Palwal, September 21
Residents of villages falling along the banks of the Yamuna in Faridabad and Palwal districts are once again threatened by floods.

The administrations in both districts have issued a red alert in some of the villages. There are about 18 villages in Faridabad and about 32 in Palwal on the watch list of the authorities. The situation in Palwal is more grave as the villages fall in low-lying areas.

In the recent floods, water had entered the fields of Palwal villages. Residential areas in Indra Nagar and Mahabalibur were inundated. The residents were shifted to relief camps.

They had returned to their villages only last week. They were again evacuated last evening..

The water level in the fields of Palwal villages has risen to 3 feet.

Panipat: With a number of villages in low-lying areas in the district facing the danger of floods, officials today continued to struggle against the swollen Yamuna by undertaking revetment of the banks at several places.

The river, carrying an all-time high of 7.5 lakh cusecs of waters, kept the villagers in the Sanuli segment on their toes. At several places villagers could be seen placing sand bags along the banks. Deputy commission JS Ahlawat said a number of workers had been deployed along the river to undertake revetment with sand bags wherever these were found to be weak. The DC said boats had been placed at strategic points so that villagers could be evacuated in case the waters started entering houses. Meanwhile, the breach between Tamsabad and Pathergarh villages widened to about 80 feet. The DC said once the situation normalised, the administration would carry out a survey to assess the loss to standing crops.

Sonepat: As a precautionary measure, residents of Tonki Manoli and Garhi Assadpur have been moved to safer places with the water in the Yamuna constantly rising following the release of 7.44 lakh cusecs of water into the river from the Tajewala head works.

The administration has taken measures to protect the most vulnerable stud near Rakashera.

The water flow along the 40 km-long embankment is being monitored round the clock.

KARNAL: Flood waters started receding from several villages in Karnal on Tuesday. However, many areas, including the Kalsora-Nabiabad road, the Randori-Nagli road and the vital road link to Chandrao were still submerged, cutting off Nabiabad, Sayeed Chapra, Japti Chapra, Nagli, Bona Kheri, Chandrao, Hansu Majra, Chogawn and Khukni villages from the district headquarters. 

Karnal, September 21
All 39 members of a mountaineering expedition of Sainik School, Kunjpura (SSK), who were stranded near Rangaudi village in Uttarakhand, are safe and have contacted their parents after returning to the base camp at Donagiri, the Principal, Col Arun Dutta, said today.

The expedition, which set out to conquer an unnamed virgin peak (21,770 ft) in Uttarakhand, was stranded en route as flash floods caused by heavy rain washed away the Chamuli bridge, providing a vital link to the peak.

Since the team members were out of the base camp and mobile phones were not working, the parents of the students got worried and assurances from the SSK authorities that their wards were safe failed to satisfy them.

The parents heaved a sigh of relief after talking to their wards. However, a student hailing from Manipur was sick and was evacuated to the Army Hospital, Bareli.

The expedition is waiting at the base camp for roads to clear so that it can start the return journey as the mission has been abandoned due to inclement weather. 

Rohtak, September 21
Satish Kumar Dahiya, a retired official of the Haryana government, has alleged that a sum of Rs 2.20 lakh lying in his account with Punjab National Bank here was fraudulently withdrawn through a cheque which he never issued.

He said despite submitting a complaint to bank officials and the police, nothing had been done in this regard. The police was yet to register a case in this connection.

Dahiya told The Tribune that he had a savings account with the Civil Lines branch of Punjab National Bank. He alleged that he was shocked on August 16 when he found that an amount of Rs 2.20 lakh had been withdrawn from his account through a cheque which he never issued.

The cheque number - 778593 - dated August 12, bore “forged signature”.

He said he was surprised that bank officials, who were well-known to him, did not cross-check with him when such a huge amount was being withdrawn from his account.

The complainant, who retired as Divisional Manager from Haryana Tourism, alleged that the CCTV footage was not made available to him and he was told that the camera not functioning on the day of the withdrawal, leading to the suspicion that some bank employees could be involved in it.

He lamented that though he had lodged a complaint with the police in this connection on August 20, no case had been registered as yet. Senior Manager of the bank DN Satija claimed that there was no fraud on the part of the bank and investigations had revealed that the allegations levelled by the complainant were baseless and the payment was made strictly as per the norms. He said a report was being submitted to the police officer concerned in this regard.

He claimed that the cheque had been issued by the account holder and bore his genuine signature.

Kuldeep Beniwal, SHO of the Civil Lines police station, said the matter was being looked into and nothing suspicious had been found against the bank so far.

Chandigarh, September 21
Newspapers will survive despite the internet, blogs and the growing culture of citizen journalists because the reader wants credible news.The task of a journalist, therefore, essentially remains accurate presentation of news, filtered of slander and rumour.

This was stated by the Editor-in-Chief, The Tribune Grop of Papers, Raj Chengappa, in his keynote address at the state-level Patrakar Puruskar Samman Samaroh at Haryana Niwas here today, where 153 journalists were awarded. Warning journalists against complacency, he urged them to act as gatekeepers in the age of information revolution.

“The challenge is to see the internet revolution coming and embracing the new technology rather than waiting for it to hit us. In the US and the UK, this is already a reality with the economics of producing a newspaper no longer viable. In India, however, the print media is still growing, though the growth rate has slowed down,” Chengappa observed.

“With the mobile invasion, the advent of the smart phone and I-pads, the day is not far when people will have plastic newspapers,” he said, emphasising that multi-tasking was the key to meeting the challenge of information explosion.

“This explosion will take back the journalists to their old role of culling relevant news, going beyond the obvious and interpreting and analysing developments.”

Making the complex simple is “outstanding journalism” and the journalist is seen by the reader as a trusted communicator. The print media would not only have to meet the new challenges, but also deal with the growing menace of paid news that was eroding the credibility of the newspapers, he warned.

Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda announced medical reimbursement to journalists and offered free training at Kurukshetra University to those desirous of upgrading their skills.

Stressing on objectivity, he urged journalists to resist the temptation of being the “first with the news” and in the process ignoring vital facts.

Expressing concern over the trend of carrying advertisements that looked like news items, Hooda urged the newspapers not to publish such material as it misled the people and eroded the credibility of the papers.

Chief Parliamentary Secretary Sharda Rathore and Additional Principal Secretary to the CM Dr KK Khandelwal also spoke. Three Lifetime Achievement Awards were conferred upon NS Parwana, BK Chum, and Manmohan Sharma. The Shri Satpal Saini Award for Excellence in Journalism and Shri Rajender Hooda Memorial Journalist Excellence Award were conferred on Sushil Manav, Staff Correspondent, The Tribune, Fatehabad, and Ramesh Vinayak, the then Group Bureau Chief, India Today, Chandigarh, and now Resident Editor of Hindustan Times.

The state-level awards went to The Tribune’s Bijender Ahlawat and Nawal Kishore Rastogi, among others. Part-time Tribune correspondents Ravinder Saini, Rajinder Bhatnagar Suman and SD Sharma, Tribune staff correspondent Arti Kapur, Surinder Sangwan of Dainik Tribune, part-time correspondents Pravesh Gehlot, Narinder Khyaliya, Daler Singh, Yaadram Bansal, all from Dainik Tribune, and PP Verma of Punjabi Tribune, were also awarded. 

Panipat, September 21
The Haryana Power Engineers Association has expressed its anger over the rejection of new pay scales by the Haryana Bureau of Public Enterprises even though these were approved by the Board of Directors of the power utilities.

In a statement here today, the association said under the Companies Act, the Board of Directors was fully empowered to decide the pay scales of its employees.

RS Dahiya, president of the association, said power utility engineers had got a better deal after the recommendations of the Fifth Pay Commission were implemented. However, as per the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission, the engineers were placed in a lower pay band.

He said the bureau had violated the provision of Section 133 of the Electricity Act, 2003, wherein it was stated that the service conditions of the employees of state power utilities could not be inferior to the ones already enforced. In Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, engineers in power sector companies were getting better pay scales than government engineers.

The work of the power utilities was also suffering as a large number of posts in the discoms, including that of director, were lying vacant.

Dahiya said the association had urged the state government to take immediate action on pay anomaly of engineers, restructure the power utilities and fill the vacant post of director in the utilities.

Hisar, September 21
The call by the Haryana Jat Mahasabha for a bandh today, to mourn the death of Sunil Kumar in police firing at Mayyar village last week, proved to be a damp squib with not a single shop being shut in the district in response to the call.

Albeit, by coincidence or design, the district administration did hand over a cheque for Rs 10 lakh to Anil Kumar, brother of the deceased, hailing from Ladwa village in the district. The cheque was drawn in favour of Rajbala, mother of the deceased. This was done in pursuance of orders of the Chief Minister on September 13.In view of the bandh call, the administration had deployed policemen in strength all over the city as a precautionary measure.

However, neither did the shopkeepers down shutters, nor any activist of the mahasabha was seen canvassing support for the bandh.

However, Om Parkash Maan, leader of the Mahabsabha, made tall claims in Bhiwani, saying the bandh was “successful and a majority” of markets had remained closed. He also claimed that effigies of former Hisar Superintendent of Police Subhash Yadav were burnt “all over Haryana”. These claims were belied in his statement issued today in which he appealed to the Jats to “show solidarity by gathering for Sunil Kumar’s rasam teharvin on September 24”. Maan demanded that the state government must grant reservation to the Jats under the OBC category by September 24.

Almost admitting a split in the community in the wake of the Mayyar violence, he said that “self-styled leaders from Uttar Pradesh” would not be allowed to practise their politics here in Haryana. A report on an “under-the-table” accord by these leaders with the government would be made public shortly, he said.

Chandigarh, September 21
Raghu Yadav, politico-social leader and thinker of the Ahirwals, has demanded that the Indus Water Treaty, which completed its 50 years on Sunday, should be abrogated because Pakistan has not lived up to its unwritten assurances to the then Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

Yadav, who has done research on the treaty and has also written a number of books on the issue, said Nehru had cleared the treaty because the then Pakistan ruler, Gen Ayub Khan, had assured him that if they could sort out the river water dispute amicably and Kashmir would not come in the way of good neighbourly relations between the two countries.

For having friendly relations with Pakistan, Nehru conceded more than 80 per cent of the water of the Indus rivers and even agreed to restrictions on the use of the western rivers - Indus, Jhelum and Chenab - though as per the international law, India, being an upper riparian nation, had every right to use water of these rivers.

The Chandra and the Bhaga, which constitute the headwaters of the Chenab, flowed through the eastern Punjab (now Himachal Pradesh). Their waters along with those of the Ravi and the Beas were earmarked by the British for quenching the thrust of the Rajputana desert before Partition. The waters of the Sutlej were allotted to that part of Punjab, which now constitutes Haryana.

Sonepat, September 21
The Deenbandhu Chhotu Ram University of Science and Technology, Murthal, will set up community colleges on the university premises to train people of the rural areas as artisans.

This will increase the number of skilled artisans and trained labourers in rural areas. This was announced by Vice-Chancellor of the university HS Chahal while addressing a seminar organised on the 43rd Engineer’s Day in the university here recently to mark the birthday of Sir M Visvesvaraya, a renowned engineer who was awarded Bharat Ratna in 1955.

Announcing that the fourth newly constructed academic block in the university would be named after Visvesvaraya, Chahal said prestigious projects of the country like Bhakhra Dam, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and Bhilai Steel Plant were the gifts of his days. He exhorted the university students to fulfil the dreams of Visvesvaraya and take the nation on the path of prosperity.

Former Director-General of the Ministry of Road Transport and National Highways DP Gupta said though India’s road system was the largest in the world, the condition of roads was not good. It was mainly due to the shortage of quality engineers, efficient managers, experienced contractors and skilled labourers, he added.