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Swine flu: Gurgaon lab gives wrong reports, blacklisted
HC admits plea against CPSs
CEO Misra meets complainants |
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Micro Spasms: Ambala’s mixer industry loses juice
LC Goyal oversees the making of juicers at his unit in Ambala. Tribune
photo: Manoj Mahajan
N-project: Villagers form panel to decide on land price
Woman gangraped
Five killer cabbies convicted
Hooda: State economy sound
Cane growers hold up traffic
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Swine flu: Gurgaon lab gives wrong reports, blacklisted
Gurgaon, December 11 This was revealed at a monthly meeting of the district officers held here today. Gurgaon civil surgeon Dr SS Dalal told the meeting that now no private lab was authorised to carry out the tests for swine flu and the samples were being collected at the Civil
Hospital only. Deputy Commissioner Rajender Kumar Kataria, who was presiding over the meeting, directed district education officer Ajit Kadian to ensure that the heads of schools were properly educating the students about the causes of swine flu and preventive measures. “If symptoms of swine flu are seen in any student, he or she should be asked to remain at home, instead of closing the school,” he added. The civil surgeon informed the meeting that so far 675 cases of swine flu had been reported in the district. Of these 423 are students. He said swine flu had been divided into three categories, namely A, B
and C. “The category C is considered severe and its symptoms are high fever, cough with blood and difficulty in breathing,” he said, adding that the samples of C type of swine flu were being sent for testing, as the other two types were not so severe. The civil surgeon further stated that patients showing symptoms of B category were being given medication. The implementation of the newly introduced Referral Transport Scheme was also reviewed at the meeting. The Deputy Commissioner called up the mobile services operators of all companies and directed them to ensure that the health control room number 102 remained operational in their system. |
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HC admits plea against CPSs
Chandigarh, December 11 Throwing a challenge to the appointment by filing a petition in public interest, newly elected legislators Pradeep Chaudhary, Dilbagh Singh and Rajbir Brara have sought the High Court’s intervention for quashing the appointments of the nine CPSs. All CPSs, Anita Yadav, Rao Dan Singh, Dharambir Singh, Jaivir Balmiki, Jaleb Khan, Prahlad Singh Gillkhera, Ram Kishan Fouji, Sharda Rathore and Sultan Singh Rod, have been made party to the petition. The petitioners have said the appointments were liable to be quashed on the ground that these violated the 91st amendment. Elaborating, the petitioners have contended that the 91st amendment fixed the upper limit of the size of ministries at 15 per cent of the total strength of the legislature. Counsel for the petitioners said this came to a maximum of 13, including the Chief Minister, as the state legislature had at present an effective strength of 89 in 90-member House, with one seat vacant. A Division Bench of Chief Justice Mukul Mudgal and Justice Ajay Kumar Mittal admitted the PIL this morning. Before parting with the case, the Bench directed the matter would be heard along with other writ petitions challenging similar appointments in Punjab and Haryana now pending before the court for adjudication. About a month back, a similar petition challenging the appointment of the nine CPSs in Haryana was filed by advocate Jagmohan Singh Bhatti. He had sought directions for declaring and holding the posts illegal, unconstitutional and contrary to the provisions of the Constitution. Bhatti had also sough directions to the state finance department against bearing the expenses of the alleged illegal appointments, which were “in violations of 91st amendment 2004 of the Constitution of India”. Directions had been sought for the withdrawal of all facilities to these CPSs.The petition stated the appointment of Chief Parliamentary Secretaries was also liable to be set aside to protect the state exchequer from the burden of expenses due to these appointments. This petition too has been admitted for hearing.
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CEO Misra meets complainants
Gurgaon, December 11 She, however, asserted that an inquiry into the complaints of bogus votes was on and the factual position would be clear only after it was completed. Talking to The Tribune here today, the CEO said as the revision of electoral rolls in Gurgaon had been carried out in a short time period, there was a possibility of some error having crept in. “However, it is for certain that the number of fake voters (if any) cannot be as high as being claimed by the complainants,” she maintained. Misra, who was in Gurgaon to review the progress of the inquiry into the allegations, met three defeated candidates, Dharambir Gauba of the Congress, Umesh Aggarwal of the BJP and RS Rathee of the residents’ bodies, who had contested the recent election to the state Assembly from the Gurgaon seat. These unsuccessful candidates had later teamed up and alleged that the Independent candidate, who won the election, had managed to do so with the help of a large number of fake voters. They had complained that there were as many as 52,000 fake votes in the Gurgaon constituency, an allegation which was denied by the CEO. According to sources, nearly 3,000 fake votes have been detected in the Gurgaon Assembly segment. Misra, however, remained non-committal on the issue. “It will be premature to disclose the findings of the probe as it is still in progress...the only thing I can say at the moment is that we are taking the matter seriously,” she said on being asked whether some fake votes had been found in Gurgaon. At today’s meeting, the CEO directed local Deputy Commissioner-cum-district election officer Rajender Kumar Kataria to involve booth-level officers and supervisors in the probe and also get the relevant sites (houses etc) photographed.
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Micro Spasms: Ambala’s mixer industry loses juice
Ambala, December 11 Those that have not moved out are now contemplating setting up an additional unit in the tax-exempt states so as to remain in competition. Sources say of the 40-odd units here, at least 10 are in the process of shifting to Himachal. Manufacturers who have stayed put say that what the shifting of branded mixer-juicer manufacturers in tax-exempt places like Baddi has hit them the hardest. Being exempted from paying various taxes, their products are now cheaper than the appliances being manufactured by them. “Earlier, our business was growing because of the price competitiveness with branded home appliance manufacturers. Now that our mixer-juicers are more expensive, we have lost out on a sizeable portion of the market,” rues Ashwani Goyal, president of the Ambala Electrical Appliances Manufacturers Association. For the branded home appliance manufacturers, mixer-juicer is only one of the products in their range of portfolio. They are offering these mixers as free gifts with their other products like refrigerators or TV sets. “Most of these free mixer-juicers are sold at a cheaper rate by the refrigerator or TV distributor to retailers. This has also spoilt our distributor channels as distributors prefer to buy the branded appliance at cheaper rates,” complains Lal Chand Goyal, MD, United Engineers. Interestingly, it is not just the branded home appliance manufacturers who have spoilt the party for the mixer manufacturers here. Over the past two years, several large groups, which undertake outsourcing jobs from the branded players, too have entered this region. One such group, based out of Mumbai, has hit the small manufacturers here who were working as dedicated vendors for large manufacturers. With this group having captured all outsourcing work, many smaller vendors have been forced out of business. However, all is not lost. People who are still in business are now trying to diversify their product portfolio. “The production of these mixer-juicers has come down sharply over the years. In fact, the turnover of the mixer-juicer industry has come down by almost 75 per cent in the past four years following the flight of the industry to tax-exempt states. “Many of the mixer-juicer manufacturers here are now trying to innovate new kind of juicers, blenders and fruit processors. “We too have started our new range of storage utensils, besides innovating in juicers and blenders. This is helping most of the units here survive,” says Ruchit Bansal, director, Signora Appliances. |
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N-project: Villagers form panel to decide on land price
Fatehabad, December 11 Villagers from Gorakhpur, Kumharia and surrounding areas at a meeting constituted a committee to deal with the government on issues like the price for the land to be acquired. The agriculture land identified by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) for setting up the plant near Gorakhpur has remained waterlogged since the late seventies though it is fertile land. Over 1,000 hectares of agriculture land in Gorakhpur, Mohammadpur Rohi, Kajalheri and Badopal became waterlogged in 1978 and remained as such till the then Chief Minister Bhajan Lal installed shallow tubewells along the Fatehabad branch canal in 1982. These shallow tubewells ran round the clock to pump out sub-soil water and throw it into the canal. It was during this period that the Bhajan Lal government identified the land for the nuclear power plant in 1984. The area again became waterlogged in 1998 and the then Chief minister Bansi Lal undertook an aerial survey. His government got constructed the Gorakhpur periphery drain, Uchu drain and matkana drain that took away water from waterlogged fields and threw it into the Fatehabad branch, Dehman link channel and Sabarwas minor, respectively.Now, merely 50 acres, known as Matkana pond, are under water while the rest is fertile land giving rich harvest to farmers. Due to the very high water table near the Fatehabad canal, land near its banks has been sold at a price of Rs 1 lakh per marla during the past some years. Some farmers even set up tubewells for selling water by purchasing small pieces of land. They have invested Rs 15 lakh-Rs 20 lakh on tubewells as they have laid pipes up to 5km-8 km for selling water. Mostly, they who are the ones opposed to the plant in the area as they run the risk of losing lucrative business.
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Woman gangraped
Faridabad, December 11 The victim said she used to work in Munirka in Delhi and used to stay there. The two youths were known to her. While returning home from Munirka to Lakarpur on December 6, the two youths offered her a lift in their car. They first took her to a forest area in Anangpur and then to a place in Sector 31 where they raped her. They were later joined by four friends in the crime. They, too, are from Anangpur village, whom, she claims, she has identified. The suspects dropped her outside Lakarpur the next morning. No arrest has been made so far. Yamunanagar:
A 17-year-old girl of Chhuna Bhatti locality of old Jagadhri town has been allegedly kidnapped and raped by a youth. The youth kidnapped the girl by allegedly mixing intoxicants in her tea and later raped her. The police on Friday booked the youth identified as Suresh. The police said Suresh took the girl to Jagadhri Railway Station on some pretext, where he served her tea laced with intoxicants and then raped her. |
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Five killer cabbies convicted
Gurgaon, December 11 The fast-track court of Additional District and Sessions Judge BL Singhla held Rohtash, Mukesh, Pramod, Ravi and Lalit guilty of Jain’s murder. The court will award the sentence in the case on December 18. However, since Lalit was a minor at the time of the crime, his sentence will be awarded by a juvenile court. Sachin Jain (18), a trainee with a fast-food joint in DLF phase III, was reported missing from Gurgaon’s DLF phase II on the intervening night of October 29-30, 2006. A week later, his semi-decomposed body was found from a drain near Leisure Valley Park near Sector-29 here. Police investigations later found that the same gang of cabbies had killed two more persons on the same night - Ashish Bhagaria from Gwalior and one
Ranjit. |
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Hooda: State economy sound
Chandigarh, December 11 Hooda was talking to newsmen shortly after inaugurating the 31st All-India Public Relations Conference here today. He was asked to comment on the current economic situation of the state. He said the economic measures being taken by the state government aimed at reducing its expenditure. He said the government had decided to reduce fee charged for furnishing copies of documents sought under the Right to Information Act from Rs 10 per page to Rs 2 per page as it wanted to ensure transparency in the
system. Panipat: The Northern India Textile Research Association (NITRA) Powerloom Service Centre has come out with an ambitious plan to provide group insurance to industrial workers. Speaking at a seminar here today, senior official of NITRA RK Saini said the scheme had been introduced for the benefit of the working class. |
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Cane growers hold up traffic
Sonepat, December 11 The blockade was lifted after assurance from the mill MD and Gohana SDM GL Yadav that their grievances would be redressed promptly. He said the technical fault had been repaired and crushing operations resumed. The crushing season began on Thursday and just a day later the authorities were forced to close the mill after detecting a snag in the boiler. |
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Tax
holiday in neighbouring Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal have spelt doom for the
once thriving mixer-juicer-grinder industry here. Once home to over 300 small
units manufacturing this quintessential kitchen appliance, this city now houses
only 40-odd such units, with a majority of smaller ones having closed shop and
larger ones shifted base to tax-exempt states.
