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Chautala gives oust-UPA call
Ajay Chautala has a dig at Third Front
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LS Polls
Cong Plan
Thin presence of BJP workers rattles alliance
Revenue from liquor soars; so does irony
FCI to hire storage space for wheat
Sikh bodies to take part in congregation
Longest Performance
New uniform likely for expectant cops
Seminar on women
4 killed in accidents
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Chautala gives oust-UPA call
Karnal, March 8 Addressing the “vijay sankalp rally” of the INLD-BJP alliance here, he lashed out at the UPA and the state government for “ignoring farmers, misusing government funds and perpetuating corruption”. Chautala said all corrupt people would be booked if the INLD-BJP returned to power and misuse of public funds in publicising the so-called achievements of the government would be probed. Terming the MSP of Rs 1,250 per quintal for wheat as far too inadequate, he promised to raise the same to Rs 1,400 per quintal. He also alleged large-scale bungling in the allotment of plots free of cost to below poverty line families and said a large number of ineligible and undeserving persons had managed to grab the plots. Referring to anomalies in the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission report, Chautala promised that the report would be implemented in toto without any changes. Ridiculing the move of Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda to set up a museum in the name of his father Ranbir Singh Hooda, he said the government was wasting public money by issuing advertisements in newspapers for getting documents related to Hooda. Having a dig at the Congress, he said a party which could not get the personal belongings of Mahatma Gandhi and had to bank on liquor baron Vijay Mallya to get the same for the country should stay away from such misadventures. Accusing the Congress government of playing with religious sentiments of Hindus, Chautala said firstly it denied the existence of Ramsethu, then questioned the very existence of Lord Rama and finally came out with the logic that Lord Rama himself dismantled the sethu. State BJP president Atam Prakash Manchanda criticised the UPA government for its “failure” to contain terrorism and improve the condition of farmers. While four Indians were ranked among the richest persons in the globe, the condition of over 70 per cent people was miserable, he added. Former Union Minister ID Swami urged the people to vote for the NDA and not bother about the candidates to ensure that LK Advani was next Prime Minister. Blaming the UPA for ignoring the rural economy and not taking steps to protect the interests of farmers, he said the Vajpayee government spent 70 per cent funds on development of rural areas. State INLD president Ashok Arora pooh-poohed the claims of the Haryana government of being number 1 and challenged the Chief Minister to hold the Assembly polls simultaneously with the Lok Sabha elections. Haryana was number 1 only in corruption, irregularities, crime and perpetrating atrocities on poor people, he added. |
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Ajay Chautala has a dig at Third Front
Hisar, March 8 Speaking to mediapersons in Ladwa village near here today, he said earlier the Third Front was projecting Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati as its nominee for the post of Prime Minister. Later, they backed out and mentioned several other alternatives. He said the so-called constituents of the Third Front had no ideological commonality and these political outfits were merely trying to put together a platform to grab power in case of a fractured verdict by the electorate in the Lok Sabha polls. Chautala said there was, however, no question of the Third Front coming anywhere near grabbing power at the Centre after the elections. He said the INLD would go to the electorate with the issue of the SYL Canal as its main poll plank. This issue, he said, affected the interest of every single Haryanvi and his party gave it the highest priority. History was witness to the fact that progress was made on this important issue only when the INLD and its earlier avatars were returned to power, he added. He said the Congress had been engaged in a so-called poverty-alleviation exercise since Independence. It raised the bogey of poverty at the time of elections and made tall promises which were conveniently forgotten immediately after the polls. He said the Congress and its allies had always exploited the poor for political ends and it was not interested in ameliorating their lot. Besides the poor, the Congress always used the issues of caste and creed to exploit the gullible voters. The INLD leader said there was no truth in the Hooda government’s claims that the state occupied the top slot in development. He said the publicity campaign launched by the government was a mere eyewash and it lacked any substance. He said development was limited only to a particular area in Haryana and it did not mean the rest of the state was developing at the same pace. |
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LS Polls
Chandigarh, March 8 The party had already announced its nine candidates. It had not named its nominee from the Sirsa seat so far. Announcing the candidature of Rajesh Vaid from Sirsa at a successful “Balmiki sammelan” organised by the BSP in Jind, party’s national general secretary Mann Singh Manhera, who is also the in charge of the party affairs in the state, said the BSP would contest the next Lok Sabha elections in Haryana on its own. It would not enter into an alliance with any party. Referring to recent newspaper reports, which had said that Bishnoi was in touch with the BSP leadership through the Left parties for a possible alliance, Manhera said “no one approached us for an alliance nor did we approach anyone.” He described as “humbug” the news reports, which had suggested that the BSP had put a condition before the HJC that the two parties would head the next government in the state in turn. He said though the Assembly elections were still a year away, the BSP had already decided to contest these elections also on
its own. Manhera said his party believed in the welfare of all communities. Therefore, it had fielded its candidates from different communities. Even for the two reserved seats of Ambala and Sirsa, the BSP had fielded representatives of “B” and “A” categories of the Scheduled Castes, respectively. He said Vaid was not only a representative of “A” category of the Scheduled Castes, he also represented the working class. He claimed that Vaid was given the ticket on the recommendations of trade unions. Vaid is an office-bearer of the Devi Lal University Teachers Association, Sirsa. Wooing “A” category of the Scheduled Castes, the BSP leader reminded them that when the Gohana violence had taken place, no national leader except Mayawati had come there. During the next Assembly Among those who were present were Dev Raj Diwan, party nominee from Sonepat, Arjun Singh, MLA, and a youth leader, Ravi
Choudhary. |
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Cong Plan
Chandigarh, March 8 While the “Karyakarta Samman Yatra”, covering 12 districts, started from Kalka and concluded at Rewari, the campaign committee is all set to shift gear. From holding workers’ meetings to addressing public meetings, the campaign committee will field Rahul Gandhi as its star campaigner even in Haryana. “With elections being announced, our focus will be to reach out to the public instead of the workers. We will hold public meetings at the district headquarters and rallies at the divisional headquarters. Leaders from the Centre will campaign for the party besides Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, who will also attend these rallies. However, Rahul Gandhi will be our star campaigner. We are in the process of finalising dates with the top leaders,” says chairman of state Congress campaign committee Venod Sharma. Though infighting within the local leadership has been the sore point of the recently concluded first phase of campaign, the party’s leadership is convinced that the bickering will end once the candidates are finalised. The party top brass in the state is in high spirits for having achieved the three-pronged objective with which the first phase of campaigning was initiated. If the “social engineering” agenda of the Bahujan Samaj Party was a challenge, the Congress is of the opinion that the presence of Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee president Phool Chand Mullana along with Sharma countered the Brahmin-Dalit combination projected by the BSP. Interestingly, the campaign committee targeted primarily non-Jat districts like Panchkula, Ambala, Karnal, Yamunanagar among others with the specific programme of tackling the USP (unique selling point) of the Haryana Janhit Party which markets itself as a non-Jat alternative. Thirdly, the party wanted to not only take its policies down to every worker to propagate these further but also to assess the impact of the Indian National Lok Dal’s (INLD) recent padyatra. It arrived at the conclusion that while the INLD gained little from its much-hyped march, the Congress energised its workers and sorted out any “differences within the extended family” to emerge as a united front. |
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Thin presence of BJP workers rattles alliance
Karnal, March 8 The crowds at the rally were below expectation due to a lukewarm response of BJP cadres and INLD workers overshadowed the show in spite of the fact that the BJP was expected to contest this seat. The apparent indifferent attitude of BJP cadres was considered as an endorsement of the general belief that party workers at the ground level have not fully reconciled to the alliance hammered out by top leaders of the two parties. Chautala is known for holding massive rallies but the response at today’s district-level rally did not match his earlier rallies. This should be cause of concern for the BJP which won the seat in 1998 and 1999 and hopes to wrest the seat this time with the support of INLD. Further, the party was divided over giving the ticket to ID Swami this time and names of state party chief Atam Prakash Manchanda, Niti Sen Bhatia and Shashi Pal Mehta were also being mentioned for this seat. |
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Change image of police, Guv asks women officers
Chandigarh, March 8 And, it was this that the first tugged at the heart strings of Haryana Governor Dr AR Kidwai, who gave the inaugural address at the national conference for women in the police, which began at the Indradhanush Auditorium, here today. He urged the women to change the image of the police force. Jija Hari Singh was the chairperson of the conference. If Kidwai prodded them to be catalysts in overhauling the image of the police, the women officers “networked” on a common platform to reach out to each other in times of need. Instrumental in launching an interactive website for women cops, DIG Abhilasha Bisht from Uttarakhand said they were hoping that more women in the police would register. “We started this in 2005 but have only 70 users. We, a group of women officers, address any queries posted on the website, counsel, help the staff down the line to redress any grievances they have. Hierarchy is no issue on the site and we are all a part of a family,” she maintained. Writer Matreyi Pushpa, who has stringed together stories of women police personnel from varied backgrounds in Haryana, said women who did make it to the police did so despite stiff opposition from their families and society. However, at the meet, country’s first woman police officer Kiran Bedi was conspicuous by her absence. Nobody seemed to miss her much despite the fact that she found special mention in Kidwai’s inaugural address. Sharing his experience of Bedi’s selection into the police force, Kidwai, who was on the panel of the UPSC then, said her choice of joining the police came as quite a surprise to the Commission. “She insisted on the IPS and we gave in to her choice because we could not discriminate. At the academy, when her stay presented another challenge, the Commission told the Home Secretary that she could take care of her security even with 80 men around if she wanted to be a police officer,” he narrated to the gathering. Organisers, when asked about Bedi’s absence, said an invitation had been sent out to her and they knew nothing beyond that. Bedi, it is learnt, had skipped the last meet as well on account of eye infection though she had chaired the first conference of the meet. The most telling statement for the day, however, came from Kanchan Chaudhary, the country’s only woman DGP. “We, as women, at any level, are constantly on inspection within the force. However, whether the men like us as bosses on not, they have to just lump it. A woman just needs to remember that she is taken by society the way she wants to be. It’s all a mind game and we are strong,” she remarks. |
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Revenue from liquor soars; so does irony
Gurgaon, March 8 Mahatma’s ideals of austerity, truthfulness and abstinence from alcohol notwithstanding, a representative of the Union Government claimed that they had asked Mallya to help it bring Bapu’s belongings home. Mallya, on the other hand, denied having acted on the government’s insistence. Barely a day after the episode, the state government proudly announced that it had earned higher revenue from the auction of English liquor vends. This, despite the fact, the state regime has recently vowed to follow the ideals of late freedom fighter and Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s father Ranbir Singh Hooda, who passed away Apart from being a Gandhian leader himself, late Ranbir Hooda was a staunch believer in the ideology of Arya Samaj, which extols the
virtues of abstinence from alcohol. What kind of tributes the state authorities wish to pay to the departed soul by devising new ways and means to promote liquor sales and earn higher revenue therefrom remains known to them only. For record sake, the state government earned Rs 63.56 crore more from the auction of English liquor vends in Gurgaon for the next financial year as compared to the current year. As per an official Press statement issued here yesterday, this time, the state government has auctioned liquor vends through tender bids which fetched it
higher revenue. The licence fee of Rs 109.38 crore was fixed by the state government for these English liquor vends in Gurgaon district, against which the government got revenue of Rs 172.94 crore through tender bidding. The auction was organised amidst tight security arrangements at the local John hall in the presence of Deputy Commissioner Deepti Umashankar and other senior officers of the district administration. The highest bidding of Rs 3.69 crore in English liquor was for a wine shop in the Galleria market here. It was for the first time that reservation in auction of liquor vends was given to the persons belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Backward Class (A) categories. |
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FCI to hire storage space for wheat
Chandigarh, March 8 The central food agency is expecting to procure 8 lakh metric tonnes (LMT) of wheat during the next two months. Official sources said with a steady movement of wheat stocks from the godowns of the FCI, they had 7.5 LMT of storage space available with them. “We are hoping to procure around 8 LMT of wheat stocks this year. By hiring 70,000 MT of space, we will be quite comfortable for storing the additional food stocks,” said Arun Kumar Gupta, general manager, FCI, Haryana. Earlier, with the corporations’ warehousing and covered and plinth (CAP) capacity being exhausted with wheat and rice stocks of the past two years, it had no space available to accommodate the wheat stocks to be procured in the coming season, which would begin next month. Since there had been negligible movement of stocks to other states in south India, the food agency was left with no space to procure wheat in the upcoming season. These states are supposed to lift stocks (meant for public distribution, food for work or under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan) on a quarterly basis, but they have not been doing so on the ground that there was not enough warehousing capacity in their own states. However, after the FCI officials here had taken this matter with the head office, they managed to offload 30 per cent of their existing stocks. The FCI has a total storage capacity of 23.18 lakh metric tonnes, including plinth storage of 3.20 lakh metric tonnes. Though FCI’s share in wheat procurement for the upcoming season is 10 per cent of the total market arrivals of 55 LMT, FCI officials said they could procure 15 per cent of the total wheat arrivals. Officials said the main problem in Haryana was that even the state government agencies involved in food grain procurement - HAFED, Haryana Warehousing Corporation, Food and Civil Supplies and Haryana Agro Industries Corporation, too, had no vacant space available to store foodgrain. Whatever spare capacity was there last year, had been used for storing paddy. |
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Sikh bodies to take part in congregation
Sirsa, March 8 Sant Baljit Singh Dadu of Dadu Sahib Gurdwara today told The Tribune that Sikh organisations had taken exception to the alleged efforts of the Sirsa district authorities to interfere in the religious affairs of the Sikhs. The district authorities had taken preventive measures apprehending
dera-Sikh clashes due to the proposed congregation and had banned Dadu’s entry into the village vide administrative orders issued
yesterday. Dadu said a meeting of the Sikh organisations was held today in Damdama Sahib Gurdwara near Bathinda under Jathedar Balwant Singh Nandgarh of Takht Damdama Sahib. “It has been decided that Jathedar Nandgarh will lead representatives of the Sikh organisations to Jhorar Rohi village on March 11 to participate in the two-day congregation in the village
gurdwara,” Dadu said. The others who participated in the meeting and confirmed their participation in the congregation were Sukhwinder Singh
Khalsa, president of the Guru Granth Sahib Satkar Sabha, Daljit Singh Bittu of the Panch Pardhani
Sabha, Bhai Baljinder Singh of the Ek Noor Khalsa Fauj and Nihang Sant Charat Singh, chief of the Taruna
Dal. Dadu said in another resolution passed by the Sikh organisations, it has been decided to launch a movement to close branches of Dera Sacha Sauda in Punjab from March 22, 2009, by sending Sikh jathas there. “The first jatha of 11 Sikhs will be sent to the Salabatpur dera on March 22,” Dadu
said. Dera Sacha Sauda, on the other hand, has reacted to the latest announcements of the Sikh organisations by saying that they were opposed to the vilification campaign against the dera in the name of religion by certain misguided elements. “We have regard for all religions, yet the actions of some self-proclaimed guardians of faith are engaging in activities bordering fratricidal subversion. We pray to the Almighty to grant them saner sense,” said Dr Aditya
Insan, spokesman for Dera Sacha Sauda. Meanwhile, members of the peace committee that visited Jhorar Rohi village to persuade the organisers to postpone the congregation were unable to get any concrete assurance from them. Vikramjit Singh, a member of the committee, said they were optimistic and would meet the organisers again to get the congregation cancelled. |
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Longest Performance
Fatehabad, March 8 Kaushik says he will now approach the Limca Book of World Records and the Guinness Book of World Records, whom, he says, he had informed before his record-breaking feat in advance. Rohit Kaushik, a resident of Bhiwani, who has been active in the field of theatre in the area for quite some time, started his performance in the local Manohar Memorial College of Education on March 7 at 11.55 am and finished at 3.27 pm today and during this period he staged “Chhata Pandav” 25 times, taking a rest of five minutes after each performance. “The earlier world record stands in the name of a duo, Krishana Bhorkar and Sanvinder Mukesh, who staged a play, “The Blame”, 16 times on May 28, 2007, in 13 hours and 15 minutes of which the actual performance time was 10 hours and 40 minutes, the rest being the time of intervals,”
Kaushik claimed, while talking to The Tribune. Kaushik says his performance is better in terms of the number of shows, period of performances, besides the fact that his was a solo performance while the earlier record was created by a duo. Several prominent persons of the town, who witnessed the record-breaking performance by Rohit, included Sanjay Arora, media coordinator to Haryana Chief Minister, Subhash Sharma, director, DK Kaushik, principal of MM College, Mamta Chaudhary, principal of the MM College of Education, Brij Bhushan Midha and Bhisham Pitameh. “Chhata Pandav” is the story of Mahabharata character Karna and has been taken from Shivaji Sawant’s famous play “Mritunjaya”. Bhagwan Dass, Harpal Insan and Sooraj Kumar played harmonium, tabla and flute, respectively, during all 25 performances. |
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New uniform likely for expectant cops
Chandigarh, March 8 Director-General, BPR and D, Prasun Mukherjee said after much deliberation, the National Institute of Fashion Technology was given the task of designing alternatives for the women cops. “We selected two designs. Both are salwar-kameez designs, the only difference being the size of the kameez. The designs have been forwarded to the Ministry of Home Affairs for approval,” he said. These designs would be forwarded to the individual states for individual feedback and approval after which these would be finalised. |
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Seminar on women
Sirsa, March 8 Issues like food security, increasing crime against women and reservation for the women in Parliament and state assemblies were discussed on the occasion. State president of the AIDWA Jagmati Sangwan was the chief speaker. Sangwan said food insecurity was one of the biggest concerns for the women today. She emphasised the need to strengthen the public distribution system. She demanded proper implementation of the rural employment guarantee scheme with its extension to urban areas. |
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4 killed in accidents
Rohtak, March 8 According to the police, two persons killed on the spot when a truck reportedly knocked down their
motorcycle on the Rohtak-Panipat Highway late last night. The incident took place when the deceased identified as Sumit and Kuldeep were heading towards Basantpur village in the district around 10.30 pm. The police has registered a case against the driver of the truck, who managed to flee. In another incident, two youths were killed on National Highway No 10, near Kharawar village, when an unknown vehicle reportedly knocked down their motorcycle yesterday. The deceased have been identified as Sahil (15) and Naveen (18), residents of Kharawar village. The victims were on their way to Sampla town from their village. A case has been registered in this regard. |
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