Gurdaspur, September 5
Junior Engineer Baljit Singh of Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (Powercom) was booked under section 304-A (negligence leading to death) following the electrocution of six employees of a Powercom contractor at Shahpur Jajan village, 25 kms from here, on Friday.

The incident, which sent shock waves among Powercom employees, forced the authorities to place Baljit Singh under suspension after a criminal case was registered against him by the police following a complaint made by Shahpur Jajan sarpanch Gurinder Singh. The authorities also suspended Assistant Lineman Bachan Singh.

The incident took place when someone allegedly switched on power when the cables were being laid. Sources disclosed that JE Baljit Singh was allegedly instrumental in awarding the contract of laying the 11KV cable to Bachan Singh’s son without the consent of Powercom senior officials.

The bodies of all the six deceased --- Harpreet Singh, Lakhwinder Singh, Gurmukh Singh, Swaran Singh, Sarabjit Singh and Lakha Singh --- were cremated at Shahpur Jajan village yesterday. Punjab Vidhan Sabha Speaker Nirmal Singh Kahlon attended the cremation. He was accompanied by Dera Baba Nanak DSP Mohan Lal and other SAD activists.

Meanwhile, Gurdaspur MP Partap Singh Bajwa expressed sympathies with the bereaved families and asked the state government to conduct an inquiry into the sequence of events leading to the deaths of six persons.

Phagwara, September 5
A doctor of a private hospital was booked for negligence following the death of a patient. Rukamani Devi Duggal, a resident of Hadiabad, suffering from fever was admitted to Aggarwal Hospital Shaheed Bhagat Nagar on Saturday night. She died the same night.

The relatives of the woman along with others held demonstration in front of the hospital. The police registered a case against Dr Rajiv Aggarwal under section 304A of the IPC (negligence leading to death).

Meanwhile, the Indian Medical Association, Phagwara unit, took a serious notice of the police action and formed a five-member action committee comprising IMA President Dr NPS Makkar, Secretary Chiman Arora, Dr Satnam Singh Parmar, J.S. Virk and Dr Davinder Chhabrra, to plan out the course of action.

Giving details of the meeting, Dr Parmar said the IMA Phagwara strongly condemned the police action that “violated the directives of the Supreme Court”.

He said the IMA had decided to intensify the stir against registering of a case against a doctor without any legal findings by the civil surgeon concerned. Dr Parmar said the IMA would knock the doors of the Punjab DGP, Chief Secretary and court to take action against the police officer responsible for violating the court verdict.

He said the association had demanded to register a counter case against those persons involved in manhandling Dr Rajiv and others present on the site. The IMA has also demanded for immediate withdrawal of the “false case” registered against Dr Rajiv.

Meanwhile, a board of government doctors conducted the post-mortem examination of the body of the woman in local Civil Hospital today, said SMO Dr Rajiv Gupta.

Hoshiarpur, September 5
After the formation of the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (Powercom), a lot of improvement has been witnessed in power supply, resulting in decreased daily power cuts.

Only a half-an-hour-long power cut is being imposed in various districts of Punjab and round-the-clock power supply is being provided to the industrial sector.

Claiming this, while talking to mediapersons here this evening, Chairman of Powercom Er KD Chaudhary said power was being supplied to the industrial sector according to its requirement.

There’s a daily consumption of 18.50 lakh units of power in the state whereas production and procurement of power from all sources is 17.5 lakh units. Powercom is generating about 4,500 MW from all of its sources, whereas 2,000 to 3,000 MW were being purchased from the national power grid and from other states.

Jalandhar, September 5
As the country celebrated Teachers’ Day to remember former President Dr Radhakrishnan on his birth anniversary, thousands of computer teachers across Punjab took to streets to press their demands.

They gheraoed the residence of Cabinet Minister Manoranjan Kalia for over an hour and demanded that they be transferred to the Education Department as permanent teachers.

The teachers, from the various districts of the state, adopting the slogan “Compulsory Subject, Compulsory Job”, under the banner of “Computer Teachers’ Association (Contract)” took out a rally from Desh Bhagat Yaadgar Hall.

After holding a rally there for three hours, the teachers advanced towards the Kalia’s residence in the two different groups. However, all the routes leading to Minister’s residence were barricaded by the police.

The demonstration was seen as a pressure tactics of the teachers as the meeting between the representatives of the association and Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal is scheduled to be held on September 15. There are over 7,000 contractual computer teachers working in various government schools of the state.

Unfolding the objective of the protest, Gurvinder Singh, state president of the association, said as the Chief Minister had assured them that their demands would be met after the meeting of September 15, the association wanted to leave no stone unturned on the way of achieving the core demand.

The protesters lifted the gherao only after getting assurance from Kalia that he would try to resolve the issue on priority basis in the cabinet meeting on September 10.

If the CM failed to honour our demands, we would organise a series of gheraos of all cabinet ministers at district level, said an association member.

Hoshiarpur, September 5
Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal has approved the new media policy of the state, which would be announced within three days, said Punjab Minister for Public Relations Sewa Singh Sekhwan at Sikri village, near Tanda, today.

He said many benefits had been provided to pressmen in the new media policy.

The State Press Accreditation Committee had already been constituted, in which due representation to the electronic media, press photographers, representatives of three main pressmen unions, field and desk journalists had been given.

None of the owners or the chief editor of any of the newspapers was included in this committee.

Referring to the recent test conducted by the Panjab University, for the recruitment of public relations and assistant public relations officers, the minister said probe into the charges levelled into the holding of this test had been done and no discrepancy had been found. Results of this test would soon be announced.