Nurmahal, May 22
After the parliamentary poll in Punjab, the electoral battle lines have shifted to the Nurmahal assembly seat where a byelection will be held on May 28. Not leaving anything to chance, especially after the Lok Sabha setback to the ruling SAD-BJP alliance, Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal is personally leading the charge and crisscrossing this largely rural constituency comprising 140 villages.

Although it is just a byelection, both the parties have made it a prestige issue and are going for it in all earnest. The SAD candidate here is Rajwinder Kaur, the widow of the incumbent MLA Gurdeep Singh Bhullar.

Not to be left behind, the Congress too is firing all cylinders and has deputed its top leadership to campaign for its nominee Gurbinder Singh Atwal.

Leader of Opposition Rajinder Kaur Bhattal is spearheading the campaign and is being helped by acting PPCC chief Lal Singh and a host of other state and local leaders.

A tour of the constituency revealed that Akali and Congress leaders and workers are fanning out in all direction and there is sea of white and blue turbans across the length and breath of the area. In fact, a common joke cracked in both the camps is that the leaders and workers just stopped by their homes to pick up some fresh clothes before heading for Nurmahal after months of hectic campaigning elsewhere in the state.

The intense heatwave condition have failed to deter the campaigners as they move from village to village so that they cover all the villages in the next three days before campaigning ends on May 25.

Commenting on their election strategy, former SGPC chief K.S. Badungar and Dr Daljit Singh Cheema said they had divided the constituency in nine 32 zones, all of whom are headed by senior leaders to woo the voters. Badal campaigned actively and his visits were planned in a way that he touched all the villages in the constituency, they revealed. The Congress too is following a similar action plan and Bhattal said that she would attend over 30 meetings in addition to the ones by local leaders that would see the participation of the voters of all the villages in the coming days.

Since a large number of NRIs hail from this region, S.S. Rana, President of the Indian Overseas Congress, Europe Chapter, is here with other office-bearers to help the party nominee.

Nawanshahr, May 22
In a bizarre incident, a poor family of nearby Gujjarpur village has been undergoing a traumatic experience as their only son, who has reportedly been a HIV positive and drug addict, has allegedly been threatening his parents and younger sisters to pass on the disease to them by administering injections with the infected syringe. The wife of the HIV positive youth has reportedly acquired the infection.

The family has submitted a complaint to the police about this behaviour of their son. “The police, however, keeping in view the mental condition of the youth, has referred the case to the Health Department for providing him proper treatment and counselling. A letter has been sent to the Civil Surgeon for helping the distressed family,” said SHO Lakhbir Singh.
However, when Civil Surgeon Dr Chitranjan Brar was contacted on the phone, he said that he had not so far received any letter from the police in this regard. The Health Department would provide the requisite medical help and counselling to the youth whenever brought to them either by the police or the family, said the Civil Surgeon, adding that as far as the complaint of terrorising the family members by the youth was concerned, the department had nothing to do with it. The police should register a criminal case against him for the same.

While the police and the Health Department are yet to decide their responsibilities or to coordinate their efforts to deal with the situation, the family continues to undergo a nightmarish experience.

Jalandhar, May 22
The Gumtala Rail Mishap Action Committee today suspended its agitation following an assurance by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to give Rs 10 lakh each to the next of kin of the deceased and Rs 5 lakh to the injured, besides looking into the other demands raised by the committee.

Badal met victims of train-van collision which took place at an unmanned level crossing near Nurmahal and offered to provide the necessary help at the earliest.

Yesterday former chief minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal also met the victims and expressed shock over the apathetic attitude of the state government in installing a railway barrier at the site of incident. The kin of the victims of the previous rail accident, which took place at the same site in 2006, are yet to receive compensation. “The state government should have learnt a lesson from the previous incident. Since they failed to take preventive measures well on time it resulted in another tragedy”, she added.

Jalandhar, May 22
Providing some solace to over 26,057 candidates who appeared in the CET conducted by Punjab Technical University (PTU), the authorities seem to have finally conceded to most of the objections raised by the subject experts on the questions and their solutions.

Nearly 11 objections had been raised by the experts on the physics, chemistry and mathematics questions asked in the CET and their keys given on the site on May 5, two days after the conduct of the exam. Of these, five key mismatches were detected in the physics paper, four in mathematics and two in the chemistry paper.

Probably accepting the mistake in the interest of the students’ future a few days back, the PTU authorities had highlighted all these keys in yellow colour, without indicating the significance of the colour change. Now there is a new change. Some of the yellow keys have been converted to red with solutions to six questions corrected as perhaps had been suggested by the experts.

For instance in set C of the paper, the answer to question number 9 of the physics portion has been changed as B instead of C. The answer to question 16 has been put as A and B while it only was A earlier. The keys to questions 26, 29 and 39 also have been highlighted without any indication of change of answer.

In mathematics, the experts had pointed out that none of the options given for questions 5, 6 and 16 were correct. These three keys have now been highlighted with “ALL” mentioned instead of the originally posted answers. There is a footnote as well that indicates that “ALL” means that each candidate would get full marks for these questions. The key to question 24 also remains highlighted in this section, perhaps indicating some doubt.

In chemistry paper, the answer to question number 3 remains unchanged with a highlight indication. The experts had pointed out that the correct answer is C, instead of D and the PTU continues to put it as D as of now. The answer to question 32, however, has been changed to A and C instead of just A mentioned earlier. With the corrections made in their favour, the students can now perhaps heave a sigh of relief as they can expect a fair treatment in six questions, which sometimes can make a major difference in deciding the merit of the students and their chance to avail themselves of a better seat. But there are many who blame the university officials for making so many mistakes in the question paper.

“Two to three objections in a set of 120 questions is understandable and it happens each year. But this time it has been too much, which can turn merit in favour or disfavour of many,” they rued. Registrar Sarojini Gautam Sharda said the changes had been made after taking views of scores of subject experts and going by what that majority of them opined. “I think the whole effort was aimed at introducing transparency,” she said, adding that the result would be out on May 26.