Jhajjar, December 19
Raising objection to Maharshi Dayanand University’s advertisement published in newspapers for inviting applications for admission to BBA and MBA at centres located outside the territorial jurisdiction, the UGC has sought an explanation from the varsity within 15 days as to why it has indulged in franchises and opening centres outsides the state, which is not permissible.

A communiqué in this regard has been issued recently by SC Chadha, Deputy Secretary of the UGC, wherein citing the observations made by the Supreme Court in the case of Prof Yash Pal vs Chhattisgarh government. It was said in the case that no university was authorised to run any off campus centre or affiliated colleges outside the territorial jurisdiction of the state.

In spite of this, the MDU has been advertising and inviting applications for BBA and MBA courses outside the state.

The communiqué also stated that: “This is a serious issue as it is against the judgment of the Supreme Court. The university may not make any admission at the extended study centres outside the state and immediately withdraw the advertisement. Besides, the university may submit an explanation within 15 days in this regard.”

In view of the SC’s judgment, nearly six months ago, the UGC had directed all universities across the country to close down their off-campus study centers/affiliated colleges immediately and the centre operating through franchises outside the territorial jurisdiction of the state concerned.

It had also strictly directed that no distance education programme would be started without a prior approval of the joint committee of the UGC-AICTE-DEC for which the Distance Education Council (DEC) is the coordinator.

At that time, this directive of the UGC had put the authorities of all four universities - MDU, Rohtak, KU, Kurukshetra, GJU, Hisar, and CDLU, Sirsa, - of the state in a quandary as these had opened a significant numbers of study centres/affiliated colleges and also created franchise in the name of distance education programme outside the state concerned.

These off-campus study centres had been running several professional and traditional courses under the distance education mode and a huge number of students across the country had enrolled in courses by paying a hefty fee. The MDU alone has over 350 study centres outside Haryana while over 20,000 students of various states have been pursuing different courses through distance education from these study centres.

The MDU Vice Chancellor (VC), Prof RP Hooda, was not available for comments. 

Gurgaon, December 19
The management of Super Religare Laboratories (SRL), which was recently blacklisted by the authorities concerned for reportedly giving “wrong” reports of swine flu samples, has denied the charge as “baseless and mala fide”.

Reacting to the reported blacklisting of the lab for “wrong” reports of swine flu in certain cases, Dr Sanjeev Chaudhry, CEO of SRL, stressed that the Haryana government, not their lab, was at fault in this case.

“The state authorities have not adopted the correct procedures of re-testing the random samples.? They just collected the samples from the same patients who were tested positive by us and sent those samples for re-testing. The test result only indicates the status of swine flu influenza at that point of time when the patient has given the sample for testing. The re-testing procedure does not approve that the samples are collected from the person after a substantial gap of time and then checked against the original results. There are always chances of a person getting cured by the time their samples are taken for re-testing,” the CEO asserted in a statement issued here.

Dr Chaudhry maintained that the correct procedure for re-testing was to test the same samples again. Stating that the samples of all positive swine flu cases had been preserved at their lab at -80 degrees Celsius, he even offered to get those re-tested.

“It is rather unfortunate that the health authorities decided to unilaterally issue a derogatory statement against us to the media, using the word “blacklisted” without even giving us any adequate notification or explanation chance,” he said.

“Super Religare Laboratories is among the world’s largest H1N1 testing facilities. All H1N1 tests are carried out at its CAP and NABL-accredited laboratories in Gurgaon and Mumbai in accordance with the gold standard process approved by the Government of India and as per norms specified by the WHO,” said Dr Chaudhry.

“Our reference labs are accredited by the NABL, Government of India, for the rigorous testing procedures followed. All our swine flu tests have time and again tested for proficiency and random sampling by the laid down procedures of the government agencies concerned,” he said, adding that they were contacting the authorities concerned to get the damage caused to their reputation undone.

The Gurgaon Civil Surgeon, Dr SS Dalal, who had disclosed at a recent meeting of the district officials that SRL had been blacklisted, chose to remain on the back-foot on being contacted for his version.

“SRL has represented its case before the state authorities,” he said, adding that the final outcome was yet awaited. 

Chandigarh, December 19
The Punjab and Haryana High Court has made it clear that a little delay in depositing money for a site by allottees of the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) can always be condoned in a genuine case.

The HUDA had cancelled the allocation of a booth site to allottee Mahesh Kumar. But, the Single Judge quashed its cancellation orders, against which the HUDA filed an appeal before the Division Bench.

Dismissing the appeal with Rs 10,000 costs, the Bench of Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel and Justice Jitendra Chauhan ruled: “We are unable to accept the submission that the authority could not condone even short delay of five days, which may have taken place for reasons beyond the control of an allottee.”

“Such delays could always be condoned at some level in the hierarchy, subject to additional charges being given, in genuine cases…. This appeal is dismissed with costs quantified at Rs 10,000 to be deposited with the High Court Legal Aid Committee”.

The site was allotted to Mahesh Kumar in an open auction. According to terms and conditions of allotment, 10 per cent of the total amount was deposited at the spot. The remaining 15 per cent was to be deposited within 30 days. Mahesh Kumar sought condonation on the ground of illness, pleading confinement to bed. The prayer was not accepted on the ground that delay beyond 30 days could not be condoned.

As the matter came before the high court, the Single Judge held that though according to HUDA policy, there was power of condoning the delay on payment of extra charges up to 30 days, in a fit case, longer delay could be condoned by the next higher authority on payment of surcharge along with penal interest.

Reference was also made to policy dated July 27, 2005, envisaging condonation of delay up to 60 days, subject to certain payments.

The Division Bench ruled: “Having regard to the facts and circumstances of the case, we do not find any ground to interfere with the view taken by the Single Judge.

Rewari, December 19
Rameshwar Dayal, a resident of Luhana village, 22 km from here, has reportedly been duped of lakhs by a person, who fraudulently managed to grab his ATM card from his son Navin Kumar here on December 15.

Sources said the incident took place when Navin sought assistance from the alleged accused to operate his father’s ATM card to withdraw money from an ATM booth of a bank here. The accused allegedly took away his father’s ATM card while replacing it with a fake one.

Subsequently, the accused reportedly made use of Dayal’s ATM card to facilitate the transfer of Rs 1 lakh as well as over Rs 2.30 lakh from the latter’s account to his two bank accounts - one each at Saffidon in Jind district in Haryana and at Akhnoor in Kashmir, respectively.

Besides, the accused also withdrew Rs 50,000 from Dayal’s account here.

Meanwhile, when Rameshwar Dayal came to know of the fraud, he approached the bank authorities as well as the police, which has now sought closure of the accused’s bank accounts at Saffidon and Akhnoor.

The police has registered a case of cheating and criminal breach of trust in this regard. 

Karnal, December 19
Satish Kumar, a resident of Gali No. 9, Shiv Colony, was shot dead allegedly by two persons near his house late last night. The deceased, who used to run a barber shop in Sector 6, was found dead at the spot and his motorcycle was lying nearby.

The body of the deceased was identified by a local resident, Happy, who informed Satish Kumar’s family.

Shocked family members, including the mother of the deceased and his 15-year-old son Arjun, rushed to the spot and informed the police. The police registered a case under Section 302 of the IPC and Section 25 of the Arms Act.

After preliminary inquiries, the police came to know that Satish Kumar had an old enmity with Chander Sen and suspected the latter’s hand in the crime.

Chander Sen had a quarrel with Satish Kumar over a wall last year, but they reached a compromise. However, Chander was harbouring a grudge against Satish and he and his nephew Shiv Kumar allegedly shot him.

DSP (Headquarters) Surinder Boria said the accused fired from a country-made pistol and fled. Satish Kumar died on the spot. Both accused have been arrested by the police.

In another sordid incident, Gyanender, a second-year student of the civil trade in Government Polytechnic, Nilokheri, was found in an injured condition at a canal near a sugar mill, 25 km from here, last night. He was taken to the trauma centre here by the police, where doctors declared him “brought dead”.

According to the police, the deceased, who was 18 years old, used to take tuitions from Neelam Rathi, who is teaching as a guest lecturer at the polytechnic. The father of the deceased, Suresh Kumar, who works as a security guard in DLF at Gurgaon, in his complaint, alleged that Neelam Rathi and her husband Shekhar were responsible for the murder of his son.

He alleged that Neelam and his son had developed “illicit relations” and her husband Shekhar had come to know about it.

The police has registered a case against the couple, but no arrests have been made.