Dehradun, September 5
With Eid-ul-Fitr being just around the corner, people of the Muslim community could be seen indulging fervently in shopping on Sunday. The weekly market at the Parade Ground which remains lined up with squatters or rheris selling clothes, artificial jewellery, decorative or household items, drew large crowds of the lower middle class who made most of the day prior to Eid.

The other popular market, Paltan Bazar, had the gentry from the middle class jostling to pick their stuff for the big day. Branded and swanky outlets on the Rajpur Road in the city too were thronged in preparation for the festival.

The rain did play a spoilsport in the afternoon for a few hours as shopping came to a standstill in the weekly market, but soon after the rain stopped, the shopping spree continued with a new gusto.

A spirit of family togetherness could be made out from the constitution of the crowd. For instance, Nemuddin, a teacher at Jamia Arbia Madina Tul-Uloom, came from Bijnaur with his family to share the festivity with his younger brother’s family. Nemuddin, said, “Each member of the family bought a new pair of clothes for the Eid. We also bought new shoes for kids. I picked one for my brother as well”.

His wife Rukhsana Naees said besides the new clothes, they also purchased what their five-year-old son and two-year-old daughter asked from the Tid-Bits.

Mohammad Imtiyaz and Mohammad Shahid, students from a madrassa in Saharanpur, were busy trying jeans and teaming shirts. Imtiyaz said, “We have come all the way to celebrate Eid with our grandparents. While womenfolk will do shopping for the rest of the family.

Dehradun, September 5
Forty students of The Cambridge School, Pondha Road, who had come for a picnic, got stuck in the Nimi river after heavy downpour in the afternoon increased the flow of water. All students were rescued safely later.

According to the police, the incident happened at about 2.30 in the afternoon. The students were on a picnic in the Pondha area when they got stuck. All were playing near the Nimi river when all of a sudden a heavy flow of water came there due to the incessant rain.

The students got trapped there. Somebody informed the 108 following which the local administration and the police were pressed into service.

Circle Officer Premendra Dobhal and the Station House Officer of the Cantt police station, along with police force and officials of the local administration, rushed to the spot as they received the information.

Cops wearing life jackets entered the river in a queue holding on to a long rope to rescue the students. They brought out all forty students one by one safely.

Sources said the boarding school hadn’t given any permission for the picnic, but the warden of the school had allowed the students to go.

Haridwar, September 5
Citing the two main targets of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the near future, veteran BJP leader Manohar Kant Dhyani at the conclusion session of the three-day BJP party workers’ training camp said the victory in Haridwar district panchayat elections in course to the state Assembly elections, scheduled in 2012, were the twin targets the party was looking for to from party workers.

Dhyani, who is also the state Planning Commission Vice-Chairman, urged the party workers to work for the party keeping in mind the national and social aspects too. “Ideology is one which differentiates our party from others and it’s the one which is not attached with any profit or gets changed with time. In 1981, the BJP had just two Members of Parliament, while in 1998 we emerged as the biggest national party forming the Central government under the able leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Remember our ideology was and is the same,” said Dhyani.

He urged the party workers to strengthen the party cadre, organisation which eventually will help the party win in the upcoming panchayat elections in Haridwar, subsequently enabling the party to regain power in the state under the young and energetic Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank.

On the concluding day of the training camp, a written test was also conducted for the party workers. A 100-mark question pattern was set up with the allotted time of 25 minutes. Later, the result was declared in which all participants cleared the test, and the first three party workers garnering the highest numbers were felicitated with memorabilia and party signs.

Om Prakash Jamdagni, district party chief, said the training camp was an overwhelming success with about 95 per cent cadre workers attending the camp. Among others who attended the concluding sessions were vice-district chief Sanjay Malhotra, district in charge Mukesh Mahendru, general secretary Jitendra Chaudhari, Adesh Chauha, Kusum Gandhi, Sanjana Sharma, Poonam Jha, Manoj Garg, Brijesh Sharma, Surendra Chauhan, Rajednra Singh and coordinator Naresh Sharma.

Dehradun, September 5
On the occasion of the 36th Incarnation Day of Vishok Sagar and Samarpan Sagar, members of the Digambar Jain Sadhu Sewa Samiti celebrated the day with great fervour and enthusiasm here today. The event began with the hoisting of a flag by Chandra Sen followed by a curtain raised from the photograph of the saints.

A large number of people of the Jain community had gathered to offer prayers on the occasion. The chief guest of the event was Dr Harak Singh Rawat, Leader of the Opposition, who ignited the lamp along with Gaurav Jain, a special guest.

Students of Shri Mahavir Jain Kanya Paathshala presented a cultural programme,

including of a dance drama depicting the story of the saints. The programme in the evening was followed by guru bhakti, aarti decoration competition and grand performance of aarti.

Nainital, September 5
Women public representatives from across the districts of the Kumaon region came here to share their experiences in the light of the Millennium Development Goals.

The women recounted their experiences with regards to various developmental initiatives introduced across the country for the uplift of women in particular and the society in general.

The programme was organised by Vimarsh, an NGO, with the support of the Vaada Na Todo Abhiyan (VNTA). Talking to The Tribune, Kanchan Bhandari of Vimarsh said, “The women, who have gathered here, will be discussing the changes that various initiatives have brought about in their lives. We are looking at things from the perspective of implementation of initiatives like the Panchayati Raj Act, Domestic Violence and Protection of Women Act, Right to Education Act and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The evaluation is both in terms of the negative as well as positive impacts”.

Anil Sinha of the VNTA said, “We just want the government to fulfil the promises made by it to people of the country.

We are working on the three issues of the Right to Education, Right to Health and Right to Food. The rampant disparity is there for anyone to see. On one side the foodgrain is rotting and on the other there are poor people with no access to food and the farmers are committing suicides”.

Similarly, there is a wide disparity in school education that needs to be removed. There must be a universal system of education across the country. The same is true for health care. “On the one side we have five-star hospitals and on the other there are dispensaries for the poor that do not even provide the most basic of the medicines,” he added.

Sinha applauded the Planning Commission for accepting that all women in the country cannot be treated in a similar manner and therefore separate columns to determine the status of the women have been introduced in the census forms.

Dalit panchayat member from Guleti Kamla Devi said even though women had been elected to various bodies following reservations for them, they were still far from independence.

She pointed out on the lack of awareness amongst the women public representatives and the problems they face in getting works done.

Saraswati Gwal from Dharchula recounted how women had been empowered over the past few years on account of their being elected to the public offices at the panchayat level.

“Today we decide to get our girls educated. We manage to get health care for them. We have become bold,” she said.

Meenaxi Tamta of Bhujiyaghat was the most vocal in airing the concerns of the elected women panchayat members.

She demanded that the panchayat members and gram pradhans be given a minimum remuneration of Rs 8,000 so that they could travel in their areas and get the works done.

“There are no trainings for us and all we get to attend is day-long workshops. We need to be trained to deal with the issues that emerge at the panchayat level,” she asserted.

Munni Nyal of Chidapani pointed out towards the identity crisis the women panchayat and gram sabha members face.

She said the practice of “pradhan patis” needed to be done away with at the earliest and women public representatives must assert on their identity.

Dehradun, September 5
Financial services giant Trustline is planning big investments in Uttarakhand even while expanding its infrastructure in the state.

Addressing mediapersons in Dehradun, Vinay Gupta, Director, Trustline Group of Companies, said Uttarakhand kept an immense potential in terms of investment and was an untapped market in terms of investment potential.

He said apart from capital Dehradun, small towns like Srinagar, Rishikesh and Kashipur had not been much in the focus of companies dealing with finance and said the Trustline was contemplating to re-energise itself in the state.

He said the company had a total of eight offices in Uttarakhand which were providing services on securities, commodities, insurance brokers and real estate and added that the opening of many more new offices were in the offing.

Sanjay Verma, Senior Vice-President, Strategy and Operations Trustline, disclosed that seminars and workshops across the country were frequently organised by the company to educate the investor so as to ensure that he came out as a smart investor.

“As advocated and practised by every member of the Trustline fraternity, we believe in education first, investment second and, hence, the focal point of all our endeavours is to empower the client to help him take informed decisions,” Vinay Gupta added.

Rajiv Kapoor, Head of Commodities, was present at the news conference.

Dehradun, September 5
More than 2,000 NGOs are registered in Dehradun, but most of them either lack infrastructure, facilities and in some cases they are not even functional.

These NGOs deal in the field of education, health, culture, female foeticide and other areas too. The Dehradun District Economic and Statistics Department has gathered information on the direction passed by the Statistics and Programme Implementation (Government of India).

The department had been asked to collect information regarding the functioning of NGOs which are working in different sectors in the district. Dehradun District Economic and Statistics officer Geetanjali Sharma said, “We had collected information about the registration of NGOs, their infrastructure, source of funds, expenditure and way of functioning. It was found that more than 2,000 NGOs are registered in the district, but some of them are not functional”.

She claimed, “According to the findings of the department, more than 1,500 NGOs were not able to furnish concrete data regarding their function and appeared non-functional. About 500 have no physical presence in any rural part of the state”.

“The data collection of the NGOs is still going on and will be completed soon,” Sharma mentioned. She appealed to the NGO officers to cooperate with the officials concerned for providing information related to their registration, fund, infrastructure etc. She mentioned that the department faced much difficulty as the NGOs were being secretive in their functioning.

Dehradun, September 5
A shop in the Nehru Colony was gutted in fire last night.

According to police sources, a fire broke out at the photostat shop of Upendra Badoni located at A Block of Nehru Colony during midnight hours. A youth sleeping inside a hair-cutting salon nearby raised an alarm and informed Upendra about the fire. Fire extinguishing officials rushed to the scene and managed to quell the fire. But by that time most of the paper and other material kept at the shop had turned into ashes. According to the victim, the shop had a photostat machine, apart from a fax machine, a lamination machine and CDs numbering in thousands.

Dehradun Mayor Vinod Chamoli who lives in close proximity to the shop also reached at the site of the incident.

Dehradun, September 5
The National Action Forum for Social Justice will organise a seminar on September 10 focusing on human rights and their protection as enshrined in the Indian Constitution.

Addressing a press conference here yesterday, Nanak Chand, Chairman of the forum, said the seminar besides focusing on human rights would also focus on the problems being faced by the Dalits in the state.

Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission Justice KG Balakrishnan will be the chief guest.

“There have been reports that the Scheduled Caste communities are not being issued the caste certificates, as such they cannot take benefits of the schemes nor apply for the government jobs,” said Nanak Chand.

He said despite complaints to the District Magistrate, the matter remained unresolved. “If after 60 years, the Dalits continue to be oppressed, we need to ponder over the problem and take remedial steps,” said Nanak Chand.

Union Minister of State for Labour and Employment Harish Rawat, MP Sanjay Singh Chauhan, patron of the National Action Forum for Social Justice KS Mani and others would participate in the seminar.

Nainital, September 5
A sudden inspection by the top brass of the Health

Department has revealed discrepancies on a large scale in urban health centres set up in Haldwani under the National Rural Health Mission.

As per information, a team, led by Director General (Health) Dr HC Bhatt, inspected the health centres set up with the help of a non-government organisation (NGO) in Ujalanagar,

Indiranagar and Rajpura slums. The centres were supposed to take care of the reproductive health of residents of the areas and help them in the adoption of various family planning techniques.

The major shortcoming that came to light was the absence of women staff in departments meant to deal exclusively with women patients.

Instead, men staff had been deployed in such departments. In addition to this, there were allegations of financial irregularities.

It also came to light that the patients were being asked to shell out Rs 10 as registration fee following which they again had to get a slip made at the women’s hospital.

It is learnt that there is no provision for such fees. Sources say that a probe has been ordered into the matter.

The health authorities were shocked to know that even a baseline survey had not been done of the areas where the centres have been set up.

Dehradun, September 5
With the appointment of 187 doctors in the state, the manpower crunch at district hospitals and primary health centres (PHCs), community and community health centres (CHCs) is expected to be partially solved, but the bigger problem of filling all posts in the state health facilities remains as it is.

All these doctors have been appointed through the Public Service Commission. Though the advertisement was for 250 posts, only 187 were selected. At different health facilities in the state, close to 1,293 posts are still unoccupied.

It took three months for the appointment of doctors, as it was not cleared by Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank.

Priority was given to those health centres that did not have even a single doctor. The worst affected are districts of Rudraprayag, Bageshwar, Champawat, Chamoli and Uttarkashi with scarce human resources at each level.

In the recent past, even contractual employment of medical personnel had backfired as a majority of them after receiving appointment letters have so far not joined and are now spending most of their time shooting letters to the higher authorities in the hope that the station of their posting could be changed to plain areas. Their selections were made only for remote areas.

Against the total sanctioned posts of 2,230 of medical personnel at the directorate and various hospitals in the state, only 937 medical personnel are currently working and 1,293 posts are vacant. The vacancies are right from the top-most level of Director General, Director, Additional Director, Joint Director (specialist cadre), Joint Director (general cadre), Senior Level Medical Officer (general cadre), Medical Officer (specialist cadre) and Medical Officer (general cadre).

Last year, a similar problem had cropped up when almost all doctors appointed on contractual basis had somehow managed to get them deployed in the plains. The government then was forced to cancel all appointments after a Right to Information application was filed.