Bhiwani, August 18
State president of the Akhil Bharatiya Jat Mahasabha Om Prakash Maan has demanded the withdrawal of cases registered against 28 residents of Rohnat village for unfurling a black flag on the premises of Government High School in the village on Independence Day and raising anti-government slogans.

Addressing a meeting in the village today, he said residents of Rohnat village had participated in the 1857 revolution and had laid down their lives for the freedom of the country. He said the villagers had unfurled the black flag in protest against the apathetic attitude of the government towards the families of martyrs.

“The police has registered cases against those whose families had laid down their lives for the sake of freedom of the country,” Maan added. He demanded that the police station in charge and the Superintendent of Police be transferred. He also demanded an apology from them. The police had registered cases against 28 persons, including two former sarpanches and a numberdar.

Sirsa, August 18
The vice-principal and a music teacher of a local school have been booked after the father of a class X student of the school lodged a complaint of corporal punishment against them.

A case of assault, criminal intimidation and criminal conspiracy under Sections 323, 506 and 34 of the IPC has been registered against the vice-principal and the music teacher of AV International School, Bishambar Dass and Mahesh, respectively.

The music teacher allegedly slapped Sagar (15) when he expressed his inability to appear in a class test due to indisposition yesterday.

When he went to the vice-principal with a complaint against the music teacher, he too, according to the complaint lodged by Sagar’s father Raj Kumar, beat him up.

Sagar was shifted to the local general hospital, where the doctors issued a medico-legal report of injuries sustained by him.

A case had been registered in the Sadar police station against the two teachers and Sub-Inspector Kamlesh was investigating the matter, said a police spokesperson.

Meanwhile, an emergency meeting of the managing committee of the school was held today to take a stock of the situation.

Principal of the school Neetu Madan said she was not in the school, when the alleged incident occurred.

“However, after speaking to other teachers and students, we have reached the conclusion that the issue has been blown out of proportion by the boy’s parents,” said the principal.

Madan said corporal punishment of any kind was totally banned in her school.

She added that the teachers had merely scolded Sagar after he was trying to disturb other students in the class.

She alleged that the complainant had been trying to settle some scores with the school management due to an old issue.

Chandigarh, August 18
Lambasting assistant registrar of cooperative societies in Gurgaon for “running his fiefdom”, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has ordered the state of Haryana to pay a compensation of Rs 50,000 to a widow, who was illegally dispossessed from a society flat.

Justice Kanwaljit Singh Ahluwalia also granted the state the liberty to recover the amount from official responsible for passing the order whereby petitioner Surinder Kaur was dispossessed.

Surinder Kaur had sought the setting aside of the February 1 order passed by the assistant registrar on the ground that it was passed in her absence.

The petitioner had purchased a house in Chanderlok Cooperative House Building Society Ltd, Gurgaon. Her counsel contended that one Raja Ram, who used to dabble in the property affairs, intended to usurp her property, as she was an aged widow. He approached the assistant registrar, who in the absence of the petitioner passed the impugned order.

Justice Ahluwalia asserted: “It is stated in pursuance of the impugned order, Raja Ram accompanied by few others forcibly entered into the house of the petitioner and threw all household articles out of her house, took possession of the house and dragged her out of the house.”

Virtually passing strictures, Justice Ahluwalia said: “The act of assistant registrar, who passed the impugned order, is indefensible. It is expected that any authority, before passing of any adverse order against anyone, should have associated the petitioner, heard her and then passed the order.

“Furthermore, a perusal of the impugned order reveals no reason as to why the petitioner was dispossessed. The impugned order stipulated no time frame for the petitioner to hand over the possession. Even if the order of dispossession was to be passed, the petitioner ought to have been afforded sufficient time to make an alternative arrangement. The assistant registrar acted as he was running his own fiefdom….

“For the past five months, an aged widow is on the roads without any shelter or roof on her head. Denial of the same amounts to violation of her fundamental rights to live with dignity. Thus, she ought to be compensated. Therefore, this court hereby awards a compensation of Rs 50,000 in favour of the petitioner… The order is hereby set aside and the assistant registrar is directed to decide the matter afresh by affording effective opportunity of hearing to the petitioner and to pass a speaking order within a month…”

Fatehabad, August 18
Determined to stop the acquisition of their agriculture land for the nuclear power plant coming up in the district, farmers from Gorakhpur village started an indefinite dharna outside the mini-secretariat here today.

The Haryana government had recently issued a notification under Section 4 of the Land Acquisition Act for the acquisition of over 1,300 acres of this village for the proposed plant.

The farmers, who had given a memorandum to district revenue officer Om Parkash Verma on the issue yesterday, met under the banner of the Kisan Sangharsh Samiti constituted by them today and marched towards the mini-secretariat.

Samiti president Hans Raj Siwach and secretary Om Parkash Nain, who addressed the agitating farmers, asked them whether they wanted to sit on dharna on daytime only or for round the clock.

After the farmers unanimously resolved to sit continuously on dharna till the notice of acquisition was withdrawn, tents were erected outside the mini secretariat. The farmers placed a “panchayati hookah” in the middle and started their dharna.

Puffing hookah at the dharna site, the farmers maintained that a majority of them were dependent on their lands to eke out a living for their families and their families would starve if the government acquired their land.

Meanwhile, the INLD and the Haryana Janhit Congress extended their support to the agitation of Gorakhpur farmers.

INLD leaders Balwan Singh Daulatpuria, Kuljeet Singh Kuleria and Surender Lega and HJC leaders Nihal Singh Matana and Dr Jitender Chaudhary today met the farmers at the dharna site and expressed their respective party’s support to their struggle.

Faridabad, August 18
Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda will unveil a life-size statue of former premier late Rajiv Gandhi during his proposed visit here on August 20, which also happens to be the birth anniversary of Rajiv Gandhi. The CM will also address a public meeting on the occasion.

The main organiser of the programme and Mayor of Municipal Corporation, Faridabad (MCF), Ashok Arora, said the statue would be installed at the Rose Garden here.

According to him, Punjabis of the area will felicitate the Chief Minister for officially according Punjabi the official second language status in the state. The public meeting will be organised under the auspices of the “Frontier Community”, which consists of groups of people and their decedents, who had migrated to this part in India during the partition.

Faridabad, August 18
A six-year-old girl student of Murari Lal Senior Secondary School was crushed to death under a bus of the school today near the gate of Green Field Colony on the Suraj Kund road here.

The victim, Shabnam (6), a UKG student, reportedly got down from the bus before the main gate of her colony while returning home after the school was over in the afternoon. According to eyewitnesses, the driver drove rashly from the spot, resulting in the mishap. There were other children near the area when the mishap took place. Shabnam became the victim as she lost balance on the road while trying to get out of the way of the bus. She was crushed under the rear wheels of the bus.

The news of the incident spread like wild fire. People, along with the parents of the child, gathered on the spot and threw stones on the bus, damaging its windowpanes. According to Jitesh Kumar of the Suraj Kund police, a criminal case has been registered against the driver and conductor of the bus. Both of them have been arrested.

Mehboob Aalam, father of the victim, who was inconsolable, said action must be taken against the authorities of the school as they had left the child at the mercy of the driver and the conductor. The usual practice, according to him, was that a schoolteacher or a member of the staff accompanied the students in school buses till the last student got down.

Jind, August 18
The region, which is otherwise “notorious” for skewed sex ratio and has been facing a shortage of brides for the past few years, celebrated the birth of five girls by performing “Kuan Pujan” at a village in Jind today.

The wife of Deputy Commissioner AS Yadav attended the ceremony.

The function was organised with the help of the district unit of the Red Cross Society, which was informed of the birth of five female babies in Buana village.

While the mothers and families were initially reluctant to hold a ceremony of this kind, some volunteers and family members motivated them to go ahead with the function normally held at the birth of boys.

“Many couples take the services of ultrasound centres and abortion centres to know the sex of the child and to get the pregnancy aborted in case it is a girl,” said a volunteer associated with the health services.

Kala Yadav, wife of the DC, who gave an incentive of Rs 1,100 and a box of sweets to all mothers of newly born babies, asked residents to take up the issues of social importance and work towards eradicating social evils, including liquor, gambling and drug addiction.

Sirsa, August 18
The Haryana government has conceded a long-standing demand of junior librarians working in government libraries and government colleges and promoted 31 of them to the post of senior librarian.

According to orders issued yesterday by Dheera Khandelwal, Higher Education Commissioner, the promotion has been made on a temporary basis in the pay scale of Rs 15,600-39,100 (pay band 3) plus a grade pay of Rs 6,000 with immediate effect.

The promotions were long overdue and successive governments had been keeping the matter in abeyance due to lack of numerical strength of librarians.

In the 88 libraries of the state, 64 posts of senior librarian and almost an equal number of posts of junior librarian had been lying vacant as no recruitment or promotion had taken place during the past more than two decades.

While the senior librarians enjoy a pay scale equivalent to that of college lecturers, the junior librarians were paid lowly, almost on a par with clerks.

Yesterday’s orders have come as a relief for the junior librarians who were eligible for promotion since long and the delay had been causing a lot of heartburn among them.