Kullu, April 11
The state government is dithering over taking action against the former Kullu SP KK Indoria, at present on interim bail from the high court in connection with a corruption case.

The state vigilance has already arrested three persons, Ramesh Volga, a studio owner in Kullu and two managers, Abhijit Chakravarti and associate vice-president Tajinder K Trehan of the Allaian and Duhangan project company, which has executed the 192 mw power project at Prini village, the summer residence of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Though the vigilance, as per its manual, has sought the permission of the state government to expedite the investigation against IPS officer KK Indoria, the state government is dithering over taking action as Indoria has some political connection in the ruling party, revealed sources.

The vigilance has been questioning Indoria in connection with the graft case registered under Sections 7, 8 and 13(1-D) of the Prevention of Corruption Act and Section 120-B, IPC, for hatching a criminal conspiracy to pocket money in the graft case in the third week of February this year.

The vigilance arrested Ramesh Volga in February and it claimed that Volga acted as an agent between the company and the alleged official beneficiary in the case. The vigilance arrested Chakravarty, who was bailed out this month, and later Trehan, who is in judicial custody till April 16.

The vigilance claimed that it had gathered enough evidence but the government’s permission under the vigilance manual to chargesheet the gazzetted officer was still awaited from the government.

The managers had given crucial clues to the vigilance about the money transaction that ran into several lakhs, but the vigilance was not revealing the exact amount.

It showed the pressure being exerted from the top government quarters, the sources revealed.

DG, vigilance, KC Sadyal had claimed that they had a substantial evidence in the case, but Indoria got interim bail from the high court subsequently. Indoria’s counsel had pleaded that he was being implicated in the case.

The next hearing in the case is on April 26.

Indoria proceeded on medical leave as soon as the vigilance was about to nab him after gathering evidence in the case. The vigilance has recorded a conversation involving Indoria and other persons in which he was talking about hiring a tantrik to dispel the bad omens”, the sources revealed.

Indoria served as the Kullu SP from February 27, 2009, to September 28, 2010. Later, he was transferred and posted at the low-profile AIG, police headquaters after the government got complaint against him, the sources said.

IG, Vigilance, Anurag Garg said the investigation in the case was still on and the case was in the high court. “We have sough the government permission”, he added. 

Shimla, April 11
The new state executive of the Congress which has been delayed by almost six months is likely to be constituted later this month.

Pradesh Congress Committee chief Kaul Singh will undertake the exercise after discussing the issue with Virender Singh, national general secretary and new in charge of party affairs, who will visit the state on April 24 for a party meeting.

It will be the first meeting of the full house of the party after he took over, tough he interacted with the senior leaders at Parwanoo last month. Besides the members of the PCC, conveners of the various frontal organisations and cells of the party, district presidents and constituency presidents will attend the meeting.

The meeting at Parwanoo was attended by only AICC members from the state and former PCC chiefs, during which Virender Singh got acquainted with the organisational matters.

The meeting has been primarily convened to discuss organisational matters and initiatives to be taken to bring the party back to power by ousting the BJP in the 2012 assembly poll. However, Kaul Singh will also discuss the constitution of the state executive with Virender Singh in view of the inordinate delay in the matter.

Kaul Singh was appointed as the PCC chief in October last year but he has so far not constituted his team of office-bearers and the state executive as a result of which field activities of the party are being affected. The exercise has been delayed due to the failure of the high command to approve the list of the co-opted members to be inducted in the PCC.

The main reason for the delay is that the process of co-opting members to make for the shortfall in the representation of women and inability of the some deserving leaders to make it to the PCC has not been completed. Only four women got elected and to increase their representation to 33 per cent, as per the policy of the party, 21 more would have to be inducted by co-option. Similarly, some important leaders, who have been left out, will also be given a place.

Kaul Singh said he would announce his team and the state executive by including some of those whose names had been sent for co-option and seek formal approval from in charge of party election, Oscar Fernandes subsequently so that there was no further delay.

The total strength of the house is 82, which will increase to 115 after co-option of women and other members. The new body will have 24 office-bearers, including vice-presidents, general secretaries and secretaries. 

Mandi, April 11
Coming to terms with the yellow rust that has destroyed a major chunk of wheat crop in the state, the government has decided to phase out the hybrid wheat varieties that have been in use for the past three or four years and has made it mandatory for private companies to do the DNA profiling of the their seeds from the agricultural university, Palampur.

According to sources, the hybrid wheat seeds, mainly the three varieties- PBW-502, PBW-343, PBW-373, which the agricultural department has been procuring from NAFED and the Haryana Seed Corporation for the past four years, will be phased out and replaced by the new hybrid seed varieties.

In fact, the yellow rust plagued these three varieties in the lower region of the state. The yellow rust, a fungal disease, has destroyed wheat crop ranging from 30 per cent to 70 per cent this year.

Agricultural officials have attributed the yellow rust to the cold and humid winter conditions, but the farmers have blamed it on the substandard quality of seeds.

After the issue was raised in the Vidhan Sabha, Chief Minister PK Dhumal gave a statement in the Vidhan Sabha that the yellow rust was caused by the cold and fluctuating rainy weather conditions. He also stated that the government was phasing out the wheat varieties.

Talking about the safeguards against substandard seeds being supplied by the private companies to the farmers, secretary, agricultural, Ram Subhag Singh said the government had now made it mandatory for the private companies to do the DNA profiling of the seeds from the agricultural university. “If the seeds do not subscribed to the prescribed standards, these will be rejected and not allowed to be sold to the farmers”, he added.

Shimla, April 11
A delegation of Congress workers from Kangra led by Pradesh Congress Committee member and former NSUI president Kewal Singh Pathania today submitted a memorandum to the Governor, demanding an inquiry into the supply of poor quality of wheat seed which caused huge losses to the farmers.

They alleged that the substandard PW 343 -173 -502 wheat seed drastically reduced the production and it was a case of farmers being duped by companies in connivance with officials. Only an inquiry could bring the culprit to book.

The memorandum called for a review of the policy of opening private universities and pointed out that most of the universities did not have students and adequate staff to justify their existence. Worse, only two out of 11 universities were recognized by the UGC and it was clear that the government was playing with the future of the students.

Other demands included appropriate directions to the government to take necessary action to appoint ETT teachers who were on a hunger strike for the past more than one month, ensure that no driver was forced to perform duty for more than eight hours, enforce the condition of providing 70 per cent jobs to Himachalis in industries and removal of anomalies in salary of different categories of teachers in schools and colleges like Vidya Upasak, primary assistant teacher (PAT), para teachers and PTA teachers. The government should ensure equal pay to all teachers performing same duties under posts of different nomenclatures.

Shimla, April 11
Maintaining that the Dhumal government has been discriminating against Shimla district, particularly the apple growers, the Congress demanded that the proposed engineering college should be opened at some other site in Pragatinagar and not on the premises of the apple carton factory.

The local unit of the party alleged that after denying the region its due for three years Chief Minister P.K. Dhumal was now trying to take credit by laying foundation stones of projects sanctioned by the Centre. The controlled atmosphere stores was got sanctioned by Union Commerce Minister Anand Sharma and the engineering college was being funded by the Sutlej Jal Vidyut Nigam, a Central public sector undertaking.

The party alleged a raw deal to growers and the sale of the carton factory was one such action which hurt them as the prices of apple packing cases increased sharply. The government failed to transport the apple procured under the market intervention scheme and decided to convert the rotting stocks into manure. However, more than five months had passed and composting was still underway. Instead of creating infrastructure for marketing and processing of fruit, the government was selling off the assets of the HPMC.

The much-publicised Rs 85-crore apple rejuvenation project had not taken ground and funds sanctioned under the urban renewal for Shimla city had been diverted to the Hamirpur parliamentary constituency.

The party advised Horticulture Minister Narinder Bragta, who hails from the area, to focus on the problems being faced by the government instead of wasting time and energy in celebrating the birthday of the Chief Minister.

Shimla, April 11
The state government has admitted before the high court that the desired progress of the work on the widening of 80-km-long Theog- Kotkhai-Jubbal to the Rohru state highway is very slow, but for this, the management, poor cash flow and inadequate recourses with the contractor are responsible. This was stated by the chief engineer-cum-project director, State Road Project, HPPWD, in his affidavit filed before the court.

After taking it on record, a division bench comprising the Chief Justice Kurian Joseph and Justice Sanjay Karol impleaded the contractor, Chinese firm, Longijian Roads and Bridge Limited, and American consultant-cum-supervisor of this project Louis Berger Consultancy as party in this case and directed them to explain their position before the court within four weeks and listed the matter on May 10.

The court passed this order on a public interest litigation filed by Devinder Chauhan, alleging that due to bad condition of this road apple growers of this area were facing transportation problem.

The chief engineer further stated in his affidavit that the slow progress of this work was due to the slow work carried out by the contractor, but still taking into consideration the strategic importance of this road, the state had given one more year extension to the Chinese firm to complete it soon.

The petitioner alleged that the condition of the road was so bad that it took more than 8 hours to cover just 72 km from Kotkhai to Shimla instead of the normal two-and-a-half hours. He further alleged that due to the bad condition of this road, apple growers had suffered a loss of Rs 500 crore.

Hamirpur, April 11
Education Minister ID Dhiman has taken a strong exception to the criticism of Union Minister Virbhadra Singh about the working of the state government.

Talking to mediapersons here today, Dhiman said, “Whenever Virbhadra Singh visits the state it has become his habit to criticise the functioning of the state government which does not behove well for a senior politician like him.”

He said, “Though Virbhadra Singh is criticising our government for opening new schools and colleges, he should not forget that a large number of educational institutions were opened by the previous Congress government headed by him in the state without providing any infrastructure and staff. However, our government has provided infrastructure and staff in these institutions.”

Coming down heavily on Virbhadra for his criticism about closing schools in the state by the present regime, Dhiman said, “Being former Chief Minister of the state for five terms and present Union Minister Virbhadra Singh should know the facts that only those schools having less than 10 students have been closed and many schools are being opened in the difficult areas.”

Bilaspur, April 11
The Himachal Pradesh State Employees Federation has hailed and welcomed the declaration of Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal that the government would soon adopt a legislation for taking stringent action against corrupt elements by making provision of confiscation of property and assets of such elements.

State federation president Ram Singh said here today that the federation was already committed to giving full support to the resolve and campaign of the Chief Minister to root out corruption and his various steps in that direction were giving shivers to such elements.

He said Anna Hazare sat on a hunger strike only last week but Dhumal had started this campaign effectively against corruption more than three years ago. The fFederation once again resolved to provide more information and cases with documentary evidence of corrupt officers and help it in its resolve to give clean and transparent government to the people of the state.

He expressed satisfaction and also praised efforts of the state Vigilance Department which had caught red-handed an executive engineer at Solan recently while accepting a bribe of Rs 20,000 from a contractor.

It has given a call to all employees to come forward and give evidence of any corrupt practice by any officer so that it is forwarded to the Chief Minister for suitable action.

Shimla, April 11
The state secretariat of the CPM has accused the Dhumal government of promoting a sort of “education mafia” in the state in the name of private universities and demanded that they should be disallowed from conducting examinations to prevent the “sale of degrees”.

The private universities have not obtained recognition from the UGC and the students are facing a precarious situation as the posts being advertised by banks and other institutions state that passouts only from institutions recognised by the UGC and approved by the regulatory bodies like the AICTE are eligible to apply.

They expressed concern over the fact that many more private universities for which letter of interest (LoI) had been issued were in the pipeline, even though those already functioning were not getting enough students.

Senior party leader and a member of the state secretariat Tikender Panwar pointed out that like Chhattisgarh, which earned a bad name for opening private universities, corrective measures had been taken and their number had been brought down to just two. In the neighbouring Punjab the move to upgrade Khalsa College to a private university had been dropped.

The government was virtually allowing these to sell degrees and this could be checked only by disallowing them from conducting examinations and making recognition from the UGC and other regulatory bodies mandatory.