Amritsar, June 14 
Several non-government affiliated aided colleges, especially in the rural areas, are on the verge of closure due to the absence of staff and failure of government to provide aid-hampering quality education. 

Stating this to the media, the Federation of Managements of the Non-government Affiliated Aided Colleges of Punjab and Chandigarh, appealed today to the state government for total implementation of 95 per cent deficit grant-in-aid scheme, update reviews of posts and release of all the arrears of grants, besides lifting the ban on the new appointments of teaching and non-teaching posts. 

Criticising the governments, the federation alleged that the consecutive governments had failed to take necessary steps to bail out the aided colleges facing severe financial crunch. The federation today held a meeting in Khalsa College and forwarded a memorandum to Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal.

President of federation SC Sanwalka said about 25 per cent of the colleges, especially in the rural areas, were facing severe crunch and were almost on the verge of closure and require immediate attention. He said about 40 per cent seats of the lecturers were vacant in these aided colleges in state. 

The federation also pointed out that a few years ago, UGC had recommended for creation of a state council of higher education and further that some state governments had successfully resolved many crises and ushered in new avenues after enacting such councils. He said the Punjab government should also pass a bill for the creation of a statutory state council for the higher education. 

Secretary of the federation Jaswant Singh said Punjab and Haryana High Court had given relief to federation by releasing of the grants, but the state government was yet to release the same. The situation would turn grimmer in view of the 6th Pay Commission report, which is likely to be implemented in the state in next few months. 

He said the federation would also urge the government for conversion of the posts as per the requirement of the colleges concerned. He also urged the universities to join hand with them.

Vice-president of the federation and honorary secretary of the Khalsa College Management committee Rajinder Mohan Singh Chhina were also present on the occasion. He expressed hope that the present SAD-BJP government would pay heed to their demands to uplift the quality of higher education in the state. 

Bathinda, June 14
A student of Police Public School, Bathinda, Naripjeet Kaur, cried that pages carrying 30 questions in the Punjab PMT, for which she appeared today, were missing from her question paper.

Vice-Chancellor, Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, Faridkot, Shaminder Singh Gill has accepted that pages 13 and 14 were missing from Naripjeet’s sheet that was replaced after 45 minutes after the exam started.

Naripjeet, while talking to The Tribune said, “I passed my Class XII from Bathinda with 83.8 per cent marks. I was confident of making it in PMT this year, until I saw that two pages were missing from my question paper. My roll number was 575624. When I opened my sheet, I found page number 13 and 14 missing. I reported the matter immediately to the authorities”.

“Rather than immediately replacing my sheet, the authorities started taking my photograph and videography. This was to check fake students appearing in place of someone else. But they actually treated me like a proxy student and gave me another sheet after 45 minutes,” she added.

Naripjeet’s father Gurbrender Singh said she looked stressed out and harassed when she came out after appearing for her exam. “She told me that after reporting the matter she kept waiting for another sheet and did not attempt the sheet given to her earlier as she did not know what to do. But after about 15 minutes, she started attempting the paper as she was losing out on valuable time. She was given another sheet 45 minutes later,” he said.

“She missed out on many questions because she just got 2 hours and 15 minutes to attempt her paper. I went to the university, but was not allowed to go in,” he added.

Vice-Chancellor Gill said, “As soon as we got the information about Naripjeet, we gave orders to replace the sheet. Only 10 questions were missing, she could have attempted other questions well by the time”.

Meanwhile, keeping in view the past scandals of fake students appearing in the PMT, the authorities took steps to prevent such incidents. The police was deployed in strength outside the examination centres and the roll number card of each candidate was thoroughly checked by cops before they were allowed to enter the complex.

Faridkot, June 14
This year all candidates appearing in the pre-medical entrance test (PMET) in the state were called to Faridkot to appear in the test.

Centres were spread across Faridkot and Kotkapura and some candidates had travelled for over five hours to come and appear for the test.

“Holding the test centrally in the district ensured that the whole thing went off without a hitch. Here everything is under our own control. If we had more centres, we would not have been able to oversee things properly,” said Vice-Chancellor, Baba Farid University, SS Gill. “The local police had been coordinating with us to ensure a fair conduct of the test,” he added.

However, the district police failed to control the massive traffic problems following the test. Traffic jams were witnessed on almost all roads leading out of Faridkot.

The 6,000 vehicles coming out of the district made traffic to come to a virtual halt for hours at various bottlenecks.

Several commuters contacted the police control room, but failed to get any response. No traffic cops were posted on any of the roads despite the police knowing that so many vehicles are in the district.

SSP SS Sodhi said, “We were all busy with the conduct of the test and could not post any cops on the roads”.

Meanwhile, the number of candidates has fallen further. A total of 6,668 candidates appeared in the test that took place at Faridkot here today.

Last year, over 7,000 candidates had appeared in the test. Till some years ago, over 10,000 candidates used to appear for the test.

Jalandhar, June 14
Where has our canal water disappeared? Raising this question senior SAD MLA Balbir Singh Bath from Sri Hargobindpur in Gurdaspur said canal water for irrigation used to be available round the year in Gurdaspur and Amritsar districts in the 1980s and ’90s. However, now it was not made available even for six months, he said.

Narrating the tale of woes of farmers of his area, Bath said water was released a few days ago in the Upper Bari Doab Canal (UBDC) system after several months. He said this had been done only after he took up the matter with Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal.

“Some weeks ago I approached a senior official of the Irrigation Department to release the water as farmers needed it for irrigation. However, the official did not listen to me and kept telling me that there was no demand for water from people of the area,” said Bath. “I had to tell the official that I have been elected by people of the area the third time in a row and they have approached me to get the water released in the UBDC system,” said Bath. But the official did not budge from his stand and kept deferring the release of water. “Then I asked the CM to intervene,” said Bath.

On the one hand water was not being released in the UBDC for weeks and on the other hand there were areas in Malwa which were facing the problem of water-logging owing to excess water. He said the Irrigation Department should explain where the water, which used to be made available to Gurdaspur and Amritsar districts in 1980s and ’90s, had disappeared.

He said he would also like to know from the Irrigation Department how much money had been spent on removing the silt from the UBDC and smoothening its water-carrying capacity.

Meanwhile, some people from the Majha area have asked the Irrigation Department from where water would be diverted to increase the discharge in the Patiala feeder (Kotla branch). The government had claimed that the water-carrying capacity of the canal would be increased by 30 pc after its desilting by spending Rs 123 crore. People have asked from where that 30 pc water would come which would be added to the existing capacity of the Kotla branch. 

Patiala, June 14
Rajya Sabha member Tarlochan Singh said here today that consensus should be evolved on the controversial issue of Women’s Reservation Bill providing for seat reservation for women in Parliament.

Tarlochan Singh, who was here to attend a private function, said he, along with 20 other MPs, had met chief ministers of different states and leaders of regional parties to discuss the issue. All of them had generally agreed to the suggestion that a consensus should be evolved on the contentious issue.

He said it had been broadly agreed that 181 additional seats be created in Parliament so that no leader would run the risk of being deprived of his present constituency.

There was also an argument that this would mean additional 181 MPs, which would be an unwieldy strength in Parliament. However, Tarlochan Singh said, the House of Commons in England, and even parliament in Pakistan had much more members than Indian Parliament. As of now, there was no immediate need of rushing through the Bill, which was facing stiff opposition, he added.

There was a need to evolve consensus and also simultaneously create wherewithal for additional seats in Parliament, he said.

Alternatively, he said, the political parties should be directed by the Election Commission of India to reserve one-third of the tickets for women for all elections. The parties that defaulted on that count could face disqualification by the commission.

He said he and some other MPs had been holding negotiations with leaders of different political parties in various states and the response to the consensus suggestion had been encouraging. He expressed optimism that the Bill could be carried though in Parliament without much opposition if political leaders felt assured that their seats would not be compromised if the Women’s Reservation Bill was passed.

Jalandhar, June 14
The state is heading for a major crisis in case the government does not come to the aid of farmers transplanting the PAU 201 variety of paddy. It is a favourite with farmers owing to its high yield, less consumption of water and insusceptibility to diseases.

This issue assumes significance since the paddy transplantation season began on June 10 and more than 25 per cent of the farmers across the state have gone in for this variety.

Despite the poor results of its test milling, neither the state government nor the Centre has taken note of the problem that will manifest itself at procurement time.

Punjab Rice Millers Association chief Tarsem Saini, who has been raising the issue with the government, said they had a meeting with PAU scientists, senior officers of the Agriculture Department, Food and Supplies and state procurement agencies in January itself.

“We told them that we had no problem with the variety, but something had to be done about the high percentage of grain damage. As per results from the milling done at five places in the state on June 8-9, the percentage of the damaged grain was in the range of seven to nine. This was beyond the prescribed limits under the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act and the Food Corporation of India (FCI),” he said.

“Since 3 per cent damage renders paddy unfit for human consumption, how can we or any government agency procure it,” he said.

“The non-seriousness of the government in this context can be gauged from the fact that it chooses to turn a blind eye to our pleas even though the former had three months to warn farmers against going in for this variety,” he added.

Saini said the government chose to keep this report under wraps for obvious reasons even though they had assured them that they would get the matter resolved from the Centre by getting the pin damage deleted from the overall damage percentage. But nothing had materialised so far, he alleged.

Ludhiana, June 14
Wheat straw prices in the state have doubled at Rs 350-400 per quintal in past couple of months, as more and more industrial units are consuming straw as fuel, affecting over 50,000 dairy farmers.

At the onset of the wheat harvesting season, the straw was available for about Rs 170-200 a quintal. However, the price started going up soon after and has touched Rs 350 a quintal now. Rates of the feed spiraling further could not be ruled out, sources said. Wheat hay feed produce this year was about 1,600 lakh tonne.

Dairy farmers have warned that the higher cost of cattle feed would lead to spiraling of milk and milk products prices in the state.

Pesident, Tajpur Dairy Farmers' Association, DS Oberoi said, “Milk prices will increase in the future as farmers have to spend more on buying feed for the cattle”.

Not only the industrial consumption of the straw, but also the increasing use of machines by farmers to harvest crops is affecting the produce of the feed.

Burning of hay in the fields is one of the reasons behind shortage of the feed. There are about 23 lakh lactating buffaloes and 20 lakh cow heads in the state. Dairy owners are also sourcing fodder from neighbouring states of Haryana and Rajasthan, where straw is about Rs 50-80 cheaper than in Punjab.

Dairy farmers are demanding that industrial units like paper mills, furnaces and dyeing industry should be totally banned from using wheat straw, the main feed for the cattle.

Sangrur, June 14
As part of a drive launched to check adulteration in milk and milk products in Sangrur district, district health officer Ramesh Bansal, along with food-sampling team, today collected six samples of milk from three different places.

Dr Bansal said two samples each had been collected from Bhagwan Milk Collection Centre, Sheron village; Milk Collection Centre of Modern Dairy (Karnal), Akoi Sahib village, and Verka Milk Bar, situated in front of the Verka Milk Plant, Sangrur.

Dr Bansal said all samples had been sent to the Public Laboratory Punjab, Chandigarh, for testing. He said after receiving the test reports of the samples, further proceedings would be initiated against the persons involved in adulteration.

Sangrur, June 14
To improve the blood transfusion services World Blood Donors Day, under the theme of “Achieving 100 per cent non-remunerated donation of blood and blood components”, was observed at the Civil Hospital here today. Civil Surgeon Dalip Kumar presided over the function.

Addressing the function, Dr Dalip Kumar said Sangrur district would have two blood storage centres soon at Bhawanigarh and Amargarh, while a case had already been sent to the higher health authorities to set up two more blood storage centres at the civil hospitals at Dhuri and Sunam. A blood components separator machine would be installed at Sangrur.

Dr Inderjit Singla, Blood Transfusion Officer, Sangrur, said the Sangrur blood bank delivered about 6,000 blood units yearly to needy patients. Out of these, 50 per cent units were being collected by organising blood donation camps. He further said the number of blood donations was to be increased up to 100 per cent with the help of NGOs etc.

On the occasion physically challenged blood donor Jagdish, who has donated blood more than 50 times, was honoured by presenting him a memento and a certificate. About 40 other donors and representatives of about 20 NGOs were also honoured.

Among others who spoke included social workers Prof Charanjit Singh Udari, Prof Uday Partap Singh, Harmohan Singh, Parminder Longowal and Balbir Singh Gill. 

Chandigarh, June14
The Punjab government has envisaged making every student in the state “computer literate” by making information technology (IT) a compulsory subject in schools from the current academic session. 

Every student will become digitally literate by 2010, after a scheme to cover all 13.5 lakh students in the state would be implemented this month. Education and languages Minister of the state Upinderjit Kaur today said under the centrally sponsored scheme of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), the Punjab ICT Education Society had launched this ambitious computer learning programme based on the NCERT guidelines for Class VI to XII in all upper primary schools in a phased manner.

The Education Department under the Sarv Sikhya Abhiyan had already successfully covered 2,880 state schools at a cost of Rs 265.34 crore in two phases, to facilitate the creation of state-of-the-art infrastructure on lease model for supporting the knowledge economy, she said.

The minister further added that under the project the department has covered the remaining 2,085 schools having enrolment of 2.5 lakh students in the third phase at a cost of Rs 132.55 crore. “To train the students, 5,014 computer faculties were recruited in schools,” she added.

Upinderjit further said to impart good quality of computer education, 5,415 modern labs equipped with 40,500 computers have been created at a cost of 220.88 crore with the latest IT infrastructure on the lease, maintain and transfer model, under which the all the equipments would be transferred to the Department of School Education after 5 years.

She said books had already been provided to all the students free of cost. With a view to achieve the sustainability of the project, nominal fees of Rs 20 per month was being charged from students of Class VI to VIII and Rs 25 from students of Class IX to XII. The fees charged were being utilised to pay the salaries to the computer teachers.

She further said the quality assessment and independent monitoring of the ICT project has been assigned to the American India Foundation Trust, an NGO, through its 85 field coordinators.  All DEOs (SE), district ICT coordinators and project coordinators have been asked to visit ICT schools regularly. 

Chandigarh, June 14
The state government has accepted the recommendations of the Governance Reforms Commission on the delivery of citizen services, including simplifying procedures and setting up uniform services, throughout the state.

The recommendations were accepted by the high-powered committee, which met here yesterday under the chairmanship of the Chief Secretary. The committee accepted that instead of affidavits there is a need to introduce plain undertakings with sufficient checks. For efficiency it was felt that electoral database could be used wherever necessary.

It was resolved that the Empowered Committee should take a pro-active role for ensuring inter-departmental coordination. The recommendations of the commission regarding the upgrade of Suwidha centres and ensuring the implementation of all 24 services in all districts was also discussed. The commission noted only one district is providing around 21 of the 24 identified services in the state through Suwidha centres. More than half of the districts are providing less than 50 per cent of the services. Nawanshahr, Kapurthala, Bathinda are front-runners for providing more than 15 services to the people. Barnala, Sangrur and Tarn Taran are providing less than six services.

The Transport Department in its report said the authorisation of dealers to issue registration certificates to non-transport vehicles should be implemented within three months. The Department of Health said the simplified procedure of issuing of birth certificates and death certificates should be discussed in a workshop of civil surgeons and it shall be implemented throughout the state.

Chandigarh, June 14
For Gurmant Grewal, who has several firsts to his credit, including becoming a member of the House of Commons within six years of immigrating to Canada, a formal clearance by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), has come as a “personal vindication”.

Expressing relief and gratification that the most stressful chapter in his life has come to a close, he says, “Though the investigation has taken an unduly long time, the final decision is a personal vindication. From the beginning I maintained all accusations against me were politically motivated and completely baseless.”

Gurmant, a product of Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, was among the first Sikh MPs to be elected MP in Canada in 1997. He subsequently had two more terms as MP and in 2004 created history when he and his wife Nina were elected to the House of Commons, a record unprecedented in the Commonwealth.

He landed in trouble when he claimed that Liberals had tried to win him over with lucrative offers to win vote of confidence in the House of Commons. Since then various allegations were made against him and investigations ordered.

“I have never personally benefited from any money donated to me or my party. Every penny that was donated to me was used for political purposes and collected under the rules and regulations established by Elections Canada. Any suggestion otherwise is a personal attack on my character and good name,” he said in an interview with The Tribune over the telephone.

Holding that the past four years had been a time of almost unbelievable stress, Gurmant said, “It should have been the pinnacle of my political career, with the election victory of the Conservative Party, I have tried so hard to build, has instead been one of emotional pain. I have had to endure eight politically inspired investigations. My political opponents have thrown mud, but nothing has stuck. On each false allegation, fabricated by my political enemies in the Liberal Party, I have been found innocent.”

A relieved Gurmant says the Liberals unsuccessfully attempted to defeat, buy him out and then tried to destroy his political reputation. Before this episode began he was known as a hardworking, honest, and very accessible and down-to-earth MP. He raised numerous important issues in Parliament that changed the agenda of the Canadian government. Besides introducing over 50 Bills and Motions, six of them passed vote in the House and one even received the Royal Assent, he had been proud to hold important portfolios like Deputy House Leader, Chairman of a Joint Standing Committee of the House and Senate for seven terms, Senior Critic for Foreign Affairs, Multiculturalism and Scrutiny of Regulations. He said he was not called the “Iron man of Canadian Parliament” for nothing. He claims he never took a vacation and was always available for his constituents. 

Enjoying large support in a constituency whose natural inclination was to vote Liberal, he won three consecutive terms from there before the federal Liberal Party unleashed over a half dozen politically motivated investigations. Literally hundreds of news stories appeared, most based merely on innuendo and rumour. But he persevered and has now been cleared of all charges.