Dehradun, December 7
The ginger purchase deal is turning out to be a matter of big embarrassment for the incumbent state Agriculture Minister. While Director, Horticulture, Dr BP Nautiyal was removed unceremoniously recently after he was held responsible for irregularities in the purchase of ginger, state Agriculture Minister Trivendra Rawat today admitted that the irregularities took place in 2007-08, much before Nautiyal’s tenure. Trivendra said the irregularities were linked to the tenure of the earlier Horticulture Director and not Dr Nautiyal.

According to Dr Nautiyal, who has now sought the refuge of the Uttarakhand High Court, has been maintaining that as per the audit report, the ginger deal has its genesis during the tenure of the then Horticulture Director Dr DR Gautam that ended on January 28, 2009, and was in no way concerned with him. Peeved with some media reports, Nautiyal said the series of events, as mentioned in the media reports, had gone to the extent of questioning the credibility of the then Chief Minister, which was technically incorrect and ethically wrong.

Meanwhile, sources in the Uttarakhand Horticulture Department revealed that the ginger deal took shape two years ago, much before Nautiyal joined and was based on a three-year old audit report of 2007-08. The onus of the deal, therefore, lies on the officials who served the term during 2007-08 and not 2009-2010. Interestingly, freezing financial powers of the director on the outcome of the audit report of 2007-08 defies all logic. Nautiyal also questioned the role of the state Agriculture Minister towards his removal. “Neither the expelled horticulture director was the director, nor I was a minister at the time when these irregularities took place,” said Rawat.

Dehradun, December 7
The Managers and Supervisors Association (MSA) and the Employees Association of Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam (GMVN) has decided to start a statewide protest from December 15 against the alleged delay on state government’s part to decide about the irregularities committed in the recruitment and selection of 10 high-level positions in the nigam four months ago.

The wrath of the employees also got fuelled by the alleged handing over of the task related to hospitality sector to the Winter Games Federation of India (WGFI) ahead of the SAF Winter Games, and sidelining the GMVN in the process from this much-hyped event. Both associations have blamed Principal Secretary Rakesh Sharma for taking these decisions, which defy the interests of the nigam. The Employees Association has decided to resign collectively if the state government did not revoke the decision on these controversial positions.

Vice-president of the MSA BD Petwal said their patience ran out on November 30 when the state government was supposed to announce the decision about the controversial high-level selections. He said: “Now, after waiting for four months, we are told that the Commissioner (Garhwal) will take more time to look into the case of gross irregularities in the 10 high-level recruitments. This issue of corruption is so crystal clear that it should have been wrapped up in a short period of time by removing those unworthy ones who have been given these positions overriding the most deserving ones in the GMVN, who are more qualified and have experience of more than two decades.”

He also signalled to heavy exchange of money to facilitate these posts, which according to him, smelt of involvement of higher-ups. Petwal targeted Rakesh Sharma for pushing debt-ridden GMVN into further losses.

“The GMVN is struggling with finances, and does not have money to pay regular salaries to its employees, not to talk of bonus. In such a scenario, Rakesh Sharma first divested the GMVN of all rights to manage its rest houses in Auli from June itself when a plenty of domestic as well as foreign tourists were supposed to come there for the SAF games.

It has been more than six months since the GMVN had been kept away from all hospitality business at Auli. He also made the nigam to return all bookings and advance money. Not only this, he has engaged the Centre and the state body of the WGFI to handle hospitality activities besides administrative work at Auli. It is highly disgraceful for the GMVN, which in the past too has handled various winter games competitions quite successfully,” he added.

Petwal blamed Sharma for not paying the nigam a single penny for his elaborate stay with the group of people in nigam’s properties at Auli in the past six months. President of the Employees Association Purushottam Puri said they were also getting support of the Kumaon Mandal Vikas Nigam (KMVN) for the agitation on December 15 and were going to resign collectively.

He said: “It is ludicrous that on the one hand, the GMVN offers Voluntary Retirement Scheme to its 22 experienced employees in the name of overstaffing and the very next month the management recruits 10 persons to the same posts for more than double the salaries. We are annoyed over these malpractices and have decided to resign collectively on December 15, if the state government did not revoke the new appointments.” Puri added they would continue to work despite the protest keeping the interest of the nigam in consideration. Vice-president, GMVN, Raghunath Singh Negi also extended his support to the cause of the GMVN associations. He said he would make a personal visit to Auli to find out the wrongdoings.

Dehradun, December 7
Vice-president of the Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam (GMVN) Raghunath Singh Negi met Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank and requested him to direct all government offices to hold all press conferences and other meetings, which they otherwise hold in hotels, in the GMVN and Kumaon Mandal Vikas Nigam rest houses to augment the revenue generation of these loss-making bodies.

While informing mediapersons, Negi said the government officers paid heavy charges to hotels and restaurants to hold press conferences or official meetings. He added that the CM had welcomed his suggestions.

Negi also highlighted the issue of equipping the Vigilance Department with newer technologies to enable them to trap the erring and corrupt officials, while indicating that the employees of this kind working in both the nigams.

He said he had directed managing director to formulate a transfer policy, under which PROs, who had been stationed at one place for years together or were operating from their districts, should be transferred to other locations. He said this matter would be finalised in a meeting of the directorate later this month.

Touching upon the issue of scarcity of gas cylinders in the city, Negi blamed the Congress at the Centre for the mess. Despite the fact that the state had largely been contributing to the Centre by sending five MPs, the Congress was giving a step-motherly treatment to the state, he said.

Negi sympathised with the employees at manager, supervisor and lower level in GMVN and KMVN, who were going to start a protest from December 15 onwards to demand the cancellation of 10 high-level recruitments four months back.

He though applauded the state government for clearing the roadblock of regularising 22,000 irregular and daily-wage board employees. He also appreciated the government’s decision to provide 16 per cent TA/DA to those who did not get salaries as per the Sixth Pay Commission.

Nainital, December 7
The SSB-trained guerrillas, who have been agitating and seeking employment for the past one year, have threatened to boycott the forthcoming Assembly elections, if their demands are not met at the earliest.

Hundreds of agitating Guerrillas held protests in support of their demands in Almora and Bageshwar yesterday and submitted memorandums to the Union Home Ministry through the local administration. “While our counterparts in the North-Eastern and some other states have been provided with regular employment, the Guerrillas of Uttarakhand have just got empty promises,” said the agitators.

Earlier this year, Almora and Nainital Congress Lok Sabha members Pradeep Tamta and KC Singh Baba, respectively, had taken up the long-pending demands of SSB-trained Guerrillas of the state with Union Home Minister P Chidambaram. Both Tamta and Baba had written letters to the Home Minister asking him to solve problems of the affiliates of the Guerrilla Warfare Organisation of Uttarakhand.

In their letter addressed to Chidambaram, the MPs had quoted an order of the Nainital High Court, which said “an appropriate representation should be made by the petitioners before the competent authority annexing the judgment of the Guwahati High Court, which has been affirmed by the Supreme Court of India. If such a representation is made, the authority will be obliged to pass a reasoned and speaking order within three months from the date of production of certified copy of this order”.

The two leaders had requested Chidambaram to sympathetically look into the demands of the Guerrillas in the state, but no action has been taken so far.

The SSB-trained Guerrillas have been demanding that they should be given a permanent appointment along with pension benefits. They are also seeking that the next of kin of Guerrillas should be given an appointment in the event of their death and their dependents be given pension benefits.

In an earlier memorandum addressed to Chidambaram and Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhariyal Nishank, which they had submitted at different district headquarters across the state on April 5 this year, they had said, “While our counterparts in the North East have been enrolled for jobs, we are on the verge of starvation”.

The guerillas are also seeking that widows of dead Guerrillas be given a pension. They have been questioning that if the government was not going to enrol them in any stable job, why did it train them.

After the 1962 war with China, the SSB had been constituted and asked to train bands of young men from villages on the borders. These men were supposed to be used for gathering intelligence on the developments on the borders.

Dehradun, December 7
City president of the women cell of the Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (UKD) Asha Sharma went with members of her party and city president Bahadur Singh Rawat to gherao the district supply officer (DSO) for failing to provide ration cards to many families.

Sharma said the DSO had been requested many times by the city residents, but still a number of families did not have APL/BPL cards. She also complained that many people, who did not belong to the BPL category, still carried old BPL cards. She also brought the wrongdoings of middlemen, who were charging Rs 1,500 for preparing a ration card, to his notice.

She asked the DFO to expedite the work of the APL/BPL ration cards, inquiry into the old ration cards and action against the middlemen. She also warned that if their demands were not fulfilled within two months, the UKD’s women cell would initiate protest against the DFO and his department.

Dehradun, December 7
In a tragic event, wife of a man who succumbed to his bullet injury on Monday in the CMI Hospital also committed suicide by jumping from the third floor of her house last night after hearing to the news of her husband.

After getting the chiding of his father over drinking, Preet Malik had shot himself with a licensed revolver in the bathroom of his Nehru Colony-based residence on Sunday night. He was taken to the CMI Hospital in a critical situation, but died during treatment.

In January this year, he had got married to Rubi, who couldn’t control herself after coming to know of her husband’s death. Within one and half hour of the tragic news, she ran to the third floor of her house and jumped off it.

Relatives who were consoling her ran after her, but by then she had jumped from the building. Her body soaked in blood was taken to the hospital where she was declared brought dead. Her husband Preet was the only son of owner of famous Malik Stores. Deceased Preet was earlier serving in the Merchant Navy and had left the job and joined his father’s business.

Nainital, December 7
Going defencive on the controversy surrounding the Citurgia case, the BJP has stated that it has nothing to do with the matter and the entire process of land-use change started during the tenure of ex-Chief Minister Narayan Dutt Tiwari.

Choosing to adopt offence as the best defence tactic, the party has instead gone ahead with launching a frontal attack on the Congress. Responding to a series of questions on this matter here today, BJP state general secretary Suresh Joshi said the BJP Government had only given conditional acceptance in the matter, which had later been withdrawn promptly.

“It was Harak Singh Rawat (leader of Opposition in the state Assembly), who had gone around the site in the company’s helicopter looking at the proposed plan. What we want to know is that why did Rawat and Baba Ramdev go to attend the inaugural function of the project launched by the company,” he said, targeting Rawat, who had been amongst the most vocal persons to raise the issue in the public domain.

Earlier, Joshi had attacked the Congress on the issue of the 2G-spectrum controversy. He had also attacked the state leadership of the Congress for usurping land belonging to the marginalised sections of the society. Joshi said the Centre had been creating problems for the state on all fronts to ensure that the BJP popularity did not go up in the public eye.

Talking about the issue of mining in the rivers, he said the Centre had not granted mining permission in most of the rivers in the state and even in rivers like the Gaula, where the mining was allowed after a considerable delay, the Centre was again trying to create hindrances.

When cornered on the issue of corruption involving the BJP leadership in Karnataka and instances of corruption being reported on daily basis in Uttarakhand, he said it was a misinformation campaign launched by the Congress and a section of the media.

Talking about the forthcoming Assembly polls in the state, the BJP leader said the party had asked its leaders and office bearers to start touring the state right up to the booth level. The party leadership would pit four years of the BJP rule in the state and six years of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) rule at the Centre against the six-year tenure of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government at the Centre and the letting down of the people of the state by the previous Congress regime in the state. “In the days to come, people will see only BJP workers amidst the public,” said Joshi.

Pitthoragarh, December 7
Delay in winter rain and the falling water level in small rivulets have affected over seven micro-hydel schemes in border villages of the district.

“We have to link nearly 400 villages situated in Dharchula, Munsiyari and Kanalichina blocks with the northern grid feeder, as they showed symptoms of low voltage,” said micro-hydel project executive engineer GS Budiyal.

According to sources, out of a maximum number of micro-hydel schemes in Dharchula block, only the glacial-fed Kanchoti project has been generating 200 KW of electricity at present.

“Other micro schemes like Chirkila, Ailagar, Garau, Charandev, Taleswar of Pithoragarh and Sapteswar project of Champawat are generating only one half of their installed capacity of electricity at present, as the water level in rivulets concerned has come down.” said Budiyal.

According to the Micro-hydro Project Department, most of their micro-electricity projects are based on rain-fed rivulets that start receding from November and remain the same till July. “Moreover, two of our projects Suringar of Munsiyari and Kulagar of Dharchula have been closed down after the excess rain damaged these in September this year,” said Budiyal.

Pitthoragarh, December 7
Senior BJP leader, ex-chairman of the Kumoan Mandal Vikas Nigam and present organiser of the Lok Adikar Manch Rudra Singh Panda has threatened to start a movement in Munsiyari, if electricity is not provided to all 28 villages, which have been without electricity for the past five years at the border area, near Madkot, on the Jauljivi-Munsiyari road.

“Ten years ago, the Uttarakhand Renewable Energy Department (URED) constructed its project at Bhikuria to provide electricity to these villages. The project did not function soon after its inception, leaving 28 revenue villages in that area in the dark,” said Rudra.

The BJP leader said more than 6,000 people lived in that area and the government had opened a lone high school at Sera village. “Neither the students are able to study properly, nor any teacher wants to join the high school due to lake of electricity,” said Panda.

According to project officer of the URED Association, his department has been trying to give electricity to these villages from the grid of the Uttarakhand Power Corporation and very soon these villages will be given electricity. But the Lok Adikar Manch said the URED Association was now pursuing the connectivity through grid, to cover up its failure in providing electricity to these remote villages via renewable sources of energy.

“The department has always claimed before the government that it is capable to provide electricity to the remote areas of the state by renewable means of electric generation, but the Bhikuria project’s failure is an example of its incapability in providing electricity to needy villages of the border areas,” said Panda.