Solan, January 5
With a high-powered team from the Union Ministry of Commerce cancelling its supposed visit to the state, aimed at reviewing the extension of central industrial package, the industry has been left high and dry.

It was interesting to note that though two different teams from the Union Ministry of Steel and Commerce had visited the state, after the UPA government took over the reins in May last year, to explore the feasibility of expanding the package, little had been achieved to enhance it till today.

Several statements had, however, been made by the Congress to enhance the package with little having being done till today. It was only yesterday that the Union Minister of Commerce had officially made a recommendation to the Prime Minister and the Union Finance Ministry.

Officials in the Industries Department opined that since two teams had already taken into consideration the data of industrial growth after the 2003 central industrial package and had made an in-depth assessment about the type of industries which could be set up, there was little left to be assessed which required a visit. Elaborate data in this regard had already been made available to the two teams earlier.

The two visits were made after Union Minister of Steel Virbhadra Singh and Union Minister of Commerce Anand Sharma had directed their officials to prepare a suitable case for extension of the industrial package.

It was worth mentioning that since the grant of the central package in 2003 cleared 12,649 proposals involving an investment of Rs 40,123 crore and potential to generate 4.55 lakh jobs was cleared.

However, till date 6,091 projects with an investment of Rs 6,230 crore have initiated their operations. Investment plans have been put on hold by many promoters and even after completion of ongoing projects the total investment will not cross the Rs 10,000 crore mark.

It was, however, being felt that the state had failed to set up the requisite infrastructure and there had been little support from the Centre in this regard. Even the much-touted Baddi-Chandigarh railway expansion had failed to come through despite several announcements and even surveys. This was crucial to help the industry survive amidst stiff opposition from the neighbouring states.

Dharamsala, January 5
The BJP MP from Kangra Rajan Sushant today praised former Congress Union Minister Sukh Ram for his work for the state in the field of telecommunication. He said because of his efforts Himachal now had the highest density of telecommunication connections in the entire country.

He also praised Rahul Gandhi for his work in the rural areas. If Rahul is going to the rural areas and visiting the houses of poor, we should appreciate his efforts rather than criticising for the sake of criticism. Rather we should outdo him with our own efforts. The BJP national president Nitin Gadkari has recently set an example in this regard by praising Rahul Gandhi, Rajan Sushant said.

He then also praised Shanta Kumar, the former union minister, for his role in getting 12 per cent royalty in power projects for Himachal Pradesh.

He was here in view of the district-level organisational poll and said the politicians should grow above the party lines to appreciate the good works.

He also lamented that in Himachal the leaders displayed narrow vision. They would not appreciate anyone till there is indication from the respective Chief Minister. However, the scenario was changing at the national level. In Parliament MPs are cutting across party lines to appreciate good work or suggestions made by 
the members.

When asked about the proposed policy of the state government to carve out new districts, Rajan Sushant said nothing could be done without taking everybody from Kangra into confidence.

Rajan Sushant who is known for his outbursts had recently also announced that he would review the implementation of union government schemes in the district. If any officer was found to be misusing the funds in the scheme, he would be brought to the book, he had warned.

Dharamsala, January 5
‘I am a sevak (servant) of Shanta Kumar’. These were first words uttered by Ranjit Singh Pathania, the newly elected district president of BJP in Kangra, the most populous district of the state.

The words clearly indicated the dominance of Shanta Kumar, the former Chief Minister and national vice-president of the BJP, in the organisational polls of the party in Kangra district that concluded here today.

Pathania, a close confident of Shanta Kumar, from the Gangath area was today declared elected unanimously as president from Kangra district. Khushi Ram Balnatah, the returning officer for the elections, said all 15 mandals from the district had proposed the name of Pathania only and so he is declared elected unanimously.

However, just one minister Ramesh Dhawala was present during the elections, held at the PWD rest house in Dharamsala. The absence of Kishan Kapoor was justified due to the death of his father. However, the other two minister’s from the district, including Ravinder Ravi and Sarveen Chaudhary, who are considered close to Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal’s group, were absent.

Khushi Ram Balnatah when asked about the absence of minister’s said they were busy in official chores. He also said 18 delegates from Kangra district had also been elected unanimously for representation in state BJP leadership. Sources revealed that except Capt Atma Ram and Desh Raj both MLA’s from Jaisinghpur and Indora assembly constituency, all other delegates were workers of the party.

The other delegates include Rabinder Singh, Gaya Prasad, Manohar Lal, Rakesh Sharma, Sudha Sushant, Chiranji Lal, Surinder Thakur, Asha Ram, Vidya Sagar, Madho Ram, Mangal Chaudhary, Rajiv Bharadwaj and Pritam Chand.

Ranjit Singh Pathania also immediately announced Vinay Sharma another close confident of Shanta Kumar as the general secretary of Kangra BJP.

By electing the common worker in place of a MLA as district president of party, the Shanta Kumar group has tried to drive home the point that elected representative shouldn’t be given charge of party affairs. Shanta Kumar has been advocating that common party workers should be given party position to create a balance of power.

The dominance of Shanta group delegates from Kangra district is likely to bolster the chances of JP Nadda the forest minister for the post of state president of BJP. Nadda, who has openly declared that he was ready to leave the post of minister or even the MLA, if elected as state president of the party, is being supported by the Shanta Kumar group.

The group owing allegiance to Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal on the other hand is for continuation of Khimi Ram as state president party.

Hamirpur, January 5
A case of alleged misappropriation of development funds worth lakhs by a panchayat president in the Bamsan Assembly constituency of Chief Minister PK Dhumal has come to light here through information procured under the Right to Information Act (RTI).

The information procured by Shakuntla Thakur, former gram panchayat president of Bufadi, regarding inquiry conducted by a committee formed by BDO Toani Devi on 19 development works carried by present panchayat president Duni Chand in two wards not only speaks volumes about glaring misappropriation of funds but also points out that many of these works were not carried at all.

Interestingly, all these works were carried under the supervision of officials of the Toani Devi block who had been making on the spot inspection of these works from time to time.

While inquiry report has highlighted exaggerated payments received for many works, it also speaks about payment made in the name of a minor through muster roll, who actually was attending classes in a school during that period, raising bills for use of his own JCB machine, showing use of building material without deploying labour and without issuing muster rolls, leaving many works incomplete.

In a work related to link road to a Harijan Basti the inquiry report details out that though panchayat president has drawn Rs 1 lakh and shown expenditure of Rs 50,400 but the evaluation report specified zero work on the link road and no road was reportedly constructed to Panahar village, for another work Rs 26,700 were supposedly spent.

The inquiry committee had also recommended recovery of thousands of rupees in many cases from the Panchayat president for exaggerated expenditure shown for many works besides highlighting misappropriation of panchayat funds for these works.

Ward members of the panchayat Bidhi Chand, Ramesh Kumar, former panchayat president Shakuntla Thakur and many other villagers have demanded “immediate removal of Duni Chand and registration of criminal case against him for misappropriation of government funds besides action against officials who overlooked the glaring irregularities in the development works.”

Duni Chand said, “I have not received any inquiry report and comment after getting the copy of the report.”

District Panchayat officer Satish Sharma said, “The inquiry report has highlighted misappropriation of development funds by Bufadi panchayat president and action was on final stage in this case, even suspension from the post was possible,” he added.

Kangra, January 5
A three-member team of the Medical Council Of India (MCI) started inspection in the Dr RP Government Medical College, Tanda, today for pre-postgraduate courses, scheduled to start from next academic session in the college. The team also conducted the verification of the doctors through identification parade.

The doctors had to wait for hours together before they submitted their resumes personally before the team and physical verification of doctors was made in an identification parade of each department by the MCI members. It was an atmosphere of uneasiness all over and faculty members of all categories, including professors, associate professors and assistant professors and resident doctors 
were waiting in a queue in the corridors of the principal’s office for their turn for verification.

During the last MCI inspection the deficiency of six professors, two associate professors, six assistant professors, five senior residents and ten junior residents in different departments was pointed out and the college management now claim to have filled up all these posts by fresh appointments or promotions.

The GOI had already given an approval for 21 PG seats in ten departments which included two each in medicines, surgery, paediatrics, orthopaedics, ophthalmology, community medicines, pharmacology, anaesthesia and skin and VD and three in gynaecology.

The college authorities did not even dare to whisper the names of the members of the inspection team. However, on the condition of anonymity one professor said Dr Ram Prakash was heading the MCI team.

The MCI had earlier pointed out that Dr Ramesh Bharti and Dr Sanjeev Sharma of surgery department, Dr Suresh Verma and Dr Sita Thakur of gynaecology department, Dr Ranjeet Thakur anaesthesia, Dr Kamlesh Thakur of microbiology, Dr Sanjeev Choudary of paediatrics and Dr Rupali of department of physiology were not fulfilling the norms of MCI required for being the professors.

All these doctors though fullfil the criteria of Recruitment and Promotion rules of the state government for holding the post of the professors yet were not eligible for the post of professor under the MCI norms.

According to the MCI guidelines, a doctor must render service for 5 years as an assistant professor and for 4 years as associate professor, to be eligible for the post of professor. MCI in its rules had further suggested that a doctor with 15 year service as assistant and associate Professor too was eligible for the post of professor.

Director Medical Education, Dr Jaishri Sharma, was also stationed in the college during inspection today. The mediapersons were not allowed to meet the MCI team so much so even the Director Medical Education Dr Jaishri Sharma refused to meet mediapersons.

The MCI team was here on the request of the college management as deficiencies earlier pointed out were covered up, claimed principal Dr Anil Chouhan.

Shimla, January 5
The State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission has dismissed the appeal filed by National Insurance Company and directed it to pay a compensation Rs 2,35,420 at an interest of 9 per cent per annum to complainant.

The commission had passed this order on an appeal filed by the insurance company challenging the order of the Consumer Forum, Mandi.

The company had repudiated the insurance claim of complainant, Goverdhan Singh. The company argued that when the vehicle in question met with an accident, it was permitted to ply on Jahal-Chailchowk route only. Whereas the accident in this case had not taken place on this route. The vehicle had met with an accident at Salahar village. This was the ground for repudiating the claim of the complainant. While dismissing the appeal of the company the commission had observed that the company did not provide with sufficient evidence to prove its defence that the vehicle was not plying on the authorised route.

Shimla, January 5
The Patanjali Yogapeeth at Haridwar has decided to set up its second centre in Solan district.

This was stated by Swami Ramdev in the presence of Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal while speaking at the Sewa Deeksha and Sankalap Divas organised in Haridwar today. Earlier, Dhumal held detailed discussions with Ramdev for setting up of second yogapeeth to be spread over an area of 25 acres.

Speaking on the occasion, Dhumal said construction work on the proposed yogapeeth would be started during the current year and assured that the government would provide all possible help and assistance to expedite the work on the completion of the institute.

“Patanjali Yogapeeth will sell 700 tonnes apple juice concentrate through its sale counters at various places in the country to help apple growers get remunerative prices for their produce,” he said. He added that the yogapeeth would also purchase medicinal herbs from growers of the state.

“The government will fix support prices of the medicinal plants so that farmers get an assured income from the herbs and medicinal plants grown in their fields,” said Dhumal. He invited Patanjali Yogpeeth to set up a food and fruit-processing unit in the state so that the people benefit economically.

He said the government would promote scientific exploitation of natural resources to ensure quality herbal production in 
the state.

The state government had entered into an MoU with Patanjali Yogapeeth to sell its herbal and food produce to the peeth. Himachal had 7.32 per cent of the total biodiversity of the country and various medicinal herbs were also available in the higher reaches of the state.

Shimla, January 5
Perturbed over non-implementation of decisions of the apex bodies of Himachal Pradesh University (HPU), Waryam Singth Bains, a member of the Executive Council (EC), today sought the intervention of the chief minister to ensure that the employees get their due.

Bains in a letter written to Chief Minister P.K. Dhumal has pointed out how the Local Audit Department (LAD) does not abide by the decisions taken by the EC with regard to pay fixation of non-teaching employees. “Despite the issue of pay fixation examined by the sub-committee of the EC headed by H.S. Atwal, a retired IAS officer, the issue is still hanging fire,”he rued.

Bains said that after due deliberations on the issue of pay fixation it was decided that there was no need to obtain further clarification from the state government in this regard.

He added that due to growing resentment among the non-teaching cadres the matter was once again placed before the EC on September 29 last year,”he said.

He urged the chief minister to intervene in the matter to ensure that the provisions of the HPU Act and Statues and Ordinances are implemented in letter and spirit.

“It is also the duty of the Vice-Chancellor to give effect to decisions of the apex body, Executive Council, but LAD has refused to implement the decision of the EC,” he said.

He pointed out that the non-teaching staff was now holding protests over non-implementation of the decision on pay fixation, revision of scales on UGC pattern, promotions and upgradation of posts.

“The revised pay structure has been notified in respect of teaching staff but the other officials have been left out in a complete departure from the past practice,” he said.

Bilaspur, January 5
The district lost 74 human lives in 247 road accidents involving various vehicles and 471 persons were injured during 2009. The accident rate has risen sharply as compared to 2008 when 36 persons died in 207 road accidents and 298 were injured.

This was stated by BR Kaundal, Additional District Magistrate (ADM), while presiding over a daylong district-level Road Safety Seminar in connection with the road safety week here yesterday.

The seminar was organised by the Disaster Management Centre of the Government Public Administration Institute, Mashobra (Shimla), in collaboration with the Transport Department here at the Kisan Bhawan. It was attended by large number of government and private bus and truck drivers and conductors and truck operators from throughout the district.

Kaundal pleaded that all concerned departments should ensure that all drivers must be fully trained and taught to scrupulously obey road safety and traffic rules. He said 97 per cent of the road accidents have been found to occur due to human error and drivers must learn, or be forced to ensure, accident-free road travel every time they sit on the wheel.

He said the known reasons for accidents involved breaking of traffic rules, overtaking from wrong side or without waiting for the signal from the vehicle ahead, over speed, turning at top speed, jumping traffic lights, playing of stereos, changing of cassettes of stereos, drunken driving, habit of talking on mobile while driving.

The ADM directed all concerned departments to ensure that they were on the road at least once in a week so that any defaulters be checked and warned and if need be, challenged for faulty driving.

He said maintenance of vehicles was also important as 3 per cent of the accidents took place due to failure of the machinery.