Shimla, July 28
The Rs 3,600-crore Renuka Dam project in Sirmaur district hit another roadblock today when the National Green Tribunal passed an interim order directing Himachal Pradesh Power Corporation Limited (HPPCL) to stay the entire acquisition process under the Land Acquisition Act.

It has also restrained the public sector undertaking from carrying out any construction activity in both non-forest and forest land and from announcing the award of compensation.

The order was passed on a petition by Durga Ram, a local resident and project-affected person, challenging the environmental clearance (EC) awarded to the project in October 2009.

This is the second setback for the project. Earlier, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests had withheld forest clearance in August last year on the grounds that it involved the submergence of a large number of trees. The HPPCL is already preparing a revised proposal to bring down the loss of tree cover.

The main argument put forward by Ritwick Dutta, counsel for the petitioner, was that the environment clearance had been obtained by concealing and misrepresenting data.

In fact, the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) report, the environment clearance letter and the affidavit filed by the HPPCL had three different sets of data. While the EC was granted for 1,477 hectares, the company now wanted 2,239 hectares. Similarly, the EIA stated that only 308 families would be affected, but the tentative figure had now been increased to 985.

The storage project is basically meant for meeting the water requirement of Delhi and has been hanging fire for the past over 20 years. The entire cost of the dam is to be borne by the Cetre and the Delhi Government as it has been declared a national project. The state will only set up a 40 MW project to generate power, a byproduct of the storage dam.

Dharamsala, July 28
Former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh and his close aide, former Bollywood actress and Rajya Sabha member Jayaprada, today invoked the blessings of Mata Bagulamukhi in Kangra district to “ward off their evils”.

Facing charges of bribing BJP MPs for saving the UPA government in 2008 and being “chased” by the CBI, Amar Singh and Jayaprada came in a charted flight to Kangra last evening. After landing here, the duo went to the famous Shiva temple in Baijnath and performed puja there.

Thereafter Amar Singh and Jayaprada went to Pt Lekhraj Sharma’s house. He is an astrologer from the Jogindernagar area. The astrologer is believed to be an old acquaintance of Amar Singh.

The duo stayed at Taragrah, a heritage property owned by kin of Dr Karan Singh, the last heir apparent to the throne of the former princely state of Kashmir.

Amar Singh and Jayaprada were expected to visit the Bagulamukhi temple at 4 am for performing a havan to “ensure victory over enemies”. Newspersons, especially those from the electronic media, kept vigil at the temple the whole night waiting for the famous duo to arrive.

However, they arrived at noon today. They went straight to the main temple. Accompanied by Pt Lekhraj Sharma, they performed puja there.

Priests at the Bagulamukhi temple said “tantrik havan” (religious ritual in which worship material is offered to fire) was performed for their “victory over enemies”. In a brief interaction with mediapersons, Amar Singh said he came here quite often, but it was for the first time that the media had noticed his presence here.

The Bagulamukhi temple is located on the Ranital-Dehra road, about 40 km from Dharamsala. The temple is visited by a large number of rich and powerful people, who pray for victory over their enemies.

Capt Amarinder Singh, former Chief Minister of Punjab, and Himachal Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal are occasional visitors to the temple. Amar Singh and Jayapradha also paid obeisance at the Jwalamukhi temple later before leaving in their chartered plane in the evening.

Shimla, July 28
With hardly any suggestions having been received from the public or builders, the Select Committee of the Vidhan Sabha, constituted to look into various aspects of the Himachal Pradesh Apartment and Property Regulation Act, 2005, has again invited the public to come forth with its views on the contentious issue before it on August 4.

The decision to invite public views through personal appearance in the Assembly was taken by the Select Committee at its meeting held here yesterday under the chairmanship of senior BJP leader and Shimla legislator Suresh Bhardwaj.

Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu, Rakesh Pathania, Randhir Sharma and Nikhil Rajour were among those members who attended the meeting.

Meanwhile, two members failed to attend the meeting.

Sources said the Select Committee was likely to wrap up its work after eliciting views of builders and public on August 4. It is likely to hold one last meeting after August 4, before placing its report before the Speaker and the House. The HP Apartment and Property Regulation Act, 2005, was available on the website of the Town and Country Planning Department.

The sources said only about six suggestions had been received by the committee so far in response to the public appeal that had been made through the newspapers earlier. This includes the suggestions made by a retired bureaucrat, who has vehemently opposed the Act and demanded it scrapping. Some suggestions have been received from owners of flats who have rued absence of certain facilities like parking in their apartments, which according to them should have been made mandatory.

Even as the repeal of the Act is emerging as one of the options before the committee but then the question confronting them is that there has to be some mechanism to regulate the coming up of flats and apartments in the state.

“The majority view among the committee members is that the Act must be repealed but then we also need to make suggestions and recommendations to ensure that the situation does not go from bad to worse,” said a member.

The sources added that certain cases have also been brought to the notice of committee members that in some areas which were contiguous with a major urban centre, be it a planning area or special area development authority, haphazard construction in the form of apartments and flats is going on unchecked as it is outside the purview of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1972.

Sundernagar, July 28
Thieves struck at the Hateshwari temple, about 10 km from here, and decamped with jewellery worth around Rs 20 lakh last night.

Solan, July 28
The Himachal Pradesh Sarv Karamchari Mahasangh today gave an ultimatum to the state government to either fulfil their eight-point charter of demands or face statewide agitation after August 15.

Govind Chatranta, chairman of the mahasangh, while addressing newsmen here today, said their demands pertained to issues like grant of revised pay scale and its arrears in one instalment, assured benefit of the career enhancement scheme under 4-9-14 system, regularisation of employees employed under the PTA, daily wage and other categories and creation of a uniform policy for them.

The other demands include early settlement of cases under the compensatory grounds, grant of the CCS pension scheme to those employees employed prior to May 15, 2003, grant of enhanced DA and revised pension to employees of boards and corporations and raising the limit of ex-gratia from Rs 50,000 to the range of Rs 3 lakh to Rs 10 lakh.

The mahasangh, which is a conglomeration of 40 employee associations from different public sector enterprises and departments, represents various ministerial staff, non-gazetted officers and Class IV employees of the state government.

Members of the mahasang stressed that the state was adopting a discriminatory attitude by granting bureaucrats and other officials benefits like revised pay scales but denying these to other employees.

The mahasang, while criticising other employees’ unions of the state, said they were fighting for being recognised while the genuine issues had taken a backseat.

The existing mahasanghs were only appeasing politicians and they had been constituted at the behest of the latter and had failed to serve the cause of employees.

They said they would soon begin a membership campaign to enrol employees so as to muster support for their cause, adding that they would hold a meeting on August 15, if their demands were not met and would chalk out their future course of action to carry out statewide agitations.

Shimla, July 28
A minor altercation between two cousins at a midnight party resulted in the death of a youth, Hitesh Thakur (23), alias Honey, early this morning.

According to the police, six friends gathered at the house of Mukesh Thakur in the lower Summer Hill for a party. It was about 2.30 am when there was a heated argument between the deceased and his aunt’s son Atul over his style of smoking. It was on the intervention of their friends that the two pacified.

Hitesh belonged to Chamrog village in Kiari and had just completed a course in hotel management from Chandigarh. He was doing a computer course from an institute in Lakkar Bazaar.

However, it was while returning home in the morning after the party that Atul allegedly attacked Hitesh from behind and stabbed him. Seeing Hitesh’s critical condition, his friends immediately rushed him to IGMC, where he succumbed to his injuries later.

On being interrogated by the police, friends of the deceased said they had found him seriously injured near the 103 Tunnel and rushed him to the hospital. A case has been registered. — TNS

Hamirpur, July 28
The authorities of the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Hamirpur, who had phased out MBA course a few months ago, have decided not to fill about 350 seats of MTech in different disciplines for the current session.

Though about 250 seats of MTech have already been filled through the first counselling from among the candidates qualifying the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE), the NIT administration has decided not to hold the second counselling to fill the remaining seats of MTech in different disciplines. There are 600 seats available in the MTech courses at NIT.

Dean (Academics) of NIT, through its letter dated July 15, 2011, has asked heads of departments of various disciplines, except two where the process for the second counselling had already begun, not to hold the second counselling for MTech courses.

The decision was taken by a committee headed by NIT Director RL Sharma and other members due to shortage of hostels to accommodate new students on the NIT campus. There is a shortage of hostels on the campus here and PG students had already been accommodated in training houses with four to five students in a room.

There is a shortage of faculty too with about 50 per cent posts of teacher in different disciplines are lying vacant for quite some time and many PhD students are not getting registered for the doctorate courses here due to these reasons.

The NIT authorities had phased out the MBA programme this year due to lack of regular faculty members in the management department after running the course for two sessions. Prof Sharma said: “It would be very difficult to accommodate all new MTech students due to shortage of hostels and thus we have restricted the number of MTech admissions this year, but soon new hostels would be ready to accommodate about 1,500 more students.”

Dharamsala, July 28
The Dharamsala tea factory has launched saffron tea that will take the Kangra tea to the international market. The saffron tea will be available in sachets in the form of tea bags. It is for the first time that the Kangra tea will be marketed in sachets.

The owner of the Dharamsala tea factory, Gurmeet Singh Mann, said the saffron tea would be sold as a high-end product. “We have already registered the new product with the Tea Board of India and have got it tested from the Institute of Himalayan Bio-resource Technology (IHBT), a CSIR centre at Palampur.

He said initially the saffron tea produced at Dharamsala would be sold in West Asian and European markets. “This year, we plan to sell about 10 lakh sachets of the saffron tea,” he added.

Aman Pal Singh, a tea expert at the Dharamsala tea factory, said the tea was a fine blend of powdered saffron and Kangra tea. It was for the first time that tea had been blended with saffron in India. The product had been approved after many tests and had now been issued a licence by the Tea Board of India.

Gurmeet Singh Mann, owner of Mann tea estate, which is the biggest tea estate in the Dharamsala area, has also countered the statement of vice-chairman of HIMUDA Ganesh Dutt in which he had alleged that the Mann tea estate owners had offered their land for bringing up a satellite township near Dharamsala.

Mann, however, maintained that they had never offered their land to HIMUDA. “We are, in fact, planning to increase the production at the Dharamsala tea factory from 1.25 lakh kg to 1.5 lakh kg per annum,” he said.

Dharamsala, July 28
National vice-president of the BJP and Rajya Sabha member Shanta Kumar has welcomed the decision of the party high command asking Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa to step down.

Shanta Kumar, who was earlier the party in charge for Karnataka, had maintained that he had suggested to the party to remove Yeddyurappa after he faced charges of giving favours to his family members.

In a press note issued here today, Shanta Kumar said the decision would act as a milestone in the BJP’s fight against corruption.

He said corruption was a major issue and the BJP had always taken a lead in the fight against corruption. It was due to the BJP agitation against black money that the UPA government had been forced to take steps for bringing the “ill-gotten money” stashed in foreign banks back into the country, Shanta Kumar claimed.