Karnal, June 16
The enraged family of Chamel Singh, who was found dead under mysterious circumstances in Sector 4 yesterday, agreed for a postmortem only after V Kamraja, IG, Rohtak Range, assured it that the case would be recommended for a CBI inquiry.

The family members and villagers did not allow the doctors to conduct the post-mortem yesterday on suspicion that Chamel Singh, a cousin of ex-Sarpanch Karam Singh, who was found in a critical condition near a cemetery in Karnal on June 7, had also been murdered . The body of Chamel singh, which was handed over to the family after a post-mortem, was later cremated at his native village, Waser.

Kamraja said it appeared to be a case of murder but nothing could be said with certainty till the post- mortem report was received. Meanwhile, the Karnal police have registered a case under sections 201 and 302, IPC, against unknown persons.

The Sain Samaj, which had organised vehement protests after the alleged murder of Karam Singh On June 7, asserted that the same accused were responsible for the murder of Chamel Singh. Without naming any accused, the family members sought a fair inquiry into the case .

Leaders of the Sain Samaj assembled at ex-sarpanch Karam Singh’s Kombopura village to decide the future course of action to ensure justice to the deceased’s family.

Meanwhile, Vandana Bhatia, CMO, said the post-mortem report was “inconclusive” as parts of lungs, lever, heart and intestines had been sent for histopathology tests while viscera had been sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory, Madhuban, and the PGI, Rohtak, for chemical tests to ascertain if any poisonous substance was administered to the deceased. While sleuths of the crime branch were yet to make any headway in the sensational murder of ex-sarpanch Karam Singh, the alleged murder of another key witness in the case had added to their woes.

Shagun Chand, a relative of the deceased, said Chamel Singh could have been saved had the police arrested the main accused after Karam Singh’s murder.

Chandigarh, June 16
Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda seems to be slowly shedding his image of being soft towards his defiant ministerial colleagues and employees. This impression is strengthened by two recent developments.

While the first is in the full public knowledge, the other went more or less unnoticed though it had the desired impact on the quarters for which the move was meant.

Hooda reshuffled his Cabinet two days ago, giving a jolt of sorts to Capt Ajay Singh Yadav and Mahender Partap Singh, who were divested of their portfolios in a sudden move. The two had been critical of the government’s policies and did not hesitate in making their criticism public. While Capt Yadav spoke against the land acquisition policy, which was lauded by AICC general secretaries Rahul Gandhi and Digvijay Singh, Mahender Partap Singh, who was the Industries Minister then, had virtually dissociated himself from the new industries policy of the state, which was announced after a discussion in the Cabinet. He was divested of the Industries portfolio when Hooda expanded his Cabinet.

The recent exercise was obviously meant to send a message to his colleagues that they have to behave and cannot escape joint responsibility, a cardinal principle of the Cabinet system.

However, Hooda does not want to take things too far, as was evident when he allotted the Food and Supplies Department to Mahender Partap Singh today in an obvious attempt to apply a healing touch to the minister’s bruised ego. HS Chatha, who held this portfolio earlier, was compensated with the Renewable Energy Department.

It is yet to be seen if Hooda will extend a similar treatment to Capt Yadav also.

Similarly, Hooda, who had been avoiding a confrontation with employees in the past, decided to act tough with the Haryana Roadways’ employees when they went on a day-long strike on June 8. Though negotiations were held with their representatives on the eve of the strike to dissuade them from adopting the agitational approach, the government refused to accept their “unreasonable” demands.

The authorities were told in no uncertain terms to be tough with those who participated in the strike. Two HCS officers, who failed to control the situation in their depots, were given the marching orders the same night. Two senior officers of the Transport Department were placed under suspension, while many others were sacked using emergency constitutional provisions. So far the employees have not reacted.

It may be a coincidence but Hooda reshuffled his Cabinet after Sonia Gandhi profusely praised his policies when she visited Mewat earlier this month. One can safely presume that before reshuffling his Cabinet, Hooda must have taken the party high command into confidence. During his first term, he had changed the portfolios of Kiran Choudhry but had to reverse his decision after the intervention of Moti Lal Vora, who was in charge of the party affairs in Haryana at that time.

Chandigarh, June 16
The Punjab and Haryana High Court has held that the Haryana Public Service Commission is within its right to include the score of the preliminary test in the viva voce marks held subsequently. This ruling came on an appeal filed by Ranbir Singh Kharab against the state of Haryana and other respondents.

In their appeal placed before a Division Bench of Justice MM Kumar and Justice Gurdev Singh, the appellant had earlier questioned whether the Public Service Commission and other recruiting agencies are within their “right to hold a preliminary test with objective-type multiple-choice questions for shortlisting the candidates and include those marks in the marks for viva voce”.

Taking up the matter, a single Judge had earlier ruled that Article 14 and 16 (1) of the Constitution had not been violated by including the marks of the preliminary test in the viva voce.

In his order, the single Judge had also turned down the argument given by the candidate that he was not aware of the inclusion of the marks in the viva voce score “so as to enable him to prepare better.”

The Judge had observed that in a competitive examination of this nature, every candidate is expected to perform to the best of his ability. “There are no allegation of mala fide showing that the course was adopted in order to favour some and to prejudice others”.

Dismissing the appeal, the Bench asserted it was unable to find legal infirmity in the view taken by the single Judge. “The appeal is wholly without merit,” the Bench ruled.

Elaborating, the Bench added: “Firstly, in order to restrict the number of candidates, a preliminary test with an objective-type multiple-choice question paper is always better.

“We are further of the view that there is no illegality committed by the commission in rejecting the argument that the marks of the preliminary test were included in the viva voce illegally. The view of the single Judge does not suffer from any illegality. Accordingly, the appeal fails.”

Panipat, June 16
Law-enforcing agencies in the state will soon be able to identify criminals and link suspects to unsolved crimes with just a click of the mouse as the Police Department is all set to have a high-tech automatic fingerprint identification system (AFIS) in place at the Madhuban crime record bureau.

The system, which can be used to determine the identity of a person based solely on fingerprints, will cost around Rs 5 crore. It will have a database of over five lakh criminals. The main equipment will be installed at Madhuban and all district headquarters will be linked to the system. Even PCR vehicles will get remote identification devices so that the identify of any person apprehended by the police can be established on the spot. These devices will be connected to the main AFIS at Madhuban through the Internet.

Speaking to The Tribune about the new initiative being taken by the state police, Director of the state crime record bureau Layak Ram Dabas said the system would enable the police to automatically match one or more unknown fingerprints against a database of fingerprints making it easy for investigators to identify criminals.

He said the AFIS would have facilities such as latent searching, electronic image storage, electronic exchange of fingerprints and criminal identification.

While European police agencies are now required by a European Council Act to have the AFIS to improve the war on terror and investigate cross-border crime, in India the system is yet to find favour with state police departments, with only a few states having this system.

Dabas, who recently visited Bengaluru to have a first-hand account of the AFIS installed by the Karnataka police, said the system was accurate and there was seldom more than one match unless there were multiple records of the same person in the database. He said that the system was likely to become operational soon.

Sirsa, June 16
Former Haryana Chief Minister and INLD supremo Om Parkash Chautala today demanded that the Prime Minister should be brought under the purview of the Lokpal Bill.

Speaking to mediapersons at Ellenabad, Chautala said as the Constitution treated all citizens equally, there was no reason for leaving any person outside the ambit of the proposed Bill.

Terming Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as honest to the core , Chautala alleged those around him were involved deep in corruption.

He said it was strange that despite the Supreme Court’s directions, the UPA Government was not willing to make public the names of persons, who had stashed away over Rs 400000 crore in foreign banks.

Castigating the Hooda government for a poor law and order situation, Chautala demanded an inquiry by a sitting judge of the Supreme Court into the Kambopura murders, where a former sarpanch and the prosecution witness were allegedly killed one after the other recently.

Earlier, addressing villagers in Budimeri, Amritsar, Talwara Khurd, Dholpalia and several other villages of the Ellenabad assembly segment, Chautala said the people were fed up with the UPA Government at the Centre and the Hooda Government in Haryana.

He claimed that the INLD was the only alternative to the Congress in Haryana

Addressing village meetings in the Kalanwali assembly segments under the mass awareness campaign of the INLD, Abhey Singh Chautala, MLA from Ellenabad, alleged that farmers were not getting sufficient power and irrigation water in villages.He alleged spurious seeds and pesticides were on sale but the authorities were not doing anything.

Karnal, June 16
A woman, married for 20 years, and a teenaged girl allegedly committed suicide in separate incidents in Assandh and Indri subdivisions in Karnal district. A 16-year-old girl hanged herself from the ceiling fan at Khera Mansingh village last night. Her family members came to know of it this morning.

The mother of the deceased, Shakuntla, in her complaint, said she saw her daughter running away with Bindu, a boy of the same village, and two unidentified persons and caught them.

She said her daughter was so ashamed on being caught that she ended her life by hanging herself from the ceiling fan. The police has registered a case under Sections 306 and 34, IPC, against Bindu and two unidentified persons.

In another incident at Dupedi village in the Assandh area, a woman, Geeta Devi, allegedly took poison after an altercation with her husband, Hukam Singh, and ended her life. She was shifted to a hospital at Safedon and later referred to Jind, where she died, the police said.

The police has registered a case under Sections 306 and 34, IPC, against Hukam Singh on a complaint of Rajinder Singh, brother of the deceased.

Chandigarh, June 16
With the government formulating its draft state water policy, the Irrigation Department has sought comments on it. A spokesman of the Irrigation Department said the policy would pave the way for long-term sustainability of the water sector and improvement in the management of this precious resource.

Under the policy, special focus has been laid on equitable and judicious allocation of water, with emphasis on poor and disadvantaged people and conservation of precious water resources and its optimum utilisation. The policy would also become an operational action plan for the implementation of the National Water Policy, 2002, in the state.

A groundwater authority would be created for effective groundwater management . Priority would be given to the monitoring of quality of groundwater. Exploitation of groundwater resources would be so regulated as not to exceed the recharging possibilities, as also to ensure social equity.

Under the policy, top priority had been laid on drinking water, irrigation, power generation, environmental allocation, agro-industries, non-agricultural industries and other uses .

The spokesman said watershed development and management would be enlarged through measures like soil conservation, catchment area treatment, preservation of forests, increasing the forest cover and check dams.

A central institutional arrangement would be set up for effective monitoring and improvements in this programme. Incentives for use of water-saving devices, such as sprinkler irrigation and drip irrigation, would be provided in the structure of rates, the spokesman said.

Sirsa, June 16
The cyber crime cell of the district police will investigate complaints of fraudulent submission of online requests for transfer of some teachers in the district.

Satinder Kumar Gupta, SP, issued these orders after a delegation of the Haryana Rajkiye Adhyapak Sangh met him under the leadership of Gurdeep Singh Saini, state spokesperson for the organisation, in this connection.

Gupta said earlier some teachers had lodged complaints with the city police station here, alleging that some unknown persons had made online requests on their behalf for transfer without their knowledge.

The police, he said, would initiate criminal proceedings against the accused, once the cyber crime cell established the identity of those who had misused the online facility to make transfer requests for others.

Teachers Sita Ram Khatri, Lalit Sharma, Balwant Singh, Fateh Singh Virk, Anil Sharma, Anil Berwal, Mohan Lal Shashtri and Jai Parkash alleged that some unscrupulous elements had made online requests for the transfer of some of their colleagues without the latter’s knowledge.

The teachers came to know of the fraud when they logged in to the website of the Haryana School Education Department to make an online request for their transfer.

A message, “You are already registered with us”, was flashed on the screen when they tried to register their request.

The teachers said they had been living under constant mental stress since then and feared transfer to far-off places.

The Haryana School Education Department had invited online requests for transfer from the teachers working in the department on June 6.

The teachers who wanted to be transferred and had stayed at their place of posting for three years or more could make online request on www.schooleducationharyana.gov.in.

The teachers needed their employee ID and date of birth for registering their requests.

The teachers alleged that their ID and date of birth were easily accessible to all on the website and also in the school records.

Chandigarh, June 16
The government has decided to grant the pay scale of Rs 7500-250-10000-EB-250-13000 to such engineers of the Housing Board as have completed 18 years of regular and satisfactory service and have not so far been promoted .

This decision was taken at a meeting of the standing committee on public enterprises held under the chairmanship of Ajit M. Sharan, chairman of the committee.

It has also been decided to designate such engineers as additional subdivisional engineer but they would continue to discharge the duties as JEs. The JEs, who have already availed of the benefit of second ACP pay scale of Rs 6500-10500 after 20 years of regular satisfactory service, would not be entitled to the next stage of pay fixation.

The engineers who would be granted the new time scale of Rs 7500-250-10000-EB-250-13000 after completion of 18 years of regular service would not be considered for the second ACP pay scale on completion of 20 years of service.

It has also been decided to grant two advance increments toJEs who acquire the AMIE/BE degree after joining the service on condition that the incumbent has completed a minimum five years of regular service.

Approval has also been granted to create and fill posts in the Haryana Rural Development Authority. These posts would be filled by deputation from other departments.

Sonepat, June 16
Raj Kumar, youth INLD leader and son of Sonepat Zila Parisad chairperson Shanti Devi, reportedly committed suicide by hanging himself at his residence here last night.

Raj Kumar, who was the state general secretary of the sports wing of the INLD, was found hanging from a ceiling fan in his room at his Sector 15 residence. The police has registered a case of suicide. — OC