Panipat, December 26
With four thermal units of 1,610 MW capacity units down, unscheduled power cuts have become the order of the day.

Sources in the Haryana Power Generation Corporation (HPGCL) said two 600 MW units at Khedar thermal plant and one unit each at Yamunanagar and Panipat thermal stations stopped generation affecting the overall pwer situation in the state.

HPGCL is withdrawing about 500 MW from the Northern Grid, but is still not able to meet the demand.

The power demand in the state was over 1,020 lakh units daily and the peak load shortage was over 1,100 MW. The power supply is short by more than 200 lakh units, sources said. On Sunday, HPGCL drew more than its share from the grid.

The planned 15-day maintenance schedule of unit number 1 of 600 MW capacity at Khedar has been extended twice and is likely to become operational this week. The second 600 MW unit at the same thermal power plant tripped yesterday night due to condenser leakage. The unit was revived after two hours, but tripped again at midnight, sources said.

The Yamunanagar unit-2 is under forced outage for three months after water started leaking from the turbine on September 25.

Though job orders for the repairs had been given, there was an abnormal delay in response.

The unit number 2 at the Panipat thermal power plant also tripped last Tuesday. It has not been revived. The coal stock at Panipat and Yamunanagar is also a cause of worry. According to the an official report, Panipat has four days of coal stock while Yamunanagar has only two days of stock.

Chandigarh, December 26
After sitting over the appointment of the Haryana Electricity Regulatory Commission (HERC) chairman for several months, the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government has recommended the name of its former IAS officer, RN Prashar, for the post. He will succeed Bhaskar Chatterjee, also a former IAS officer of the Haryana cadre.

According to sources, a high-level committee of the Haryana Government has recommended the name of Prashar, a retired IAS officer of the 1975 batch, to the Governor. A notification regarding appointment would be issued after a nod from Raj Bhavan.

Set up on August 17, 1998, as an independent statutory body corporate as per the provision of the Haryana Electricity Reform Act, 1997, HERC plays an important role in the process of reform restructuring of the power sector in the state.

Once appointed, Prashar would have to take a call on the “unpopular” decision to hike power tariff in the state. Already the two power distribution companies — the Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (UHBVN) and the Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN) — have sent an SOS to the commission to hike power tariff in the backdrop of the accumulated losses, loans and other liabilities to the tune of Rs 16,000 crore.

Besides, the two power utilities have a projected revenue gap of whopping Rs 7,755 crore for the year 2012-13, including a rural electrification component of Rs 3,431 crore for subsided power supply to the farm sector.

With populism of the Hooda government regarding the supply of subsided power to the farm sector and the poorer sections of society ruling the roost, the new chairman would face a herculean task to put the power distribution companies back on track. This coupled with mismanagement and high aggregate technical and commercial losses (AT&C) would make his assignment more challenging.

In the past, the commission had sought state government’s intervention to save to power utilities from financial crisis. 

Chandigarh, December 26
The Haryana Civil Medical Services Association has decided to withdraw its agitation following the acceptance and implementation of a majority of its demands by the state government.

Stating this here today, president of the association Rajesh Khyalia said the decision to withdraw the agitation was taken at a meeting held in Rohtak yesterday.

The Haryana government doctors had gone on mass casual leave on November 8 and November 9, paralysing the health services in the state, to press their demands. The agitation was suspended till December 27 following an assurance from the government.

Khyalia said the government had agreed to count non-practising allowance for leave encashment at the time of retirement. It had also relaxed its post-graduation policy to meet the shortage of specialist doctors in the state and had also restored 285 posts of medical officers, which were shifted from rural to urban areas.

He said the government had also agreed to speed up the promotion of doctors at the SMO, CMO and Director levels and to create an additional post of director-general, health services. Khyalia hoped that the government would also resolve the other issues like not treating the period of mass casual leave as “absence from duty”, post-graduation increment and higher entry-level pay scale. 

Chandigarh, December 26
Haryana Janhit Congress president Kuldeep Bishnoi today moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court with his counsel Satya Pal Jain and Dhiraj Jain filing two writ petitions against three former HJC MLAs and Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

In the first petition, Bishnoi has urged the High Court to initiate contempt proceedings against Sat Pal Sangwan, Rao Narendra Singh and Vinod Bhayana for continuing to hold the posts of Minister and Chief Parliamentary Secretary (CPS) despite the directions given by the High Court on December 20.

In the second petition, Bishnoi urged the court to issue a notice to the Haryana Government seeking explanation from the Chief Minister as to why the three MLAs had not been removed from their posts. The counsel mentioned the petitions before Mr Justice Augustine George Masih, the senior most vacation judge.

Jain contended that on December 20, a Division Bench comprising Mr Justice M.M. Kumar and Mr Justice Gurdev Singh directed the Speaker of the Haryana Assembly to decide the disqualification petitions filed by Bishnoi against five former HJC MLAs who had “defected” to the Congress by April 30, 2012.

The Division Bench, Jain said, also directed that these three MLAs “shall not hold any office till the decision of the disqualification petitions.” However, Sangwan and Narendra Singh were still Ministers in the Hooda government, while Bhayana continued to be CPS. Thus they had committed contempt of court.

After hearing Jain, Mr Justice Masih ordered that the petitions should be listed for hearing on January 2.

After submitting a memorandum to the Haryana Governor on December 23, Bishnoi said he would file a contempt petition in the High Court if the defector MLAs were not removed. 

Sirsa, December 26
Villagers and schoolchildren at Jogiwala in the district have been sitting on a dharna for the past six days in support of their demand to upgrade their middle school to the senior secondary level.

The villagers have locked the school building and have not been allowing the teachers to run the school.

The villagers, including women and children, sit on a dharna outside the school building in the morning and remain their till late in the evening.

The agitating villagers Harbans Khetlan, Sadasukh Jandu, Devi Lal and Ramji Lal said they had given representations to the authorities several times, but to no avail.

The villagers alleged that their children had to go to other villages for pursuing their studies after the VIIIth standard, and as there was no bus service, they had to go on foot in this chilly weather.

The villagers said they would not open the school till the authorities conceded their demand, and warned that if the authorities used force to open the school, they would not send their children in.

Yamunanagar, December 26
The district administration and the National Highway Authorities in a joint operation here today removed a major part of the encroachments on NH-73 near Kamani Chowk, Yamunanagar.

Deputy Commissioner Ashok Sangwan appointed three officers as duty magistrates -- Devender Kaushik, subdivisional magistrate, Jagadhari, Paramjit Singh Chahal, tehsildar, and Suresh Kumar, naib tehsildar, with a police force to maintain law and order near Kamani Chowk during the removal of encroachments.

The sources said that an encroachment was also in the shape of a religious structure built around a huge banyan tree and was causing hindrance to the free-flow of traffic on the national highway at this major intersection. Early in the morning, officers of the National Highway Authorities, including Sahib Singh, SDO, accompanied by a large contingent of the police force and duty magistrates removed the encroachment in a peaceful manner.

Sangwan said notices had already been sent to all encroachers to demolish encroachments but no action was taken by the violators and encroachers and the district administration had no alternative except to demolish these structures. He said three duty magistrates would look after the law and order situation during drive to remove encroachments over the government land with the help of the police force.

The Deputy Commissioner said arrangements for diverting the traffic during the operation had been made with the help of the local police before the drive. An order under Section 144, CrPC, was also passed by the district magistrate to prevent any untoward incident in the vicinity of 500 metres of the intersection.

Sahib Singh, SDO, National Highway, Yamunanagar, said the removal of the encroachment would enable the National Highway Authorities to make a slip road and improve the traffic flow in the area. During the past two years, six people had been killed in fatal accidents on this intersection, the sources added. 

Sirsa, December 26
Nearly 20% of children in the age group of 11-14 years in the district have dropped out of schools, according to a survey.

The survey was conducted by the authorities under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). There were about 70,000 children in the district in the 11-14 years age group. Of them, 14,333 either dropped out of schools or never joined any.

The dropout is much lesser in the age group of 6 to 11 years, where 3,493 children were found to have dropped out of school.

The survey found that there were 1,26,428 children in the district in the age group of 6 to 11 years and out of these 1,22,735 were enrolled in different schools.

The dropouts were not only prevalent in the rural areas of the district, but the urban areas also. Of the 3,493 children outside the school system, 1,847 were from rural areas and 1,646 from the urban areas.

An official spokesperson said under a special drive launched by the SSA, the authorities have enrolled over 900 dropout children to various schools.

The spokesperson said under the Right to Education Act, a child has a right to get admission to his “age appropriate class”, irrespective of the fact whether she or he has passed the previous classes or not.

The authorities, the spokesperson said, had been providing “bridge course” to such children so that they could compete with others in their classes.

Chandigarh, December 26
The Haryana School Shiksha Pariyojna Parishad has decided to enhance the honorarium of volunteers working at Child Care Centres of Model Cluster Schools, set up under the National Programme for Education of Girls at Elementary Level (NPEGEL) from Rs 625 to Rs 1,400 per month. The blocks housing these schools are spread over 10 districts of Haryana.

This decision was taken at the 33rd meeting of the executive committee of the Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan chaired by Chief Secretary Urvashi Gulati here. The national programme for education of girls is a focussed intervention of the Government of India aimed at reaching the “hardest to reach” girls, especially those not in school. There is provision to run two child care centres in each Model Cluster School (MCS) with the provision of play way material, and an honorarium of Rs 6,000 per MCS to the volunteers.

The volunteers, who are at least Class X pass, take care of the young siblings attending schools along with their elder sisters. It helps in completion of the girls' elementary education.

In her directions to the ADC who are responsible for implementation of the Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan in districts, Mrs Gulati said : "We would not achieve the objective of Right to Education Act merely by enrolling children in schools. Each and every component of the programme should be followed religiously. Learning levels should be benchmarked by conducting regular surveys, imparting training and bridge courses, remedial coaching, perfect monitoring and strong evaluation of the impact of the steps taken in this direction".

The Chief Secretary issued directions that water conservation and water harvesting methodologies should be explored for schools in the lowlying areas. 

Sirsa, December 26
The authorities have issued a final warning to the property dealers to get themselves registered under the Haryana Regulation of Property Dealers and Consultancy Act 2008 by December 31.

Out of the 200 dealers, merely 30 dealers have so far applied for registration.

The Act is aimed at safeguarding the interests of persons using the services of property dealers, property consultants and real-estate agents.

According to the Act, no property dealer or his representative without obtaining a licence can enter into transactions of sale, purchase, exchange, letting or taking on lease between the buyer and seller, lessor and lessee, landlord and tenant, including the collection of rent with respect to immovable property with anybody in any manner.

Besides fixing commission charges for agents, the Act also aims at checking ‘fly by night’ operators and those who do not follow healthy real estate practices.

However, the property dealers here are not willing to pay Rs 25,000, which is the fee for registration of their establishments under the Act.

The dealers have held several meetings with the authorities, including the DC Sameer Pal Srow, as they want some concession in the amount.

The authorities have now announced that the unregistered shops of property dealers would not be allowed to function after December 31.

Sirsa, December 26
Three unidentified men looted over Rs 11 lakh from a trader after hitting him on his head with a rod in a busy Gole Market area of Dabwali town in the district today.

A critically injured trader, Ramesh Mittal, has been shifted to Ludhiana for treatment. The police has not made any headway in the case.

Mittal is a proprietor of a factory that deals in sugar, at Mandi Dabwali. He left for the local branch of the Oriental Bank of Commerce at about 12 noon to deposit Rs 11.67 lakh, sources said.

As the trader carrying money in a bag walked towards the bank, the assailants struck him with an iron rod.

The armed men snatched the bag containing money from Mittal and made good their escape before the trader could call people for help.

The lane where the incident occurred is on the backside of the shops and remains lonely. That’s why shopkeepers could not notice anything suspicious, police said.

Superintendent of polic Devender Yadav said the case was handed over to the Crime Investigation Agency (CIA) staff and the Detective staff of the district police and three teams had been constituted to nab the culprits.

Since Dabwali is located on the Punjab border, the task of the police has become even tougher.

The police has sealed borders and informed its counterparts in nearby Punjab towns.

Local shopkeepers closed their shops for sometime in protest. They alleged that it was the second such incident in Gole Market in a week.

Earlier, the shopkeepers alleged that miscreants had looted Rs 18,000 from a liquor vend. The polic is yet to trace the accused. 

Gurgaon, December 26
The residents of Haryana will now get smart cards in place of ration cards. A pilot project has been started in the district.

This was stated by the Haryana Financial Commissioner-cum-Principal Secretary of the Food and Supplies Department, Shakuntala Jakhu, while presiding over a recent meeting of district officers at the local mini-secretariat.

“The Central Government has chosen Haryana and Chandigarh for the preparation of smart cards in place of ration cards as a pilot project. It has already been started in four blocks -- Gharonda, Ambala, Sirsa and Sonipat. Now, the districts in which these blocks are situated would be covered, in addition to Gurgaon,” she said. The job of preparing smart cards in the entire state would be completed by June, 2013. Jakhu said ration card was an important document even for those who do not get subsidised supply.

A comprehensive survey will be carried out with the help of the Booth-Level Officers (BLO) appointed by the Election Department.

Fatehabad, December 26
The agitation of farmers against the acquisition of their land for the Gorakhpur Atomic Power Project entered its 500th day today.

The agitating farmers have been sitting on a dharna outside the local mini-secretariat since August 2010, a few days after the state government issued a notification for the acquisition of 1,313 acre 5 kanal and 13 marla land of Gorakhpur for the setting up of the nuclear power plant.

The Kisan Sangharsh Samiti, which is spearheading the agitation, said the Gorakhpur farmers would not yield an inch of their fertile land for the nuclear plant.

The nuclear power plant will not only uproot the farmers, but would also have dangerous consequences for the people living in its vicinity, the samiti said.

Meanwhile, the farmers have been braving hostile weather, but have not budged. The agitating farmers, most of them over 60 years of age, sleep in the open under a tent in these chilly nights.

Bhagu Ram, an agitating farmer, had died of cold in last December, while Parkash Siwach, another farmer, suffered a severe pain in the chest, while sleeping at the dharna site in the night two days back. Ram Kumar and Ishwar Siwach, two other farmers, have also died during this agitation. 

Fatehabad, December 26
Three youths died instantly when their scooter collided with a truck on the railway over bridge in Tohana Town yesterday.

The truck dragged the scooter to some distance and all victims were crushed under its front wheels, said police.

The truck driver, who jumped out of his vehicle in his effort to flee from the accident site, was seriously injured as he fell from the over bridge. He has been rushed to Ludhiana hospital with serious backbone injuries.

The deceased were on their way to Kalyan Nagar area of the town when the incident took place. They have been identified as Satish (30), Rajnish (23) and Kalu (22).

Jhajjar, December 26
Two men reportedly died of suffocation at Indira Gandhi Super Power Thermal Plant in Jharli village here late last night. The deceased have been identified as Kapoor (55) and Sunder (35) of Akheri village here. Kapoor was associated as security guard with Mukund Company while Sunder was working as watchman with Indiwork Company.

The incident came to notice when some labourers found the duo lying inside the plant when they came to duty in the morning today. They immediately informed the police about the incident.

The police said the victims in order to keep themselves warm put on a bonfire inside the plant last night. They fell asleep without extinguishing the bonfire and died of suffocation apparently due to fumes coming from the bonfire.

Residents of Akheri village blocked the Matanhel-Bahujhholari road outside the plant when news of death spread in the village. They were demanding Rs 10 lakh compensation each to next kin of the deceased. The Jhajjar DSP Sukhbir Singh along with police force rushed to the spot but the protesters did not relent.

The protesters later lifted the blockade following an assurance made by the Jhajjar DC Ajit Balaji Joshi. He said a compensation of Rs 5 lakh each would be given. Meanwhile, a 45-year-old man, identified as Hargun Singh of West Bengal, was crushed to death by unidentified vehicle outside the plant this morning. 

Kurukshetra, December 26
Rani Shangla (70), a freedom fighter, died of prolonged illness here yesterday.

She along with her father participated in the Quit India Movement launched by Mahatma Gandhi.

During the Bhoo-daan Andolan of Vinobha Bhave, she and her family donated 1,000 bigha land for the landless.

Her cremation was largely attended. Her daughter, Dr Neelima Shangla, Additional Sessions Judge, Sirsa, lit the pyre.