Chandigarh, October 18
Holding that the Hisar byelection result was essentially a mandate against the Congress, the INLD today sought the resignation of Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda on “moral grounds”.

Addressing a press conference here, INLD chief Om Prakash Chautala said while Team Anna had had no impact on the result, the INLD, too, had won the election though the HJC-BJP combine had “technically” won the parliamentary seat. Chautala said that the party position had improved in all Assembly segments that make up the Hisar parliamentary seat and their vote share had increased.

"The people are fed up of the misrule of Congress at the Centre and in the state. While prices are rising, there is complete collapse of law and order, no control over the bureaucracy. With the Congress candidate losing even his security deposit in the byelection at a time when the party is in power in the state and at the Centre, Chief Minister Hooda has lost the right to run the government and should step down on moral grounds," Chautala said.

Rejecting the claims that Team Anna had anything to do with the election result, he said if its members were under any such impression, they were free to contest the forthcoming byelections in Adampur and Ratia. “They will know exactly where they stand,” the Leader of the Opposition said. However, he was quick to add that the INLD would support Team Anna on its crusade against corruption and its demand for passage of the Jan Lokpal Bill.

Taking a dig at the Congress, he said though Hooda and his entire Cabinet and all his MLAs were camping at Hisar all through the campaigning, the party candidate lost his security deposit.

Chautala said that the BJP, too, stood exposed. “The coming times belong to the regional parties. That is probably why the BJP has joined hands with a party that is still trying to evolve. The increase in our vote share and the improvement in our votes shows that we have the support of all communities and the public is looking up to us to take over in the state and put an end to Congress misrule,” he claimed.

Chandigarh: The BJP today claimed that the BJP-HJC alliance received a thumbs-up in the Hisar byelection.

Addressing a press conference here , state BJP president Krishan Pal Gurjar said the result was a “mirror” for those who considered the BJP a big zero.

“Political history is witness to the fact that any party that we have supported has come to power in the state with our help. This alliance has been well-received not only by workers but also the public with all communities coming together and voting for us. We are the third front the public of Haryana, tired with the Congress and the INLD, has been waiting for,” Gurjar claimed.

Commenting on the Congress performance, Gurjar said the party was a “poor third” and the party candidate had lost his security deposit which was the fallout of rampant corruption, ill-maintained roads, poor water supply and spiralling prices.

The CM has lost the moral right to continue in office. He should resign and so should the Prime Minister because this might be a record in itself that a candidate of the party in power in the state and at the Centre has not only lost a byelection but even his security deposit,” he said.

He maintained that the BJP-HJC combine would win the the Adampur and Ratia byelections too.

Fatehabad, October 18
Owing to the “indifference” and “insensitivity” of the doctors at the Community Health Centre, Ratia, who referred an expecting woman to Fatehabad without a nurse in the ambulance, a father had to assist the delivery of his daughter in the ambulance on the Ratia-Fatehabad road.

The piqued father today lodged a complaint with the local authorities and he has sent copies of his letter to the Chief Minister.

The incident occurred on the night of October 13, when Subhash, a resident of Lalwas village, approached doctors in the CHC at Ratia with his daughter Priyanka, who was undergoing labour pains at that time.

The doctors allegedly kept her in the hospital for over an hour and then asked Subhash to shift his daughter to the General Hospital, Fatehabad, as she needed a caesarian section surgery.

He said he requested Dr Sakshi Bansal, who examined his daughter, against referring Priyanka to Fatehabad and arrange for the caesarian section at Ratia as she was already in labour pains. However, the doctor expressed her helplessness and asked him to shift Priyanka to Fatehabad without caring to send a nurse with him.

Subhash alleged that the ambulance had hardly travelled a distance of 10 km, when his daughter’s condition deteriorated and the delivery started progressing.

He asked the driver to stop the ambulance on the roadside, where he had to assist the delivery of a stillborn child in the ambulance.

Dr Bansal said the woman was brought to her on October 6 first, when she told Subhash that it was a case of breech birth (delivery of the baby with buttocks first, rather than the head as is usual) and advised him to shift Priyanka to Fatehabad.

However, he brought Priyanka again on October 13, when she was undergoing labour pains. She said she had no option, but to refer the woman to Fatehabad in view of the risk involved.

She, however, said that she was not expecting that the baby would be delivered so soon and hence did not send a nurse with the ambulance.

Dr VK Jain, SMO of the CHC, Ratia, said though caesarian section operations were conducted in his hospital, they preferred to refer emergencies to Fatehabad.

He admitted that there was a lapse on the part of the doctor, as she failed to send a nurse with the ambulance.

Rohtak, October 18
The Haryana Civil Medical Service Association (HCMS), the body of the state government doctors, has threatened to go on an indefinite strike from November 10 in the wake of non-acceptance and non- implementation of its demands.

The demands include non-practising allowance (NPA) for all purposes, entry- level pay scales, new PG policy and changes in the re-employment policy of the government in the Health Department.

A spokesperson of the association said here today that the body, which had held a meeting here recently, had resolved to adopt the path of stir unanimously in case the state government failed to pay heed to the call given by it regarding accepting its demands by November 9.

He said all doctors of the state government, who were employed in civil hospitals, government dispensaries, and primary and community health centres across the state, will go on two days’ mass leave on November 8 and 9.

Claiming that all appeals and reminders to the authorities concerned had yielded nothing, he said the decision to go on mass casual leave had been taken to lodge the doctors’ protest against the delay on the part of the government to resolve the matter in an amicable manner.

He warned that the doctors could go on an indefinite strike from November 10 if the government failed to take any positive action on their demands.

It is learnt that the doctors will attend only emergency and post-mortem services on November 8 while only emergency cases will be taken up in the government hospitals on November 9. The OPDs will be closed on both days. All medical services will be paralysed from November 10 onwards if the authorities do not respond by then.

The association, which has a total membership of about 2,000 in the state, has also released instructions for the doctors regarding the action plan announced for November 8 and 9.

Palwal, October 18
A final-year MBA student, who was married recently, tried to wangle a sum of Rs 10 lakh from his father, but ended up being arrested by the police.

Dheeraj (21), a resident of Kondal village in Hathin block of Mewat district and a student of Ramanuj College in Mitrol village, about 12 km from here, called his father on his cellphone last Saturday, posing as a criminal and said that his son (Dheeraj) was kindnapped.

The caller demanded a sum of Rs 10 lakh as ransom money for his son’s release.

The first call to the father, Kishan Lal, was made on Saturday evening. Subsequently, a number of calls were made by the purported kidnappers. The calls were made from an STD booth in Brindavan in Mathura district.

The Hathin police started investigations when Dheeraj’s relatives took up the matter with it. The case was referred to the Palwal police as Dheeraj was last seen in Palwal where he used to go to a coaching institute.

The Palwal police said Dheeraj went to the institute, but did not attend the classes on Saturday. He changed his clothes and left for Brindavan.

The police traced the origin of the calls made to Kishan Lal to Brindavan. The cell number of Neeraj, a close friend of Dheeraj and a resident of the Tigaon area in Faridabad district, was traced from the details of the calls made from an STD booth.

The police zeroed in on Neeraj who revealed that Dheeraj conspired with him to con his father of the money. Neeraj was acting as an informer to Dheeraj, passing on details of the mood and movements of Kishan Lal, the police added.

Rewari, October 18
Irate farmers of various villages of the Kosli region resorted to traffic blockades at various points at Kosli blocking vehicular traffic for the second day today.

Shouting slogans against the state government as well as the administration, they demanded immediate commencement of procurement of bajra lying in the Kosli market for the past several days.

Meanwhile, Dharam Raj Phaprana, district manager of the Warehousing Corporation, said while the farmers were adamant that their entire produce must be procured at the market support price, it was not possible to purchase bajra that did not conform to the specifications laid down by the state government.

The standoff between the agitating farmers and the authorities concerned was continuing till the filing of this report.

Fatehabad, October 18
Due to a skewed sex ratio in this part of the country, getting brides for youths has become a tedious job, particularly for those belonging to economically weaker sections and having lesser landholdings.

“Procuring” brides for a premium is common practice in villages and smaller towns due to the availability of a lesser number of girls as compared to the boys.

In one such incident, a quarrel over the payment of an agreed amount to a “go-between” at Ratia town landed the ‘baratis’ as well as the bride in the police station on Sunday, where the matter was resolved after a lot of persuasion by the police.

The incident occurred in a marriage palace on Tohana Road of Ratia town, when the bride refused to go with the bridegroom after the Anand Karaj ceremonies, until his family paid the agreed amount to her widowed mother and a “go-between”, who negotiated the “deal” for the marriage.

The bridegroom’s father, Kuldeep Singh, a resident of Nikuana village of the district, said he had “struck a deal” with a mediator, Gurmeet Singh, for the marriage of his son, Jaskirat Singh, with Komal, daughter of a widow, Paramjit Kaur, a resident of Nehar Colony at Ratia.

He said under the deal, he had agreed to pay Rs 30,000 each to the bride’s mother as well as the mediators, Gurmeet Singh and two others, including a woman.

A quarrel erupted when the bridegroom party tried to leave for their village along with the bride and the mediators refused to allow them to take away the girl till their money was paid.

The mediators took away the car’s ignition key and called the police for intervention in the matter.

Kuldeep Singh said he had already paid Rs 30,000 to the girl’s mother and would pay the mediators’ “fee”, when the girl settled in their house for a few days.

The matter was later resolved in the police station, when the bridegroom’s father, Kuldeep Singh, gave a written undertaking that he would pay the money on October 24, when his family would host a party in the village to celebrate the marriage.

While the incident points towards the difficulties villagers are facing for finding brides for their marriageable youths, it also reveals that in some societies, even a reverse dowry system has started due to scarcity of marriageable girls.