Palampur, July 31
Heavy rain over the past two days has paralysed normal life in the Palampur region. Vehicular traffic on many kutcha roads has come to a standstill.

There are also reports of landslides from various parts of the region. A number of kutcha houses have either collapsed or developed cracks.

Sources said there were reports of heavy landslides and sinking of a hill in Tikka Kathyana village, 5 km from here.

Debris has damaged many houses in the village. Last night, the administration shifted three families to safer places after some boulders hit their houses in the village.

These families were provided shelter in a village temple, while their cattle were
left in the forest.

The entire hill is sinking and has developed huge cracks. It can come down any time, destroying the entire village.

Kolan Devi, a 70-year-old widow, said it rained heavily last evening. They were sleeping in their house when all of a sudden boulders from the adjoining hills started rolling down. Some of these hit their house.

The 11-member family ran for safety. Later, more boulders and clay came down and damaged the walls of their house.

They spent the entire night in the open. She said they had constructed the house only two years ago after raising a loan that was yet to be repaid.

She urged the SDM, Palampur, to provide her adequate compensation so that she could rebuild her house.

Meanwhile, the administration has declared the two houses unsafe for habitation and directed the owners not to enter these as this could result in a tragedy.

An official of the Revenue Department said the loss was being estimated and financial assistance would be given to the affected families soon.

He said experts of the Soil Conservation Department had been requested to help the affected families by constructing retaining walls.

Palampur, July 31
Chief Minister P.K. Dhumal today appealed to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to expedite the work on the Jogindernagar-Leh rail line keeping in view the defence requirements of the country.

He said China had already extended its rail network up to Lhasa in Tibet and Arunachal Pradesh, whereas India had done nothing for the expansion of the rail or road network up to the Tibet boarder in the past 40 years.

The road network to Leh was not very good. The area was accessible only for four months in a year. Most of the defence supplies were lifted by air from Chandigarh and other places.

This resulted in huge financial burden on the exchequer, he added. Dhumal said India should never underestimate the defence preparations of China.

He said he had already written a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in this regard. The PMO had asked a private company to prepare a detailed project report (DPR), but a lot more needed to be done.

He said financial crunch should not come in the way of execution of the project and the Centre should go ahead for global tenders at earliest.

A meeting was held in this regard in New Delhi last month in which principal secretary (finance) represented the state, he said.

He said the state government would extend full cooperation in the speedy execution of the project.

There would be no delay on the part of the state government in the acquisition of land, if the Centre approved the project.

The exact cause of Tak Chand’s death would be known only after the post-mortem report was received, the SP said.

Dharamsala, July 31
The residents of Nagrota Surian, about 60 km from here, are facing an acute shortage of LPG cylinders.

They alleged that the shortage in their area started when the Pong gas agency was shifted to the Baddi area.

There are 5,000 gas connections in 15 panchayats of the area and the gas is being supplied to their area by the Jawali-based gas agency.

The agency owners supply as many as 50 cylinders to the area for 20 days in a month, which is not sufficient to meet the demand.

Hundreds of villagers have to lift their cylinders to Nagorta Surian to fetch LPG. However, many of them have to return empty handed.

The residents alleged that the Pong gas agency was shifted without any substantial reason that had added to their hardships.

They have also written to the state food and civil supply minister to shift the agency back to Nagrota Surian.

PALAMPUR: The residents of the region have been facing an acute shortage of cooking gas for the past 10 days, as most of the LPG dealers have not received the supplies from the LPG bottling plants.

The Indian Oil Corporation, HPC and BPC, three companies supplying LPG to the state, had arbitrarily reduced the LPG quota of most of the dealers in the region, which had resulted in the scarcity of LPG.

These companies hve imposed a cut of 20 per cent in the supplies made to the dealers. Consumers had to wait for 15 to 20 days to get LPG cylinder.

There are more than 12 lakh LPG consumers in the state. The situation has further worsened with the complete ban on the felling of trees in the state.

The state government owned depots had no fuel wood, which had further aggravated the situation. Kerosene is also in short supply because of its large-scale black marketeering.

The state government had failed to take up this issue with the Union Government, as the supplies of LPG could only be restored to the state at the behest of ministry of petroleum, which had imposed a cut on the supplies of LPG.

Pritam Chand, president of the state LPG Dealers Association, said dealers were not responsible for the shortage of LPG in the state. Adequate supply of LPG could improve the situation.

Shimla, July 31
The Tibetan Solidarity Committee today started a chain fast in protest against the holding of the Olympic Games in China and alleged atrocities being inflicted on the Tibetans there. President of the committee Tenzin said a total of 60 activists took part in the protest.

“The Tibetans who are vehemently opposed to the holding of the Olympics in China have been imprisoned and some of them have gone missing,” he said.

He said all those who stood for human rights should not be part of this event as China had a very poor record on that front. He said the Tibetans were undergoing religious repression in their homeland.

“We demand that the Dalai Lama should be allowed to return to Tibet and the Panchen Lama be set free,” he said.

Shimla, July 31
The fate of the state electricity board is hanging in the balance now as the extension granted by the Centre to the state utility to continue as an unbundled entity expired today.

The board was granted extension up to March 31 but the state government had requested the union ministry of power to allow it to continue in the existing form for another year on the grounds a lot of groundwork is required to be done to carry out the “unbundling” exercise.

However, the ministry was not convinced by the plea as the government had been extending the same argument since June 2005 to stall unbundling. It gave only two months extension and that too for submitting the roadmap for unbundling.

As the government sought more time for preparing the blue print, it extended the deadline up to July 31 which expired today.

Sources revealed that the government has so far not prepared any roadmap for unbundling and instead it has again sent a request for granting extension up to March 31, 2009.

It had been trying to convince the ministry that the proposed reforms like separation of transmission, generation and distribution functions could be carried out without trifurcation of the state utility.

However, the ministry has been far from pleased with the attitude of the state which had not taken any concrete steps to comply with the provisions of the Electricity Act 2003 and has been seeking repeated extensions to allow the board to continue in the unbundled form.

It has asked the government to first give the details of the steps taken so far by it to unbundle the state utility.

The only step the government has taken over the past two months is to set up a transmission corporation.

However, it will be assigned only new projects and the board will also continue to carry out the construction of transmission line as before.

Such a policy will prove disastrous as the board was already short of technical manpower and as the staff in the new corporation will be sent on deputation from the board, affecting functioning of both the entities.

The government had earlier constituted the State Power Corporation but the Beas Valley Power Corporation, which is executing the Uhl project was not merged with it.

The board is already incurring heavy losses and creating special purpose vehicles with overlapping functions.

Moreover, the new corporations do not enjoy any functional autonomy. Senior officers maintain that the government has been lacking political will to unbundle the board and taking such half-hearted measures but delaying inevitable will only make things worse.

Shimla, July 31
The worry of the Health Department with regard to the acute shortage of doctors in the state continues as only 250 doctors have applied for the 200 posts of doctors advertised by it.

The government was hopeful of a better response this time as the remuneration for both MBBS and specialist doctors, to be appointed on contractual basis, had been considerably enhanced by the Health and Family department.

Senior officials said the government would not be considering the 30 MBBS students who had applied for the job. The last date for applying for the posts was July 28.

“Since we already have a lot of vacancies in the department, we will advertise more posts within a short interval. Hence, those still doing their internship can apply at that time,” said a senior bureaucrat.

The 30 doctors doing their one-year internship would be completing it at different times and they would be considered for appointment only after that.

What is causing even more worry to the department is the fact that a sizeable chunk of doctors, who have applied for these posts, are Himachalis who have done their MBBS or post from medical colleges outside the state.

“Though they have applied, we are not very certain whether they would be keen to join at places where we post them,” said an official.

The department may not be left with enough doctors to fill the 200 posts advertised by it.

Chamba, July 31
In the wake of bomb blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad, high alert has been sounded on the borders of the district.

Those on duty at the border checkpoints have also been directed to be on their toes to avoid any untoward incident.

An official communiqué issued here today said Munish Garg, the district magistrate of Chamba, through a notification to this effect, had enforced Article-144 of the CrPC to check infiltration and to keep a strict watch on the strangers entering into the region from the neighbouring states.

The DM directed the private hydropower enterprises, executing the hydroelectric projects, and contractors deploying labourers and servants from outside the state to get the antecedents of their labourers verified from the police.

“Violation of the notification would be dealt with stringency by initiating a legal action,” the DM said.

Chamba, July 31
The Chamba-Shimla highway via Jot-Sinhuta is in bad shape. Any untoward incident can happen if the condition of the highway is not improved in the near future.

The highway is full of potholes and the most risky portions, including the blind curves, are devoid of parapets.

It has become unsafe, as the hillside edge of the highway has been dug out for laying telephone cables by ‘Reliance’.

The executive engineer, PWD, Dalhousie division, said the company was directed through notice to execute the work within the parameters decided in the agreement.

Shimla, July 31
The high court today disposed of the petition filed by Reliance Energy Limited wherein it had challenged the allotment of Jangi-Thopan and Thopan-Pawri power projects to the Brakel Corporation.

The Division Bench of Chief Justice Jagdish Bhalla and Mr Justice Sanjay Karol observed that in view of the decision of the state government to issue a show-cause notice to the Brakel corporation, the petition had become infructuous.

Reliance Energy had filed the petition on the ground that the Brakel had given wrong information to the state government with regard to its financial and technical competence while bidding for these projects.

In its earlier order, the court had directed the state to place on record the fresh decision of the government with regard to allotment of these projects to the Brakel.

The state has decided to issue a show-cause notice to the Brakel asking it to explain why the allotment of these projects be not cancelled since facts regarding the company’s financial and technical status were misrepresented.

The projects had been allotted during the tenure of the Congress regime in December, 2006. On assuming power, the BJP issued a show-cause notice to the Brakel asking it to deposit the upfront money of Rs 173 crore, along with interest.

The notice was withdrawn after the Brakel deposited the amount and accepted the fresh conditions.

However, after taking a fresh look at the matter at the highest level, the government decided to issue a show-cause notice to the Brakel again.

Shimla, July 31
Senior IAS officer Subhash Ahluwalia, who was private secretary to former chief minister Virbhadra Singh, today failed to turn up for questioning in connection with a disproportionate assets case registered against him by the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau.

The Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau had summoned him for questioning at its headquarters here today.

However it was through a fax message this morning that Ahluwalia sent his medical report which said that he had been advised one week’s bed rest as he was not well on account of his diabetes and blood pressure problem getting aggravated.

In the intimation sent by the bureaucrat to the Vigilance Bureau, he has said that it would be possible for him to travel to Shimla only after August 7.

Ever since the Vigilance Bureau has registered a case against Ahluwalia he has been summoned for questioning on several occasions along with his wife Meera Ahluwalia.

The bureau is trying to check every transaction in the 18 accounts in the name of the Ahluwalia couple with deposits of over Rs 1.34 crore during the past five years.

The transactions also pertain to some foreign remittances of about $ 5,000 sent to him by his daughter who is a software engineer in the US.

Sources in the Vigilance said that cross-checking each and every transaction in these accounts is a lengthy procedure and it would still take some more time for the investigation to get over.

It also decided to honour the former leaders of employees at a rally to be held on August 22.

Shimla, July 31
CITU activists today staged a dharna outside the deputy commissioner’s office against the alleged exploitation of workers at hydropower projects in the state.

They alleged that the workers were not being paid the proper wages as fixed by the state government.

They sought government intervention to ensure that the workers did not get a raw deal at the hands of contractors.

They cited the example of Sawra Kuddu project at Rohru, where, they said, the workers were being harassed.