B A T H I N D A    E D I T I O N

Crackdown on drunken driving
Bathinda, August 10
In order to give more teeth to its enforcement efforts, the traffic wing of the Bathinda police has inducted three Alco sensors to check drunken driving in the city and on the highways.

Drunken driving will also be checked on the highways with cops keeping a close watch. — A Tribune photograph

Bathinda farmers believe ‘Honey Hai Toh Money Hai!’
Bathinda/Dabwali, August 10
The nearly 40 kms stretch of highway between Bathinda in Punjab and Dabwali in Haryana is dotted with bee farms that are these days yielding a bumper harvest of honey.

Honey being extracted from beehives in a makeshift workshop near Pathrala on the Bathinda-Dabwali road. — Tribune photo by Kulbir Beera

Celebration time!

Women work at a spinning wheel at the Teej celebrations organised by the Phulkari Club at the Kamla Nehru Colony in Bathinda on Sunday. — Tribune photo by Kulbir Beera

50 penalised for ticketless travelling
Bathinda, August 10
Special Railway Magistrate, Raj Kumar Garg and officials of the checking staff of the Northern Railway in Ambala division, hauled up about 50 passengers who were found travelling without tickets in the incoming and outgoing mail and passengers trains during the surprise checking conducted at the railway station here last night. The special checking continued until 10 p.m. and all the ticketless passengers were let off after the recovery of the actual fare and the penalty.

Drugs worth Rs 60 lakh seized
Bathinda, August 10
Acting on the complaints about intoxicants being freely available in the markets of the state, health authorities seized more than a crore tablets, capsules, injections and syrups from various districts of the state, which could have been misused as intoxicants.

State of Education
Poor mentor-pupil ratio mars primary education
Abohar, August 10
Claims on improving the standard of education in the state fall flat, if one goes through a recent survey on the strength of staff in government primary schools in the region.

Surplus teachers moved to urban areas, rural students may suffer
Abohar, August 10
The “ways and means” being adopted by the babudom at the district headquarters to adjust the surplus teachers of the government schools in the urban areas may defeat the idea behind the much-hyped rationalisation of staff plan, well placed sources said.

Veterans gather at state-level rally
Ex-servicemen demand better pension scale
Barnala, August 10
Mandikarn Board state chairman Ajmer Singh Lakhowal while extending support to ex-servicemen for the cause assured that he would raise the matter with the state government to get one rank one pension for the ex-servicemen.

Abohar boy saves Britisher’s life
Abohar, August 10
Chandan Monga, a former student of the LRS DAV Senior Secondary School, brought laurels to his alma mater as well his parents, Shammi and Lalita, here by saving a Britisher's life.

It’s boom time for financial experts
Bathinda, August 10
It's boom time for financial experts. Chartered accountants have become the most sought-after professionals these days, thanks to the "difficulty" the businessmen claim they are facing in understanding VAT.

Dairy farming catches fancy of farmers
Bathinda, August 10
Farmers in Bathinda no longer see dairy farming as a part-time venture and instead have taken it up as a full-fledged profession.

Red Cross holds Mela Tiyan Da
Barnala, August 10
To celebrate the Teej festival in the month of Sawan, Mela Tiyan Da was held at the local Bansal Palace by the Red Cross society, Barnala. Kamlesh Mehta, chairperson of the Red Cross society inaugurated the festival by lighting the traditional lamp. The girl students from various schools participated in folk song, dances and kikli competitions.

Crackdown on drunken driving
Anil Jerath
Tribune News Service

Bathinda, August 10
In order to give more teeth to its enforcement efforts, the traffic wing of the Bathinda police has inducted three Alco sensors to check drunken driving in the city and on the highways.

Kartar Singh, traffic in-charge, highways, said that the traffic police will launch a special drive to check drunken driving. Traffic cops will be deployed outside various hotels, pubs and night clubs in the city to keep a check on drunken driving.

The police will challan viorule lators under section 185 of the Motor Vehicles Act, wherein they can be sentenced to six months of imprisonment and Rs 2,000 as fine.

Meanwhile, in a special drive today, the traffic police set up four nakas in different parts of the city in order to check if the residents were adhering to the traffic rules and regulations.

Cops in plain clothes were stationed at four light points in the city in order to check whether drivers were adhering to the traffic rules and regulations. The cops would inform then the policemen stationed at the next naka about these violators, who would then be nabbed. The DSP (Traffic), T.S. Dhillon, said that the cops in plain clothes were stationed at different places.

Bathinda farmers believe ‘Honey Hai Toh Money Hai!’
S.P.Sharma
Tribune News Service

Bathinda/Dabwali, August 10
The nearly 40 kms stretch of highway between Bathinda in Punjab and Dabwali in Haryana is dotted with bee farms that are these days yielding a bumper harvest of honey.

Most of these makeshift farms have been set up alongside the cotton fields where the crop would bloom shortly. At the moment, the bees are carrying honey from the "kikkar" trees that grow in the wild in the area.

Jagdeep Singh, a beekeeper, who moves from place to place according to the flowering season, says that he has put 600 boxes at two places in the Pathrala village where he was harvesting the second round of honey from the hives.

The extraction can go up to four times in case the weather is favourable. He would camp here for two months before shifting to Alwar in Rajasthan when the mustard fields there are in full bloom.

The price of raw honey fluctuates between Rs 40 to Rs 70 per kg, he says. Two honey-marketing units based at Baddi in Himachal Pradesh were the main buyers of the produce in this area.

Jagdeep Singh said that after camping in the Kashmir valley for three months, he has just returned empty-handed without collecting even a single drop of honey, as the weather there was unfavourable because of incessant rains. His empty bee boxes were still being transported from J&K.

He said that the Bt cotton flowers were harmless to honeybees as the farmers do not have to repeatedly spray insecticides on the plants, but in case of other crops, a large number of bees perish when they sting the chemical sprayed flowers.

Initially, farmers in Rajasthan would not allow the beekeepers to come near their fields as they feared that their crops would get destroyed if the bees were allowed to sip the nectar. However, now they greet them with open arms as they have realised that the bees were the best pollinators, he says. 

50 penalised for ticketless travelling
Tribune News Service

Bathinda, August 10
Special Railway Magistrate, Raj Kumar Garg and officials of the checking staff of the Northern Railway in Ambala division, hauled up about 50 passengers who were found travelling without tickets in the incoming and outgoing mail and passengers trains during the surprise checking conducted at the railway station here last night. The special checking continued until 10 p.m. and all the ticketless passengers were let off after the recovery of the actual fare and the penalty.

Mukesh Kumar Panwar, commander, Railway Protection Force (RPF) while talking to TNS, disclosed that 12 persons were also figured for violating the Railways Act. They were let off after paying a fine, RPF commander added. The drive will continue, said the railway official.

Drugs worth Rs 60 lakh seized
Anil Jerath
Tribune News Service

Bathinda, August 10
Acting on the complaints about intoxicants being freely available in the markets of the state, health authorities seized more than a crore tablets, capsules, injections and syrups from various districts of the state, which could have been misused as intoxicants.

In a major swoop spanning over 10 days, health authorities raided wholesale dealers in Bathinda, Sangrur, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Barnala, Ferozepur, Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala, Nawanshahr, Mohali, Patiala, Ropar and Tarn Taran and confiscated a large quantity of medicines, including habit forming and non-habit forming, worth over Rs 60 lakh.

According to a press release issued here today, Sangrur, Jalandhar and Ludhiana accounted for intoxicants worth Rs 40 lakh alone. Dr Neelam Bajaj, civil surgeon, Bathinda, said the seizures from a chemist shop led by drug inspector Janak Raj, yielded a rich haul of intoxicants worth Rs 1.45 lakh. The team unearthed 1.05 lakh tablets of Alprax, 3,000 tablets of diazepam and 85 bottles of syrup which, when sold without medical prescription, are mostly used by drug addicts. Members of the team believe that the seller has a vast network and supplied drugs to various places across the state.

With this major haul, habit-forming and non-habit forming drugs worth Rs 60 lakh have been seized by the Punjab Health Department in the last 10 days. The seizures in other districts include Sangrur worth Rs 20 lakh, Ludhiana-5.20 lakh, Jalandhar-17.50 lakh, Amritsar-20,000, Bathinda-1.45 lakh, Barnala-2.10 lakh, Ferozepur-14,000, Gurdaspur-1.40 lakh, Hoshiarpur-60,000, Kapurthala-47,700, Mohali-1.60 lakh, Muktsar-19,000, Nawanshahr-1.67 lakh, Patiala-4.40 lakh, Ropar-2.49 lakh and Tarn Taran Rs 13,000.

State of Education
Poor mentor-pupil ratio mars primary education
Raj Sadosh

Abohar, August 10
Claims on improving the standard of education in the state fall flat, if one goes through a recent survey on the strength of staff in government primary schools in the region.

The Union Ministry of Human Resources had directed the state governments to ensure 40:1 ratio of students, teachers in each class but one finds only one teacher for 218 students in the government primary school at village Bakayanwala located close to Indo-Pak border in the Hindumalkot sector. The residents included Dogra families who had migrated from Jammu, Sansi and other SC/ST/BC families who are daily wage earners.

Another border village Koyalkhera enrolled 187 students in the primary school but has got only one teacher. Close to this, village Panjawa Mandal too has one teacher for 191 students in the primary school.

Senior office-bearers of the ruling SAD (B) reside in village Dalmirkhera but they could not prompt the department to improve the fate of the primary school. Here too, one teacher is posted for 174 students. Bhangarkhera has got 133 students but the only teacher there had proceeded on maternity leave. In Dhaani Tumbarbhan, one teacher was posted for 46 students but she prefers to avail long leave. The department was "kind" enough in posting two teachers for 165 students in the government primary school at village Panniwala Mahla, located near the Punjab-Rajasthan border, but one of them often goes abroad to spend long leave with relations, the villagers rued. The twin villages Rampura-Narainpura is also located on the edge of the inter-state border. It has 272 students in the primary school but only one teacher is available here.Village Usmankhera has one teacher for 134 students.

An interesting situation prevails in village Seetogunno that has got the status of sub-tehsil. There was one teacher for 376 students in the primary school but the same has been promoted as block elementary education officer. The students have no option other than to play on the dusty ground.

Dangarkhera, linked to the National Highway 10, is famous because of Basanti Mata Mandir. Politicians have been boasting of tremendous development that they claimed to have made but none could increase the number of teacher from one for 133 students. Similarly there is one teacher each for 361 students in primary section at village Khubban. The village has the distinction of having only one lecturer also for Plus I and II classes in the senior secondary school. Bazidpur Bhoma had two teachers for 156 students but one of them was transferred.

The teachers were required to attend Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan seminars and meetings, training camps under the Padho Punjab campaign, revision of electoral rolls besides other non academic duties. 

Surplus teachers moved to urban areas, rural students may suffer
Our Correspondent

Abohar, August 10
The “ways and means” being adopted by the babudom at the district headquarters to adjust the surplus teachers of the government schools in the urban areas may defeat the idea behind the much-hyped rationalisation of staff plan, well placed sources said.

The head of a government senior secondary school here confirmed that two teachers were declared surplus by him strictly in compliance of the instructions received under the ongoing rationalization scheme but the district office has posted them in local schools instead of filling the vacancies in the villages. Interestingly, the head of the new school where one of them was posted had never asked for more staff as the existing teachers were not having sufficient students there, the sources added.

As per information, four teachers in a government high school here were declared surplus due to fall in strength of students but they too were adjusted by the district office of the department in other local schools even when they were not required as per norms laid down for distribution of work.  Education minister Upinderjit Kaur in a statement on August 4 had informed that about 2830 teachers who were at present posted in urban schools will have to go to villages to fill the vacancies. While promising to implement rational and transparent policy in the ongoing rationalisation process she had further confirmed that out of surplus teachers 2010 were working in their home district for last so many years. They would be shifted to other districts if vacancies were not available in the home district.

Assuring to streamline the policy on transfer and promotion of teachers in the government school, the minister was quoted saying that priority would be given to border villages, Kandi area and backward sub divisions while filling the vacancies.

But all that the minister proposed was being disposed by the babudom in this district, well informed sources regretted. The students in the rural schools will continue to suffer due to shortage of staff, sources said.

Veterans gather at state-level rally
Ex-servicemen demand better pension scale
Our Correspondent

Abohar boy saves Britisher’s life
Our Correspondent

Abohar, August 10
Chandan Monga, a former student of the LRS DAV Senior Secondary School, brought laurels to his alma mater as well his parents, Shammi and Lalita, here by saving a Britisher's life.

Principal Kusum Khungar informed today that Chandan, at present working with IBM at New Delhi, was quizzing UK- based client Cuming Scott online on July 24 at about 9.30 pm on some important issue. All of a sudden, Chandan felt the client had started behaving abnormally. After a few minutes, it appeared that he fumbled and distanced on the voice receiving instrument. Showing extraordinary presence of mind, Chandan managed to procure Scott's second contact number from his PN screen but voice mail was found operative there.

Having spent about 50 minutes on the exercise, Chandan sought guidance from senior leaders Neeraj K. Mehto, Nikhil Sarin and Kunal Utreja. They advised him to ring the emergency phone number 112. Meanwhile, they contacted ambulance services at 999 in UK. Chandan was able to locate contact number of Scott's neighbourers by going through the details of the account of the client. The neighbourer, Mathew, responded immediately. He was requested to check in Scott's residence. Mathew rushed and found Scott lying in unconscious on the floor. Meanwhile, the ambulance also reached there and provided medical assistance.

Chandan has been declared as an "IBM Hero". The management has honoured him with a citation and a medal. The heroic deed is filling up Chandan's mail box regularly with words of appreciation. 

It’s boom time for financial experts
Anil Jerath
Tribune News Service

Bathinda, August 10
It's boom time for financial experts. Chartered accountants have become the most sought-after professionals these days, thanks to the "difficulty" the businessmen claim they are facing in understanding VAT.

Vineet Jindal, a city-based chartered accountant, says, "People are not clear about the intricacies involved in VAT. So, it is quite obvious that they have to rely on professionals like chartered accountants. We are expecting a business growth of 15 to 20 per cent."

Basically, the assessees coming within the purview of VAT are facing problems related to billing, sales number, TIN conversion, VAT returns and VAT audit. "For taking Input Tax Credit (ITC), an assessee has to file party-wise purchase details. Also, people want to avoid hassles in getting TIN, and filing VAT returns, as the paper work has increased enormously because of complex formalities," says Sanjay Singla.

Confirming an approximate 20 per cent rise in their income, a Muktsar-based chartered accountant, Ravi Arora, says, "VAT is a self-assessment tax, and as people are not clear about the minute details, we are there to help them. Moreover, no one wants to be on the wrong side of the things in the very beginning. So, they have to take the help of the professionals."

He also adds, "With the introduction of VAT regime, paperwork is going to increase, and the veracity of the returns will be checked through random or selected scrutiny."

However, these financial experts caution that the fear on the part of businessmen vis-à-vis the new type of tax is rather misplaced. The new tax regime is a modified phase of MODVAT and CENVAT, and it would help simplify the indirect tax system, reduce tax evasion, bring transparency and enhance tax neutrality, they say.

Moreover, with the introduction of software like Tally 7.2, the evaluation of VAT has been simplified manifold, add the experts.

Dairy farming catches fancy of farmers

Bathinda, August 10
Farmers in Bathinda no longer see dairy farming as a part-time venture and instead have taken it up as a full-fledged profession.

"Farmers are now quite keen on running a dairy farm on large-scale, which helps in cutting the cost of milk production considerably and helps in getting remunerative rates," Inderjit Singh, director, dairy department, said here recently.

Banks also do not hesitate in providing finance to fund such projects, he said.

Traditionally, Bathinda farmers used to have just 10 to 20 cattle per farm. "But now farmers have started owning dairy farms with 100 to 200 cattle for producing milk in bulk," he said.

Singh expected that in next three years, a single dairy farm would boast of 400 to 500 cattle. Banks have also started showing interest in lending money for big dairy farming projects. The department has also decided to encourage farmers for having cattle of pure breeds such as Holstein-Freisian. — TNS

Red Cross holds Mela Tiyan Da

Barnala, August 10
To celebrate the Teej festival in the month of Sawan, Mela Tiyan Da was held at the local Bansal Palace by the Red Cross society, Barnala. Kamlesh Mehta, chairperson of the Red Cross society inaugurated the festival by lighting the traditional lamp. The girl students from various schools participated in folk song, dances and kikli competitions.

The women folk were invited for dana chadana (sorting the grain) competition . The ladies performed giddha. Many ladies came over to the fest in traditional clothes wearing ghaghra, choli, saggi phul. Mehndi stalls were also set up. A stall of articles belonging to the ancient Punjabi culture was also set up.

The ladies and children took part with great enthusiasm as most children from urban areas were not aware of the ornaments and clothes being used by Punjabi girls. The utensils, tokni, haara, earthen big tandoor for making saags and pulses, dhaula, chati, channa madani for churning the curd was also deployed.

The children eagerly enquired about the use of these articles.— OC