Nawanshahr, February 20
Unruly scenes prevailed for about half an hour at the meeting of the local municipal council. The ruckus was on the issue of spending of a grant of Rs 2 crore, provided by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on February 5 for carrying out development works here on Friday.

The councillors of the Congress and the SAD-BJP alliance raised slogans against
each other.

It is pertinent to mention here that the reins of the local municipal council are in the hands of the Congress.

A virtual tug of war is on between the Congress and SAD-BJP councillors for the utilisation of the development grant.

The chaos had begun when a Congress councillor raised the issue of a larger share of the development grant allegedly being spent in the wards represented by the ruling SAD-BJP councillors.

The allegation was sharply refuted by SAD-BJP councillors Makhan Singh Grewal, Param Singh Khalsa and Shiv Kumar Tejpal who said a proposal was being formulated for the grant to be equally shared among all the wards.

Besides, priority in improving the condition of the dilapidated roads was being
given in the plan without any discrimination at the political level, pleaded the
SAD-BJP councillor.

Soon the arguments turned into an uproar and the Congress councillors, led by MC president Rajinder Chopra, started raising slogans against the Badal government.

Later, the Congress councillors boycotted the meeting. It is perhaps for the first time in history that an MC president has boycotted a meeting convened by himself.

Rajinder Chopra, when contacted, accused the SAD-BJP councillors of effecting changes in the tenders released for carrying out development works using their political clout.

Nawanshahr, February 20
Keeping in view the ensuing Lok Sabha poll, the Congress-led UPA government has been trying to woo farmers and the Badal government in Punjab has been clamouring to champion the interests of the farmers.

The ground realties, however, seem altogether different from the claims. The amount of difficulties, which farmers have to face in procuring hybrid sunflower seed, can be gauged from the fact that farmers start queueing up in front of seed stores as early as 5 am in the hope of getting seed.

Long queues can be seen outside seed stores near Sloh Road Chowk and Garhshankar Road here at about 8 am.

Some of the farmers, Gurinder Singh of Bheen village, Pardeep Singh of Mehatpur Ulladhani, Rinku Chaudhary of Balachaur, Paramjit Singh and Amritpal Singh of Denowal and Avtar Singh of Mukandpur, said though the government had been asking them to adopt diversification in agriculture, it hadn’t been providing the requisite quantity of seed and fertilisers, etc. in time.

“Due to the errant supply of the hybrid sunflower seed, the sowing of the sunflower crop has been delayed by two weeks in the district, which would further affect the sowing of paddy,” they rued, while alleging that the hybrid sunflower seed was available in the black market.

The market price of the hybrid seed of standard companies like Pioneer, Advanta, Krishidhan, etc. ranges from Rs 800 to Rs 900 per packet of 2 kg, but in the black market it is available at Rs 2,000 to Rs 2,500, alleged farmers.

Seed store owner Uttam Singh attributed the problem to the short supply of seed from the southern states.

Chief agriculture officer Dr Jasbir Singh Parmar, when contacted on the phone, attributed the problem of scarcity of hybrid sunflower seed to “crop failure” at the nurseries of the companies in the southern states.

Besides, the area under cultivation of sunflower in the district has increased from 1,000 acres last year to about 1,500 acres this year, said Parmar while claiming that out of the total quantity of 7,500 kg of the seed required in the district, 6,000 kg had been made available to the farmers.

Jalandhar, February 20
Certain tough resolutions passed by the municipal corporation in a House meeting held on September 26 to ensure better traffic regulation, cleanliness and strict implementation of environment-friendly laws are yet to get government approval.

The MC House had passed decisions on enhancing malba fee, charging penalty from those dumping concrete outside their boundary walls, depositing security for rainwater harvesting, levying penalties in tow-away zones and starting self-assessment system for compoundability of completed buildings but none of these proposals have been given a go-ahead by the state government.

The files were reportedly received back by the MC officials with certain riders mentioning that these were all policy decisions which could be taken at the government level only.

“If such decisions are to be passed these would be passed for all five MCs jointly,” local bodies officials are said to have put the point.

Mayor Rakesh Rathour said certain objections had been raised by the government officials in this regard.

“We normally have 100 plus items on our agenda and the government officials insist that we list just 50. They sometimes even delay approvals of certain technical points,” he said clarifying that those harsh decisions were yet to get a green signal.

Officials of the town-planning section revealed that the government officials wanted more elaborate details of the proposals while terming them as policy decisions out of the purview of the MC House.

“We have clarified our stand on the matter twice and are waiting for the reply,” said officials of the town planning section.

In fact, MC officials were so certain about getting these passed that they issued public notices in this regard and set deadline of December 15 for implementation.

The House had called for the imposition of a fine of Rs 200 on the owners of two-wheelers, Rs 300 for three-wheelers and Rs 400 for four-wheelers parked along the roadside in any of the three tow-away zones in the city.

The other decisions included charging Rs 5,000 as penalty for throwing malba outside the boundaries of the premises and mandatory Rs 2 lakh refundable security from the owners of a new building for rainwater harvesting system installation at the time of sanction of maps by the MC.

Jalandhar, February 20
Members of the Safai Sevak Union Punjab today staged a protest rally in front of the residence of local bodies minister Manoranjan Kalia in support of their long-pending demand of regularisation of contract safai workers.

Addressing the gathering, union president Prakash Chand said the safai workers were forced to work in deplorable conditions in the absence of proper kits for them.

“In case the government failed to take notice of our grievances we would launch a statewide strike in the coming days,” he said.

Jalandhar, February 20
The night temperatures continued to rise in Punjab as the days become warmer. The minimum temperature at Amritsar rose by two degrees to settle at 9.8°C, two degrees above normal.

The minimum temperature at Halwara rose by four degrees to settle at 10.4°C, two degrees above normal. However, the minimum temperature at Adampur dropped by four degrees and it was recorded at 8°C.

The minimum temperature in the border town of Pathankot rose to 14.6°C, while at Bhatinda in the Malwa belt it went up to 10.8°C.

The Met Office has forecast clear dry weather in Punjab over the next 24 hours. The night temperatures will remain more or less the same. — UNI

Batala, February 20
On the initiative taken by Dr Edward Mash, principal, Baring Union Christian College (BUCC), and Dr Samuel Gill, coordinator, BUCC youth club, an annual inter-college youth festival was organised today at the open air theatre on the college campus.

Students of various institutions from Batala participated in competitions of songs, folk songs, political recitation, rangoli, flower arrangement, painting, fancy dress, solo dance and mehandi.

Dr Edward Mash welcomed chief guest Inder Yash Bhatti, additional deputy commissioner, Taran Tarn, and participants. Kanwal Grewal, a Punjabi pop singer, entertained the audience with his melodies numbers.

In the political recitation competition, Ritika from R.R. Bawa DAV College for Girls, Kuljeet Kaur from BUC College and Aman from Shivalik College got first, second and third positions, respectively.

In the folk song competition, Raman Sagar from BUC College, Navdeep from Shivalik College, Anju from Hastshilp College bagged the first, second and third positions, respectively. In the sketching competition, first prize was bagged by Pallawi Kalia, second by Jatinder Kaur of HastShilap College, and third by Varun Sareen of BUCC.

Gurpreet Kaur of R.R. Bawa DAV College for Girls, got first prize in mehandi competition and Simandeep Kaur from the same college won the flower arrangement competition. Simrandeep Kaur also got first prize in the rangoli competition.