Bathinda, May 8
A week after Bathinda police busted a gang of vehicle lifters and recovered 15 stolen vehicles from their possession, on April 30, the district police today again claimed to have recovered 26 more vehicles and arrested three members of the gang. However, a key member of the gang, a deed writer at the Bathinda courts, is still at large.

Addressing the media persons here today, SSP Dr Sukhchain Singh Gill and in-charge, Anti-narcotics cell, Rajinder Kumar said three people, including two brothers, had been arrested.

Police have recovered 22 motorcycles, two Activa scooters, a Bolero jeep and an Indigo car. The stolen vehicles have been recovered from different places in Bathinda, Mansa and adjoining areas.

All three were arrested near the grain market. The accused have been identified as 55-year-old Amarjit Singh from the Guru Ki Nagri area of Bathinda, who is a seasoned criminal and has been involved in lifting vehicles for the last few years.

The other two arrested include 25-year-old Mangal Singh, an amateur, and his younger brother Zorawar Singh, from village Buta in Kapurthala. Both have a history of being involved in criminal activities for the last one year.

One of the main members of the gang, Vijay Kumar Badla, a deed writer on the Bathinda court premises, is at large.

Cops said while the three arrested accused used to steal the vehicles, Badla was entrusted with the task of preparing fake documents of the stolen vehicles, getting their number plates re-painted and selling the same in the open market.

The members of the gang first tore the original papers of the stolen vehicles, if available, and then proceeded with making their fake copies.

SSP Dr Gill further said the deed writer Badla may have some criminal background as well. “We are not sure about it. But we are tracing his antecedents as well,” he said.

The SSP said police was trying to trace the original owners of the stolen vehicles with the help of the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) data. “The chassis numbers of the recovered vehicles are being used to trace their owners,” he said.

Bathinda, May 8
The applicants for the plots in Bathinda Development Authority’s (BDA) phase IV and phase V, who are seeking refund of the earnest money, have demanded that the two per cent reduction charges levied on them should be waived.

One of the applicants, Yudhishthir Lal Chopra, retired head of the department of economics from Government Rajindra College, said he approached the BDA seeking refund of his earnest money deposited for the plot the draw for which was to be held in December last year.

“I was told that two per cent would be reduced from the earnest money which I borrowed as loan from the bank. I have been paying interest on that amount for the last six months,” he said.

Chopra said such an attitude on the part of the BDA amounted to violation of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986.

“BDA authorities said they have mentioned it in the brochure for the project that anyone seeking refund of the earnest money before the draw would be charged two per cent reduction fee. But in the present case, the failure is on the part of the BDA,” pointed out another applicant, Savita Rani.

Savita Rani said people were being wrongly penalised for the BDA’s myopic vision. She said when the BDA did not have the complete possession of the land, it should not have gone forth with the project.

The applicants demanded that the BDA should instead pay them the interest for four out of the last six months.

“The dispute over the piece of land under litigation came to BDA’s notice before the draw. As its moral duty, the BDA should have committed some per cent of rate of interest to the applicants,” said Chander Mohan, an advocate.

He added that when the BDA did not commit anything, it should at least waive the deduction of two per cent on the earnest money deposited.

Bathinda, May 8
The government schools in the home district of Education Minister, Sikandar Singh Maluka, have cremation grounds and village ponds (containing sewage of the whole village) in their neighborhood.

At village Chak Attar Singh Wala, the government primary school shares its boundary wall with a cremation ground. “Whenever anyone’s last rituals are being conducted, students give the school a miss. Even if they are present, they are scared because of the wailing and crying,” confided a teacher.

The school has a high boundary wall separating it from the cremation ground, but it does not serve the purpose.

Similarly, at Dhobiana Basti in Bathinda, the government primary school is run with the village pond, full of sewage, located in its neighborhood.

The school has only two rooms, 410 students and eight teachers. The school does not have any toilet or arrangement for drinking water. In the absence of adequate facilities, some students sit under makeshift tents, while the other half of the school is run from a “dharamshala”.

In the Education Minister’s own constituency, Rampura, at village Kothe Malluana, the government school has only nine children and two teachers, whereas in the primary school at Ballo, one teacher teaches 100 students.

Similarly, in village Lulbai, 140 students have one teacher.

At village Raike Kalan (Nehri Kothi), the government primary school has no building and is being run from the government secondary school premises. Similarly, the primary school in village Kothe Multania has no building of its own and is being run out of a rented accommodation.

In the absence of a boundary wall at the Phool town’s primary school, the school’s ground serves as a passage for the villagers.

At village Mandi Kalan, the school is situated besides the village pond, while at village Burj, the primary school and the village pond, share the same boundary wall.

Students in both the schools suffer more during the summers and the rainy season when the pond starts emanating a foul smell.

District Education Officer (Elementary) Malkiat Kaur said Bathinda district has already sent its list of demands to the Director General of School Education (DGSE) Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan.

“Funds were sanctioned for constructing 28,000 metre of boundary wall in the primary and elementary schools of the district. However, we are yet to receive funds for the same,” she added.

Bathinda, May 8
Despite the approval of the budget to the tune of Rs 13 crore by the office of the Joint Development Commissioner (JDC), Punjab, for the MGNREGA (labour and material), funds are yet to be received by the MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) wing of this district.

The approval was given in the first week of April this year for the Bathinda district for the year 2012-13.

Sources said in the first week of April, a demand of Rs 2 crore was also sent by the local MGNREGA office to the state government for releasing the amount, but no funds had been released so far.

Earlier, in the first week of March this year, a demand for Rs 2 crore had been sent. However, an amount of Rs 66 lakh had been released by the state government then.

Thus, the local MGNREGA office still required Rs 1 crore to clear the pending payments of labour and material for the period up to March 31 last, they added.

Besides, due to one reason or the other, the annual contract of all 117 MGNREGA employees of the district could also not be renewed for the year 2012-13 so far. The contract was to be renewed from April this year.

Due to the non-renewal of the contract and shortage of funds in the contingency, all the employees could not get their salary for April so far.

However, these employees had succeeded in getting their salary for the months of February and March only last week. There are 89 Gram Sewaks, 11 computer assistants, eight technical assistants, seven assistant programme officers (APOs), one accounts manager and one complaint assistant in the district.

Sources said the contract employees were paid salaries from the contingency, equal to 5.75 per cent of the total expenditure, incurred on MGNREGA labour and material.

They said due to the shortage of funds. the MGNREGA work in the district was being executed slowly. So the amount of the contingency with the MGNREGA office here was also not enough to make the payments of the salary and meet the administrative expenditures.

The MGNREGA employees have demanded from the state government to pay their salaries every month, in place of linking it with the funds available in the contingency, as they were not getting their salaries regularly. 

Bathinda, May 8
Jatin Goyal, a resident of Bhagu road, has added another feather to his cap. His name is also on the list of those who cracked the UPSC Civil Services exam this year.

Jatin, who did his schooling from the St Joseph’s School, pursued mechanical engineering and then went on to do an MBA in rural management from IRMA in Gujarat. Instead of taking up the lucrative corporate job offers, he preferred to work with the NGO Pratham.

“It was while working with the NGO that the realisation dawned upon me that much bigger things could be done for the uplift of society by being a part of the government sector. And that is when I decided to appear for the UPSC exam,” a jubilant Jatin says.

“My first attempt was a rather half-baked one as I started preparing for it only a month before the preliminaries. I took proper coaching for the second attempt and managed to crack the exam. My optional subjects were public administration and Punjabi literature,” he said.

Bathinda, May 8
Central University of Punjab organised a special lecture on the 'Distribution of income in the post-reform (post-globalisation) period' at its city campus today. Noted economist Prof Sucha Singh Gill, Director General, Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID), Chandigarh, was present at the CUP to deliver the lecture.

Prof Gill began his lecture by pointing out that in the post-reform and the post-globalisation period, the Indian economy was trying to follow in the footsteps of the Western economies. He said this was evident by the freedom being given to the private and corporate sector. The abolition of the licence permit raj and the ceiling on investment limits by private sector were indicators of this.

Elaborating on the nature of income distribution in India, Prof Gill pointed out that the distribution of income was not only determined by purely economic factors but also by political processes which were, in a way, supported by bureaucratic and political set-up.

He said while the primary or the agricultural sector was seeing a decline, the next best bet for the labour — the secondary or the manufacturing sector — had also reached a saturation point. He added that the services or the tertiary sector was gaining and expanding tremendously.

Dividing the labour force into the organised public sector, the organised private sector and the unorganised sector, he said the organised sector was marked by the quality of employment that it offers. A job in the organised public sector has the promise of continuity of employment, post-retirement and on-job benefits apart from participation in the decision-making process.

He also pointed out that due to these reasons, gradually, the labour was shifting towards the organised private sector not only from the unorganised sector but also from the organised public sector.

He said 76.7 per cent of the total population is engaged in the unorganised sector as wage labourers and self-employed in tiny enterprises both in rural and urban areas.

The development process in the country led by corporate sector has yielded little benefit to this section.

The lecture was followed by a question answer session with the students and the faculty members of CUP. 

Bathinda, May 8
A Powercom team, that had gone to village Chotiyan in Rampura Phul tehsil to check power theft, was assaulted today.

XEN, Rampura Phul, RK Goyal said a team including SDO Vijay Kumar, three junior engineers and other staff members reached the village early in the morning at 5:30 am.

“The team detected power theft at three places. This did not go down 
well with the villagers. They held up the team members and beat them up,” Goyal said.

The officials said Mohan Singh, Kartar Singh and Bhoora Singh, all consumers, were caught red-handed stealing power.

Irate at this, the villagers assaulted the Powercom team. The SDO, Vijay Kumar, lineman Gurdeep Singh and Narinderpal Singh, sustained injuries in the incident.

On receiving information regarding the assault, senior Powercom officials too reached the spot.

Based on a complaint lodged by Powercom officials, the police have registered a case against the three accused.

The villagers alleged that their power supply has been cut off after the incident, while Powercom officials said the line has developed a technical snag and no Powercom worker is ready to repair it as a mark of protest against the conduct of the villagers.

Bathinda, May 8
The Civil Lines police has arrested a man for abusing his wife.

In her complaint to the police, Taruna Chhabra, a resident of Pukhraj Colony, Bathinda, stated that she was married to Amandeep Singh of the same area on March 11 this year.

She alleged that her husband was a drug addict and had beaten her up in a drunken state on May 6. Police has subsequently arrested the accused. 

Bathinda, May 8
Miscreants thrashed a retired doctor from the Army, Dr Darshan Singh Randhawa, at Jogi Nagar and snatched his motorcycle from him.

In his complaint to the Canal Colony police, Randhawa’s son Jaswinder Singh, a resident of Gopal Nagar, stated that the incidence took place on May 4 at around 9:30 pm.

Dr Randhawa had gone to the vegetable market at Jogi Nagar. He forgot to lock the two-wheeler and left its key intact. Suddenly, he heard his motorcycle being switched on. He ran towards the youths who were trying to take away the vehicle. However, they thrashed Dr Randhawa and fled with the motorcycle.

Bathinda, May 8
The court of the district and sessions judge SK Aggarwal today awarded seven years of rigorous imprisonment to a man for raping a minor girl.

Happy Singh, a resident of village Shergarh under the Talwandi Sabo tehsil, has been held guilty of raping a minor from his village. In his complaint to the police, the girl's father stated that his daughter went missing on June 7 last year when everybody in the house was asleep.

The family tried to locate the girl in neighborhood and amongst relatives, but failed. The girl came back after a week on June 14, 2011, and alleged that Happy Singh had forcibly taken her away. The accused allegedly took her to village Khuajawala in Bikaner district of Rajasthan. There, he kept her in an abandoned house and raped her. Later, the police arrested the accused.

The accused, Happy Singh, pleaded before court for a lenient view stating that he is young and has elderly parents and younger brothers to support. However, the court awarded him five years of imprisonment and imposed on him a fine of Rs 5,000 under section 366 of the IPC. He was also awarded seven years of imprisonment and awarded a fine of Rs 7,000 under section 376 IPC. Both the sentences would run concurrently.

The court has also directed that an amount of Rs 5,000 be paid to the victim.

Bathinda, May 8
Three bodies were found in the Bhakra canal at Golewala headworks today. The volunteers of the NGO, Sahara Welfare Society, received information about three bodies floating near the headworks.

The volunteers pulled out all the three bodies in the presence of the local police. None of the bodies could be identified. All the bodies are 7-8 days old and are that of males.

One body is of a 22-year-old youngster who is wearing a T-shirt and an underwear and has a locket around his neck. The other body is that of a 70-year- old man with long hair and white beard. He is wearing a white kurta and has a peacock tattooed on one thigh and a star on the other. The third body is of a 40-year-old man. All the bodies have been kept at the Talwandi Sabo Civil Hospital for identification.