In a first of its kind, woman constable Simarjit Kaur, posted at Khemkaran sector, has been promoted as sub-inspector in the BSF. She is the lone woman constable to appear for the subordinate level.

The MHA had given the approval for the recruitment of 15 sub-inspectors (female) for a better supervision and command of the women constables. “It is a major boost for woman constables. She would undergo training first after which she would be posted somewhere in the Punjab Frontier,” said IG Himmat Singh. 

Gurdaspur, December 2
With All-India Society for Electronic and Computer Technology (AISECT) getting the rights to establish Common Service Centres (CSCs), the equivalent of suvidha centres, in Gurdaspur, e-governance will now touch the lives of villagers in 
the district.

One thought to be a pipe dream, the administration officials say, e-governance will prove to be a boon for people who are unable to trudge long distances to get their work done.

All the 1624 villages of this border district will be interlinked online and the district has been divided into 270 CSCs with each centre providing information and services to a group of six villages. This, in effect, means that suvidha centres will come up at the village level in this district.

Villagers, instead of travelling long distances --- like residents of Dhar Kalan block who have to travel 60 kms to get their work done at the District headquarters --- will now get information relating to their work at the click of a mouse at a CSC located in their cluster.

The contract for establishing such suvidha centres has been bagged by the AISECT whose representative here is Sanjeev Sarpal. He has been appointed as District Manager for Gurdaspur district.

CSCs are being set up at village levels which will provide ruralites with the facilities of driving licences, death certificates, old age pension, marriage certificates, payment of electricity and BSNL phone bills, police clearance certificates and a host of other private Business to Citizen (B2C) services all under one roof.

B2C services include provision of bank loans, insurance, mobile bill recharges and education to rural masses.

The CSC will be computerised and will have a direct link to the Chandigarh-based State Wide Area Network (SWAN) which will monitor the CSC running at village level. SWAN is governed by the Department Information and Technology, Punjab government.

Says Sanjeev Sarpal, an IT engineer by profession and who will be overseeing the setting up of the 270 CSC in this district, says he already has appointed 14 block managers in the district who, in turn, will be leasing out these CSC to villagers willing to run these Centres for a profit. The villagers who will given the franchises of the CSC will be termed Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLE). On their part the VLEs will be running the CSC on a profit basis. Says Sarpal, “The VLE will be charging for the services he renders and villagers will no longer be required to travel to the district headquarters to get their work done. Each and every CSC will be computerised.”

There are nearly 540 services which can be offered to residents. These also include providing passport services, permission for holding of fairs, issuance of both married and unmarried certificates, issuance of dependent certificates to wards of freedom fighters and issuance of dependent certificates to riot and terrorist victims.

Sarpal adds that proper training and guidance will be given to people who will run the CSC at the village level. “AISECT is already successfully running 3000 such CSCs in Madhya Pradesh and nearly 1000 in Chattisgarh. We admit that underprivileged sections of society are not very well organised to meet the demands of internet commerce. However, the IT infrastructure that we intend to put in place will be strong enough to elicit a strong response from rural folk.”

Gurdaspur, December 2
The raids conducted by Punjab Education Minister Sewa Singh Sekhwan on government schools in recent weeks have created a fear psychosis among teachers following which attendance of those teachers, who earlier used to remain absent regularly from schools of this border district, has now picked up.

This was confirmed by District Education Officer (Secondary) Jaspal Singh, who claimed that regular monitoring of the situation had proved that the attendance rate of teachers had picked up. “Cluster in charges have been informing me for the past couple of days that absenteeism had indeed gone down. In charges of all 52 clusters of Gurdaspur district have been asked to keep a hawk’s eye on teachers playing truant in their respective clusters and have been asked to directly report to me,” added Jaspal Singh.

It is pertinent to mention here that a few days ago the minister raided various schools and pulled up lax and negligent teachers and officials. Last week the Kanhuwan police, acting on the directions of Sekhwan, raided Government High School, Deriwal Daroga, 15 km from here, and caught five Education Department employees, including the school Headmaster and three other teachers, consuming drinks during school time. They were also found to be using the kitchen of the school, meant for cooking mid-day meals for students, to cook non-vegetarian food for their own consumption even as classes were on in adjoining rooms.

Sekhwan said he had regularly been receiving complaints against the school staff and added “now the time has come to act.” All the five employees have been placed under suspension following the results of medical tests conducted by the Community Health Centre, Naushera Majha Singh, which proved that all of them were drunk during duty time.

This incident has sent shock waves among Education Department officials, following which schoolteachers, who earlier used to play truant, particularly in schools located near the border areas, have now started taking classes on a regular basis. A senior Education Department functionary, preferring anonymity, confirmed that the raids had acted as a catalyst with teachers now coming to schools regularly.

There are a total of 483 government schools in this district, out of which 150 are located along the border belt.

Sekhwan claimed that strict instructions had been sent to senior Education Department officials to ensure 100 per cent attendance of teachers. He said, ”teachers are nation builders of our society and strict action will be taken against them if they err on any count. I am going to enforce my instructions pertaining to teachers’ attendance very seriously. I have been receiving regular complaints relating to high incidence of absenteeism among teachers. Nobody will be spared howsoever highly he or she may be politically connected. Action against the Deriwal Daroga teachers was initiated on the complaint of the village panchayat members about the lack of proper academic environment in the school. I know of several other schools in Gurdaspur district where the standard of education being doled out by teachers is not up to the requisite standards. Even late comers will not be spared.”

Hoshiarpur, December 2
An undertrial prisoner, Taranjit Singh, alias Badal, of Chandpur Rurkee, Nwanshahr, who had been languishing in Una jail in Himachal Pradesh, fled from the police custody at Garhshankar bus stop, 40 kms from here, this afternoon.

According to the police sources, Taranjit Singh was brought at Garhshankar today by the Una police in the court of Judicial Magistrate Gurnam Singh Dhillon in a case, registered under sections 201, 302 and 365 of the IPC on September 12 in Garhshankar police station.