Haridwar, July 31
The dreadful scenes of July 18-19 rain havoc relived on the minds of Haridwarites today with to heavy rain continuing the whole night and almost the whole day. Once again the same areas that bore the brunt of rain fury on the earlier two days witnessed severe water logging. But, thanks to the anti-encroachment drive by the administration, this time the water logging didn’t stayed for long.

With once again rain creating a flood-like situation in the city, the administration and municipality pitched in to remove encroachments over nullahs, particularly in the new Haridwar region.

Nainital, July 31
Incessant rain continuing over the past 24 hours has thrown life out of gear across the Kumaon region. Reports of water logging at several places and streets in the urban areas turning into running rivulets are coming from across the region.

Adding to the hampering of movement is the problem of erratic power and drinking water supply. Bageshwar district has been amongst the worst hit during the last two days. A cloud burst reported from Karmi village in the Kapkot area led to the death of as many as 300 goats, besides rendering the village disconnected from Kapkot as the bridge connecting the two was washed away. The shops and houses in the village have been inundated and several residents, particularly from Tok Bhayat, have taken shelter in the adjoining areas.

Meanwhile, four labourers, who had been trapped in the Saryu river in Bageshwar, were rescued in an operation by the disaster relief team. They were stranded near the Hanuman temple where they had been extracting stone and sand from the riverbed. Landslides led to closure of several roads like Balighat-Dharmdhar, Sang-Munar, etc.

Large tracts of fertile agricultural land have been washed away by the Saryu river. Similarly, the Kailash river in Sitarganj has washed away a large tract of land and its erosion towards the national highway is continuing at a fast pace. The area has been experiencing long power cuts over the past two days.

With the water levels in Gaula river rising and tones of silt flowing into the riverbed, the water filter plant at Sheeshmahal was closed once again yesterday causing drinking water scarcity in parts of Haldwani. A similar condition was recorded in Haldwani last week and areas had to go without water supply for four consecutive days.

In Khatima, several localities in the low-lying areas were inundated on account of the incessant rain yesterday. In Mayur Vihar locality, people resorted to the gherao of the Sub Divisional Magistrate demanding that the water be drained out from the locality. As many as 30 villages located on the Indo-Nepal border are facing the threat of floods over the past two days.

With the water levels of Sharda river rising consistently, several low-lying parts of Tanakpur also lay submerged in water.

Nainital, July 31
Yet another committee has been formed to identify statehood activists in the state. The committee will have police and administrative officials along with those associated with the statehood agitation nominated from every tehsil.

According to District Magistrate Shailesh Bagauli, the process to identify statehood activists in accordance with a new government order would continue till November.

Reports of Local Intelligence Units (LIU), hospitals and police stations will form the basis of the identification process.

Bagauli said more than 900 applications had been received from across the district, out of which 109 persons had already been identified.

Bagauli said in cases where the reports of the LIU and the police stations were unclear and the members of the committee also did not have specific knowledge about the applicant, the latter would have to undergo fresh verification. Such cases would be taken up in subsequent meetings.

The identification of statehood activists has become a contentious issue with successive governments having failed to identify them even 10 years after the state came into existence. The governments have announced reservation and other benefits for the activists.

There have been allegations that the identification of activists has been done on selective basis and certain people who had nothing to do with the Uttarakhand agitation have been identified as statehood activists.

The identification has become a tedious task as it is difficult to segregate statehood activists from anti-reservation agitators.

Nainital, July 31
Showing presence of mind, five youngsters from a village near Kaladhungi managed to save themselves from a tigress yesterday.

According to the information available, five youngsters identified as Bache Singh, Vinod Bhandari, Bhairav Dutt, Trilok Singh and Devendra Dobiyal of Dohniya Sherpur village had gone to Dechauri forest to collect wild mushroom when they spotted a tigress coming towards them.

Showing presence of mind, they climbed a tree. The tigress also parked herself below the tree waiting for them to come down. The boys made use of their mobile phone and called up their families. Their kin rushed to them along with officials of the Forest Department. Three rounds of fire into the air led to the tigress moving away from the spot and the lives of five youngsters was saved.

Dehradun, July 31
Prasar Bharti CEO Mrinal Pande said today that efforts like save tiger campaign kept little relevance without concrete forest conservation efforts.

Pande was addressing a gathering after release of “Kumaon Ke Khaufnakh Adamkhor” and “Devishar Tatha Kumaon Ke Anya Narbhakshi” here. Pande said while forest conservation kept paramount importance, the initiatives to save the tigers could not be more than just a part of conservation.

Chief Secretary NS Napalchayal, Chairman of the Third State Finance Commission Indu Kumar Pandey and Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Dr RBS Rawat were other prominent speakers at the release ceremony.

Upendra Arora of Natraj Publishers: The Green Bookshop accorded the vote of thanks. “Kumaon Ke Khaufnakh Adamkhor” is authored by Thakur Dutt Joshi, whereas “Devishar Tatha Kumaon Ke Anya Narbhakshi” is translated version of Jim Corbett’s famous The temple tiger and more maneaters of Kumaon. The translation has been done by Naresh Chandra Madhwal.

Dehradun, July 31
On the occasion of Munshi Premchand’s birth anniversary, the city-based Hindi Sahitya Samiti today felicitated veteran journalist and literary writer Radha Krishan Kukreti with Munshi Premchand Kathakar Samman-2010.

Girijesh Pant, Vice-Chancellor of Doon University and Dr Haridatta Bhatt Sailesh presented the shawl and memento to Kukreti. Pant said he was feeling proud while honouring Kukreti.

While praising Munshi Premchand, he said Premchand was one of the finest writers of the country. Sailesh said Premchand himself belonged to a middle class family and had spent most of his life in village only. He had used a simple language and this was the reason anyone was able to understand the meaning of what he wrote.

Jagdish Babla, president of the samiti, said the Hindi Sahitya Samiti would felicitate one littérateur every year on this day.

A book “Ardhshati” written by Savitri Nautiyal Kala “Savi” was also released. A play “Gulli Danda” based on stories of Munshi Premchand was also presented by Dinesh Uniyal.

Pitthoragarh, July 31
Uttarakhand’s new Director General of Police (DGP) Jyoti Saroop Pandey has said the Indo-Nepal border in the state needs special policing to prohibit entry of anti-national or anti-social elements from Nepal. “This is one of the vital tasks I would like to prefer over others during my tenure as the DGP of Uttarakhand,” said Pandey to this correspondent over telephone from Dehradun.

“To strengthen the intelligence network at this border we need to take the villagers living on this border into confidence and work with their cooperation while gathering any information about new activities in and around these villages,” said Pandey.

The DGP said he would like to use minimum use of police force in the state while controlling the law violating activities and during interrogation with any criminal. “The police will have to move towards becoming a civic and helping force instead of becoming a cruel and crushing one,” he added.

“The villagers on the Indo-Nepal border can be only genuine source of information about the activities inside the other country facing their village and until our police forces and intelligence sleuths established a rapport with them on the basis of respect and dignity, we can not gather any intelligence from that area,” said the DGP, adding that he will take steps to strengthen the police-public rapport in the state, specially with the border villages.

He also emphasised cooperation of all para forces and intelligence agencies working in the border area and said he would also take steps in this direction. “Since all intelligence agencies, be it the IB, LIU, RAW or the forces deputed on the border, have the single task to provide security to the nation then why not to work as a coordinated unit?” asked the DGP.

Derhradun July 31
The probability of holding a Board meeting by next month is getting stronger day by day. Mayor Vinod Chamoli gave indications of doing so to consider the new structure of the Dehradun Municipal Corporation.

“I am planning to divide the working of the MC in four zones. We already have three offices at Rajpur, Chakshah and at DMC premises itself. Then for the fourth office, we have place at Kanwali road. The present office of the DMC will continue to remain the headquarters,” he said.

The division of employees and departments would be decided according to each zone. An officer of management level will be deputed for each zone. “We need expertise of a manager to run the administration of each zone; therefore, we will appoint four managers once the structure is decided.”

The budget of DMC has yet not been finalised, for this Chamoli said he had given directions to the officials to prepare a budget. Once it happened, then the budget would be placed before working committee and from thereon to the next level of the Board meeting, he said.

The exercises prior to the Board meeting are being rolled out. “As per the rule, the assessment of compliance of the decision taken in last Board meeting will be taken into consideration. Then the second stage would be to set the agenda or the issues to be raised in the meeting. Third would be to discuss the intricacies to lay out new structure of the Dehradun Municipal Corporation.”

The atmosphere in the corporation too is building up for the Board meeting. Wary of the arguments and counter-arguments by the councillors in the opposition, the officials have begun bracing themselves for the testing day. The Health Officer in DMC too ordered to maintain the file record saying that it might be needed to answers the questions posed in the board meeting.

Ravi Pandey, Executive Engineer, too have decided to pull the councillors who had been demanding ward offices. “The ward offices, wherever they had been made, are not being used by the councillors. They are just raising this issue unnecessarily to create a ruckus. I would not speak before but in the board meeting to expose them,” said infuriated Pandey.

Mayor who earlier seemed nonchalant about holding the Board meeting seems to be falling into line after pressure built up from all sides, not only from the BJP councillors but the Congress councillors as well. Toeing the path set by the Municipal Act, opposition leader Ashok Verma submitted a memorandum before the Mayor urging him to call a Board meeting few days ago.

Mussoorie, July 31
Mussoorie Nagar Palika President OP Uniyal, speaking over the notices served on traders for permanent encroachments in the town, has said the Palika was only working on the directions of the High Court and the traders should remove the encroachments on their own.

He has also said any sort of encroachment in the town will not be tolerated whether it has been done by the Palika or by the traders.

Uniyal said the temporary encroachment would also be removed phase wise. He said the Palika was planning to shift these temporary encroacher to the new shops which the Palika would provide them, but there was a stay of the high court on it and if the high court removed the stay, more than 100 families could be removed from the streets.

When questioned that traders were of the view that the Palika had submitted an affidavit in the court saying that the encroachment would be removed, Uniyal said, “I was not present at that time, so I will rather not comment on that at the moment”.

The PIL applicant in the high court, Pradeep Bhandari, said traders were misleading people on the issue and if they felt that no trader was violating the law, then they needn’t worry.

He said the resident of the town were glad that the high court was concerned about the encroachment and had given clear directions to remove it on urgent basis. Bhandari said the Palika in 2006 had submitted a false affidavit in the court that the encroachment had been removed, but on the contrary in the past five years more land had been encroached not only by traders, but also by Palika.

He demanded from the administration to expedite the matter soon and provide relief to the residents by removing encroachment permanently so that others did not commit same mistake.

Meanwhile, on other developmental issues in Mussoorie, Uniyal stated that the Palika was concerned about the housing problem in the town and the IDH area had been identified for the lower income group.

The project, amounting to Rs 1.65 crore, will be funded by the government of India and work will begin in October. More than 96 flats have been sanctioned for the poor residents of Mussoorie.

He said that the Palika had already passed a proposal for a housing facility for scribes and the Chief Minister has given his consent verbally.

Uniyal said the old buildings needing repair would be given permission by the MDDA so that these do not endanger lives of others.