like telephones and PA (public address) system through which instructions are given to operators are not working so far. The coal mill reject system, wagon tipplers for coal unloading, primary and secondary coal crushers and coal conveying system for this unit has not been installed. The coal is being fed through existing system of the two units of stage I.”

The experts feel that normal operations (generation) of this unit will start only when coal plant for this will be complete, “which is not likely to happen before June 08.”

Neither the chairman of PSEB or the BHEL officials at GHTP could be contacted despite repeated attempts. 

Barnala, March 30
A man along with his father have been arrested for allegedly killing his wife. The Bhadaur police has arrested Sukhjeet Singh and his father Karmchand of Tallewal village for allegedly burning Ritu Sona, wife of Sukhjeet.

Mother-in-law of the deceased, Jaswant Kaur, is absconding.

Ritu Sona had died in mysterious circumstances. From the neighbours, the parents of the girl came to know about the incident. They admitted their daughter in critical condition to a hospital in Ludhiana.

As per police diary, Ritu of Bhotna village got married to Sukhjeet about five years back. She was blessed with a son and daughter. On Saturday, she succumbed to her burn injuries at the hospital.

Ritu was a teaching in a private school. On the complaint of Ritu's family, the police registered a case against in law's family under section 306 of the IPC.

SHO Bhadaur, Kulwant Singh said that two had been arrested while police is making investigation in the incident.

Bathinda, March 30
Director-General of the Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI) T.V. Ramachandran said today that the official delay in granting permission for the installation of mobile towers was affecting the industry growth adversely.

The problem was more acute in Punjab, which had a high mobile phone penetration and was a fast-growing market.

He said cellular towers were the key infrastructure elements used to propagate radio frequency signals and they played a key role of passing over the call from cell to cell, to locate the mobile subscriber and terminate the call.

Ramachandran pointed out that if the infrastructure growth did not keep pace with the increasing number of subscribers, it would lead to network congestion, poor quality of service, call drops and even stagnation of the service growth.

Although the service providers were focusing on more tower-sharing, the demand for new towers was growing rapidly, he added.

However, Bathinda Deputy Commissioner Rahul Tewari, when contacted, said that he had received no complaints regarding the delay in granting the permission for the installation of towers.

He said service providers were welcome to see him if they were facing any problem in this regard. “We realise the importance of mobile telephony in today’s world,” the DC added.

As for health hazards of mobile towers, Ramachandran said, “Radio frequency emissions from the base stations are around 50,000 times less to cause any harm to health, according to the international guidelines.”

He added, “Research, national and international, has shown that there was no conclusive evidence of any health ailment caused due to electromagnetic radiations emitted from mobile base towers.” 

Bathinda, March 30
One person died and one sustained severe injuries at Laleana village, near here today.

Sources in the village said that Mahinder Singh (40) and Babu Ram (50) were doing some work inside a 20-feet deep well when all of sudden, bricks and mud fell on them.

Receiving the information, SDM Talwandi Sabo Anil Garg along with other officials of the administration reached the spot.

After the constant efforts of two hours, both the persons were pulled out of the well with the help of a JCB machine and tractors. after rescuing them, it was found that Babu Ram, a labourer, was bitten by a snake who succumbed to the snake-bite injury.

Mahinder Singh’s condition being critical was taken to civil hospital.

The police has registered a criminal case against the owner of the farm for violating the orders of the DC. The orders stated that before doing such work, a prior permission should be taken.