NEIGHBOURHOOD

Debate contest to hone augmentative skills
Tribune News Service

Patiala, October 18
The excise and taxation department, Punjab, has set up a target of Rs 10,000 crore for the collection of VAT in the year 2010-11, which will be achieved by the department easily.

Till now, the department has already collected Rs 4,973.18 crore, which is Rs 1,224.24 crore more than the last year. Excise and Taxation Commissioner A Venu Prasad, Punjab, gave the information during the inauguration of a computer centre at the head office of the department.

He further informed that the department will appoint 118 new inspectors next year and the matter to appoint 74 new ETOs has been sent to the Public Service Commission.

He informed that an amount of Rs 25 lakh had been spent on the building and computerisation of this new centre.

Around 500 ETOs, inspectors and other senior officers will be given training at the centre. At a time, 20 officers can be given training in the centre. He said the centre would be connected online with all barriers and districts and also the record of information regarding all dealers would be kept in the centre.

He said the department wanted to make the entire system of bill payment online and further informed that around 1,63,000 dealers in Punjab were already using the mode.

Soon, the dealers will be able to make e-payments through the Oriental Bank of Commerce and State Bank of Patiala. A large number of excise and taxation officers were also present on the occasion.

Rajpura, October 18
The ban on burning paddy stubble has gone up in smoke with farmers resorting to this practice to save money. Thick clouds of smoke are seen emanating from paddy fields.

Despite being aware of the ban, farmers are burning stubble without caring for law and order. “All we know is to save money and time. We have to grow green fodder to save our animals from hunger,” said a farmer of Alampur Nepra village while burning paddy stubble on the Chandigarh-Patiala road.

Commuters on the road were seen struggling to find way immediately after the fire. As per fire department officials in Rajpura there is a sudden rise in cases of burns in and around Rajpura villages.

Agriculture department officials said burning of paddy damaged important ingredients, including useful insects and worms, and also harmed fertility of soil. It posed health hazard to the people living nearby, especially children and elderly.

Lack of stringent measures taken by administration is encouraging the problem. Even last year incidence of wheat and paddy burning went unchecked due to lack of check by the administration.

Farmers must be taught about drawbacks of burning paddy stubble and efforts should be intensified to rush fire tenders at places where stubble burning is reported, said department officials.

Villagers said presently fire department was not equipped enough to control fire in fields. Wind spreads fire in no time and fire department officials, too, fail to reach in time.

Agriculture department officials said they were teaching farmers that burning paddy stubble harmed micronutrients in soil and also caused environmental degradation due to increase in temperature. Rise in temperature also harmed trees, insects and worms present in moist soil, which may prove helpful for the fertility of soil.

Chandigarh, October 18
The Punjab and Haryana High Court Judges, previously on the Central Government panel, will soon get their dues. For, it’s payback time for the Centre.

That’s right! The Centre, of its own accord, wants to reimburse the high court judges for the work they did as standing counsel before their elevation to the Bench.

A letter in this regard has already been shot off to Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court Justice Mukul Mudgal by Additional Solicitor-General of India Mohan Jain; and is believed to have been received by the CJ’s office.

Available information suggests the communiqué has been addressed to the Chief Justice, as it was considered appropriate to seek his aid in the matter, rather than asking the judges individually. It was apparently being felt that some of the judges would not be very enthusiastic to ask for their dues, even when requested to do so.

The development is significant, as several judges, previously on the Central Government panel, were elevated before they could be reimbursed for contesting the cases on behalf of the government. Apparently not in favour of asking the Centre to give them their dues, the judges had let go the amounts.

But now, the initiative to pay back has been taken by Mohan Jain. Associated with the Punjab and Haryana High Court since long, Jain was previously Haryana Advocate-General. The one-page letter in this regard says: “It has been brought to my notice that some of the sitting judges of the Punjab and Haryana High Court at Chandigarh, who were previously standing counsel for the Union of India, their fee/bills are pending.

Chandigarh, October 18
The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum has sentenced the managing director of Cargo Movers Private Limited to imprisonment of two years for not complying with orders.

The complainant, Sunil Vermani, a officer of Essen Connectors Private Limited, Panchkula, stated in the complaint that on December 2, 2009, he had entrusted a consignment of goods to the respondents, which were required to be transported to New Delhi. The goods were to be airlifted to Sao Paulo, Brazil, South America.

He said the consignment was accepted by the respondents at Chandigarh and were transported to New Delhi. The value of the goods entrusted to the respondents was Rs 1,42,548 and further excise duty of Rs 14,523, thereon totalling to Rs 1,57,071. It was further stated that the consignment was insured against fire only.

On December 8, 2009, the respondents telephonically informed the complainant that the goods had been destroyed in a major fire at the godown of the respondents at 
New Delhi.

Subsequently, the respondents have been avoiding the earnest efforts of the complainant to seek the material documents of the goods like FIR and insurance documents.

The forum had directed the respondents to pay Rs 1,57,331 to the complainant, along with Rs 25,000 as compensation towards mental and physical harassment caused to the complainant. Besides, the forum had also directed to pay Rs 5,000 as the cost of litigation.

Chandigarh, October 18
Accused of rape, Harmail Singh alias Bubby, husband of councillor Sunita Chaudhary, heaved a sigh of relief today as the victim filed to identify him in the court of Additional District and Sessions Judge GC Garg.

While deposing before the court, she failed to identify Harmail and said he was not the one who had committed the crime. On Saturday, the victim’s father had stated before the court that when he had visited the office of the then DSP (East) PK Dhawan to get an FIR registered, the DSP had offered him Rs 25,000 to withdraw the complaint.

When one of the accused had filed a bail petition in the Punjab and Haryana High Court, the court had directed the trial court to hold a day-to-day trial of the case. Charges were framed against the accused on August 15.

The police had registered the case against Harmail Singh on May 20, 2009. Harmail had surrendered before the court on Thursday after which he was sent to police remand.

The police had registered a case against Vijay, a resident of Indira Colony, for allegedly raping a minor girl of Darshni Bagh, Mani Majra, and also making an obscene MMS of the victim in connivance with the Harmail Singh.

Panchkula, October 18
The district police has claimed to have arrested six accused in a hit-and-run case here today.

The accused identified as Ishar Ram, alias Ichhar, Amarjit Kaur, Paramjit Kaur, Rupo, Amaro and Pinder, all residents of Sangrur, allegedly attempted to kill Sub-Inspector Kuldeep Singh, Additional SHO, Pinjore, along with his staff, on Saturday when he set up a naka near Dhara Mandal, Pinjore, to apprehend them who are also said to be chain snatchers.

The gang of chain snatchers were in an Indica car and were being chased by the SHO, Kalka. They tried to kill Kuldeep by running over their car over him and other policemen accompanying him, said the police.

Chandigarh, October 18
Hemant Sharma of Delhi became the National U-25 Chess Champion 2010 after defeating Krishna Prasad KC of Tamil Nadu in the final round of the 19th National U-25 Chess Championship 2010 held at St Xavier’s Senior Secondary School, Sector 44, here today.

Hemant Sharma scored seven points out of possible nine and tied for the first place with two other players-Gurpreet Singh Maras from Maharashtra and Arjun Tiwari from the Railways. But Sharma was declared winner for having a better tie-break score. Maras bagged the second position after defeating international master Rahul Sangma of Delhi. Arjun Tiwari defeated overnight leader Hemal Karsanji Thanki of Gujarat to secure the third position.

Around 60 chess players participated in the national championship.

Chief Guest Pradip Mehra, Adviser to the Administrator, Chandigarh administration, gave away prizes to winners.

Score

7 points: Hemant Sharma, Delhi, Gurpreet Singh Maras, MAH, and Tiwari Arjun, Railways.

6.5 points: Shreyansh Daklia, Chhattisgarh, Thanki Hemal Karsanji, GUJ, and Rishabh 
Mishra, MP.

6 points: Sangma Rahul, Delhi, Krishna Prasad K C, TN, Ganesh Babu S, TN, Pradip Tiwari, MAH, Yogesh Gautam, HAR, and Soumya Banerjee, WB.

5.5 points: Gusain Himal, Chandigarh, Joshua AP, UP, Sumit Grover, J&K, Bhatt Jalpan, GUJ, Singh Gursher, PUN, Rahul Lamba, PUN, and Shravan Nilkanth, MAH.

5 points: Vijay Kumar, Bihar, Neetakshya Singh, Haryana, Ravi Teja M, AP, Pardeep Singh Negi, Chandigarh, and Nagpal Tejas, Chandigarh.

4.5 points: Roop Saurav, Bihar, Piyush Manuja, PUN, Akshat Chandra, Delhi, Uma Maheswaran P, TN, Jaydeep Sharma, Delhi, Nishant Malhotra, Delhi, Singh Manpal, PUN, Swapnil Bansod, MAH, Akshay Shoshta, HP, Shivika Jain, Chandigarh, and Jaskeerat Singh, Chandigarh.

4 points: Ravikant Sharma, MP, Subhash Chopra, HAR, Anubhav Tuknayat, Chandigarh, Anmol Gupta, Delhi, Ravneet Kaur, Chandigarh, Satbir Singh, Chandigarh, Nivedan Bhardwaj, Chandigarh, and Tarun Kumar, HP.

3.5 points: Biswajit Bharadwaj, Assam, Deepak Ranga Rao, Ranchi, Simranjeet Kaur, Chandigarh, Shweta, Chandigarh, Rakesh Ningthoujam, Manipur, Atul Moudgil, HP, and Kashish Kaushal, Chandigarh.

3 points: Rajesh Ranjan, Bihar, Amarjeet Singh, PUN, Ratul Sharma, PUN, Tanya Kaushal, Chandigarh, and Surender Pal, HP.

2 points: Jashan Khurana, Chandigarh, Rishabh Jain, Chandigarh, Vipul Dogra, Chandigarh, Abhimanyu Goyal, PUN, Gursharan Singla, Chandigarh.

Chandigarh, October 18
The mystery surrounding the repeated theft and prompt recovery of Shera, the Commonwealth Games (CWG) mascot, first from Mohali and then from Chandigarh by the police, has all ingredients of a typical Bollywood blockbuster in which efficient cops lay their hands on a stolen item, but the thieve(s) manage to give them the slip.

A similar thing happened on Monday, when Shera, stolen on last Saturday from Sukhna Lake, was ultimately found in the wee hours, abandoned near Grecian Hospital in Sector 69 here. But as usual the police had no clue about the thieves.

Terming it a joint operation between the Mohali police and Chandigarh police, the stolen Shera was handed over to Chandigarh police Inspector Mahavir Singh, the Station House Officer of the Sector 3 police station, by Station House Office of the Phase VIII police station Sanjeev Bhatt. “We found the mascot lying in Sector 69. Chandigarh cops were called to identify it, as an FIR had been registered in Chandigarh,” said SHO of the Phase VIII police station.

In a similar turn of events, earlier the mascot was stolen from near Verka Chowk in Phase VI and recovered after two days from near Tonga village by sleuths of the Chandigarh police. 

Chandigarh, October 18
PEC Tech, Chandigarh, lost to Lucknow University 2-3 on the inaugural day of the North Zone Inter-University Badminton (men) Championship 2010-11 at Panjab University Gymnasium Hall here today.

The tournament is being played on a knock-out-basis.

Results

Lucknow University, Lucknow, beat Dr BRA University, Agra, 3-1; Dr BRA NIT, Jalandhar, beat GADVSU, Ludhiana, 3-1; Lovely Prof University beat CCS University, Meerut, 3-2; Dr RML Avadh University beat Bundelkhand University, Jhansi, 3-1; PTU, Jalandhar, beat MDU, Rohtak, 3-1; Punjabi University, Patiala, beat HNB, Gharwal University, 3-1; HPU, Shimla, beat Integral University, Lucknow, 3-0, KU, Kurukshetra, beat JMI, New Delhi, 3-2; CSJM University, Kanpur, beat Thapar University, Patiala, 3-0; MJP University, Rohilkhand, beat Rastriya Skt University, Delhi, 3-0; Jammu University, Jammu, beat GKV, Haridwar, 3-1; Lucknow University beat PEC Tech, Chandigarh, 3-2.

Mohali, October 18
Mankirat was declared the winner, while Amitoj Singh finished as the runner-up in the under-8 category in the Open Lawn Tennis Tournament by Shemrock Ace Tennis Academy on the school premises here today.

Mankirat beat Amitoj Singh 6-1, 6-2. In the boys’ under-10 final, Savneet Singh drubbed Gurseerat Singh 4-2, 4-1.

In girls’ under-10 category, Aarshpreet Kaur upset Ibadat Kaur 7-3.