Shortage of LPG
HPCL distributors threaten protest
Jalandhar, January 18
Reacting to the “non-cooperative attitude” of the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) authorities in smoothening the supply of LPG, the Punjab unit of the All-India LPG Distributors Federation today threatened that shutters of the HPCL gas agencies would be pulled down if the corporation failed to cover the backlog.

Amritsar, January 18
Akal Takht Jathedar Gurbachan Singh has demanded the revocation of the Union Government prepared “black list” which has the names of persons who are prohibited from entering India.

He said the deportation of an NRI woman from New Zealand, Shobhneet Kaur, and her two-year-old son Bachantveer Singh at Indira Gandhi International Airport on January 12 had brought out the “insensitive” face of the government.

Raising the issue of the “black list”, he said since the matter was brought to his notice now by the affected family, he was compelled to speak out. He added that many Sikhs with their names on the “black list” and their families living overseas faced problems.

The Jathedar said the reinvestigation of individuals, whose names were on the “black list”, must be carried out to give them another chance to enjoy the benefits of the mainstream of the nation.

He said the family contacted him after the mother-son duo had to take a flight from New Delhi to Dubai and then another to reach New Zealand.

He alleged that the Union Government was using the “black list” to humiliate Sikhs and demanded that it must review its policy in this regard and make the necessary amendments.

He condemned the attacks on gurdwaras in Kuala Lumpur and Melbourne. He said all Indians, irrespective of their faiths, must stand united to face challenges in foreign countries.

He also urged Sikh children to carve out their careers in the country instead of going abroad for this purpose.

Jalandhar, January 18
BJP leader Navjot Singh Sidhu today said he was prepared for a confrontation with the Union Government which was deliberately strangling Punjab by excluding it from national development projects.

Speaking to The Tribune, Sidhu said the Centre’s attitude towards the state was evident from the way it had been treated on the issues of the freight rail corridor, industrial corridor, railway connectivity, the Amritsar heritage project and other major projects. The state had also not been included in the Mumbai-Delhi industrial corridor on which investment of Rs 4,00,000 lakh would be made. Nor was there was a proposal to extend the freight rail corridor up to Amritsar. Keeping in view the contiguity factor, Punjab should have been included in the Mumbai-Delhi industrial corridor in which Maharashtra, Gujarat, MP, Rajasthan, UP, Delhi and Haryana had been included. Punjab was yet to be linked to the national gas grid, he said.

The state could not survive on agriculture for centuries and its economy required to be modernised by establishing a sizeable manufacturing sector. He said in the absence of a freight corridor, the export of various commodities through the Wagah border could not be further promoted. “Punjab, which used to be a golden goose, is being killed by the Centre systematically”, Sidhu alleged. “ The state is not ready to continue to be dominated by agriculture, an economy of the medieval period”, he added. “What is the future of our youth in such a situation?” he asked the Centre.

He said the most troubling fact was that Punjab was the slowest growing state in the country. Whereas other major states would be growing at a rate of 9 per cent or above during the 11th Plan, Punjab would be growing at 5.9 per cent and it was bracketed with Manipur at the bottom of the growth ladder, said Sidhu. The Centre would have to stop playing politics in the case of Punjab.“ We are not against giving incentives to any state but we want that Punjab should be included in the national growth programme”, he added.

“Discrimination with Punjab is a wake-up call for all of us and we will be prepared to take on the Centre in this regard. I will confront the Centre with facts and figures also”, he added.

Rail connectivity in Punjab was the poorest.“Two months ago, I had a long meeting with the Chairman of the Railway Board. I told him that there would be agitation in case Punjab was not linked to its capital, Chandigarh, from Bathinda, Ferozepur and Amritsar in the next few months”, said Sidhu. He said the Union Government had done nothing for the development of railways in Punjab. Even big cities were not linked through rail. 

Faridkot, January 18
The district administration has written a letter to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs to issue instructions as per the law for sending back home the Pakistani boy lodged in the juvenile home here for the past more than 18 months.

Sunil Khan, the 17-year-old Pakistani boy, a resident of Bahawalpur, was taken into custody by the BSF personnel in May 2008 when he was just 15 years old for illegally entering into the Indian side in the Hussainiwala area of Ferozepur district.

He was handed over to the Ferozepur police after formal interrogation and investigations. The Ferozepur police lodged a criminal case under Sections 3 and 5 of the Passport Act and various sections of the IPC against him. Later, he was sent to the juvenile home here on the orders of a local court.

Since then, he was facing a trial before the Juvenile Board, which had recently ordered to release him after computing the days of his judicial custody in the juvenile home as punishment.

Following this, the district administration has written to the Home Ministry to issue instructions to repatriate him to Pakistan, said a senior official of the district administration.

In 2008, on the intervention of the Juvenile Board, Indian authorities arranged a telephonic conversation between him and his parents so that they could know that their child was lodged in the prison here.

His parents were said to be very poor, who could not pursue his case. Therefore, Sunil made an appeal to the Indian Government on November 2, 2009, to release him, pleading that he had unknowingly crossed the border. He said the fencing along the border on the Indian side was damaged leading to confusion and he unknowingly entered this side of the border. “I am innocent and there was no motive behind this act,” he stated before the Juvenile Board.

For the past few months, Sunil Khan was trying to learn Punjabi language in the juvenile home but he was worried that if he was not repatriated back to Pakistan immediately, his life could get spoilt because his age would run out for education. 

Chandigarh, January 18
Coming to the aid of farmers who have borrowed money from private moneylenders in Gurdaspur, Punjab National Bank has now gone in for a debt swap. Instead of paying abnormally high rates of interest to these moneylenders, the bank has taken over their debt at a very nominal rate of interest.

The bank has convinced 124 farmers in the villages of Anial, Bamial, Bakhri, Chak Mir, Jamial, Manwal, Kothe Manwal and Muthi to take a loan from the bank and repay their debt to the moneylenders. This means that these poor farmers will now have to pay an interest of just 9.75 per cent per annum to the bank as compared to 36 per cent interest that they were forced to pay to the moneylenders.

J. K. Kakkar, chief lead manager, Punjab National Bank, Gurdaspur, informed TNS that though the debt swap scheme was announced by the government a few years ago, it did not find many takers. “Earlier, banks expected farmers to get a declaration from the moneylenders that they had given a loan of a certain amount to the farmer. Since the moneylender would not give this declaration, the farmer could not swap the debt. But now we decided to do away with this condition and the farmer now has to give a self-declaration that he has availed himself of a loan from the moneylender. Based on this declaration, we have given a loan of Rs 50,000 each to 124 farmers, who have paid off their dues to the moneylenders,” he explained.

Kakkar said this required the extensive participation of panchayat members in the villages, who helped the bank identify the farmers and also vouch for the latters’ credibility to repay the loan. “We will now be extending the debt swap in the remaining 16 villages of Bamial block in Gurdaspur,” he added.

Now, based on the success of this pilot project, the state-level Bankers Committee at its recent meeting has now asked the lead bank in each district of Punjab to implement this scheme in at least one block. This would go a long way in removing rural indebtedness in the state, which is amongst the highest in the country. 

Ludhiana, January 18
Joginder Singh, former CBI director, today said the agency was not an independent body and it had been used continuously by the successive governments to serve their “political” purpose.

The former CBI director was in the city today to attend a meeting of the Ludhiana Citizens Council to discuss civic issues.

Talking to reporters here, he said, although the agency needed to be independent, unfortunately it was not. He maintained that the CBI was not above the government and it was difficult to believe it functioned independently.

Speaking on the Bofors controversy, he said, “Rajiv Gandhi was never a part of the Bofors controversy and, more importantly, he was never an accused. Terming him as an accused was most unfortunate in the Bofors case.

Favouring the freedom of the Press, Joginder Singh said the government should make the sting operations legal so that many more corrupt bureaucrats and politicians could be arrested, provided the sting operations were conducted in public interest.

Taking a jibe at former Telecom Minister Sukh Ram, he said such politicians were making full use of the slow judicial process.

While referring to the slow judicial process in the country, he pointed out that one case in the Calcutta High Court was pending for 185 years. It had been filed by the then ruler of the state against the acquisition of his land for the Governor’s house. Several generations had passed but the case was still pending in the court.

Channu (Muktsar), January 18
Village folk of this waterlogged and economically backward area of Punjab are now earning a handsome income by supplying waste to the recently set-up private sector powerhouse based on biomass and agro-waste.

Tractor-trolleys loaded with cow dung cakes (pathis), residue of cotton and paddy crop and elephant grass queue outside the power plant that has come as a ray of hope for farmers whose lands remained waterlogged for the past several years.

The 14.5 MW project generates electricity by burning dried leaves, waste wood, elephant grass, cotton plant sticks, rice and paddy straw and cow dung cakes.

Interestingly, residents of the area have started cooking meals on LPG stoves as each cow dung cake, which was earlier their means of lighting a stove, was fetching them about Rs 2 from this power project.

Pawanpreet Singh Badal, Director of the Universal Biomass Energy Limited, said about 100 tonnes of ‘pathis’ and 450 tonnes of agriculture waste and biomass were required every day to keep the generation going. Residents of villages falling in Rajasthan and Haryana are also supplying ‘pathis’.

About 70 to 80 tonnes of elephant grass was brought daily by landless people, who earn their livelihood from the power project.

Raw material for the power plant is seasonal, as the leftover cotton plant sticks were these days being used for generation while the mustard waste would come next month, he added. However, the waterlogged area around the powerhouse has the wild growth of elephant grass that is available in abundance.

Pawanpreet said about 300 persons were employed in the powerhouse and another 1,000 were gaining indirectly.

Gurmeet Singh, a landless labourer from Malout, said he brought two trolleys loaded with elephant grass every day and earned about Rs 4,000. However, a major portion of this earning was distributed as compensation to those who cut elephant grass from waterlogged areas, he added.

Chandigarh, January 18
The state government is proposing to hire a private agency so that it can evaluate people’s perception of policing, particularly the role of the SSP, even as it gets ready to hold a first review meeting to rate their performance on January 22.

The proposal, which is being considered by the Home Ministry, is next in line to the quarterly review meetings, which are set to become a regular feature from January 22 onwards. The meetings, which will be chaired by Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, are aimed at ensuring more efficient and responsive policing at the district level.

When questioned about the proposals, Sukhbir said he was in the process of suggesting that a private agency be hired to evaluate how people rate the SSP, SP, DSP and SHOs who deal with them.

He said besides this, the government would on the basis of reports submitted by the private agency initiate a system of rewarding exemplary officers.

Asserting that such “out of box” ideas were necessary for a more efficient system, he said people’s perception would also be a criterion to rate SSPs from the next quarterly meeting onwards.

Sukhbir said right now the first meeting to review the functioning of the SSPs would rate them on their performance, including how they handle law and order situations, their track record in the fight against narcotics as well as corruption and cracking of cases besides other guidelines. He said a team of officers, headed by the DGP, had been constituted in the police headquarters here to rate the officers.

The Deputy CM said the first assessment was ready and would be on the board when the SSPs attended the review meeting. When asked whether this system would “encourage” some SSPs to stage-manage recoveries, he said since a top-level team would be looking into this aspect, there was a remote chance of this happening.

Questioned about the constraints under which the SSPs are working, particularly “undue pressure” existed by SAD leaders who have been appointed ‘illaqa in charge’ of various districts, he said it was for the SSPs to display due leadership qualities. He said officers could not take refuge behind the excuse of political patronage enjoyed by SHOs under them, as it was up to them to control their subordinates.

Chandigarh, January 18
Noted molecular biologist and former vice-chairman of Knowledge Commission Pushpa Mittra Bhargava said hasty approval to BT Brinjal would be single largest disaster by of the country after Independence.

Strongly opposing what he called “vested interests in seeking hasty approvals for commercial cultivation of BT Brinjal”, Bhargava said this was a sinister design to control food production in the developing nations.

Strongly criticising Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) for granting approval to BT Brinjal, Bhargava said he had drawn attention of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the fact that less than 10 per cent of the 30 mandatory safety tests were conducted before the decision was arrived. He was delivering the keynote address on a discussion titled “BT Brinjal: Prospects and Concerns”, at the Institute for Development and Communication here today.

Questioning the legitimacy of the tests conducted, he said at least a dozen international scientists had supported his stance on the need for thorough study on the impact of the BT toxin. He alleged that the GEAC preferred to turn a blind eye towards major discrepancies, besides manipulating data and blindly following the misinformation spread by Multi National Corporations (MNCs).

Bhargava, founder director of Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, who is a Supreme Court appointee on the GEAC, said he sees a “conspiracy by the MNCs to monopolise the cultivation of Brinjal, which is India’s second largest produced vegetable after potato”. He said once released, BT toxins, could not be checked later in any way. He cited the example of parthenium (Congress Grass- that came to India along with wheat import in the 1970s) that had caused havoc with people’s health and was virtually impossible to eradicate.

The scientist said he was hoping that the public opinion would be generated against the approval for BT Brinjal and the government was forced to reverse its decision, said Bhargava, who is the founder of the Hyderabad-based Centre for the Cellular and Molecular Biology.

Bhargava maintained, “Other indigenous techniques were available to increase productivity as India possesses knowledge to double its present food production”. He disclosed that AP had put over one lakh acre under organic farming; producing yields of cotton were equal to Punjab and Maharashtra, where BT varieties had replaced traditional seeds.

The molecular biologist disclosed that most countries and several states like Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh had decided not to allow cultivation of BT Brinjals. Asking Punjab not to allow non-pesticidal, non-genetically modified pest management options, the scientist said once a mutated gene entered human body, it could cause diseases like cancer.

Bhargava said if BT Brinjal was allowed to be cultivated more, vegetable varieties would meet the same fate and control over seed production would pass on into a few large corporate, who would benefit at the cost of 1.20 billion Indians. India he said cultivated about 150 vegetables that formed a vital link in the food chain of people from all sections, but if genetic modification of vegetables would not only hurt people health wise but also economically.

Patiala, January 18
The Patiala police found a suspected improvised explosive device (IED), planted next to the boundary wall of the LPG bottling plant along the Nabha-Bhiwanigarh road, near Nabha here this evening.

As a precautionary measure, the police has cordoned off the entire area near the bottling plant to prevent any untoward incident.

Patiala SSP Ranbir Singh Khattra said the ‘IED’ was meant to blow up the plant, as the explosion could have led to wide-scale devastation. He has said it would be diffused tomorrow.

Immediately after getting information, Khattra along with a local Army officer, who is an expert in handling explosives, rushed to the spot.

Speaking to The Tribune, the SSP said the security of the bottling plant spotted a packaged material in a cylindrical plastic container placed alongside boundary wall of the plant and immediately informed the police.

“As per the preliminary inspection, it appears to be an IED, which was covered with a brown shawl. An IED weighing 10 kg is capable of creating major destruction,” he said, while adding that as a series of precautionary measures, 200-250 sand bags have been placed near the container having that ‘IED’. “Heavy deployment of the force has been done to ensure that no human or animal goes near the container”, he said.

Khattra said state-level bomb disposal squad team from PAP, Jalandhar, was on its way to Patiala and the Patiala police has also sent a request to the Deputy Commissioner asking for a team of the Army to assist the police in dealing with this exigency. “An expert of Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) of Punjab, Dr. Mishra, would also reach here tomorrow morning,” he said.

Terming the situation as very serious, he said an FIR in this regard has been registered under the Explosives Act and investigations have been initiated. He, however, denied making any arrest in this regard so far. The SSP also refused to make any comments as to which terrorist organisation could have planted the ‘IED’.

Patiala, January 18
The Punjab Education Department has released a revised list of fees being collected by government schools. The changes will be implemented from the coming session i.e. 2010-11.

Keeping in mind the requirement of the schools and students, the government has made cuts in a few funds and has also revised the rates of others.

While releasing the new list, secretary of the Punjab Education Department GS Grewal said this formula had been formed in order to manage the resources in a better way and ensure that no additional fund is charged from students.

The practical fees for Classes XI and XII will be charged monthly as Rs 5 for Geography, Rs 4 for Fine Arts, Rs 5 for Chemistry and Rs 3.5 for Physics and Biology.

As far as the annual funds are concerned, the admission fee for Class VI to X will be Rs 3, and for Class XI and XII it will be Rs 10. The re-admission fee will be Re 1 for Class VI to XII.

Earlier, schools used to collect different funds like admission fees, Red Cross fund, building fund, identity card, internal examination fund, student welfare fund etc, on annual basis. Others like amalgamated fund, sports fund, health fund, audio-visual fund, small saving fund, cycle fund, tuition fees for girls and practical fees etc, were collected on monthly basis.

Managing such large number of funds was very difficult for the school authorities, as it was very time consuming. As per information, many funds had already been discontinued.

Therefore, in order to make the entire process systematic and easy the department released this new list.

The amalgamated fee will be used for the better functioning of school, electricity bills, telephone and Internet connections, and for internal exams.

The PTA fund will go for the running cost of generators, offical work and other activities of the school.

Patiala, January 18
Hardcore criminals lodged at the Patiala Central Jail writing articles on social evils like female foeticide and drug addiction! Inmates sending requests to FM stations to play songs of their choice. Sounds strange but it’s true.

With the jail inmates learning the basics of English, Hindi and Punjabi languages through an adult education programme run by Rotary Club, Patiala, Mid-Town and Rotary Club, Toronto, Humber, Canada, at the jail, convicts as well as undertrials are “working hard” to become literate and do some good to the society.

“Female foeticide is a curse and I have written a two-page write-up highlighting the reasons behind the problem and suggestions to eradicate this social evil,” said an under-trial Sukhdev Singh Babbar, facing trial in murder case.

He said, “I have learnt Punjabi through the adult education programme. Now, I can pen down my inner thoughts about the social evils still prevalent in our country.”

Another jail inmate, Harnek Singh, has written write-ups on the drug addiction among the youth. “I strongly feel that noone is a criminal by birth. After learning Punjabi language at the camp, now my inner-self motivates me to write something on the crucial issue of youth being hooked to drugs,” he told The Tribune, while adding that if adult education programmes were organised in all jails, it would be extremely helpful in transforming the jail inmates.

Interestingly, the camp has also given an opportunity to the jail inmates to listen songs of their choice. Hardeep Singh Dhillon, serving a 20-year sentence in a murder case has loads of postcards. “After learning how to read and write, I send requests for playing songs at the Patiala FM station. That’s why I am never short of postcards,” he said smilingly.

Balbir Singh, yet another inmate serving 20-year sentence in a murder case, said, “I am a driver and have learnt Punjabi and Hindi. After my release, I would not face any difficulty in reading the sign boards while driving”, he said.

Notably, the man behind the change is Jagdish Chander Kumar. Jagdish is a state awardee, who retired as teacher from the government school, and has been teaching the jail inmates for over the past three decades in the adult education camp, being organised annually for three months.