Chandigarh, November 24
Responding to a news report carried in these columns on October 16 on the plight of single women, the state Legal Services Authority has shot off a communication to all the district and sessions judges in the state. They have been asked to ensure single women are provided with legal aid.

The communication, also addressed to the additional district and sessions judges and chairpersons of district legal services authorities, asks them to request women para-legal volunteers in their district to help single women.

Available information suggests that they have been asked on behalf of Justice SK Mittal, a judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court and also the executive chairman of the legal services, to “identify the single women and provide them with all sort of legal services”.

The letter makes it clear that the women para-legal volunteers have to help and guide the single women on “approaching legal services institutions, if and when it is required to assert their rights”.

The communication, by additional sessions judge-cum-member secretary of the legal services authority Deepak Gupta, adds that the volunteers should also work to make single women aware of their rights. For the purpose, special workshops may also be conducted.

Referring to The Tribune report, it says: “It was reported that there are 36 million single women in India according to the 2001 census. This figure is only of those single women, who are legally divorced, separated and widowed.

“As per the report, a survey was conducted by the National Forum For Single Women’s Rights, which found that 75 per cent of the sampled women lived on less than the minimum daily wages in their states and yet only 21 per cent of them were actually recognised as poor by the government.

“Particularly, in the rural areas, they have to constantly battle not only social prejudices but also have to fight for survival…. It was felt that in order to ameliorate the condition of the single women and help them achieve their rights, our para-legal volunteers could visit every village falling under the area of their operation and identify such single women so as to provide necessary legal services to them.” 

Hisar, November 24
For the first time in 43 years, the Adampur Assembly constituency is witnessing an electoral contest in which the three main contestants come from different backgrounds.

While Congress nominee Kulbir Beniwal is a politician having represented the erstwhile Bhattu Kalan constituency for about four years from 2005, HJC-BJP candidate Renuka Bishnoi is a housewife. INLD nominee Ram Singh Baswana is a former judge.

Uptill now, the Bhajan Lal clan, which has managed to keep this constituency within the family fold for 43 years, had faced challenges from politicians only.

Renuka is trying to retain the seat for the Bishnoi family vacated by her husband, Kuldeep Bishnoi, after winning the recent byelection to the Hisar Lok Sabha seat. Even though this is her maiden electoral contest, she understands the intricacies of an election fully.

“Our entire family is well entrenched in politics. I have learnt that politics is simply a way to serve our people. So anyone who wants to serve the people should be in politics and being a woman or a housewife is no bar to it,” she says.

To INLD nominee Ram Singh Baswana, having remained a judge is an advantage. “Having dispensed justice to the people during my service period only makes my resolve to undo injustice done to the people of Adampur stronger”, he says. His entire campaign is based on the theme of justice for the people.

He says: “Even after 64 years of Independence the number of BPL families has risen to 50 per cent of the population. The Congress has ruled the country for 52 years but it forgets all about the poor and the needy after it is voted to power. This is the biggest injustice ”.

Congress nominee Kulbir Beniwal was at one time a protégé of the late Bhajan Lal. He has since drifted away from the Bishnois.

However, it is more of a contest between the parties than the candidates. The HJC wants a win both to reinforce the impression that along with the BJP it will provide a credible alternative to the people in the next assembly poll and to keep the seat within the family fold.

The INLD, on the other hand, is determined to further its recent performance in this assembly segment when the party bagged over 28,000 votes here during the Hisar Lok Sabha byelection. Former Chief Minister Om Parkash Chautala has toured the area extensively. INLD Secretary-General Ajay Singh Chautala is leading his party’s campaign.

The Congress has roped in every senior party leader for the campaign. The party has established three different teams for campaigning that are sparing no effort to reinforce its position in the assembly segment. It had suffered huge losses in this segment in the recent Hisar Lok Sabha byelection. The party managed to poll just 15,000 votes as against 42,000 polled in the 2009 Assembly elections.

Under the circumstances, the candidates themselves have been relegated to the background. No wonder unseemly oral duels between senior party leaders have become the main highlight of the campaign.

The Chautalas are alleging that the Bishnois and the Congress have made an unholy alliance and are “trying to fix the election like a cricket match”. They also allege that the Bhajan Lal family has always exploited the people of the area by playing the caste card, thereby vitiating the political atmosphere in the area.

The Bishnois, on the other hand, maintain that the Chautalas have never been able to defeat any member of their family in any constituency in which they faced each other, including Bhiwani, Adampur and Hisar. The Congress is assuring the voters that that if the party nominee wins, Adampur will see unprecedented development.

The Congress is currently engaged in winning over those families which had voted for the party in 2009 but have since crossed over to opposite camps. The campaign is led by Randeep Singh Surjewala, Dharambir Singh and Sampat Singh. 

Hisar, November 24
The acrimony among the three main political parties locked in a contest in the Adampur assembly segment has reached its nadir.

INLD Secretary-General Ajay Singh Chautala addressed election meetings in Balsamand, Bandaheri and Budak. He said Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda had been confounded by impending defeats in both Adampur and Ratia constituencies and was making “absurd” claims.

Chautala said the claims of development made by Hooda were baseless and the fact was that the working classes in Haryana had been brought to the verge of ruin due to ‘anti-people’ policies of the Chief Minister. He said the prices of fertilisers and agricultural inputs had been raised by 94 per cent but big industrial houses were being offered bail-out packages.

He claimed the INLD would win both seats.

On the other hand, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Randeep Singh Surjewala made a similar statement, albeit describing former Chief Minister Om Parkash Chautala as having been “perplexed “ by impending defeat in both constituencies. He said that was why Chautala was making baseless allegations of misuse of government machinery against the government. Addressing election meetings in several villages of the Adampur assembly segment today, he said the INLD was certain to lose both constituencies. In Ratia the Congress had marched ahead of the INLD and in Adampur it was inching towards a certain win.

Surjewala said Chautala had vitiated the atmosphere during the byelection to the Hisar Lok Sabha seat by arousing feelings of casteism and regionalism. He was trying to do the same in both Ratia and Adampur but the people had seen through his game.

Rajya Sabha member Ram Parkash said the entire opposition was “getting bewildered” by their impending defeat in both constituencies. He said their frustration could be gauged from the allegations of violation of the code of conduct levelled by opposition parties against the Congress.

Not wanting to be left behind, Kuldeep Bishnoi in his election meetings described Hooda as having been completely befuddled by the prospects of the Congress nominee losing his security deposit in the byelection. He said Hooda was making baseless claims regarding government spending in the Adampur constituency. He said Hooda would know the truth after the result of the byelection .

The campaigning in Adampur is becoming acrimonious as was witnessed during the run-up to the Hisar Lok Sabha seat byelection. With no other issues at play, political leaders are just engaging in slanging matches. 

Ratia, November 24
A whole lot of politicians, including ministers, MPs, MLAs from the Congress, INLD as well as the HJC-BJP alliance have landed here to take the electioneering for the November 30 byelection to a feverish pitch in its final phase.

Buoyed at the sharp dip in its candidate Jarnail Singh’s rates in the “satta market”, which means that the punters give the ruling party an edge over the INLD in this byelection, the Congress launched a full-throated campaign here today.

Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, who landed here in the afternoon, drove straight to address a public meeting. His ministers Harmohinder Singh Chatha, Paramveer Singh, Geeta Bhukkal, Capt Ajay Singh, Mahender Partap Singh, Rao Narender Singh, Gopal Kanda and chief parliamentary secretaries Prahlad Singh Gillankhera and Vinod Bhayana have already been campaigning in Ratia, besides HPCC president Phool Chand Mullana and Sirsa MP Ashok Tanwar.

The INLD, on the other hand, has been depending on micro-level campaigning. While former Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala, his two sons, Ajay Singh and Abhey Singh, and a few senior leaders like Ashok Arora have been addressing village meetings, the party has stationed its MLAs, former MLAs and even former ministers in different villages.

“You have given the non-Congress parties 29 years. Now, give us three years and Ratia will experience more development than what witnessed in the past 29 years put together,” Hooda and his ministerial colleagues have telling voters.

For the BJP, Krishan Pal Gurjar, Ram Bilas Sharma, Rattan Lal Kataria and a number of senior party leaders campaigned for Mahavir Parshad.

Ambala, November 24
Fog safety devices (FSD) will shortly be installed in all 58 trains of Ambala division, PK Sanghi, Divisional Railway Manager, said here today. In view of the foggy weather in the plains these days, the speed of all trains had been fixed at 60 km per hour.

Special checking teams had been constituted for seven sections of this division. He said if any driver found under the influence of liquor on duty, he would be chargesheeted and suspended.

The prevailing foggy weather conditions had hit the movement of trains, with most of these running behind schedule.

Chandigarh, November 24
The Haryana police and the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) have joined hands in the battle against the bottle.

In a first-of-its-kind initiative to curb alcoholism in the state, the police and AA have started awareness programmes for police officials and community leaders to sensitise them about ill-effects of alcoholism. “These awareness programmes would go a long way in rehabilitating alcoholics through regular meetings of AA in different parts of the state,” a senior police official said.

The initiative is an offshot of a meeting of Karnataka DGP ST Ramesh with Haryana DGP RS Dalal in July this year.Ramesh, who is also the non-alcoholic trustee of AA, is credited with introducing an innovative system of collaboration with AA under which the police referred the problem drinkers to AA meetings so that they could kick the drinking habit. During his meeting with Dalal, the Karnataka DGP had impressed upon his Haryana counterpart to start a similar system.

Acting on his counterpart’s advice, Dalal reportedly instructed the SPs concerned to coordinate with AA. It is learnt that awareness meetings, which are being coordinated by the SPs, have already been held at Sirsa, Narnaul, Jhajjar, Yamunanagar and Ambala with more meetings planned at the remaining district headquarters and other important towns. Since an alcoholic is not a bad man but a diseased person, the police and community leaders should refer problem drinkers to regular meetings of AA in the state or contact the 24-hour helpline(094666-35492), an AA representative asserted.

Faridabad, November 24
A retired doctor of the state Health Department, accused to have made an attempt to rape a minor girl, was today arrested from his residence.

The alleged crime occurred yesterday in a clinic located on the premises of Sai temple. The clinic is run by the management of the temple. Doctor CS Gupta (60) had retired as medical officer from Badshah Khan Civil Hospital here and was serving in the clinic, according to the police.

The police said an FIR was registered against the doctor yesterday on the basis of complaint of the 12-year-old victim. “The doctor has been booked under an attempt-to-rape case,” he added. The accused, however, is said to have denied the charge.

According to the police, the victim had visited the clinic along with her mother for cure of abdominal pain. The doctor made the mother sit outside the chamber, disrobed the girl and tried to rape her during the medical investigation. The mother, along with other patients, barged into the doctor’s chamber in response to distress calls of her daughter. The doctor had escaped from the place.