Chandigarh, May 7
Come July, and domestic power consumers in the rural areas of the state will be able to have a “powerful” summer. With the state power utilities all set to finish the segregation of rural domestic and agriculture feeders by June, residents can now look forward to adequate power supply.

Officials in the power utilities informed TNS that since the fields remained vacant during May and June, the segregation of feeders would be completed by the end of June. As per the review of works done on April 15, the Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (UHBVN) has completed the task of segregating 437 feeders (out of total 691 feeders) and the Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN) has segregated 206 feeders (out of total 536 feeders).

Though the work of the segregation of feeders had been initially delayed by the contractors, the power department is now going ahead with the job on its own. The aim of segregating feeders is not just to ensure adequate supply to rural domestic consumers, but also to ensure better energy audit of the agricultural and the domestic sector.

With the creation of this system, the rural areas would get three-phase power supply for the entire duration that power is supplied, thus there would be no shortage of power for drinking water and other activities dependent on three-phase power supply.

This segregation will also be beneficial for farmers as there would be lesser interruptions in power supply, reduced instances of damage to tubewell motors, reduction in the damage of shunt capacitors and the increased efficiency of tubewells.

A senior official in the power department said the state was trying to reduce its accumulated technical & commercial (AT&C) losses to 15 per cent by 2011-12. “We initiated the process of the segregation of all feeders having mixed load.

This included 704 feeders of the UHBVN and 879 feeders of the DHBVN. The estimated cost for the segregation is around Rs 255 crore and Rs 288 crore, respectively, for the two power distribution companies,” he said.

There are 3,619 villages in the area covered by the UHBVN and about 3,200 villages under the DHBVN’s territory. “This segregation will result in better load management for the state government as well as the reduction of technical losses on account of load separation. The collection efficiency is also expected to increase along with removing the additional load off the overloaded feeders,” he said.

The official also said the power distribution companies would also erect about 1,230 new 11 KV feeders to segregate rural domestic and agriculture load in the state. Besides, the corporations are also adopting rural load management system and upgrading the old feeders.

Hisar, May 7
With the Lok Sabha elections out of the way, the turf war in the Haryana Congress is certain to intensify in the weeks to come.

For the first time since Bhupinder Singh Hooda became Chief Minister in 2005, infighting surfaced at the time of the finalisation of nominees for the Lok Sabha polls. With an eye on the 2010 Vidhan Sabha elections, Hooda’s political rivals within the party lobbied for party tickets for themselves or their kin to assert themselves.

Finance Minister Birender Singh wanted to contest from the Sonepat Lok Sabha seat. He lobbied hard for the party nomination, but ultimately Hooda succeeded in securing the nomination for his confidant, Jatinder Malik. This has upset the senior minister.

Likewise, Minister of State Kiran Chaudhary managed the party nomination from the Bhiwani-Mahendragarh Lok Sabha seat for her daughter, Shruti Chaudhary. The Hooda camp was lobbying for Rao Dan Singh.

At the start of the campaigning, Birender Singh stayed away from important election meetings addressed by Hooda in the Hisar constituency, which includes the Uchana Assembly segment represented by Birender Singh. Later, however, he campaigned for the party nominee and Hooda protégé Jai Parkash in Uchana.

As against this, Birender Singh made a common cause with Chaudhary and devoted enough time to drum up support for Shruti. But, in his speeches he made his intentions clear by indirectly attacking Hooda.

Likewise, another minister AC Chaudhary tendered his resignation, alleging discrimination against Punjabis in the distribution of party tickets. He remained aloof throughout the three weeks of campaigning but relented towards the fag end.

Rao Inderjit, union minister and party nominee from Gurgaon, too, is a known Hooda baiter. Although he has confined himself to his constituency and politics at the Centre, but he has lost no occasion to assert that he was second to none in so far as Haryana Congress politics was concerned.

Sirsa, May 7
Gone are the days when entry into the prestigious civil services was the domain of only those living in the metros and big cities.

Several small town boys and girls from the state have cleared the civil services examination this year to prove that given an opportunity, those coming from small and humble background can also perform.

Neeju Gupta is one such girl, who belongs to Ellenabad in this district. She has cleared the civil services examination this year, securing 221 rank.

Neeju’s father Kanhaya Lal Gupta runs a private school in Ellenabad and she did her schooling from her father’s school.

“I stood first in the district in the middle class as well as in the matriculation examinations and had a position in the state in the senior secondary examinations as well, she says.

Neeju did her graduation in economics (hons.) from the Mehar Chand Mahajan DAV College for Women, Chandigarh, and then she moved to Rajinder Nagar, Delhi, to join coaching classes for the civil services.

She opted for economics as an optional subject in the preliminary tests and added public administration as the second option during the mains.

“Hard work, dedication and commitment are all that are needed to clear the civil services or any other competitive test,” Neeju maintains.

One has to keep her goal in mind all the time and put in the best of efforts, she adds.

Neeju would like to join the Indian Administrative Services, if she gets her first choice. The Indian Foreign Services, the Indian Police Services and the Indian Revenue Services come next as her options in the order of sequence.

“But, I will not sit down if I fail to get my first choice this time. After all, it was my first attempt. I have to join the services in October but I have decided to stay back in Delhi and prepare for the next years competition,” says Neeju.

Gurgaon, May 7
“The present electoral system is totally inappropriate to our plural society. It has divided Indians along cast, communal and linguistic lines”, feels Justice Tevatia, a former Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court. He was here to attend a meeting on electoral reforms organised by the Gurgaon Study Centre recently.

Col Pratap Singh, Prem Sabhlok and Kishore Asthana also attended the meeting that was held under the chairmanship of Gen Raghu Shehrawat.

Justice Tevatia said national parties had been fragmented. “Regional Parties are getting stronger and the centre is getting weaker. Criminals are getting into the system. MLAs are being traded like commodities.

It does not reflect the wish of the electorate. When two parties are getting the same percentage of popular votes, one gets 110 seats while the other gets only 80. People are losing faith in the system,” he affirmed.

Justice Tevatia had prepared a detailed report on electoral reforms, which included more transparency in the functioning of political parties, with regular elections within the parties. “The same disqualifications that applied to MPs should also apply to office-bearers of political parties,” he said.

Justice Tevatia also mentioned the need for a provision of impeachment of candidates who do not perform.

He said the lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18 had resulted in increased politicisation of students, who had started diverting their attention to electioneering rather than studies.

“If a political party does not win any seats for two elections in a row, it should not be allowed to contest the general elections for a certain number of years,” he added.

Col Pratap Singh pointed out that there were too many political parties and emphasised the need for a two-party system.

He also recommended that there should be a minimum education qualification for the candidates.

Panipat, May 7
The Panipat elevated road might have reduced the travel time for the GT Road users, but it has failed to solve traffic problems for the local residents of the city who continue to face jams on the National Highway-1.

The over bridge seems to have benefited only those commuters who have to cross the city either to reach Delhi or those going from Delhi to western cities of Haryana or Punjab.

As per an estimate, only 30 per cent of the total traffic passing through the city uses the elevated road, while the rest enters the city through the service roads built on the either sides of this road.

The fact that the local bus stand of the city is located at one of the service lanes along the elevated road has left no other options for buses, but to enter the city instead of taking the elevated road and cross the city without adding to the traffic problems here.

The highway almost divides the city into two equal parts, thus many people in the city have to cross the highway often during the day. There are several intercepting roads on the highway that bring traffic from northern and southern cities of the state here.

Ravinder Kumar, a local shopkeeper, who owns a shop along the NH-1, said the authorities must have shifted the bus stand so that the buses could use the elevated road. This could have brought down the traffic by about 10 per cent.

“The local residents faced a lot of hardships when the elevated road was being constructed here hoping that once it was completed, it would end their woes. But it (the over bridge) has proved to be an advantage only for those who do not have to visit the city,” said Deepak Malik, a local resident.

Kishan Hooda, another resident, said in case the government wanted to provide some relief to the local residents, then it should contemplate the shifting of the bus stand from its present location.

The Tribune had earlier highlighted the problem of traffic jams being faced by the local residents, but the authorities have not initiated any action in this regard.

Karnal, May 7
In its endeavour to reach out to farmers in all parts of the country, the National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI) has decided to conduct programmes to impart training in scientific dairy farming to 200 farmers from Assam.

The training programmes of five-day duration would be in eight or 10 groups and the programme for the first batch of 28 farmers, sponsored by the State Institute of Rural Development (SIRD), Assam, has already commenced.

AK Srivastava, director, NDRI, disclosed that the trainees of the first batch were from Nalabari, Sunitpur, Golaghat and Nagaon district of Assam and added that the trainees from different parts of the state would be covered in future programmes.

Srivastava said there was an urgent need to improve the local breed of swamp buffaloes in Assam through artificial insemination, using elite high milk yielding Murah buffaloes for increasing milk production.

He further said Assam as a whole had a lot of potential for generating income and employment to rural families by improving rural dairy farming situations, as the total production of milk through dairy animals was low and the number of crossbred cattle was less in numbers.

Srivastava said the trainees should learn and adopt dairy production and processing technologies relevant under agro-climatic conditions in Assam and disseminate the technology to other dairy farmers of the state to usher in another white revolution.

Dalip K. Gosain, head of the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) and Dairy Training Centre (DTC), said the farmers would be imparted training on breed improvement, artificial insemination, scientific feeding, shelter management and health care aspects pertaining to scientific dairy farming by the scientists of the NDRI.

The trainees would also be taken to different modern dairy farms under village situations to acquaint them with the first-hand information and practical knowledge on improved dairying, he added.

Gurgaon, May 7
When eminent ghazal singer Penaz Masani recently visited the millennium city, it was neither for a musical evening nor to inaugurate some fancy retail store. She was here to create awareness about a variety of issues, including malnutrition, voting rights and female infanticide.

During her visit, the ghazal queen, who was recently honoured with the Padamshree Award, attended a function jointly organised by Mediavision Infotainment Company and Razzel Dance School in DLF Phase-I here recently.

Addressing a press conference on the occasion, she appealed to the people of the city to vote for the nation and their future generation. Razzel director Ansu Rehun and Mediavision director Deepak Gaur accompanied her.

Exhorting the younger generation to work hard and learn classical music, Penaz maintained that learning music in the traditional way would take them a long way.

In response to a query, she said the recent deluge of musical reality shows had diluted the art of singing. “There is more showbiz, razzmatazz and less originality in these shows,” she said.

Commenting on ghazals as a genre, she observed that there would always be demand for this kind of music as people liked to listen to it. “There is a great demand for ghazals even abroad as people want to listen to music which comes straight from the heart,” said the singer.

On being asked which poet she found difficult to sing, “Ghalib” was the prompt reply. “A lifetime is needed for understanding his poetry and this makes him a tough choice to sing,” she maintained.

Regarding her latest mission, Penaz asserted that she was working to curb female infanticide with a concerned group of people. “We have created a song titled “Beti” against female infanticide,” she revealed.

Karnal, May 7
Dr SK Kamra, principal scientist (groundwater), Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Karnal, has been appointed head of the division of irrigation and drainage engineering of the institute.

Kamra, who joined his new assignment on April 30 , got the regular appointment after officiating in the same capacity for the past two years.

Kamra has made a significant contribution to the subsurface drainage technology for the management of waterlogged saline irrigated lands, groundwater skimming and recharging of fresh water in saline groundwater and falling water table areas under national and international projects.

During 2006 he was selected among 10 Asian experts for the International Research Programme on Groundwater Governance at Kansas University, Lawrence, USA, and visited McGill University, Canada, as a visiting scientist in the area of the mathematical modelling of water and salt transport in soil and groundwater in 2008.

The optional paper of law in the recently conducted HCS (Executive) Preliminary Examinations, 2009, by the Haryana Public Service Commission (HPSC) contained a substantial number of questions from the CrPC although as per the syllabus provided by the HPSC, the same was not prescribed. 

The syllabus of a preliminary examination should be strictly in consonance with the one as prescribed by the commission. The result is that the candidates like me, who have opted for the law option, have to suffer a lot. We have been left out of selection to the main examinations.

The same thing happened in the Delhi Judicial Preliminary Examinations in November, 2008, after which the Delhi High Court intervened and it was directed that a fresh merit list should be prepared after leaving aside the questions coming out of the syllabus prescribed for the aforesaid examination.

I want to make an appeal to the authorities in the HPSC to look into the matter and order a suitable compensation for the aggrieved candidates.

Hemant Kumar, Ambala City

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