Sirsa, March 2
With the situation limping back to normal after Saturday’s incidents of arson, allegedly by followers of Dera Sacha Sauda, the authorities are now gearing up for March 4 and March 6 when dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh will appear before a CBI court in Ambala through video-conferencing.

Incidents of arson and burning of Haryana Roadways buses were witnessed in Sirsa, Fatehabad, Kaithal, Jind, Karnal and some other parts in Haryana following news of registration of a fresh case of murder against the dera head. After two days of limited operations, Haryana Roadways plied more buses today, though the services are far from normal. Hence, long queues of commuters were seen outside bus stands in the morning.

Paramilitary personnel summoned by the authorities after Saturday’s incidents are still on duty. The police arrested four more persons, three from Rania and one under the Rori police station, taking the total number of arrests to 11.

The accused, including a father-son duo, Sunil and his father Shriram, Jagdish and Sita Ram, have been remanded to judicial custody by a local court. Interestingly, while police sources admit in private that all persons arrested so far are followers of the Dera Sacha Sauda, no senior office is ready to confirm if Saturday’s incidents have dera connections. Political parties, too, have been trying to evade the issue.

On March 4, the dera head will appear before the CBI court in the Ranjit Singh murder case and on March 5 and March 6, in the journalist Ram Chander Chhatarpati murder case. The slain editor’s son, Aridaman Singh, an eyewitness to the crime, is to depose before the court. Although, the dera chief has been appearing before the court in the past too, the authorities are on a high vigil due to the charged atmosphere after the Saturday violence. Eight persons have been arrested in Karnal and Kurukshetra.

Karnal: In a joint operation, the Karnal and Kurukshetra police arrested eight persons allegedly involved in setting a Haryana Roadways bus on fire at Brota village in Kurukshetra district on February 28.

The arrested persons remanded to police custody for a day were sent on a 14-day judicial remand by a local court, police sources said.

The incident was linked to protests by Dera Sachha Sauda supporters in the wake of a murder case registered by the CBI against Baba Ram Rahim.

The miscreants had fled after damaging the bus but were identified by the police which launched a joint manhunt. It was owing to the coordinated efforts by the Kurukshetra and Karnal police that eight persons were arrested.

Though the village fell within the jurisdiction of Kurukshetra district, it was closer to Karnal. After the incident, a Karnal Police team led by ASP Suriner Boria was the first to reach the spot.

Meanwhile, no untoward incident was reported in the districts of Karnal, Kaithal and Kurukshetra.

The police is maintaining a strict vigil on all suspicious elements .

All vulnerable places are being heavily guarded to ensure protection to public and private property, a senior police officer said.

Kaithal, March 2
A feasibility survey to construct a Kurukshetra-Patiala railway line via Pehowa and Cheeka will start in near future. This was stated by Ishwar Singh, Rajya Sabha member and Member, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Railway, while addressing a meeting of prominent citizens at the residence of District Congress Committee secretary Anurag Sikka here today.

The MP assured that he would leave no stone unturned to get direct railway connectivity of Kaithal town with Delhi.

He said a direct Kaithal-Delhi railway link was a long-standing demand of the people of this area and it should be accepted by the Railway Ministry keeping in view the revenue contribution of this area to the Railways’ kitty.

He said Kaithal was a big foodgrain market of north India and this area contributed lakhs of metric tonnes of rice and wheat to the Central government pool.

“Besides, being a district headquarter, this town needs to have a direct rail link with Delhi,” he said.

He assured to take up the matter with Railway Minister.

Sirsa: Tarlochan Singh, a Rajya Sabha member from Haryana, who is on the consultative committee of MPs in respect of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, has raised the issues of air service to Haryana, more international and domestic flights to Amritsar and naming of the Chandigarh Airport after martyr Bhagat Singh before the committee.

“Despite its proximity to the national capital, Haryana is the only state in the country which is not connected by air. Hisar used to be on the air map of the country, but it is no longer connected by air now,” said Tarlochan Singh, in a recent meeting of the committee. Providing minutes of the meeting, the Rajya Sabha member said Amritsar airport in Punjab was another airport that had constantly been neglected by the ministry.

“Local people’s demand of renaming it after Guru Ramdas, the founder of the city, is hanging fire, expansion programme of the airport has been delayed, and sanitation of the airport is in bad shape,” said the MP.

Tarlochan Singh has also demanded a direct flight from Amritsar to Vancouver looking at the heavy traffic on this sector and also a direct flight to Toronto, in stead of the present indirect flight. — TNS

Chandigarh, March 2
The Haryana Assembly will have its Deputy Speaker from a minority community for the second successive term. Akram Khan, the lone BSP MLA, is set to be elected Deputy Speaker during the Budget session that begins on March 5.

In the last House, Azad Mohammad was the Deputy Speaker. Normally, the Speaker and Deputy Speaker are elected in the first session of the House. But the election of the Deputy Speaker was deferred. Sources say the election will be held after the motion to defer the election passed by the House on October 28 last is withdrawn by another motion.

With Akram Khan’s elevation, both key posts of the House will be held by minority communities. The Speaker is Harmohinder Singh Chatha.

It will be after several years that the post of Deputy Speaker will go to a member of a party other than the ruling party. Faqir Chand Aggarwal, BJP MLA from Ambala City, was Deputy Speaker from 1996 to 2000 during the BJP-HVP alliance government under Bansi Lal.

Though the BJP-INLD had jointly contested the 2000 elections, the former had not joined the government. The INLD had opted for an Independent MLA, Gopi Chand Gehlot from Gurgaon, for the post of Deputy Speaker.

He had earlier quit the party to contest against the BJP candidate.

According to a tentative programme, the Budget session will open in the afternoon of March 5, with an address by the Governor. While the next two days will be holidays on (Saturday and Sunday), the House will debate the motion of thanks on the Governor’s address on March 8 and March 9. The Budget will be presented on March 10. The House is likely to be adjourned sine die on March 16.

The final programme will be decided by the Business Advisory Committee, which will meet before the session opens. Meanwhile, Opposition parties are busy fine-tuning strategy to put the ruling party on the mat during the session on various issues, including price rise, law and order and “regional bias”.

While the INLD and the BJP will try to embarrass the government inside the House, the HJC, the strength of which has been reduced from six to one following the “merger” of its five MLAs with the Congress, will try to demonstrate its strength outside the assembly.

HJC leader Ran Singh Mann said the party would daily organise a dharna outside the assembly to protest against the “defections” organised by the ruling party.

He said the party was also thinking of taking legal recourse to get the seven Independent MLAs supporting the government disqualified from the House. Mann said legally Independent MLAs could be part of the government, but they could not participate in the political activities of the ruling party.

During the Ellenabad byelection, he said, these MLAs had violated the anti-defection law by campaigning for the ruling party nominee. 

Samalkha (Panipat), March 2
The state government has embarked upon an ambitious project to develop the sub-divisional headquarters of the district with an estimated investment of over Rs 300 crore.

Revealing this here today, local legislator Dharam Singh Chhokar said a master plan was being prepared to upgrade the existing infrastructure in this segment, including water supply, construction of lanes, upgradation of schools, construction of chaupals in villages and opening up of newanganwaricentres.Chhokar, who was on a thanks-giving tour of his constituency, said the government had already sanctioned construction of five new grid stations in the constituency and six more were likely to be approved soon.

Reposing faith in the leadership of CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda, he said he was quite keen on overall development of this constituency.

Chandigarh, March 2
The Punjab and Haryana High Court today issued directions against finalising the recently circulated tentative seniority list of the lecturers serving in state-run colleges in Haryana.

The order not to finalise the seniority list was issued by Justice Permod Kohli after preliminary hearing on a writ petition filed by a lecturer in physics at Sirsa Government College, Inderjit, and 15 other lecturers.

The petitioners have sought directions for setting aside the public notices issued by the Haryana education department, whereby the seniority issue of the lecturers has been re-opened.

The petitioners have contended the lecturers have been re-designated and divided into two categories, assistant professors and associate professors, with effect from September 2009.

The petitioners have further contended the seniority list in existence for more than two decades should not be reopened.

They have also sought appropriate action on the basis of the recommendations made by the departmental promotion committee (DPC) in their cases.

The list containing the seniority proposals in regard to 2,271 government college lecturers was prepared on December 1 last.

Kurukshetra, March 2
The Department of Electronic Science, Kurukshetra University, has been selected to establish an MEMS design centre under the National Programme on Micro and Smart Systems (NPMASS). With this, Kurukshetra University has become the first university in Haryana to earn this distinction and come in the select list of universities in the country.

Lt-Gen DDS Sandhu, Vice-Chancellor, Kurukshetra University, congratulated the Chairman of the Department, Prof Dinesh Aggarwal, and other faculty members for this remarkable achievement and said the university would provide all kind of support to the departments that strived for excellence and research.

From a layman’s point of view the air-bag deployment and the anti-brake locking system (ABS) in cars are nothing but the application of the MEMS, which has revolutionised the aerospace as well as the communication industries.

Most of the modern aircraft, spaceships and satellites as well mobile phones are equipped with MEMS-based sensors and actuators.

The NPMASS was launched to push the MEMS and smart systems into products and specific field applications. The Board for Smart Materials Research and Technology (B-SMART), headed by Padma Bhushan VK Aatre was responsible for steering this national programme and also responsible for running workshops, training programmes and special seminars on the MEMS.

Under this programme, the Department of Electronic Science would be provided with MEMS design tools worth crores of rupees by the NPMASS for establishing the design centre.

Chandigarh, March 2
Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda today said the state government was prepared to give incentives and financial assistance to educational organisations, adding that the state Budget for education has already been hiked by five times.

The Chief Minister was speaking at a function organised by Gaur Brahmin Vidya Pracharini Sabha in Rohtak, where he inaugurated newly constructed building of Gaur Brahmin Degree College and dedicated Gopal Krishan Dwar to the people of the area.

In 1921, Gopal Krishan used to be the head master of the school but had left the job to join the freedom struggle of the country. While lauding the significant role played by educational institutions in promoting education, Hooda said only those societies would progress who would lay emphasis on promotion of education. He said it was on February 21, 1921, at a public meeting that was held at Gaukaran in Rohtak, attended by Mahatma Gandhi, Maulana Azad and Lala Lajpat Rai, that Ch Matu Ram, representing the Jat Sabha organisations, Lala Shyam Lal, present on behalf of Vaish organisations and Pt. Gopal Krishan Gaur, a representative of the Gaur Brahmin organisations, had pledged to play a vital role in the freedom struggle of the country.

The Chief Minister highlighted a number of educational projects, including the Rajiv Gandhi Education City in Sonepat, a women’s university at Khanpur Kalan, a central university in Mahendragarh district and the National Defence University at Gurgaon, among others.

He said the government was trying to create such an atmosphere which would generate ample employment opportunities. Therefore, it would be necessary to develop industries and give good education to the youth. The government jobs being limited, self-employment opportunities were being promoted, he added.

The Chief Minister announced to give Rs 21 lakh to Gaur Brahmin organisations. He also assured financial assistance to set up Gaur Educational Institution at Pehrawar village. The Chief Minister was presented with a memento and ‘Abhinandan Patra’ as a mark of respect.

The Chief Minister honoured Shiv Raman Gaur, the grandson of Pt. Gopal Krishan Gaur. Shiv Raman Gaur is Additional Principal Secretary to Chief Minister and Director, Information and Public Relations, Haryana. Revenue Minister Shiv Charan Sharma and Member of Parliament from Rohtak, Deepender Hooda, also spoke on the occasion.

Later, the CM and MP redressed the grievances of the people at local irrigation rest house. 

Rewari, March 2
Two cases of murder have been reported from the district in the past 36 hours.

Ram Kumar Gujjar (56), vice-chairman of the Bawal Block Panchayat Samiti and resident of Bakhapur village, was shot dead by some car-borne armed assailants on the Kasauli-Bakhapur road, 12 km from here, on Sunday night.

His funeral at Bakhapur village yesterday was attended among others by the Finance Minister, Capt Ajay Singh Yadav, and Union Minister of State for Communication and Information Technology Sachin Pilot.

Sources said when Ram Kumar was returning to Bakhapur after attending a social function at Kasauli village, his car was intercepted by the assailants, who fired at him from point-blank range, killing him on the spot.

District police chief KV Ramana said at a press conference here today that the assailants reportedly had a grudge against the victim.

In the second case, Mahesh Yadav (27) was done to death by some village youths at Lukhi village, near Kosli, last night.

The youths reportedly committed the crime out of old enmity against the victim.

The postmortem report revealed that Mahesh Yadav’s death was caused by a head injury.

Meanwhile, the Kosli police has registered a case of murder against Jeetu, Sonu, Paramjit, Dholia Yadav and three others, all residents of Lukhi village.

Rewari: The police has arrested three women gangsters - Raj Kumari, Poonam and Preeti, all residents of the Ranjit Nagar colony in Alwar city, Rajasthan, for allegedly snatching gold chains of six women of various villages during the Dhulendi fair held at the shrine of the legendary Baba Gobind Das at Nangal Shahbazpur village, near Bawal, yesterday.

After being spotted, they were overpowered by the villagers, who handed them over to the police.

They were today produced in the court of the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, who remanded them in police custody for a day.

Police sources said they were yet to recover the gold chains from them.

Bhiwani, March 2
A freedom fighter and soldier of the Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauz), Bahadur Singh Yadav, died today. He was cremated at his native Paldi village today with full military
honours.

The SDM, Charkhi Dadri, Hoshiar Singh Siwach, and sarpanches of several villages were present at the funeral ceremony.

Yadav was born in 1920 and had joined 490 Hyderabad regiment in 1939. After training, he was sent to Singapore where he was jailed by the Japanese forces.

He is survived by two sons.