Ellenabad, January 8
Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s visit today provided the much-needed impetus to Congress candidate Bharat Singh Beniwal’s poll campaign that has been rather lacklustre so far.

Hooda addressed meetings of party workers at Nathusari Chopta and Ellenabad and then organised a roadshow in Ellenabad town.

The Chief Minister’s brought all Congress men on one platform with leaders like LD Arora, Ranjit Singh, KV Singh, Sushil Indora, Anil Khod, Jagdish Nehra and Gopal Kanda from Sirsa and those from outside like Sampat Singh, Prahlad Singh Gillankhera, Dura Ram, Ranbir Singh Mohindra, Nirmal Singh, Anand Singh Dangi, Chhatarpal Singh, Dharamvir Singh, Aftab Ahmed, Shakuntala Khatak, RK Gautam and Amir Chand Makkar expressing solidarity with the Congress nominee.

AICC general secretary Prithviraj Chauhan and minister Randeep Singh Surjewala, who could not make it to Chopta, joined campaign at Ellenabad.

Hooda alleged that the Chautalas had been misleading people on the development issue.

“It’s a matter of record that my government spent Rs 270 crore on Ellenabad and a further package of Rs 58 crore has been announced recently, whereas Chautala spent only Rs 148 crores during the six years that he was in power,” Hooda claimed. Accusing the Chautalas of negative canvassing, he said he was surprised at the former Chief Minister’s claim that “Congress bickering” would help the INLD. “Why can’t Chautala enumerate some positive features of his party to seek votes,” he asked.

He also accused the Chautalas of misleading the people on the issue of opening of a college in Ellenabad town. He said he had accepted the demand in principle and the foundation stone had been delayed on account of the Model Code of Conduct. “Were Chautalas to open the college, they could have done,while they were in power for six years,” he said.Enthused by the response to Hooda’s meeting, Beniwal urged voters to vote for him for ensuring development of the area.

Speaking in chaste Bagri dialect of the area, Beniwal said he had served the erstwhile Darba Kalan constituency to the best of his ability and sought forgiveness for any wrong committed.

Hooda will campaign in Ellenabad for the next two days and again on January 17 and 18.

Ellenabad, January 8
Alas, a sunny day after two days of fog. Basking in the sun and sipping a cup of steaming coffee outside the INLD office at the local grain market are Ashok Arora, state president, Ram Pal Majra, party MLA from Kalayat and Padam Jain, president of INLD’s district unit and other party functionaries. The poll managers caution workers against complacency.

“Om Parkash Chautala has been regularly cautioning against complacency,” says a senior leader. He fear that delay in the Congress campaign may led to complacency among party workers.

Office in charge KC Bangar allays any such misgiving. He says the campaigning has been relentless with the party top leaders having covered the constituency almost thrice and members of the Chautala family meeting voters door-to-door.

Resuming his campaign after a two-day break, Abhey Singh campaigns in Umedpura, Mehnakhera, Mithisurera, Kharisurera, Pohraka and Bhratwala.

“The countdown for the fall of Hooda government will begin once the Congress candidate is defeated,” the INLD candidate claims in his address to villagers.

The villagers cheer for him, despite knowing that a single seat will make no difference to the government.

“Politicians do make tall claims while addressing political gatherings and we see nothing new in this,” says a villager after the meeting.

Says Ajay Singh Chautala while canvassing for his brother: “The people of Sirsa have been denied their share of water by this government. You must vote for the INLD candidate in the January 20 byelection to avenge this discrimination.”

Ellenabad, January 8
Sudesh Agarwal, president for the Samast Bharatiya Party, today fervently appealed to the voters not to support mainstream parties that had been in power for decades and had only taken the country backwards.

The party has been emphasising on “alternative politics” where there is no place for corruption.

Accompanied by party nominee Kusum Chaudhary, Agarwal today campaigned in Darba Kalan, Darba Khurd, Makandiwan, Kutiana and Jasnian villages.

Chaudhary told the voters that power and drinking water scarcity and the hike in prices was on account of widespread corruption in politics and the lack of will on the part of politicians to address people’s problems.

She urged people to vote for her and provide her an opportunity to raise their voice in the assembly.

Chandigarh, January 8
Teachers in Haryana are apprehensive over the state government’s proposal to restructure colleges. The teaching community fears that the move may lead to retrenchment of those working in government-aided private colleges.

A delegation of the Haryana College Teachers Association (HCTA) met state education secretary Rajan Gupta to convey its apprehensions to him here yesterday. The delegation also brought to his notice certain problems like delayed payment of salaries in government-aided colleges and non-payment of revised house rent allowance.

According to general secretary of the HCTA Rajbir Parashar, Gupta assured the delegation that the restructuring would not lead to retrenchment and the teachers should have no insecurity about their jobs.

Gupta told the delegation that its apprehensions were due to the fact that the government was going ahead with the process of recruitment to about 700 vacant posts in the government-aided private colleges. There was also a proposal to double the intake of students in the higher education, which would require a greater number of teachers in the institutions concerned.

While assuring the delegation about the government’s “positive attitude” towards the teachers’ problems like delayed payment of salaries and non-payment of revised house rent allowance, Gupta asked the delegation to reconsider the existing form of teacher-student relationship and evolve a system of education based on an interactive approach. He also emphasised upon the role of the teaching community in devising methods for holistic development of students.

On its part, the delegation told Gupta that the HCTA had started internal debates and discussions for updating of the present education system. As part of this process, the one-day first academic conference of the association was held at Dyal Singh College, Karnal, on December 15 last year. On the occasion, a state-level seminar was organised on “Changing Scene of Higher Education and The Role of Teacher”.

Dr UV Singh, President of the HCTA, told Gupta that his association would launch a statewide campaign against female foeticide during the first week of February and involve students in eliminating this “collective shame” for the state. The HCTA would also hold two seminars on the examination system and humanities of the future in February.

He said the teaching fraternity of the government-aided private colleges was open to academic reforms in the larger interests of the students. The delgation comprised Dr Singh, Dr Parashar, Dr RP Saini and Dr Ishwar Singh.

Hisar, January 8
The Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN) has detected 4,364 cases of electricity theft during December, 2009, and imposed penalty worth Rs. 7.7 crore on erring consumers. The Nigam also lodged FIRs against 1,826 consumers who failed to pay the penalty in time.

A spokesman of DHBVN said teams of operation circle, Bhiwani, topped the list by detecting 1,220 theft cases followed by Hisar (960), Faridabad (922), Gurgaon (624), Narnaul (402) and Sirsa (236).

He said the Nigam also recovered arrears of power bills amounting to Rs 30.61 crore from 36,129 defaulters. The teams visited the premises of 55,739 consumers during December and disconnected connections of 10,178 defaulters who failed to pay the arrears of bills.

The Nigam officials also recovered Rs 68 lakh from consumers whose connections had already been disconnected for non-payment of bills. Special raids for theft-detection were being conducted at the premises of consumers whose connections had been disconnected on account of non-payment of bills.

The spokesman said as many as 142 dedicated teams had been formed to detect electricity theft and recover the defaulting amount under a special drive launched by the Nigam.

At least two dedicated teams had been formed in each sub-division.

The drive is part of DHBVN’s drive to bring down aggregate transmission and distribution losses to the minimum. The losses in the area of DHBVN have come down from 40 per cent in 2001 to 24.4 per cent in 2008-09. It is targeted to reduce the losses by three per cent this year. The Nigam plans to reduce the level of losses to 15 per cent by 2014-15.

Panipat, January 8
There could have been another grid collapse with three units of the thermal plant here tripping due to dense fog late last night.

Well-placed sources said the outage of 400 KV and 220 KV transmission lines led to effective outage of the 400 KV Dadri-Panipat double-circuit line. This lead to heavy loading on the 400 KV Bawana-Hisar, 400 KV Bawana-Bahadurgarh and 400 KV Dadri-Malerkotla lines.

They said the grid collapse was averted by resorting to load shedding in Punjab, Haryana, HP and Jammu and Kashmir as well as hydro re-scheduling.

The outage of transmission lines at Panipat due to dense fog tripped thermal units 1, 2 and 4 of the thermal Plant at 10.50 pm last night.

Railway supply was disrupted for 15 to 20 minutes.

The 400 KV Dehar Panipat line tripped at 10.17 pm. All 220 KV transmission lines from Panipat, including Panipat-Narela, Panipat-Kurukshetra, Panipat-Dhulkot and Panipat-Charkhi Dadri tripped.

The 400 KV Agra-Muradnager and 400 KV Bassi-Heerapur lines tripped this morning due to grid disturbances, but were restored soon after.

The sources said the authorities initiated measures to prevent a blackout in the northern states that draw power from the northern grid.

Kurukshetra January 8
In view of the solar eclipse on January 15 (Friday) and the byelection to the Ellenabad assembly constituency scheduled for January 20, Kurukshetra University has decided to reschedule its examinations falling on these two dates.

YP Goswami, Controller of Examinations, said now all examinations for graduate and postgraduate courses, including engineering and ayurveda, scheduled for January 15 would be held on January 17 (Sunday).

The exams that were to be held on January 20 would be conducted on January 24 ( Sunday).

Other exams would be held as scheduled and the venue and timings remained unchanged.

The rescheduling had been done for the convenience of the students, said university sources.

Rohtak, January 8
The ultra-modern sugar mill complex set up here at a cost of over Rs 180 crore is facing problems due to the new machinery and it appears to be in a stage of initializing itself before becoming fully operational.

This has forced authorities to divert cane purchased from the farmers to other mills. Of the 1.20 lakh quintal of cane purchased by this mill, nearly one lakh quintal has been diverted to the mills located at Meham, Gohana, Sonepat and Panipat. The first lot of sugar from here is likely to come out in a couple of days.

While some of the political parties, including the district unit of the BJP, have alleged that there could be a bigger problem than a simple initializing snag in this mill, it has demanded a high level probe into the ‘breakdown’ in the very first week of the mill becoming operational.

The managing director of the mill set up in the cooperative sector Naresh Narwal claimed that they were facing initial operational problems, which was a normal feature in all such mills as the equipment and machinery takes time to become fully functional.

Denying that any problems would be caused to cane growers or suppliers, he said arrangements were in place to buy all the cane supplied to them in the minimum time period and there was no complaint of any kind from the farmers so far. He said the mill had already diverted about one lakh quintals of cane to nearby mills so that crushing was not affected and the farmers get their payment on time.

He informed that 20,000 quintal of sugar had been crushed in the past about eight days and the first lot would be out in the next 36 hours. The mill, having a capacity of about 35,000 quintal of cane per day, had been inaugurated by the Chief Minister on December 31 last year.

Meanwhile, officials said the sugar mill at Shahbad, which had also started operations on December 28, had been able to crush 80,000 quintals of cane so far despite facing similar problems initially.

They added that all the problems would be sorted out in a week or so and crushing targets would be met.

Yamunanagar, January 8
Inmates of the district jail here have requested the Haryana jail reforms committee headed by Justice JS Sekhon to amend rules allowing their family members to meet them more frequently and not just once a week.

The inmates also appealed to the commission for landline phone facility so that they could call their kin and receive urgent calls. They also wanted that life term be reduced to less than 14 years.

The district jail does not have vehicles to carry inmates to courts. Jail officials have to hire private vehicles for the purpose. The jail staff requested the committee that they should be provided scales and facilities as available to the police force.

The reforms committee, also comprising retired IPS officers VK Kapoor and RR Banswal, visited the jail with 600 inmates, including women, four days ago.

District and Sessions Judge Bharat Bhushan Parsoon met the committee and apprised the members of reforms undertaken.

The committee visited the district jail on the directions of the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

Besides infrastructure, health facilities, hygiene, food, and medical facilities in jails, the committee has also been entrusted with the task to check facilities for mentally challenged inmates as well as the implementation of the recommendations made by the National Human Rights Commission .

The committee members, after visiting all jails,in the state, will give suggestions and also lay down guidelines for jail reforms. The committee members will submit their report to the High Court.