Shimla, October 26
The state information commission has taken a serious view of the failure of the district panchayat officer, Kangra, to comply with its directions and slapped a penalty of Rs 25,000 on him for “mala fide denial” of information to an applicant under the Right to Information Act.

It is the maximum penalty that can be imposed under the Act for not furnishing information within the stipulated time or knowingly giving incorrect, incomplete or misleading information. The commission found public information officer (PIO) Chain Singh, who happens to be the district head of the Panchayati Raj Department, had faltered in supplying information in respect of three applications filed by an applicant and the total penalty worked out to Rs 1.14 lakh.

However, as the complainant had clubbed the three applications into a single complaint in the appeal, the consolidated penalty had to limited to the maximum permissible limit under the Act.

The order was passed by State Information Commissioner S.S. Parmar on the appeal-cum-complaint filed by Parkash Chand after the PIO failed to furnish information regarding the latest position of some cases pending against the pradhan and the up-pradhan of the Jangla gram panchayat.

“Chain Singh has shown less than adequate attention to the proceedings under the RTI Act. He had been absenting himself for no cause and did not even care to explain the in-consistencies and vagueness pointed out by the applicant in the information supplied to him. He repeatedly failed to comply with the directions of the commission even after being explained the serious implications of his actions in obstructing free and smooth flow of information to a citizen. His act is unpardonable and deserves no leniency,” he observed.

The commission has allowed the officer to pay the amount of penalty in three instalments.

Mubarakpur, October 26
The failure of PWD officials to put signboards near the areas where roads had got damaged during the monsoon is leading to accidents.

An accident in which a truck slid into about 25-foot-deep ditch near Mubarakpur yesterday was a clear illustration of the fact.

Though there was no casualty in the accident, it once again showed that carelessness on the part of officials could pose threat to the lives of commuters.

A patch of the Mubarakpur-Gagret road had got washed away due to floods during the monsoon. This created a ditch along the road.

The PWD has started reconstruction of the embankment.

However, commuters have to be very careful while crossing that area carefully to pass the damaged road.

Officials of the Public Works Department have not put any reflectors etc. to alert the commuters during night hours.

Those present at the spot said the truck driver probably failed to notice the damaged portion and the vehicle slid into the ditch.

Shimla, October 26
Road connectivity continues to be the top priority of the government despite the fact that the state had achieved the distinction of having the highest road density of 53 km per 100 sq km among all hill states in the country.

The ongoing Rs 1,365.43-crore state road project under which 435-km length of state highways and major district roads is being widened and upgraded, besides ensuring proper maintenance of 2,000-km of road length, will bring about qualitative improvement in the road network. The roads being upgraded include the 44.82-km Mehatpur-Una-Amb road, 106.19-km Una-Barsar-Jahu-Bhambla-Kalkhar road, 80.68-km Theog-Kotkhai-Hatkoti-Rohru road, 41.95-km Sarkaghat-Ghumarwin road, 39.17-km Ranital-Kotla road, 71.74-km Kumarhatti-Sarahan-Nahan road, 24-km Draman Sihunta roads and the 26.80-km Bhawarana-Lambagaon road.

The upgrading of the Theog-Hatkoti road has been awarded to a Chinese company that will complete the Rs 228-crore project in the next three years. It involves construction of 15 bridges, 280 culverts and 6.5-km retaining walls, 5.5-km covered footpath and 30 rain shelters.

Apart from this, an amount of Rs 400 crore was being spent under the Prime Minister Gram Sadak Yojana, Rs 200 crore under NABARD-funded projects and Rs 110 crore under the national highway project. Out of total 3,243 panchayats in the state, 2,902 stood connected through roads.

Work is in progress to connect 300 panchayats by roads by the end of the current financial year. All villages with a population of more than 500 will be connected by road by the end of the current financial year. Villages with population more than 250 persons will be connected by road by 2012.

Recently, two more national highways, Nagrota Bagwan-Ranital-Mubarakpur and Paonta Sahib-Shillai-Hatkoti, were sanctioned for the state, taking their total number to 11. The government has proposed five new national highways.

Mandi, October 26
The District Red Cross society, Mandi, spends more on “wasteful expenditure” than on assistance of poor patients and needy physically challenged patients for whom the society seeks donations from different private and public organisations. The Right to Information (RTI) Act has exposed the misuse of funds by the society for the period 2007-2008.

Though the Red Cross sectary claimed that the society was devoted to the cause of serving needy physically challenged and poor patients from time to time, a “major share of the income is going into fitting salary bills of its secretary and 18 lower class employees, expenses of vehicles and other wasteful expenditures”.

According to the RTI, information given by the Red Cross society to RTI activist Lawan Thakur, the society has an income of Rs 82.6 lakh out of which just a sum of Rs 10 lakh was used for assisting poor patients in 2007-2008.

On the other hand, raising needle of suspicion on misuse of society’s funds is that the society claimed that it spent Rs 10.4 lakh on four vehicles “out of which two vehicles were out of service” in 2007-2008.

Ironically, the society spent Rs 4.12 lakh on administrative expenses, Rs 13,714 on postage stamps, Rs 33,277 on office expenses and Rs 17,719 on miscellaneous items, the RTI revealed.

Interestingly, the secretary’s pay was revised twice this year between January and August. “It was Rs 17,832 in January, which was revised to Rs 18,540 and now revised to Rs 19,541 in August,” the RTI revealed.

On the other hand, 17 other employees of the society got monthly salaries ranging from Rs 1,000-Rs 2,820. “Most employees do not even get the minimum wages as per the norms of the Minimum Wages Act,” Thakur said.

Thakur said he had sought information from the RTI twice, in June and then in October, but the society did not give him specific information. “The society must be made transparent and wasteful expenditure is very high, making misuse of donations in the name of poor patients, he charged.

The DC, Mandi, said the Mandi society had grown over the years and had spent Rs 50 lakh alone this year on the welfare of patients and there is no misuse of funds. The RTI information is correct, but pay to the secretary is decided by the society and must have included some interim relief etc., he added.

Shimla, October 26
Himachal Pradesh has been declared the second-best state in the country in e-governance.

An evaluation of the use of information technology (IT) in government institutions and providing various IT-enabled services to the people was carried out by Mumbai-based India Tech Foundation.

Speaker of the Lok Sabha Som Nath Chatterjee will give away the award to the state during the 10th International Summit and Expo Power-2008 to be held on November 8 in Mumbai.

Secretary, information and technology, B.K. Aggarwal, said the award for e-governance had been bagged by the state for best IT-related initiatives and providing efficient, transparent, cost-effective and speedy services to the citizens. The state was judged on the criticality of IT usage, improvement in service, impact on quality and productivity, impact on society and innovation in terms of reach and replicability, operational costs and decision-making.

He said Himachal was the first state in the country to launch statewide area network (HIMSWAN) and provide a network operation centre for unified placement of data for the entire state at one place. About 3,000 offices at tehsil and block level would be connected under the HIMSWAN project in future for which a state data centre would also be separately set up.

In all, 69 employment exchanges and sub employment exchanges had been computerised. A web-based job portal for employers, job-seekers and the employment department had been put in place and the functioning of labour offices was being computerised. He said 1,186 gram panchayats had already been provided with computer hardware and computerisation of 40 police stations was being carried out under the CIPA programme.

Aggarwal said touch-screen kiosks had been set up at various places in the state to provide common interface for various activities and as many as 68,000 employees would be trained in IT-related services. The government was making amendments in recruitment and promotion rules in most departments to make IT literacy compulsory for promotion.

Dharamsala, October 26
The Dalai Lama has “lost hope of reaching an agreement with the present Chinese leadership over allowing more autonomy for the Buddhist region in Tibet” as there is no response from across the border regarding the next round of negotiations, an aide said here today.

“He (the Dalai Lama) has lost hope of reaching an agreement with the present Chinese leadership over allowing more autonomy for the Buddhist region in Tibet,” said Tenzin Taklha, joint secretary at the Dalai Lama’s office.

“The present situation over the autonomy issue indicates that the Chinese are not keen to address the issues realistically,” he added.

The parleys between the Dalai Lama’s envoys and the Chinese leadership, which resumed in September, 2002, have been aimed at allowing more autonomy to Tibet, but so far no major breakthrough has been achieved. The Nobel Peace laureate has called for a special session of Tibetan exiles next month to discuss the future of the Tibetan movement.

Taklha said: “There is a lack of positive response from China regarding the visit of the envoys for the eighth round of negotiations. But we are still hopeful of getting green light from the Chinese.” He denied media reports that the 73-year-old Dalai Lama was going into retirement.

“It’s wrong to say that the spiritual guru is going into retirement,” he said. “Karma Cheophel (speaker for the Tibetan government-in-exile) was wrongly quoted by a section of the media that the Dalai Lama had hinted that “he is now on full retirement”, Taklha said. The Dalai Lama made his first public address since undergoing gallstone surgery in Delhi here yesterday.

The eighth round of negotiations is important as during the last meeting in July, the Chinese were preoccupied with the Beijing Olympics.

Special envoy Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari, who participated in the last round of talks in China, had said, “In the course of our discussion (seventh round), we were compelled to candidly convey to our counterparts that in the absence of serious and sincere commitment on their part, the continuation of the present dialogue process would serve no purpose.”

This would be the third meeting between the two sides since a March crackdown on protesters in Tibet. The Dalai Lama has been following a “middle-path” policy that demands “greater autonomy” for Tibetans, rather than complete independence. The Nobel laureate, along with many of his supporters, fled Tibet and took refuge in India in 1959. — IANS

Subathu, October 26
Pinegrove School celebrated its 18th annual day here today. PWD minister Thakur Gulab Singh presided over the function.

Students presented a colourful cultural programme on the occasion. An art and craft exhibition was also organised.

A group of students from Penglais School, Wales, England, who are here under an exchange programme, also performed on the occasion. An item tracing the history of the school, including achievements during the last year, was well appreciated.

Rohit Bansal, Tanika Sharma and Amit Sehrawat of class XII and Yudhvir Singh, Eeshita Manchanda and Paramdeep Kaur Paul of class X were awarded gold, silver and bronze medals in their respective board exams. The proficiency in sports medal was awarded to Kirat Bajwa, Jagjot Singh Grewal and Jyotiraditya Kapoor for 2008, while Chinar House lifted the Cock House trophy and the academics trophy.

Other distinguished guests present on the occasion included MLA Rajiv Sehzal and Lieut-Gen Kamal Davar.

Dalhousie, October 26
The Yog Manav Vikas Trust (YMVT), Banikhet, through its ‘shiksha sahayata abhiyan’, has decided to launch an intervention programme with the objective of improving the standard of education and foundation of poor children mainly from the villages of this region, where even additional tuition facilities are not available and parents are mostly illiterate, less educated or busy earning livelihood for their family.

Chairperson of the trust Kiran Dodeja said here on Friday that under this programme, 13 centres were recently established by the trust at Kanda, Devidehra, Dhalog, Bagdhar, Maloora, Baroti (Duer), Airwan (Duer), Churi, Lothal, Durgathi, Shopan, Dughar and Brangal villages of Chamba district.

Two such centres were opened at Devidehra and Kandi villages last year by assigning the responsibility of teaching to youths and since then encouraging performances and improvements have been observed on monthly basis. Report is also taken from teachers of the government schools on actual performance and standards of children, the chairperson informed.

Under this abhiyan, education help centres had been established in villages for providing additional classes in the evening by unemployed bright youth for providing additional education to weak and other students of government schools, the chairperson said; adding that the unemployed, but intelligent boys and girls of class XII and graduates were given the responsibility for such additional classes either in panchayat ghar or school itself or at common premises within the village.

The chairperson said necessary assistance and reading material was provided by the trust to the teachers.

Shimla, October 26
Within 18 months of having achieved the distinction of being the first “fully banked” state in the country, Himachal Pradesh is grappling with the problem of dormant accounts.

Under the drive for “total financial inclusion”, all 12,13,276 households in the state, as on March 2007, were brought within the banking network. Norms were diluted and as many as 81,371 “no frills” accounts were opened to ensure that there was no un-banked household in the state. However, a majority of accounts have not been operated as banking culture is alien to villagers. According to official sources, over 50 per cent of the accounts may have gone dormant and the banks have now been asked to provide details of accounts in which no transaction has taken place over a period of six months.

The problem of dormant accounts is also being faced in respect of self-help groups (SHGs) which are provided credit for income-generating activities under micro-financing. There are 45,000 SHGs, but the problem is more pronounced in respect of groups comprising persons from Below Poverty Line (BPL) families. Out of the total, 8,000 such SHGs, about 800 have become inoperative.

Even in case of other SHGs, a number of accounts have been rendered dormant after the completion of income-generating activity for which credit was provided.

Abject lack of financial literacy and banking habit among rural folks and inaccessibility of banks are the main reasons behind a large number of accounts becoming dormant.

The state has 1,305 bank branches, which means that on average a branch serves a modest population of only 4,700 as against 14,000 for the country. However, inaccessibility is still a major constraint because of the sparse rural habitations and difficult hill terrain.

The rural area is served by about 1,000 branches, one for every three panchayats.

A large number of villagers have to travel a distance ranging from 10 to 20 km to avail themselves of the banking services.

As per norms, the hill state is already “over-banked” and there is no justification for opening more branches.

The RBI has now given nod to a scheme under which banks will appoint local unemployed youth as business correspondents and business facilitators to take mobile e-banking to the doorsteps of rural populace. They will be given handheld PoS (point of sale) machines using which they will help villagers to deposit and withdraw money.

On average, one business correspondent will maintain around 750 accounts. The banks want the government to deliver a basket of social services like payment of pensions and wages under the National Rural Employment Scheme and also share some of the cost of rural e-banking to make it a viable proposition.

Shimla, October 26
The state committee of the CPM has blamed the Dhumal government for woes of the employees of public-sector undertaking Agro-Packaging India Limited who have not been paid salaries for the past six months.

The party rued the fact that instead of running the Gummah carton factory, the BJP government, which was wedded to economic policies of neo-liberalism, decided to sell it off to a private firm. As per the proposal the entire staff was to be absorbed in various government departments, but even after a prolonged exercise, which had been going on for the past 18 months, the employees were languishing in the same undertaking.

Unable to sell the factory, the government was now asking employees to explore alternatives and it was not prepared to release their salaries. The party demanded immediate release of their salaries so that the employees who had been put to financial hardship without any fault on their part could celebrate Diwali happily.

It also urged the government to make efforts to restart the factory, which was set up with the assistance of the Central Government, and ensure its full capacity utilisation. It should explore the possibility of making carton for various factories located at Baddi and other places in the state, it said.

Mandi, October 26
Former Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and state Congress president Kaul Singh Thakur are face to face with each other over what partymen call a new power struggle that unleashed within the party over the issue whether V.S. Mankotia be included in the party or not.

Virbhadra Singh today broke his silence on Kaul Singh Thakur’s shrewd move to prop up an anti-Virbhadra Singh front within the state Congress as he has been nurturing an anti-Virbhadra Singh lobby and has invoked “70-age bar” principal for partymen.

The whole tug of war has started within the Congress as the anti-Virbhadra Singh lobby was trying to rope former BSP president V.S. Mankotia, who is not linked with the Virbhadra Singh camp, revealed party insiders.

Though Mankotia has announced his retirement from active politics, there are hot political talks within the state Congress that anti-Virbhadra Singh lobby was roping in Mankotia to strengthen anti-Virbhadra Singh front.

Virbhadra, who was here for a short time on his way to Baijnath for a private function, said Kaul Singh should clarify as to whom he was referring to from various media that the Congress leaders should give up “aham” ego.

He owes an explanation to all senior leaders through media on this,” he asserted.

On his being fielded as a candidate from Mandi in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, Virbhadra said this related to him and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi. If she asks him to do so he will not hesitate, he added.

Commenting on this Thakur said he had only talked about the fact that the organisations were run though discipline and through ego problem of particular leader. Virbhadra Singh’s reaction to this only proves the point.

Kaul Singh said 70 years age bar principal was being observed in Jaipur election. However, he had no personal agenda other than the agenda of the party.

Mankotia had spoken venom on Virbahdra Singh and released the controversial CD during the Hamirpur Lok Sabha byelections last year, which the BJP won.

Shimla, October 26
State Youth Congress (YC) president Manmohan Katoch has constituted a 33-member team of office-bearers and appointed presidents of eight district units with the approval of national president Ashok Tanwar. The team has eight vice-presidents and eight general secretaries, 14 secretaries and three spokespersons. Those appointed are:

Vice-presidents: Amit Nanda, Anirudh Singh, Dhan Negi, Yupender Mishra, Suneesha Devi, Amarjeet Singh, Vivek Sharma, and Hemant Sharma.

General secretaries: Raghav Singh, Jagdish Thakur, Rakesh Dharwal, Virender Singh, Sushant Thakur, Dharmender Shrma, Neenu Sharma and Manish Thakur.

Secretaries: Dinesh Azad, Vinay Sharma, Liaquat Ali Khan, Shivani, Suneel Kumar, Yogesh Sharma, Vijay Kanav, Shivani Thakur, Varun Chandel, Rama Shankar, Jaideep Sharma, Radhika Negi, Aseem Chaudhary and Promila Devi.

Spokespersons: Suneel Sharma, Sanjeev Siani and Priyanka.

District presidents: Shivang Sharma (Chamba), Arun Mehta (Sirmaur), Shamsher Singh (Solan), Veer Singh (Kullu), Vikrant (Una), Anjana Dhiman (Bilaspur), Neelam Thakur (Hamirpur) and Suresh Kardo (Lahaul-Spiti).

Nurpur, October 26
One person was killed and one injured when a speeding truck hit a motorcycle coming from the opposite side at Kandwal near here today.

Motorcyclist Ashwani Kumar of Bhadwar village and pillion rider Ajay Kumar were seriously injured in the accident. Ashwani was taken to the civil hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries. Ajay was admitted to a private hospital at Pathankot.

Truck driver Sajivan Kumar of Drang village has been arrested and the vehicle impounded. A case under Sections 279, 304(A) and 337 of the IPC has been registered.