Bathinda, May 4
The recent plea of the education minister, Punjab to the Director, Census Operations, Punjab and all the Deputy Commissioners to depute only non-teaching staff for census duty, has failed to cut much ice in Bathinda district.

The performance of government schools here is already not up to the mark. Further, deploying most census staff from the teaching community has created a problem not only for the students but also for the district education officers as many schools are on the verge of an early summer vacation.

Senior bureaucrats of the district, who lead the operation in different zones, expressed their helplessness in relieving the teaching staff from duty.

They lamented that after spending a lot of time and energy in imparting training to them, it had become difficult to change the staff that too when the census process had begun.

DC Bathinda Gurkirat Singh Kirpal said, “First of all, the education minister issued the letter to the Director, Census, and not to us. Further, acting upon the directions of higher authorities, we have already exempted booth level officers (BLOs) from this duty as they had to perform duty in the preparatory process for the next assembly elections.” He added, “Under such circumstances, we are helpless in relieving any of the teaching staff already deployed on census duty.”

Similar was the reaction of the Bathinda Municipal Corporation commissioner Ravi Bhagat, who is the Principal Census Officer for the city area.

Bhagat said, “As the procurement staff was busy in wheat lifting process and the BLOs were assigned the duty of preparing for the next Assembly election, there was no other government staff other than the teachers. So we assigned them this duty.”

“The job is not as tough as people are making it out to be. We have experienced that besides the census duty, one can smoothly perform one’s regular duty. Moreover, it is an obligatory duty but it is our bad luck that nobody is willing to perform it,” rued Bhagat.

However, the activists of the Sarkari School Sikhiya Bachao Manch (a group to save government school education), who were protesting against the Census duty of teachers informed that during a meeting with them, the additional deputy commissioner, Bathinda, Upjeet Singh Brar gave an assurance of trying to replace the teachers with the non-teaching staff of the schools.

Sources in the education department informed that the director general of school education, Punjab, had also asked all district education officers to prepare lists of non-teaching staff in each school to convince the Director, Census, to relieve the teachers from the duty in larger public interest.

Ferozepur, May 4
Surinder Kapur, the licence and passport clerk (LPC) at the Deputy Commissioner's (DC) office, who went missing about five days ago, was found murdered today.

The body of Kapur was found lying in one of the bunkers erected by the Army near village Khai Pheme Ke, situated on the Ferozepur-Fazilka road, by a police team. The body was in bad shape and was identified by the kin of the deceased.

A team headed by DSP Joginder Singh Sandhu was probing the case and the probe was being supervised by Harjit Singh Pannu, SP (Detective), Ferozepur.

Pannu, when contacted, said initial investigations had revealed that Kapur was murdered by his friend Vicky, a resident of Guru Har Sahai, with the help of his kin identified as Gaga alias Kali, immediately after taking him away from his office in a car.

Pannu added that Vicky had been harbouring animosity against Kapur as a few years ago, Kapur had refused to help Vicky in getting an arms licence. At that time, both Kapur and Vicky are reported to have had a heated exchange.

After that, Vicky developed friendship with Kapur and started acting as his agent to get the arms licence of others prepared from him. Both Kapur and Vicky started enjoying other 'comforts' of life together.

Vicky took him along with him in the car. After travelling a few hundred meters, Gaga, who was in the rear seat attacked Kapur on the head with a hammer. Kapur died on the spot. The dead body was later thrown into the bunkers.

Police sources said that police team came to know about the fact that the mobile phone, which was with the deceased at the time of his disappearance, was being used by some other person. The team managed to zero in on Vicky, who had been using that mobile set. When Vicky was questioned about the whereabouts of Kapur, he confessed that he along with Gaga had murdered him. Gaga is yet to be arrested.

Ferozepur, May 4
Municipal councillor Devinder Kapur of the BJP was unanimously elected the president of the local municipal council (MC), about two years after the civic body came into existence in April 2008. Puran Singh Joshan of the SAD (B) and Rajinder Kumar of the BJP were also unanimously elected senior and junior vice-presidents, respectively.

Perhaps the local MC was one of last municipal councils of the state where the election for the posts of president and senior and junior vice-presidents could not be held in the past two years despite the fact that the SAD and BJP municipal councillors were in a majority in the House.

Though the process to elect municipal councillors for these three posts was initiated for about six times in the past two years, every time, election proceedings could not be completed for a number of reasons. The deep factionalism prevailing among the rank and file of the BJP in this border town of Punjab was one of the major factors, which had been blocking the election of office-bearers of the local MC.

Out of the total strength of 25 members in the House, the BJP has 12 municipal councillors, SAD has four councillors, Congress has five while independent municipal councillors are four in number.

Rajinder Bhandari and Brij Rinwa, both former state president of the BJP, who descended on this town much before the election time, toiled hard to bring consensus among the different factions to pave the way for Kapur for the top post.

All the BJP leaders including SAD and BJP municipal councillors had a breakfast meeting at the house of Sukhpal Singh Nannu, chief parliamentary secretary and local BJP MLA before they left for the MC office for the election. The Congress municipal councillors were also present in the election process.

Official sources said name of Kapur for presidentship was proposed by Joshan and seconded by Devinder Bajaj. The name of Joshan for the post of senior vice-president was proposed by the BJP municipal councillor Dyal Sarup Kalia and seconded by SAD municipal councillor Daljeet Singh.

The name of Rajinder Kumar for the post of junior vice-president was proposed by Ashwani Grover, BJP municipal councillor and seconded by Amarjeet Singh.

Later, talking to media persons, Nannu said the first priority of the MC is to protect its land from illegal occupation. Some of the land belonging to the MC would be sold off to generate enough money to fund development projects with the involvement of all municipal councillors.

Abohar, May 4
A college student who was allegedly hit by a jeep in the accident-prone zone of the railway overbridge (RoB) last night and was carried by the occupants of the vehicle for admitting him to the civil hospital was today found dead near a link road.

The incident sent shockwaves not only among the students but also perturbed the witnesses who could not suspect the intention of the jeep’s occupants.

As per available information, Vishal Yadav, a Plus Two student of DAV College and a resident of village Shergarh, was seriously injured as an unidentified jeep reportedly hit his motorcycle on the downside of the RoB last night. The collision halted vehicular traffic but the occupants of the jeep put the student inside and assured the onlookers that he would be admitted to the civil hospital.

His parents arrived from village Shergarh but could not trace him even after visiting the civil hospital as well as private hospitals. Police was informed. A manhunt was launched. Meanwhile, some persons found the boy lying dead in a field located close to Dangarkhera-Ruhrianwali link road, about 15 km from here. He was identified by his I-card. Scores of persons from village Shergarh along with Narinder Bhati, sarpanch of village Ruhrianwali, Sohan Lal Dangarkhera, former chairman of Market Committee and the volunteers of Nar Seva Narayan Seva, an NGO, rushed to the site.

Sadar police shifted the body to the civil hospital for post mortem but a case has been registered by the city police station-2 as the place of mishap falls in its jurisdiction. People have made a strong plea with the police to identify the owners of the jeep who conspired to kidnap the injured student and threw him on the way, instead of arranging for the medical aid.

Notably, The Tribune had on Sunday highlighted that the RoB has become prone to mishaps due to wrong connectivity of side lanes and no police cop is deployed to monitor the traffic on it. Even the crossings have not been equipped with traffic control system.

Ferozepur, May 4
Rajinder Kumar Bhandari, vice-chairman, Punjab State Planning Board, today said that a proper watch was being kept on the utilization of funds allocated to different agencies in different areas of state for execution of various development works.

"We will not allow the diversion of funds, meant for a specific development project, to be used for another development work. No one, who has been executing the development work, would be allowed to compromise on the quality of the same," said the vice-chairman.

Bhandari was here today to inaugurate the office building of the District Planning Board in the premises of the Zila Parishad complex. Manjit Singh Rai, chairman, District Planning Board, Ferozepur, accompanied him.

The border areas of Punjab, especially Ferozepur, had remained most backward as far as development of infrastructure was concerned and hence, more stress would be laid to usher in an era of development in such pockets by arranging the required funds.

"New development schemes for border areas are being formed and efforts are on to generate enough money for the execution of those schemes so that backwardness of such pockets could be removed," he claimed.

The priority of the SAD-BJP government led by chief minister Parkash Singh Badal is to carry out all-round development in rural and urban areas of state. Every section of society must be given enough opportunities to make progress, Bhandari pointed out.

The board had also been taking care of those projects, which had been nearing completion but were not getting completed due to some problems. Such projects would be completed at the earliest by clearing all the bottlenecks.

To a question, he claimed that relations between SAD and BJP were cordial ever since an alliance by these two parties was formed in Punjab. Bhandari said he was confident that the alliance would work even in future.

Abohar, May 4
The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has now decided to replace the barbed wire in the Mud Fort area here by raising a boundary wall equipped with an iron grill, high enough to ensure foolproof protection for the ancient monument. The work was initiated yesterday and the wiring had been completed for about 100 meters in length when this correspondent visited the site this afternoon.

Notably, the area had earlier been protected by constructing pillars and the barbed wire was erected in March this year by the ASI staff to encircle the vacated space of the Mud Fort spread over nine acres under its 22.5 lakh budget. Pillars were installed to ensure that the barbed wire fencing is not damaged.

“They are virtually fortifying the space, possession of which had been secured by launching unprecedented demolition drive using JCB machines under tight security on September 26 last year,” a resident said.

Ferozepur, May 4
Gurjant Singh, a farmer of village Katora, was allegedly shot dead by Amarjit Singh and two others while the deceased along with his friend Gurmeet Singh were coming back from his farm located near village Muthianwali today.

Gurjant who suffered bullet injuries, died on the spot. His friend Gurmeet who suffered minor injuries, reported the matter to police.

Interestingly, Amarjit, who allegedly killed Gurjant, got admitted himself to the local Civil Hospital with multiple injuries.

Joginder Singh Sandhu, DSP, who reached the spot, said as to how Amarjit Singh suffered multiple injuries is yet to be investigated.

The .12 bore double barrel gun allegedly used by Amarjit Singh was found broken on the spot of the crime. He said that whether the gun was broken by Amarjit Singh and his associates or someone else, is yet to be verified. He said that associates of Amarjit Singh, who were involved in the crime, are yet to be identified.

Sources said that both Gurjant and Amarjit had personal enmity for the past many years.

A case has been registered in this connection.

Bathinda, May 4
In an alleged eve-teasing and assault case, the Civil Lines police today booked the son of Kiranjeet Singh Gehari, the state president of Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) along with two accomplices.

Giving details, SHO Civil Lines, Gurpreet Singh informed that kin of a 17-year-old girl of Balla Ram Nagar lodged a complaint against Babbu, son of Kiranjeet Gehari for teasing her.

In the complaint, kin of the girl also accused that when they objected, Babbu along with two accomplices Sukha and Ranjit assaulted them.

Acting upon the complaint, the police registered a case under sections 458, 506, 509, 323 and 34 of the IPC.

On the other hand, Kiranjet Singh Gehari termed it as a planned move to defame him. Levelling a counter allegation, he claimed that the family of the girl in question was habituated of lodging fake cases.

Accusing the SHO Civil Lines police station, Gehari said he picked up his son’s friend Ranjit Singh and kept him in wrongful confinement for a couple of hours and pressurised him to give false statement against his son, Babbu.

“Before we came to know, the SHO had dealt him severe bruises. Somehow, we took him out and got him admitted to the Civil Hospital,” claimed Gehari.

Speaking further, Gehari demanded a fair investigation into the case.

On the other hand, SHO Gurpreet Singh said, “The girl’s family approached the SSP Bathinda, who marked the inquiry to us. To investigate the matter thoroughly, we had called one of the accused Ranjit Singh. On reaching police station, Gehari assured of lending cooperation but deceiving us, took the accused out.”

“Later, the accused themselves inflicted fake injuries on Ranjit and got him admitted to Civil Hospital to build pressure,” alleged the SHO.

Bathinda, May 4
A stray dog bit a two-and-a-half year old girl at Dhobiana Basti here today. The girl suffered deep wounds in the face as the dog bit her in the cheek. The girl was admitted to the Civil Hospital, Bathinda.

Because of the poor financial condition of the family, the Sahara Jan Seva took the responsibility of bearing the expenses incurred on her treatment.

Sahara Jan Seva president Vijay Goyal said, "Due to non-availability of anti-rabies vaccine in the Civil Hospital, people have to burn a big hole in their pocket by purchasing vaccines from the market at a much higher price."

It may be mentioned that the number of stray dogs is increasing in the city but the civic administration is helpless in taking steps in this regard.

To tackle the stray dog menace in the city, about five months back, authorities of the Bathinda Muncipal Corporation had constituted a society, "Society for prevention of cruelty to animals (SPCA)", which was expected to work on the theories of animal birth control (ABC) and immunization of stray dogs.

But after sending it to the Animal Welfare Board of India, Chennai, the officials concerned apparently forgot to pursue the case for its early approval.

Moga, May 4
A couple consumed some poisonous substance and jumped into a canal to end their lives.

The deceased have been identified as Sukhpreet Singh (35) and his lover Mahinder Kaur (32), both residents of Bargari village. Sukhpreet was already married and was having a daughter. The woman was also married to one Karam Singh, a lineman working in the power corporation. She has left behind three daughters.

They left their home in the village in the morning and came to the outskirts of Chgannuwala village travelling about 30-km. They then consumed poison and jumped into the Abohar branch canal to end their lives. Local people informed the police, following which, the dead bodies were recovered from the canal.

The police had initiated inquest proceedings under section 174 CrPC into the incident.