Dharamsala, March 30
Facing allegations of abetting self-immolation from the Chinese government and likely pressure from the Indian Government, the Dalai Lama today skipped the cremation of Jamphel Yeshi, a 26-year-old Tibetan exile who immolated himself in Delhi and was cremated at McLeodganj today.

The Dalai Lama also did not issue a statement over the self-immolation committed by Yeshi. The incident evoked tremendous response for the Tibetan exiles staying here.

Sources said since the Dalai Lama had retired as the political and administrative head of the Tibetan government-in-exile, he did not participate in today’s event as it was political in nature and organised by Tibetan NGOs.

Since the Prime Minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, Lobsang Sangay, was in Japan, speaker of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile Penpa Tsering addressed a large number of Tibetan exiles who had gathered this morning at the main temple opposite the Dalai Lama’s residence at McLeodganj.

Tsering said Hu Jintao was responsible for two more Tibetan deaths since he came to India. “We do not know how many Tibetan lives will be lost before the Tibet issue is resolved,” he said.

Besides the speaker, various MPs of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile were also present on the occasion.

Meanwhile, president of the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC), the largest group of Tibetan exiles, Tsewang Rigzin, who had come to the country to participate in the cremation procession of Yeshi, was detained by the Indian authorities at the Delhi airport yesterday. The TYC president is a US citizen and had arrived in India yesterday.

The coffin carrying Yeshi’s body arrived at Dharamsala this morning. A large number of Tibetan exiles on motor cycles and cars and carrying Tibetan flags flanked the vehicle carrying Yeshi’s body.

Tibetan protesters carried placards and banners seeking the international community’s and the UN’s intervention on the Tibet issue. A few young Tibetans were carrying placards displaying messages that “Tibetans may also get into a Syria-like situation”.

Yeshi’s coffin was kept in the Tsuglagkhang temple where thousands of Tibetan exiles paid homage to him. The body was carried in a procession to a cremation ground near McLeodganj where the last rites were performed by Yeshi’s family members.

The entire procession remained peaceful though the Himachal police was present in strength to prevent any untoward incident. Business establishments of the Tibetan exiles in McLeodganj also remained closed.

Shimla, March 30
The government today approved a proposal to enhance the Travelling Allowance (TA) and Daily Allowance (DA) of its employees and decided to implement a new vision document for the tourist destination of Manali and the agglomeration of the Kullu Valley Planning Area.

The decision was taken at the meeting of the state Cabinet that met under the chairmanship of Chief Minister PK Dhumal, here today. The DA rates for officials with a grade pay of Rs 10,000 and above will be Rs 250 within the state and for a grade pay of Rs 6,600-Rs 10,000 it will be Rs 200. Those in the grade pay of between Rs 5,000 and Rs 6,600 will get a daily allowance of Rs 180 and those between Rs 3,000 and Rs 5,000 will be entitled to Rs 160 per day.

The remaining employees in the pay grade between Rs 1,300 to Rs 3,000 will draw a daily allowance of Rs 130. Staff’s hotel charges and local transportation allowance outside the state have also been revised upward.

The fixed Travelling Allowance of panchayat secretaries and mukhya sevika in the Rural Development Department will be Rs 200 per month for remote area and Rs 150 in other area, Kanungo in the Forest Department - Rs 400 and Forest Guard - Rs 150, male and female health supervisor - Rs 350, male and female health workers - Rs 400, swasthya sahayak - Rs 120 and prashikshit dais - Rs 200. The field kanungo (mohal and field) will be paid a fixed TA of Rs 400, process server and jamadar (mohal) Rs 150, while process server and bailiffs in subordinate courts will get Rs 200 per month. It decided to grant two additional increments in place of one increment to drivers completing 20 years of continuous satisfactory service as on April 1, 2012, and provide two increments to employees adopting permanent family planning modes after having two or less surviving female children under the “Beti Hai Anmol Scheme” in the form of personal pay. It also decide to provide education loans of Rs 75,000 for one child (son or daughter) to employees to undertake professional courses and enhanced the grant-in-aid to families of employees who dies in harness equal to four times of the basic pay of the deceased employee subject to a minimum of Rs 35,000 and maximum of Rs 1 lakh.

It accepted the report of the inquiry commission on benami land transactions and directed the Home and Revenue departments to take immediate action in the cases mentioned in the report. It approved the extension of term of the commission up to May 31, 2012, to complete the left-out work. It approved six new fire posts at Dalhousie, Jogindernagar, Sujanpur, Nurpur, Jwalamukhi and Keylong and declared Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government Engineering Technology Institute, Manali, a constituent college of Himachal Pradesh Technical University.

It relaxed conditions applicable to hydroelectric projects in Chandra Bhaga and Spiti valleys with minimum capacity of 100 MW to execute self-identified projects up to 5MW to meet its requirement.

Such allottees will be required to pay additional royalty in addition to 6, 15 and 24 per cent of free power.

The new vision document to be implemented at Manali aimed at restoring the balance between environment and development, regional equity through dispersal of economic opportunities, defining horizons of growth, a new civic space and public places and enhancing the image structure of Manali.

It also decided to hold discussions with representatives of the Team Anna on the Lokayuta Bill, which will be put up on the website of the Home Department and the government to invite suggestions from thye civil society and public. It asked the Home Department to bring the Bill thereafter again before the Cabinet so that it could be introduced in the ongoing Budget session.

Shimla, March 30
The state Assembly today passed the Budget proposals for 2012-13 with the estimated expenditure for the year being pegged at Rs 20,243 crore.

It was after the completion of the debate on a cut motion on education that the Budget was approved after the Speaker, Tulsi Ram, applied the guillotine.

It was on March 19 that Chief Minister PK Dhumal had presented the Budget, announcing several sops for various sections of society in view of the elections due by the end of this year.

The Chief Minister while presenting the Budget had said the Budget being presented by him showed an increase of 109 per cent as compared to the last year Budget of Rs 9684.15 crore presented by the Congress regime in 2007-08.

The estimated expenditure on salaries alone accounts for Rs 6,285.10 crore while Rs 2784.71 crore will be spent on giving pension benefits to retired employees. The estimated expenditure on interest payments would be Rs 2,249.67 crore and loan repayments likely to touch Rs 1,937.30 crore.

The total revenue receipts are expected to touch Rs 16,342.98 crore while the total revenue expenditure will touch Rs 15,969.19 crore leaving a revenue surplus of Rs 373.79 crore. The fiscal deficit for 2012-13 is expected to be Rs 1939.35 crore, which is 2.88 per cent of the GSDP.

Shimla, March 30
Education Minister ID Dhiman said today that education had been accorded top priority by the government resulting in the state having the highest literacy percentage of 84 per cent and enrolment of 99.7 per cent.

Replying to the cut motion on the Education Department in the Assembly today, Dhiman said every possible effort had been made to improve infrastructure in educational institutions along with appointment of teachers so that there was no vacancy in interior and tribal areas.

“An allocation of Rs 3,419 crore has been made to the education sector as compared to a paltry amount of Rs 1,497 crore spent by the Congress when it was in power,” he said. He said there were over 15,000 primary, middle and high secondary schools in the state. He defended the Congress criticism of opening private universities by stating that this would provide quality education to people.

“Out of a total of over 11,000 students studying in these universities, about 6,364 are Himachalis so it is the people of the state who have benefited from this move,” he said.

He added that a separate Regulatory Commission for Private Universities had been appointed which had also issued notice to some institutes, including Manav Bharti.

He countered Congress attack of closing schools by stating that these had been merged and not closed as the number of children was too less. He added that almost 18,000 appointments had been made in the education department while 6,000 more were being done.

Earlier participating in the debate on the cut motion on the Education Department, Kaul Singh Thakur said the policy of privatisation and commercialisation being pursued by the BJP regime was neither in the interest of the state nor students.

“Rather than opening more schools, the government has denotified 187 schools and failed to fill almost 17,000 vacant posts of teacher,” he said. Participating in the debate, Harshwardhan Chauhan (Congress) said 11 private universities had been opened while four more had been issued letter of intent in a small state like Himachal.

He added that some of these universities were running unapproved courses and some had even started shifting students to their campuses in other states.

Kuldeep Pathania and Mukesh Agnihotri also criticised the government for failing to strengthen infrastructure in government educational institutions. Gangu Ram Musafir, Nand Lal, Subhash Manglet, Sohan Lal, Anil Sharma, Prakash Chaudhary and Rajesh Dharmani were among those who spoke. The cut motion was rejected.

Shimla, March 30
Food and Civil Supplies Minister Ramesh Dhawala said today that the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau was probing the pulses scam and action would be taken against the guilty.

Replying to a query raised by Vipin Parmar (BJP), Kaul Singh Thakur and Nand Lal (Congress) during question hour in the Assembly today, Dhawala said there was a provision for imposing a penalty of 20 per cent on the supplier along with return of the stock if it found to be sub-standard.

The minister said the probe in the pulses scam had been handed over to the Vigilance Bureau.

“I assure the House that the persons responsible for the irregularities would not be spared and the police is also looking into allegations that the pulses imported from outside were sold at Mumbai only and inferior quality stock was bought locally and supplied to consumers,” he said.

He lamented that it was on account of reduced quota of sugar, wheat, rice and kerosene that consumers were being given less and several requests had been made to the Centre to restore state’s quota as per population.

In reply to another question raised by GS Bali, Harshwardhan Chauhan and Sukhvinder Sukhu, all from the Congress, PWD Minister Gulab Singh Thakur said though this year no new national and state highways had been constructed in the state, the state government was spending money from its exchequer to maintain roads.

Thakur said there were 11 national and 19 state highways in the state and a sum of Rs 11.70 crore had been spent by the government for their maintenance.

“The Centre has not even paid the 25 per cent amount which it gives for maintenance of roads, but still we have made funds available for the repair of these roads,” he said.

In reply to another question by Randhir Sharma (BJP) about teaching of Urdu and Punjabi languages in select schools, Education Minister ID Dhiman said Punjabi was being taught in 79 schools.

“Though a decision had been made to introduce both these languages in 100 schools, with less than 20 children opting for these subjects it has been started only in 79 schools so far,” he added.

Shimla, March 30
With the outstanding loans crossing the Rs 4,200-crore mark, the cash-strapped state electricity board has landed in a debt trap. The situation has become so grim that it is raising short term loans to repay old ones. However, with the Reserve Bank of India issuing instructions to banks to limit exposure to power distribution companies in view of their failing financial health, the board will find it increasingly difficult to secure new loans.

The information provided by the government in the Vidhan Sabha reveals that the outstanding short and long-term loans amounted to Rs 2,990 crore as on February 29, 2012. The board was running an overdraft of Rs 612 crore and it had also exhausted its cash credit limit of Rs 400 crore. Besides, it has also raised an amount of Rs 215 crore against fixed deposits. With an average rate of interest in excess of 10 per cent, it is paying an interest of Rs 400 crore annually. The total outstanding amount was likely to cross Rs 4,500 crore by the end of the financial year.

Worse, it is taking short-term loans to repay the loans that are not permissible. As a result, the state electricity regulatory commission has not been allowing an interest of about Rs 200 crore in the aggregate revenue requirement for determination of tariff, adding to the revenue gap with each passing year.

The total income from tariff is about Rs 3,400 crore, which is not enough even to meet the employees cost (Rs 1000 crore) and power purchase cost (Rs 2500 crore).

Taking into account the interest, maintenance, and other administrative costs, the total outgo is over Rs 4,000 crore. The revenue gap of over Rs 700 crore cannot be met by increasing the tariff as it will put more burden on consumers or the government would have to shell out a huge amount as subsidy.

However, the power purchase cost could be reduced if the government provides its own power to the board at the average procurement rate of Rs 2.02 per unit for hydropower instead of the current Rs 3.44 per unit. Besides, the board should be allowed to retain the additional 450 million units power available from the BBMB, which is the cheapest at 50 paise per unit, in the wake of the Supreme Court verdict. The board has a rightful claim over the additional power as the court verdict has not made any material change and only allowed its full claim of 7.19 per cent instead of the ad hoc allocation of 2.5 per cent.

This will help bring the power purchase cost by about Rs 200 crore. Further, arrears on account of the enhanced BBMB share should be used to repay the loans to save the board from collapse.

Solan, March 30
With no bidder having come forward to pay Rs 14.18 crore for the Parwanoo barrier despite two auctions and several rounds of negotiations, the Excise and Taxation Department had to finally allot it at a lower price of Rs 11.52 crore.

The department was forced to scale down the reserve price in several rounds of negotiations held last evening as the bidders were not inclined to bid for the price fixed by the department.

AETC Rakesh Sharma said they had allotted the barrier for Rs 11.52 crore to KD Sharma though the final approval was awaited.

Since the tenure of the present contractor ends on March 31, the department had to decide this case yesterday or else it would have been compelled to operate the barrier on its own from April 1.No bidder came forward to bid for even Rs 12 crore though the department had scaled down the reserve price to Rs 13.75 crore after the first unsuccessful attempt.

Even in the first round of negotiations, held at the headquarters, the bidders did not budge from their stand.

Officials in the department said the problem arose as last year’s auction had fetched an unprecedented hike of 68.88 per cent from the earlier Rs 8 crore to Rs 13.5 crore. This was considered an exorbitant hike.

Another reason which was considered a loss-making proposition for the contractor was that a large number of passes had to be issued to vehicles of those visiting the state on a daily basis for business. Since the state government had earlier notified that vehicles registered in other states would have to pay the full entry fee but later it was rolled back following pressure from various industry associations, the contractors had presen ed their case for a suitable compensation.

The department is also auctioning the Tipra-Timber Trail barrier, along with the Parwanoo and Sector 4 barriers, as the road will be open to traffic once the four-laning is completed by mid-April.

Hamirpur, March 30
More than 3,000 krishak mitras, working at the gram panchayat level in the state, have rued the alleged government apathy towards their demands and for not making any provision to pay them a monthly remuneration.

The krishak mitras, who are working in 3,159 gram panchayats of the total 3,243 in the state, are not paid any remuneration at present.

The only expenditure the state Agriculture Department makes on them is Rs 4,000 per annum each for taking them on tours to agriculture and horticulture universities and give them training.

They were appointed an an initiative of the Central Government to provide help to farmers at the panchayat level throughout the country and to popularise various government schemes and help them in farming.

In Himachal Pradesh, 3,159 krishak mitras were selected to work at the gram panchayat level on October 2, 2010, and they have been working since then.

District president of the Himachal Pradesh Krishak Mitras Sangh Ashok Thakur said, “Though we have been on the job for a year and a half now, neither the Centre nor the state government has framed a policy for paying us a monthly remuneration.”

“We must be paid Rs 4,000 per month as remuneration, allowed to sit in gram sabha meetings and accommodated in the panchayat ghar,” he added.

Krishak mitras are doing several kinds of work at the panchayat level like helping farmers by giving them advice for making vermicompost, getting their soil tested and making soil-testing cards, distributing subsidised and free seeds and providing saplings.

Chief Minister PK Dhumal has assured the krishak mitras that he will take up their case with the Centre. 

Nurpur, March 30
Rail traffic on the Pathankot-Jogindernagar narrow gauge, which had been terminated from Pathankot to Nagrota Surian stations in August last year after the washing away of a supporting pillar of the Chakki railway bridge, is being restored on March 31. There was a lot of hue and cry among commuters visiting Pathankot and passengers who have inadequate means of transport in lower Kangra district comprising Nurpur and Jawali subdivisions.

The Railway Department, which had undertaken reconstruction work on the washed away pillar and repaired another damaged pillar of the bridge on a war footing, completed construction work on March 27. It started a trial run on the track.

Laxman Thakur, Railway Traffic Inspector, said the rail engine and an empty coach were plied on the track as trial on Wednesday and two unoccupied trains plied later to ensure safe and smooth rail traffic on it. “All trains on this narrow gauge are being restored from the railway station at Pathankot on Saturday,” he added. 

Kangra, March 30
Three persons, including a girl, succumbed to their burn injuries at DRPGMC, Tanda, during the past 24 hours, the police said here today.

Jyoti (22) of Katora village of this district received 85 per cent burn injuries when her clothes caught fire in kitchen. Leakage of LPG was reported to be the cause of the fire. She was rushed to a hospital at Nagrota Surian from where she was later referred to DRPGMC, Tanda.

Doctors at the DRPGMC Tanda declared her brought dead, the police said.

Arun Kumar (16) of Chamunda had received 55 per cent burn injuries and was rushed to DRPGMC, Tanda, where he succumbed to his burn injuries yesterday, the police said.

The cause of the fire could not be established, it added.

In another incident, Uttam Chand (35) of Suchar village of Bharmour tehsil of Chamba district received 70 per cent burn injuries when kerosene kept in kitchen caught fire. He was rushed to a Bharmour hospital. He was later rushed to DRPGMC, Tanda, where he succumbed to his injuries late last night.