Phagwara, October 18
Tension prevailed in the Shri Hanuman Garhi here on the next day of Dasehra as several residents, including members of an 11-Member Committee formed by the Deputy Commissioner of Kapurthala to run the sacred place, sat on dharna before the Hanuman Garhi in protest against the alleged misconduct and insulting attitude of self-styled caretaker Sudarshan Goyal with committee members.

The protesters demanded immediate removal of Goyal from the sacred place as they alleged that he was using abusive language with members of the managing committee and the Quami Sewak Ram Leela Committee.

The trouble arose, when Ram Leela Committee president Arun Khosla, who is also president of the Block BJP, went to the shrine to place valuables after the Dasehra festival, the caretaker misbehaved with Ram Leela Committee members.

SDM Amarjit Paul, along with SP Kamaljit Singh Dhillon, rushed to the site and prevented the protesters from blocking traffic on the national highways. Paul said this evening that he had allowed the 11-Member Committee to remove any person from the religious place who was not deputed by the committee.

The SDM said that three members, Dr Des Raj Sharma, Inderjit Ghai and Ram Labhaya, of the committee had died and the remaining members were strongly opposing Goyal. He said the committee should induct some more members to smoothly run the functioning of the sacred place, which is located on “maafee land”. The SDM advised the committee to maintain account of the offerings for transparency.

After altercations running into several hours, the caretaker agreed, handed over the keys and left the place after the evening prayer.

Nawanshahr, October 18
Public opinion against corruption is already there but the need of the hour is to unite them by providing proper leadership. This was stated by Baba Ramdev after organising a yoga camp here this morning. Baba Ramdev visited Nawanshahr, Khatkar Kalan, Banga and Balachaur in the district today under his mission aimed at making the people “disease-free by adopting yoga” as well as to eradicate corruption from public life.

The baba, while making oblique reference to the recent controversy related to the “forced collection of funds” for a political rally, remarked that political parties were making forced collection of funds and bringing people to the rallies on daily-wage basis.

Elaborating his plan on eradicating corruption from public life, Baba Ramdev said that earlier he had been mobilising people to adopt yoga and ayurveda for a disease-free life, now the people would be mobilised to unite against corruption.

In the first phase, as many as 600 villages in the country would be developed as “model villages” and during the coming two years the people throughout the country would be educated and united for ushering in a new era in the country.

Terming corruption as the root problem of the country, he said the people had been facing other problems like poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, lack of basic civic amenities, etc. due to it.

“The nexus of dishonest politicians, bureaucrats and corporate houses is responsible for the present mess and if we would be able to clean the bad elements in politics, the bureaucrats and corporate houses would automatically come on the right track,” he said, suggesting that the currency notes of big denominations should be banned, provision of capital punishment should be there for the persons found guilty of corruption and India should sign a treaty to ensure bringing back the money kept in banks in other countries by dishonest persons.

Jalandhar, October 18
Amid uproar of various eco-promotional campaigns, around 50 million litres of polluted water, generated from various parts of Jalandhar, is being silently drained into the Sutlej every day through the Kala Sanghian drain for the past over six months.

The grave eco-threat to the major river of the state is the fallout of the apathy of the Punjab Water Supply and Sewerage Board (PWSSB) authorities.

The authorities have failed to lay a 7-km-long sewer line, which would connect the seven major sewerage outlets of the localities of northern and north-western areas of the city (including the industrial units of focal point) with the main sewer channel and eventually with the existing water treatment facilities, in the scheduled period.

Although the proposal to lay this sewer line was approved around three years ago, the board had set March 31, 2010, as the deadline and then again pleaded for the extension of the deadline up to July 31, which the board again failed to meet.

Since the proposal to establish a sewage treatment plant over the Kala Sanghian drain will definitely take years to materialise, the 7-km line was to serve as a makeshift arrangement to carry the polluted water to the existing treatment facilities.

As of now, all the contaminated water is being drained into the Kala Sanghian drain.

Resham Lal, Executive Engineer, PWSSB, said there were a lot many technical hitches in the execution of the project as over 17 different departments were involved in it. The board needed to clearance from all those departments, he added.

“We have laid the network and are in the last stages of connecting the outlets with the main sewer. This procedure is cumbersome and it may take a few more weeks to run the lines,” he added.

As per sources, taking into consideration the ecological outcome of the delay, the Punjab Chief Secretary has held a meeting in this regard and asked the board officials to complete the project as early as possible.

Jalandhar, October 18
Members of the Class III Contractual Employees Union of the Department of Technical Education, Punjab, have been facing disappointment for the past over 13 years.

Employed on contractual basis in 1998, these 40 employees have been debarred from regularisation by the state government, while employees recruited as contractual lecturers in the department were given permanent postings in 2000.

Posted in polytechnic colleges across the state, the class III employees working as workshop inspectors, technicians, general mechanics and electrician trades have been demanding justice, but to no avail.

Talking to The Tribune, Harjinder Singh and Rakesh Kumar, adviser and general secretary, respectively, of the class III employees union (contractual) claimed that lecturers who were appointed on contractual basis by the department in 2000 had been regularised by the government in the same year that they joined.

Alleging discrimination by the government, they said 40 class III employees were ignored even though they had appeared in a test and interviews conducted by the government before their appointment. Moreover, panchayat secretaries were also regularised in 2009 and now the government had ensured 14,000 ETTs regular appointment, they said.