Sirsa, April 24
A Dera Sacha Sauda follower and his eight-year-old daughter were killed while his wife was seriously injured when their Maruti Alto car collided with a truck near Sikandarpur village on the Fatehabad-Sirsa stretch of the national highway in the early hours today.

Gursev Singh of Ahmedpur Garh village in Kaithal district, was coming to Sirsa with his wife, Ranjit Kaur, and daughter Amarjit Kaur to attend the weekly congregation in the dera today. When his car reached near Sikandarpur village, it collided head-on with a truck. The collision was so fierce that the car was reduced to a mangled piece of metal.

While Gursev Singh (30) and Amarjit Kaur (8) died on the spot, Ranjit Kaur was critically injured in the accident.

The truck driver fled, leaving his vehicle at the accident site. On being informed by passersby, the police reached the accident site. The critically injured woman was taken out of the vehicle with great difficulty and shifted to the general hospital. The bodies were taken to the general hospital for a postmortem. A case has been filed against the driver.

Chandigarh, April 24
Keeping track of the vaccination schedule of his four-month-old son Akash was an issue for Surinder Kumar, a resident of Dhamar village, where immunisation of children is not such a big deal.

However, much to his relief, the Rohtak district administration has not only decided to step in to keep track of Akash’s immunisation schedule, but to also send a reminder to forgetful parents about the approaching dates.

Courtesy the adoption of the immunisation information system, the Rohtak administration now sends out SMSes to parents, reminding them that their child is due for vaccination.

A novel experiment, probably one of its kind, the system was introduced recently keeping in mind the indifference of parents towards maintaining proper immunisation records and vaccinating their children against polio, hepatitis B, measles and other such diseases.

Rohtak Deputy Commissioner Vikas Gupta says the system already has 2,100 children on its rolls. “We are taking down mobile numbers of parents of all newborns at the district hospital as also at the subdivision and the CHC levels. This mobile number is fed into our system with details of the child and the immunisation so far.

After that, the system works on its own and sends messages to parents around the due date for vaccination of the child,” he explained.

While such a system was needed to drive home the importance of vaccination in rural areas, the response from parents registering their numbers for reminders has also picked up. This assumes special importance given the fact that against 100 per cent coverage, Haryana has achieved only 65 per cent coverage in the vaccination programme according to the last national family health survey, which was conducted in 2005.

The system works by sending a message a week before the vaccination is due and follows it up with a second message by mid-week and a third on the day the vaccination is due, thereby ensuring that the message reaches the public it is meant for.

Encouraged by the response, the administration has decided to extend it up to the PHC level by next month. Also on the cards is the idea of sending a voice mail to all such parents enrolled under the programme.

Jind, April 24
An amount of Rs 55,000 has been fraudulently withdrawn from the ATM account of a resident of Malwi village in the district. This is reported to be the fourth such incident in the district in the past one year.

According to complainant Khusi Ram, who has an account with the SBI branch at Julana, the incident took place after he had gone to the ATM booth of the bank at Julana on April 12 to withdraw cash. However, due to some technical fault, the machine failed to release the cash. A youth present inside the cabin offered to help. As he inserted the card in the machine, he was told that the pin number of the card was faulty and needed to be replaced.

Later, when he contacted the bank manager to get the problem rectified, the bank officials told him that an amount of Rs 55,000 was withdrawn from his account on the same day.

The police has registered a case, but no arrest has been made so far. “Several cases of cheating have surfaced in the district in the recent past and these were perhaps due to ignorance of customers and the violation of the safety norms set up by the bank,” said a bank official.

While the presence of one customer is allowed at one time in the ATM booth, it has been reported that this norm is generally violated, which leads to leakage of the security information and the customer’s password. Moreover, some new customers preferred to take help of other customers, which could result in cheating, claimed the authorities concerned.

Meanwhile, in another incident, the police has arrested two persons on the charge of betting during an IPL tournament at Narwana town in the district.

The accused identified as Rohit and Anurag were caught red-handed from the Punjabi Chowk locality on Friday. 

Karnal, April 24
The police today arrested five persons of an interstate betting gang while they were betting during an IPL cricket match being played between Kings XI Punjab and Delhi Daredevils from a house in Sector 7 here late last night.

Following a tip-off, a police team headed by Sanjeev Malik, in charge of Sector 7 police station, raided the house and nabbed all five persons, including Rajiv Kumar, Bharat Kumar, owner of the house, Rajan, Sachin and Gulab.

The police seized 200 mobile phones, four landline phones, 21 
mobile chargers, two television sets and cash worth Rs 2,100.

DSP Surinder Pal Singh said the accused were arrested while they were betting through mobile phones. The accused were members of an interstate betting racket and had links in Delhi, he added.

The police has registered a case against the accused under Sections 148, 149 and 307 of the IPC and various sections of the Gambling Act.

Chandigarh, April 24
The Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled that the denial of the conveyance allowance to the teaching staff during the summer holidays, merely because the schools are closed, is unjustified.

A Division Bench has also ruled that physically challenged teachers in Haryana performing related duties during the summer vacation would certainly be entitled to draw and receive the allowance. The ruling came on a petition filed by the Sirsa-based Viklang Sangh against the state of Haryana and other respondents.

The Bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Surya Kant observed: “The court can take judicial note of the fact that even during the summer holidays of the school, the teaching staff, at times, are required to come to the school and also participate in various workshops and seminars as a part of the ongoing process of education.

“In such a situation, the denial of the conveyance allowance merely because the schools are closed during the summer holidays will not be justified.

“All such physically challenged teachers, who perform related duties during the summer vacation of the schools, in our considered view, would undoubtedly be entitled to continue to draw and receive the conveyance allowance at the rate fixed”.

Disposing of the petition, the Bench added: “We dispose of this writ petition by directing that such physically challenged teaching staff, who may be engaged on duties during the summer holidays or participate in any activity which is a part of the ongoing process of education, will be paid conveyance allowance at the rate applicable”.

Going into the background of the controversy, the Bench observed: “The grievance raised in the writ petition is with regard to the denial of the conveyance allowance to the petitioner and other physically challenged teachers during the summer vacation of the schools in which they are working. Such conveyance allowance has been continuing since long and is being paid at the rate of 10 per cent of the basic pay, subject to a maximum of Rs 1,000 per month”.

The Bench added: “The stand of the respondents, as indicated in the written statement, is that the teaching staff of the school are not required to attend to duties during the summer vacation and the conveyance allowance, which is paid to defray the cost of travel from home to school and back, is not required to be paid during the summer vacation of the schools as the teachers do not come to the school during the vacation”.

Karnal, April 24
Education committees with 75 per cent representation of parents will be constituted in private schools to ensure proper implementation of the mandatory provision of 25 per cent reservation for poor students under the Right to Education Act, Education and Social Empowerment Minister Geeta Bhukkal has said.

“A notification will be issued soon in this regard to implement 25 per cent reservation for poor students in private schools as provided under the Right to Education (RTE) Act,” she said while inaugurating the foundation day function of The Millennium School, Karnal, here recently.

She said information relating to the Right to Education Act was available on the website of the department.

Referring to the shortage of teachers in government schools, Bhukkal said the process of recruitment of teachers would be completed by the end of the year and vacancies would be filled. She said generators would be provided in the schools facing an acute power shortage to ensure that the students did not suffer due to power failures.

Taking cognisance of complaints pouring in from different quarters regarding non-eligible persons availing of the social security pension scheme, the minister said the officers concerned had been directed to look into such complaints and take strict action in case the complaints were found to be true. A fresh survey would be conducted soon for exclusion of ineligible beneficiaries and inclusion of eligible persons in the list of old-age pensioners, she added.

Hisar, April 24
Under a campaign to check the theft of electricity, the Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN) detected 18,724 cases during the last financial year and imposed penalties worth over Rs 44 crore on the erring consumers.

Police cases were lodged against as many as 10,305 consumers who failed to pay the penalty in time.

A DHBVN spokesman said here that Hisar remained at the top with 5,935 theft cases followed by Faridabad (4,458), Gurgaon (3,185), Bhiwani (2,980), Narnaul (1,498) and Sirsa (668).

He said field officers had been asked to launch an intensified campaign against the theft of electricity and the operations wing of the nigam and teams of the vigilance wing had been given special targets.

The nigam was determined to check the theft of electricity as this was the main reason for overloading of system, interruption in power supply and revenue losses. 

Bataud (Barwala), April 24
Members of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) have threatened to intensify their stir if the state government continued to acquire shamlat land in villages.Bhupinder Singh Mann, president of the All-India Kisan Coordination Committee, said here farmers would protest against Member of Parliament for Ambala Kumari Selja, Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and MLAs whenever they visited villages in the state.

Mann said they were planning to launch a nationwide protest against the acquisition of village land by state governments.

He alleged that the state government was trying to oblige the land mafia by giving them land at throwaway prices. He said shamlat land belonged to farmers as their ancestors had donated a portion of the land to the gram panchayats for common purposes.

Karnal, April 24
The Retired College Principals and Teachers Federation, a representative body of superannuated teachers of Government-aided private colleges of Haryana, has urged the government to grant revised pension to the teachers who retired as readers/lecturers (selection grade) before January, 2006, in accordance with the Union HRD ministry( No. F. No. 15-1-2009-IFD/UII) letter of December 15, 2009.

As per the letter, the teachers who have completed three years of service in the pay scale of Rs 12000-18300 on January 1, 2006, have been placed in the pay band of Rs 37400-67000 with an academic grade pay of Rs 9000 but the government had not released the revised pensions to these teachers, president of the federation IJ Bharti said.

The federation demanded medical facilities on a par with retired government teachers, besides removal of the discrepancy in the qualifying age for retirement, which was 28 years for government retirees as per the notification of September 17, 2008, but the notification in respect of teachers of private colleges was issued on October 12, 2010. The gap of two years had not been reconciled as a result of which the teachers were suffering losses.

Referring to the pension rules, 1999, the federation said the rules provided that the teachers who retired

on or after January 1, 2006, would not get the benefit of 28 years of service for pension and urged the government to delete this cause in the larger interest of justice.

Bharti pointed out another disparity in respect of leave encashment as the teachers of private colleges were not entitled to this facility. However, the retired teachers (pensioners) who moved the court were given the benefit of leave encashment by the Punjab and Haryana High

Court vide order no. CWP NO 3732/2001 dated August 20,2007. Bharti said it was strange that the benefit of leave encashmentwas given only to the teachers who had moved the court while all others were yet to get it.