Dehradun, September 16
The violence on the last day of filing nomination and the huge police presence on the DAV (PG) College campus seemed to have discouraged freshers as few of them turned up for polling here today compared to previous years.

If statistics are anything to go by, this year there was a 50 per cent decline in the number of freshers voting in the college elections.

Election officer Davinder Tyagi said, “This year, most students who voted were from the second and third years. The freshers were 50 per cent lesser than last year because of the students’ clash on the last day of filing of nomination papers.”

As many as 4,500 students voted out of the 13,000 students, bringing the voting percentage to less than 40 per cent.

While 2,970 boys cast their ballot, 1,585 votes were polled by girls.

“After reading about the clashes among students in newspapers, my father had warned me not to go to college until the elections were over. Same is the case with most of my friends,” said Rahul, a first-year student.

Meanwhile, polling was peaceful at the college today.

The police had made elaborate arrangements to control any untoward incident.

The SSP also reached the college to take stock of the matter while the SP City remained at the college with the force. A riot-control force was especially called from Haridwar to tighten security.

Dehradun, September 16
The rising number of confirmed influenza A (H1N1) cases in the state has provided a fertile ground for ayurvedic practitioners to make claims for a sure cure against the deadly disease.

The latest to join the race is Dr Pradeep Bhardwaj, Principal, Rishikul Ayurvedic College and Hospital (Haridwar), who claims to have a cure against the virus through preventive and supportive drugs.

“Ayurvedic concoctions increase the immunity of the body as they have anti-viral and anti-allergic properties and also are effective in respiratory diseases. The concoction comprising shirish, gilohi and tulsi etc can be used as supportive and preventive medicine,” said Bhardwaj.

He also said the effect of a drug as a sure cure had still to be validated, “At the moment I cannot say anything. The medicine is being provided free of cost by Rishukul,” added Bhardwaj.

However, Dr Pooja Bhardwaj, Director, Ayurvedic Directorate, said the drug had only curative and supportive benefits. “The intake can help persons with normal immunity against the viruses,” she said.

On the other hand, Dr Ashwani Kamboj, Director, Uttaranchal Ayurvedic College and Hospital, that first came up ith an ayurvedic medicine comprising a mix of sanjivini and Laxmi vilas tablets and kada, said, “Since we made an announcement about the medicines last month, several people had approached us and benefited from the medicines. The ayurvedic texts mention about visham jawar that has similar symptoms as those of the communicable diseases present these days. The medicines have prophylactic properties”.

Dehradun, September 16
The executive council of Uttarakhand Technical University (UTU) has rejected the demand of affiliated institutes to allow direct admissions to BTech course for students having cleared class XII examinations. The decision was taken in its meeting here yesterday.

The council disallowed this on the grounds that it entailed legal hitches. Moreover, the session had already begun. As such, admissions at this stage would be improper. The management of institutes had made a case for direct admissions because they failed to get students through counselling based on AIEEE results. As such, about 1,300 seats are vacant.

The proposal came up for discussion in the meeting chaired by the Chief Secretary even as the government’s admissions committee had rejected it.

The council took the view that direct admission may have been possible if decision had been taken before counselling. However, since the development took place after counselling, the government has sought legal advice to know whether allowing admission at this stage would stand scrutiny of law.

Dehradun, September 16
Spelling out the new initiative launched by USA President Barak Obama, Sara Harriger, Political Officer American Embassy, New Delhi, said it aimed to energise the relationship between the two countries and take it to a new level of mutually beneficial cooperation in several key areas.

She said the five pillars around which dialogue had been established during Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit were in the area of strategic cooperation, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), terrorism and other global issues; cooperation in areas of education, agriculture, science and technology, health, climate change and food security.

The group of officers were here to participate in a panel discussion on “Indo-US relations under Obama” held today at Doon University. They are part of President Obama’s global initiative asking political officers of American embassies to hold dialogues with countries with which it shares common interests, respects ideals of democracy, diversity and similar views on terrorism.

Nina, Political Officer, New Initiative on Climate Change, said there was a perceptible change in American policies. “For the first time America has said it has a large problem of carbon emissions and is engaged in dialogue with other carbon-emitting countries. This has been followed by huge investments in green energy projects and alternative fuels.

“A change in legislation was brought in June last year that promises to cut carbon emissions to 50 per cent by 2050, as part of Clean Energy Policy. Besides a national policy on clean fuel has also come up that aims to check emission by vehicles,” emphasised Nina.

She said the USA had even appointed a special envoy on climate change in the run-up to the talks to be held in Copenhagen later.

Anne Le Seshadri said people-to-people relationship between the two countries were an all-time high, a total of 90,000 students were currently studying in America.

“We would like to have more hardworking students from India. Besides, the number of American students undertaking short-term language courses too have increased. Students are being encouraged to study in India by living with Indian families,” she said.

Earlier in his opening remarks, Vice-Chancellor, Doon University, Girijesh Pant said panel discussions were an effort to provide an opportunity to diplomatic officers of foreign embassies to step out of Delhi and engage in dialogue with students, intelligentsia and general public of even small towns and cities.

Dehradun, September 16
In the first standoff between the Wildlife authorities and the Eco Development Committees, members of the Corbett Eco Development Committee have threatened to check the movement of tourists on Sawaldey Gate of Corbett if their concerns are not addressed to by the Corbett Park authorities within 15 days.

Led by Chandreshekhar Khulbe, committee members today met Corbett Director Vinod Singhal and submitted a memorandum.

The irked committee members alleged that while they had submitted range-wise details of the damage of crops done by wild animals and also the measures needed to be done for flood protection as well as wildlife protection, nothing much had so far been done by the Corbett authorities.

They also pointed that a proposal seeking the construction of a concrete wall to separate villages from forests had been pending with the Corbett authorities for long.

“Wild animals frequently make incursions inside the villages, leading to loss of lives and damage to property,” said Khulbe. He also accused the authorities of failing to hold Eco Development Committees meetings regularly.

Anand Ballabh Sati, Dilip Belwal and Lakshman Singh were prominent signatories to the memorandum.

Interestingly, while most of the tourism zones of Corbett are presently closed for monsoon, Swaldey Gate is among the few of gates opened for tourists round the year.

The closure of this gate will lead to check on the movement of tourist in Corbett during this time of the year.

The committees in the state have been conceptualised to soften growing hostilities between man and the wildlife.

Dehradun, September 16
The Doon Swantantrata Senani Samiti today held a condolence meeting to offer tributes to it’s founder president freedom fighter Moolchand Gupta, who died a few days back.

General secretary of the samiti PK Khatri recalled his contribution to the freedom struggle. Mohan Singh Adhikari of Ramnagar and treasurer BS Negi also spoke on the ocassion.

Indian National Army’s freedom fighter Capt RL Awasthi, Dr SK Govil, Govindvardhan Sharma and several other freedom fighters and their dependents participated in the meeting.

Dehradun, September 16
The Uttarakhand Tennis Association will host its first ITF Women’s Tennis Tournament at Shanti Tennis Academy from September 21 to 26. Foreign and Indian players are expected to participate in the event.

Addressing a press conference, tournament director Alok Jaimal said as many as 32 players will participate in the tournament.

Twenty players have got direct entry, four are wild card entries and the remaining eight have got entry through the qualifying round. As many as 16 players will form the doubles draw.

Secretary of the association Arun Saxena said that the meet was a $10,000 prize money tournament. The winner in singles and in doubles will receive $1500 and $900 respectively.

The foreign players include Kyung-Yee Chae (Korea), Anastasia (Japan), Miki Miyamura (Japan), Keren Shlomo (Israel), Elixane Lechemia (France), Dalila Jakupovic (Slovakia), Tomoko Dokei (Japan), Chun-Yan He (China), Ester Masuri (Israel), Jung-Yoon Shin (Korea), Soon-Mi Seo (Korea), Renee Binnie (Australia), Jasmin Steinherr (Germani), Moe Kawatoko (Japan), Jade Hopper (Australia) and Tegan Edwards (South Africa).

Top-ranked Indian players participating in the tournament include Poojashree Venkatesha, Isha Lakhani, Sanaa Bhambri, Rushmi Chakravarthi, Parul Goswami and Kumari-Sweta Solanki.

Dehradun, September 16
St Joseph Academy (SJA) and The Asian School made it to the quarterfinals of the Dehradun Council School Football Tournament here today.

The Asian School outplayed St Thomas College 4-2 and the SJA team won in a tiebreaker.

The Asian School played aggressive football right from the start and scored their first goal in the sixth minute of the match through forward Ole. In the eighth minute, Sharad scored the second goal for Asian School.

But St Thomas came back strongly in the match to equal the score in the first half. They scored the first goal in the 10th minute through Tarun.

The second goal came in the 14th minute through Siddharth.

After levelling the score in the first half, St Thomas team was high on spirit and tried hard to take a lead in the match, but the strong defence put up by The Asian School denied them any more opportunity to score.

The Asian School team came with a different strategy in the second half and kept ball possession for the major part of the half.

In the 40th minute, they again took the lead through the goal scored by Fuw. And the 55th minute, Tenzin scored the fourth goal making the final score 4-2.

The result of the second match between SJA and Hilton School could only come through a tiebreaker. SJA scored their first goal in the 12th minute through Pramanshu.

Hilton levelled the score in the 23rd minute through Siddharth. In the tiebreaker, SJA emerged victorious to make to the quarterfinal.