River waters to be cleaned by November-end
Chandigarh, January 27
The Punjab Government has announced that work on the cleaning of river waters in the state will be completed by November 30.

Jalandhar, January 27
Punjab Governor Shivraj Patil yesterday gave a call for a collective effort in bringing about social reforms through commitment and a dedicated endeavour.

Patil said this while addressing the gathering at the state-level Republic Day function at Guru Gobind Singh Stadium here. He unfurled the Tricolour and took the salute at an impressive march past by contingents of the police, paramilitary forces, NCC, Home Guards and college and schoolchildren. He also distributed cycle rickshaws to the poor, tri-cycles to the handicapped and sewing machines to the widows, which were given by the Red Cross Society. Various government departments took out a tableau highlighting their activities.

The Governor said there was complete peace, harmony and prosperity in Punjab today. He said the law and order situation in the state would be maintained at all costs and efforts were being made for modernising the infrastructure.

He lauded the contribution of the Punjab farming community in meeting the food requirements of the country.

Patil further said that Jalandhar, Chandigarh and various other cities had been equipped with educational, healthcare and IT network which will further give a fillip to the development process in the state. He emphasised on the need to give top priority to health and education sector which play a significant role in shaping the destiny of the nation.

The Governor recalled the sacrifices of our freedom fighters and martyrs and paid them rich tributes with an appeal to the people to emulate their high ideals and love for the motherland. He also expressed his solidarity and gratitude to the jawans of the defence and paramilitary forces who are continually protecting the unity, integrity, sovereignty and the borders of our country.

A folk dance performance was given by the hearing-impaired students of Red Cross School. Dare-devil stunts on motorcycle were also performed by the jawans of the Punjab Police. Prominent among others who were present on the occasion included SC Agrawal, chief secretary, Punjab , PS Gill, DGP, Punjab, and SR Ladhar, Commissioner, Jalandhar Division.

OC reports from Nabha: The 62nd Republic Day was celebrated with fervour at the ground of Ripuduman College on Wednesday. SDM Tejinder Singh Dhaliwal unfurled the Tricolour. The schoolchildren presented a spectacular show of dance and drama.

Hoshiarpur, January 27
Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal today asked that why the Congress-led UPA government was shying away from revealing the identities of Swiss bank account holders despite repeated directions by the Supreme Court.

Talking to mediapersons here today, he alleged that that Congress was dragging its feet on the issue because all these accounts belonged to party leaders and the fact was that all ill-gotten money in various scams, including 2G scam, Bofors scam and rice scam, had been stashed away in Swiss bank accounts.

He alleged that the Congress was a party of scams and was the fountainhead of black money and corruption in the country. He said any law to give amnesty to black money holders or Swiss bank account holders as proposed by Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was not acceptable.

He said the SAD-BJP Government, along with other Opposition parties, would pressurise the UPA government into disclosing the names of all those black sheep who had ruined the country’s economy.

On price hike, Sukhbir said he had instructed the authorities concerned and the Vigilance Department to launch a campaign against hoarders and black marketeers.

Regarding the sale of various government properties by the Local Government Department, especially of the Municipal Councils, he said only those properties were being sold that had no utility for the department concerned.

Asked about PPCC chief Amarinder Singh raising a question on the growth rate figure, he said: “It is not Amarinder’s fault. He remained out of the state for four years and it will take time for him to comprehend development at the grassroots level.”

Asked to comment on the ongoing activities of Manpreet Badal, Sukhbir said he did not know him. Earlier, Sukhbir addressed a mammoth rally of SAD and BJP workers. 

Chandigarh, January 27
The Punjab Government has announced that work on the cleaning of river waters in the state will be completed by November 30.

At a review meeting held here today, the Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister, DS Guru, sought an assurance from various departments to make the Sutlej and the Beas pollution free over the next 10 months as had already been announced by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal.

Badal, who is currently in the US, has asked various departments to be ready with their projects and action-taken reports. The CM has also summoned a meeting of heads of all departments concerned on February 3, a day after he returns from the US. Guru, who also met a team of experts from overseas, discussed the problem with them, as the government is also looking at foreign collaborations on the issue.

Guru said 45 cities on the banks of the Sutlej and the Beas were the most affected by pollutants. Even as canals emerge from these rivers, they take along pollutants to cities and towns through which these pass. The first canal system emerging from the Sutlej is the Sirhind Canal, which supplies water both for drinking and irrigation to 10 districts.

Guru said water cleaned from these rivers and canals would not be put back into the rivers. The cleaned water would then be carried through pipes and canals only for the purpose of irrigation and would not be used for drinking.

He said it had been identified that around Ludhiana, the Sutlej was mainly polluted by 482 small and large electroplating. But as an initiative to help the government, these units were now discharging their waste into common effluent treatment plant.

The government has also asked 17 large and 251 small and medium dyeing industries to install their own treatment plants.

The meeting was attended by the Secretary, industries, local bodies, the head of the pollution control board and chief engineers from the Department of Canals and Drainage.

Guru said the Chief Minister was personally supervising the clean-up operation and the state had reiterated its commitment to achieve this target by November-end.

Patiala, January 27
Former Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal’s ‘Jago Punjab Yatra got an overwhelming response in the Congress-dominated constituencies of Shutrana and Samana today. Attacking the previous governments, Badal said it was high time that the voters decided against corruption and voted for overall development of the state.

Followers stopped Manpreet’s vehicle in Samana, where he was scheduled to address a moderate gathering in a dharamshala nearby. Residents, especially youngsters, raised slogans urging Manpreet to address the gathering.

Congress insiders have started feeling that Manpreet, along with the Shiromani Akali Dal could hamper their vote bank. The gathering at Samana and Shutrana proved that anti-government vote was slipping away from Congress as several Congress supporters were a part of the gathering.

Speaking at his yatra in Shutrana, Manpreet alleged that Punjab had to under go another struggle to gain independence from the clutches of various mafia who had occupied all trades. “My focus is on meeting maximum people and elaborate them about corruption, drugs, unemployment and financial health of the state,” Badal told The Tribune.

Addressing a rally in Shutrana later, Manpreet draw comparisons with states like Tamil Nadu, Haryana and Gujarat which have left Punjab far behind in terms of basic amenities to its citizens. “Even Bihar is a role model for other states, while Punjab, due to the decisions taken in the past and complete lack of planning is lacking behind,” he said.

In the last meeting on the outskirts of Shutrana, Badal stressed on the need of transparency for voters. “Politicians should be accountable for all their deeds during the 5 years they remain in power,” he said.

Manpreet also visited Tohra village in the morning and spent over an hour with the Tohra family, mourning the death of Joginder Kaur Tohra, wife of late SGPC chief Gurcharan Singh Tohra, who died in Patiala on Wednesday. 

Ferozepur, January 27
Saraj Kumar, a handicapped youth of the Zira area, got a rude shock on the 62nd Republic Day when the tricycle given to him by none else than the Deputy Chief Minister, Sukhbir Singh Badal, at a function here on January 26, was taken away by officials of the district Red Cross Society immediately after the chief guest left the venue.

Though Deputy Commissioner KK Yadav claimed that Saraj was given a tricycle about one and a half years ago and hence he could not be given a new tricycle within three years of the tricycle given earlier as per established norms, why he was given the same in presence of Sukhbir could not be known.

It is learnt that five tricycles were given by Sukhbir to handicapped persons on the occasion of Republic Day and Saraj was one of the recipients. However, after Sukhbir left the venue, Saraj was made to sit on a chair and the tricycle was taken back from him.

Saraj said he was asked by the civil administration of Zira subdivision to attend the Republic Day function at Ferozepur as he would be given a tricycle. He got the tricycle after facing number of difficulties. But it was taken back from him on the pretext that his name did not figure on the list of beneficiaries.

Ashok Bahl, Secretary, Red Cross, said Saraj sneaked into the ground where the function was held and sat, on his own, on the tricycle. Later, it was found that he was not the real beneficiary and hence the tricycle was taken back from him. 

Chandigarh, January 27
Punjab’s seniormost serving civil servant, Romila Dubey, who is schedued to retire in April, is all set to take over as the Chairperson of the Punjab State Electricity Regulatory Commission. She will, thus, become the first woman to head this commission.

At present she is the Financial Commissioner, Revenue. There has been a tradition that the seniormost civil servant of the state posted in Punjab is made the Financial Commissioner, Revenue. Who will replace her will be known later this week or early next week after the return of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal from the US.

Incidentally, the Dubeys will join a select band of IAS couples to head statutory bodies. Her husband, A K Dubey, who is from the 1970 batch, heads the State Election Commission. He will retire on attaining the age of 65 years in October 2012. Romila Dubey will remain in office till 2016.

A K Dubey had succeeded Chaman Lal Bains in the State Election Commission.

She will succeed Jai Singh Gill, who retired early this month after attaining the age of 65 years. Jai Singh Gill, who served the Punjab Government as its Chief Secretary during the previous Congress government headed by Capt Amarinder Singh, remained the Chairperson of the commission for five years.

Jai Singh Gill, like his predecessor, R S Mann, belonged to the Indian Administrative Service. He is from the 1968 batch while RS Mann, who also served as the Chief Secretary to the Punjab Government during the previous term of the SAD-BJP government, belonged to the 1965 batch.

Going by seniority, the seniormost civil servant belonging to the Punjab cadre after Chief Secretary SC Aggarwal after Romila Dubey’s appointment will be Dr Bhushan Chander Gupta, who is already on central deputation holding the important position of Union Food Secretary.

The third civil servant belonging to the 1975 batch of the Punjab cadre after SC Aggarwal and Dr BC Gupta is Mukul Joshi, who is also Union Secretary. Next on the list is Damanbir Singh Jaspal of the 1976 batch. He will be due for retirement by the end of the year while his batchmate, A Didar Singh, also Union Secretary in the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, will be retirring a month before him.

Meanwhile, Harjit Inder Singh Grewal, Secretary, Grievances and Pensions, Punjab, and belonging to the 1992 batch, has in a letter to Chief Secretary SC Aggarwal sought permission to contest the elections of the Chandigarh Golf Club. 

Amritsar, January 27
Even as the SGPC took the protests over the turban-frisking issue right up to the US embassy in New Delhi, a fresh incident involving Jaswinder Singh Dhaliwal, an NRI, has come to light, though this time at Milan airport in Italy.

Dhaliwal is the patron of the NRI Sabha Punjab and also holds the post of vice-president of the NRI wing of the SAD. He recently shot off a missive to the Akal Takht Jathedar, intimating him about the incident. In his letter, Dhaliwal said he had been living in Germany for around two decades and had returned to India recently.

However, he keeps visiting the European countries in connection with the Sikh issues there.

“I had been to Europe on January 18. After the tour, I had to catch my flight to India from Milan airport on January 24. However, when I reached the airport, the security officials present there asked me to take off my turban. I pleaded with them to screen me with the help of modern scanning devices, but they were adamant that I would have to take off the turban. Later, they took me to a separate room and forcibly tried to take my turban off, which led to an altercation,” he said. According to him, the security officials warned him that he should either give in or leave the airport. With no option left, he finally had to take off his turban.

Dhaliwal has urged the Akal Takht Jathedar to initiate appropriate measures to check such incidents in future. He has also informed SAD president Sukhbir Badal about the incident.

Meanwhile, taking serious note of the incident, the Akal Takht Jathedar, Giani Gurbachan Singh, has urged the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, to take up the matter with the Italian Government. “Turban is a symbol of Sikh pride which cannot be separated from a Sikh. Turban frisking is tantamount to discrimination with the Sikh community, which is a violation of international norms. The Centre should instruct its ambassadors in different countries to approach the respective governments and airport authorities to ensure that such incidents don’t recur,” he added. 

Fazilka, January 27
To provide employment to the maximum number of youth of the state, Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal handed over appointment letters to over 6,500 teachers appointed by the Punjab Government under the Sarv Sikhiya Abhiyan (SSA) at a function organised in connection with the inauguration of a Model School in Kaurianwali village of the subdivision on Wednesday.

Badal, who made a whirlwind tour of Ferozepur district, said the main aim of the SAD-BJP combine government was to generate the maximum number of employment opportunities for the youth. All the appointments were being made on merit, he added.

“What the Punjab Government has been doing is that all the vacancies of teacher in schools are being filled on priority and hence so far 48,000 teachers have been recruited,” he pointed out.

The SAD-BJP government had also recruited thousands of employees in various other departments, including the Excise and Taxation and Food and Supply departments, and all these recruitments were done on merit.

Punjab Education Minister Sewa Singh Sekhwan said most of the teachers, who were being recruited, were being posted at places that were near to their homes so that they could discharge their duties with responsibility and without any harassment. 

Ropar, January 27
Nangal SDM Lakhmir Singh, a poet by hobby, has penned a poem on Central government’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) , which ensures 100 man-days of work for every family in villages. For the past six months, the poem has become a source of inspiration for the villagers.

“On the eve of the NREGA awareness camp, held at Nangal in May, 2010, we were asked to write few lines simplifying the scheme for the masses. Consequently, I wrote a poem,” said Lakhmir Singh.

Right from laying stress on the ways to avail work under the NREGA and raising the issue of respective village sarpanch’s responsibility, the poem covers all. The most integral aspect of poem is the role of women in the NREGA.

“Often rural men do not allow the women to seek employment opportunities. The NREGA provides labour work within the village itself. It also enables women to look after their families and supplement the source of income,” he added.

The poem is now read out at the NREGA camps even outside Ropar. Deputy commissioner AS Miglani said the administration had decided to write to the rural development and panchayat office in Punjab for taking up the poem for popularising the scheme.

A pass out of the Guru Nanak Dev University Amritsar, Lakhmir Singh has been active in the literary circles for over 16 years. He has written two books, Talash and Yaadan De Panne books, published by the Punjabi Language Department.

A regular at kavi darbars at Jalandhar Doordarshan and other places, Lakhmir Singh feels that the District Level Kavi Darbar should be restarted. Earlier, the Punjabi Language Department used to provide funds for holding kavi darbar, which is not being done anymore. “Kavi darbars encourage young poets,” he added.

Lakhmir has been promoting young writers at Nangal. He had joined the Punjab Civil Services in 1988 and has also served as the SDM of Chamkaur Sahib, Jaito and Moga. 

Chandigarh, January 27
Thousands of subscribers of Idea Cellular in the Punjab circle were inconvenienced today because of a series of technical snags in the network. As a result, services on the network remained disrupted for almost 12 hours. Since a number of public utility services in Punjab, including the police, have an Idea number, people could not avail these services throughout the day.

Services of over 40 lakh subscribers were disrupted since morning when optical fibre network of the company was found to be snapped at various places. This was restored within a few hours. It may be mentioned that Idea Cellular leases the optical fibre network from HFCL across Punjab.

However, by the time the optical fibre snaps was repaired, the network experienced yet another problem. Officials in the telecom company informed The Tribune that the HLR (home location register) switch had become dysfunctional. “As a result, we had to restart the system. This meant that we lost data for all 40 lakh subscribers and had to restore their position. It was only by late evening that we could restore services,” said a senior official of Idea Cellular.

It is learnt that the company had called in experts from the Research and Development team of ZTE Corp to look into the problem. Since the BTS sites in the Punjab telecom circle are managed by this company, they are now assessing what could have caused the snag.

Meanwhile, aggrieved at the inconvenience caused to subscribers, the Chandigarh Telecom Subscribers Association, headed by Randhir Verma, today shot off a complaint to the TRAI against the interruption in services. “Since it is one of the functions of TRAI to provide technically sound and uninterrupted services to telecom consumers, we request TRAI to investigate the matter,” said Verma. 

Dera Bassi, January 27
With the launch of the avenue tree plantation drive by the GMR along the Ambala-Chandigarh highway, the stretch will soon be lined with trees.

The company has planted 5,200 saplings, covering an area of 10 KM, along the road. The company, which has constructed and widened the National Highway, has already planted saplings in Haryana. Nearly 24,000 trees were axed along the stretch in 2006 when the National Highway was widened.

Instead of planting the tress along the road after widening, the Forest Department chose another site for increasing the green cover.

According to the information from forest officials, nearly 20,000 saplings were planted at the Bakarpur and Barouli forests and 38, 000 saplings would soon be planted at the Meerpura Bhogpura forests, near Patiala, under the compensatory afforestation scheme.

Officials said saplings were transferred at other places due to lack of forest land along the National Highway.

District forest officer Bhupinder Sharma said land was transferred to the company at the time of 4-laning of the National Highway in 2006. Now the company has planted saplings, along the rural areas from Jharmari to Zirakpur. Residents are demanding that more trees should be planted along the road. 

Fatehgarh Sahib, January 27
With sugarcane harvesting season at its peak, farmers in Fatehgarh Sahib are overloading trailers of raw sugarcane for ferrying them to sugar mills. To save fuel farmers, farmers carry maximum quantity of raw material in one go. Besides risking their lives and of other commuters, overloaded trailers are also creating chaos in sugar mils.

“Chaos reigns due to overloaded trailers as farmers dispute over space in mills. They seem to jostle even on the roads,” said Sumer Singh, a resident of Fatehgarh Sahib.

A truck with six tyres is allowed only nine tonne of load, whereas sugarcane loaded trucks carry upto 25 tonnes of load. An accident, involving these trailers, is reported daily on an average basis in Fatehgarh Sahib. “Despite strict instructions to not overload trailers, farmers persist on doing so,” said ADO Jaswinder Singh in Amloh. Trolleys with flat tyres also block narrow village roads.

Similar condition prevails during paddy season when trolleys overloaded with husk ply on the roads. Agriculture officials said the administration and traffic police should initiate efforts to reduce the menace of overloading. SP (headquarter) JS Sidhu said police has tried its best to educate farmers regarding the problem of overloading. 

Patiala, January 27
A local court today put the next hearing in the infamous human trafficking case, registered against Punjabi Pop icon Daler Mehndi on March 5. Daler Mehndi, through his counsel Brijinder Singh Sodhi, brought to the notice of the court that no prosecution witness was examined in support of the allegations.

The Patiala police had registered a case under various sections of the IPC and the Indian Passport Act on September 19, 2003, at the Sadar police station here on the complaint of Bakhshish Singh of Balbehra village.

Bakhshish Singh, along with another 24 complainants, had blamed Daler Mehndi and his brother, Shamsher Mehndi, for allegedly taking money and promised of including them in his troupe during foreign trips.

They alleged that the Mehndi brothers failed to return their money and threatened them to keep quiet about the issue.

Meanwhile, speaking outside the court, Mehndi said the recent attacks by a youngster on former DGP SPS Rathore and Rajesh Talwar had raised question mark on security issues.

“I have my personal security from the past 15 years and I ensure that they accompany me whenever I step out of my house because as a celebrity you are prone to such attacks”, he said.