Jalandhar, March 2
Renowned Bollywood stars Dharmendra, Sunny Deol and Bobby Deol would entertain the spectators on the closing ceremony of the Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh Punjab Games at the Olympian Surjit Hockey Stadium here on March 6. The closing ceremony would begin at 6.30 pm.

Punjabi comedy actors Gurpreet Ghuggi and Bhagwant Mann and singer Miss Puja would also entertain the spectators. This was disclosed by Revenue Minister Ajit Singh Kohar during a meeting at the Circuit House here today.

The chief guest, Prakash Singh Badal, Punjab Chief Minister, would give away cash awards to the winning teams, while Local Bodies Minister Manoranjan Kalia would preside over the function.

“The winners of the 11 different games along with their coaches being held across the state would converge at the stadium for the closing day function,” the minister added. 

Tarn Taran, March 2
Large number of government higher secondary schools in the border area are without principals and lecturers. The government, it seems, is sleeping on the matter of filling up sanctioned posts of principals and lecturers in these schools, which are lying vacant for the last so many years.

The district education authorities, on the condition of anonymity, said all the posts of lecturers and principal were lying vacant in government higher secondary schools at Dubli, Marrimegha and Varnala villages.

The Education Department had sanctioned a post of principal and 12 posts of lecturer for Dubli school, located 45 kms from Tarn Taran. The same was the number of posts sanctioned for Marrimegha and Varnala schools.

It is learnt that these schools were without principal and lecturers for the last four years. There were more than 140 students at Dubli in Classes XI and XII.

For Government Higher Secondary School for Boys in Valtoha , the department sanctioned 12 posts, including that of a principal, but 11 were lying vacant. There were as many as 200 students in Classes XI and XII.

At Government Secondary School for Boys, Gharyala, 10 out of 13 posts were vacant. At Kaccapacca school, the post of principal and nine posts of lecturer have been lying vacant. There were more than 400 students in Class XII in the school.

The same situation persisted in schools at Kharla, Bhikhiwind, Kirtowal, Kasel, Khemkaran, Narli, Sursing, Narli, Sohal and Gaggobua villages. As many as 16 government secondary schools of the border belt out of 24 schools were without principals, revealed the department sources.

The DPI (Secondary), Punjab, said the position was in the notice of the state government. The Education Minister could not be contacted.

Kapurthala, March 2
The black marketing of domestic gas cylinders by the lone gas agency in Sultanpur Lodhi continues unchecked, despite the best efforts of the district administration to control it.

The residents of the town are a harassed lot and have to pay through their nose to get a refill. Not only this, cylinders meant for consumers of the agency are also being diverted to nearby small towns and villages by arbitrarily creating distribution sub-centres.

The extent of the problem can be gauged from the fact that long queues are witnessed outside the godown of the agency every night. Hundreds of people come with bedding and warm clothing to brave the freeze and spend the night in the open.

After the plight of the consumers was highlighted in these columns, the Kapurthala Deputy Commissioner (DC) had deputed senior officers to review the situation and set things right. Although things changed for the better for a few days, but things are back to worse now.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, employees of the agency, said on an average they receive about 400-600 cylinders every day, but only half of the consumers get them at the control prices, while the remaining ones are diverted to the illegal sub-centres, they revealed.

Eyewitnesses claimed that for the past over half month they had been queueing up at about 10 pm, but got the cylinders after 10 am the next morning. How could poor people pay the black market rate between Rs 600 and Rs 700 per cylinder, while the actual rate was Rs 363, they pointed out.

They lamented that new customers were being fleeced by the agency by charging Rs 4,000-5,000 per connection as compared to the official rate of Rs 1,250 only. The gas refill passbooks, too, were being sold at Rs 200, while it was priced at just Rs 25, they alleged. The monopoly of the agency should be broken in the interests of the people by setting up more agencies in or around the town, they demanded.

Hoshiarpur, March 2
BJP MLA from Dasuya Amarjit Singh Sahi, who is the chairman of the District Development and Planning Board, Hoshiarpur, has alleged that the Block Development and Panchayat Officer (BDPO) Baldev Singh and Balkar Singh, chairman of the Block Samiti, Dasuya, allotted the annual contract for collecting ‘adda’ fee for 2011-2012 on throwaway prices.

The fee is collected from outgoing passenger vehicles in the Dasuya bus stand.

Sahi said the contract was allotted five months before the commencement of the contract without conducting an open auction.

Sahi said this contract was given for Rs 32 lakh for the period of 2010-2011.

Earlier, Rs 15 was charged as adda fee from outgoing passenger vehicles which was increased to Rs 40 about six months ago. More than Rs 650 passenger vehicles, including buses and tempos were daily going to various destinations from this bus stand.

Instead of giving contract through auction, the BDPO and Chairman of the Block Samiti with the connivance of Deputy Director of the department allotted the aforesaid contract for Rs 36 lakh by making a nominal increase in the last contract amount.

The allotment was finalised on October 21, 2010 and the contract was to commence from April 1, 2011.

Had the contract been allotted by open auction, the annual income of the block samiti would have increased to Rs 75 lakh, lamented Sahi.

MLA Amarjit Singh Sahi had made representations to the Punjab Chief Minister and Panchayat and Development, Minister and Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court in this regard and had also brought the matter in the notice of Deputy Commissioner (DC), Hoshiarpur.

He demanded immediate cancellation of the said contract and strict action against the defaulters.

The alleged corruption in the state government machinery would not be tolerated at any cost, said Amarjit Singh Sahi.

DC Dharam Dutt Tarnach said he would constitute an inquiry into the allotment of the said contract and would take stern action against those persons who were found responsible for this bungling.

Jalandhar, March 2
Attacking the Punjab Government on the revenue front, Congress leader Avtar Henry alleged the government was misleading people. He said on one side, the state government claimed that it had collected record revenue as taxes, on the other it was planning to sell its prime lands located at different places of Punjab to collect revenue. 

Henry said the Congress would not allow the Badal government to sell any public land. If required, the Congress would also resort to agitation, he added. Alleging that Punjabis are suffering due to ‘anti-people policies’ of the state government, he said the residents of this state were paying the highest price in the country for petrol as the Badal government was adamant not to reduce VAT on it. — TNS

Jalandhar, March 2
To prevent the dengue deaths due to delayed laboratory diagnosis of the dengue-causing virus, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is all set to introduce a new diagnostic test, which would enable the doctors to diagnose the disease during the initial five days of the infection.

As of now, the suspected dengue patient can be diagnosed for the disease only five-seven days after his or her exposure to the virus, as the presently used test can only detect the antibodies, which are generated in the human body as a part of natural defence mechanism against the dengue virus.

“Such antibodies are produced only five-seven days after the exposure of the patient to the dengue virus, hence cannot be detected at early stages of the disease course. Nearly all the tests, presently used by the laboratories for the diagnosis of dengue are antibody-based test,” said Dr Kalpana Barua, Joint Director, National Vector-Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP), Central Government’s nodal agency for the prevention and control of vector-borne diseases.

Talking to The Tribune, Dr Baura said the newly introduced Non-Structural Protein-I (NS-I) test would be an antigen-based test, which would directly detect the presence of antigen (infection causing microorganism) in the human blood.

“With this, the disease causing virus can be detected right at the moment it enters the human blood stream. This would reduce a week-long wait of the patients, prior to the confirmatory test,” she added.

Another senior official revealed that the facility to conduct NS-I test free of cost would be provided at over 300 hospitals in the country by the NVBDCP from the coming “dengue season”. 

Jalandhar, March 2
A gang of thieves struck at a house in the Guru Nanak Pura locality and decamped with five British passports and cash worth lakhs of rupees on Tuesday night. The thieves broke into the house of Kanwal Preet Singh, when the family had gone to a hotel located in Jalandhar Cantonment.

In a complaint to the police, Kanwal Preet Singh said the thieves broke open the closet and took away five passports of his relatives. The stolen British passports belonged to Kamaljit Singh Dhiman, Jaspreet Kaur Dhiman, Tejinder Kaur Dhiman, Ishpreet Kaur Dhiman and Amrit Singh Dhiman. The thieves, however, did not take any Indian passport kept in the closet, he said. Besides, Rs 4.5 lakh in cash, gold ornaments and some other costly electronic gadgets were also looted.

He said his wife noticed the locks of the main door of the house broken, when she returned home, early from the party. Receiving the news from his wife, Kanwal Preet Singh informed the police authorities. The police said a case against unidentified persons had been registered under Sections 457 and 380 of the IPC. — TNS