Gurgaon, August 13
Maruti Suzuki said today that its Manesar plant could not be opened yet as it was not satisfied with the safety and security measures there.

With the Special Investigation Team failing to submit its report, Maruti said it could not plan the reopening of the plant, which had been lying idle since a riot last month killed one employee.

“Our position is the same as it was in the beginning. We will decide on the date of opening the plant when we are satisfied with the safety and security of all our employees,” said Maruti Chairman RC Bhargava.

“The police is making tall claims but it is of no use. it has not given a report about the July 18 violence, so what do we do?” added a senior management official.

The state administration has said it would position a police battalion at the plant due to the “security threat” once the production is resumed.

“The 500-600 police personnel will continue to be positioned there till the next decision is taken after the reopening of the plant. Though we have been giving full security and the plant is safe, some people apprehend a threat. I would say there is no fear in reopening the plant,” said Joint Commissioner of Police Anil Kumar.

Maruti Suzuki stopped production at the Manesar plant on July 19.

Gurgaon, August 13
A Delhi Police team has reached Goa to dig out ‘links’ in the Geetika Sharma suicide case. Geetika had stated in her suicide note that Kanda "has illegal relationship with a woman named ***** and has a girl child from her". The Delhi police said the woman was based in Goa. She earlier resided in Porvorim, but was later 'gifted' a bungalow at Taleigao located a couple of kilometers away from the capital city of Panaji.

Geetika Sharma, former employee of the defunct MDLR airlines, who committed suicide alleging that she was harassed by its owner and Haryana minister Gopal Kanda, was employed at the company's casino operations in Goa in 2009.

She held a top post in the management and had accompanied Kanda during his visits to Goa. Initially, she was based at Mint Club Casino in a five-star resort at Arpora and later was overseeing affairs at Mint Cruise Casino. The police team is in Goa to uncover any link to a case registered at Panaji police station by Geetika against Nupur Mehta and Ankita.

In 2009 Geetika had lodged a case alleging threats and theft against Nupur and Ankita. As per the charge sheet filed before the Judicial Magistrate(first class), the Panaji police said the accused had threatened to kill Geetika and her family members if she did not quit her job at Mint Casino Company and thereafter stole her belongings.

Chandigarh, August 13
Acting on a petition filed in public interest by Wazirabad villagers challenging the State of Haryana’s action of acquiring land in Gurgaon before selling it to DLF, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has stayed the creation of third party interest.

DLF is developing air-conditioned apartments and villas, along with an 18-hole golf course on the land under the project, 'The Magnolias'.

In their petition placed before the Division Bench of Acting Chief Justice Jasbir Singh and Justice Rakesh Kumar Jain, Raj Kumar and another petitioner contended that the land belonged to the gram panchayat of Wazirabad village in Gurgaon. A major chunk of it was notified “forest area”.

But the State acquired the land under the garb of “public purpose” before selling it to “real estate company DLF”. In the process, the State jeopardised “the interests and rights of inhabitants of Wazirabad village and destroyed the flora and fauna of the area.”

The petitioners claimed that on August 8, 2003, the State initiated the move to acquire 278 acres, 1 kanal and 10 marlas within the revenue estate of Wazirabad. On January 20, 2004, the State issued a declaration under Section 6 of the Land Acquisition Act; and in January 2006, an award was passed by the Land Acquisition Collector. But on February 9, 2010, the petitioners came to know that a deal had been struck between the Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation and DLF Limited.

Rather, HSIIDC had even issued allotment letter in favour of DLF, “whereby land was sought to be allotted to it on a freehold basis.”

“The State Government and HSIIDC, acted on the instance of the respondent DLF and acquired it under a public purpose of development of recreational/ leisure project,” the petition read.

It said DLF could not purchase the land of the Gram Panchayat for extension of the golf course and for constructing and selling golf villas, and commercial areas as the law did not permit it. “Hence, the DLF in collusion with the authorities of the State adopted an alternative method to get the land of the gram panchayat. Hence, the acquisition of the land in dispute is a colourable exercise of power by the State Government,” it said.

Chandigarh, August 13
The Punjab and Haryana High Court today asked the Director, Secondary Education, Haryana, to remove within three weeks illegally appointed schoolteachers working as guest faculty in government-run schools

The high court also directed the state government to recover from the officers concerned the salaries given to guest faculty in case they had continued in service even after the orders terminating their services were passed.

The directions by the Division Bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Jasbir Singh and Justice RK Jain came after A Sreenivas, Director, Secondary Education, filed an affidavit stating that three committees were constituted for giving personal hearing to guest faculty.

In his affidavit, the Director added the orders for the removal of a lecturer, 63 masters, 40 C&V and five JBT teachers had already been passed. But they were continued in service till March 31, 2012.

Taking a serious view of the matter, the HC directed that the salary paid to such teachers after the passing of their termination orders be recovered from the officers, who had sanctioned such salaries. 

Kurukshetra, August 13
Following a call by the Haryana Federation of University and College Teachers Organisation (HFUCTO), teachers across the state expressed their resentment against alleged government apathy towards their demands by staging dharnas on college and university campuses in the state.

Teachers in around 180 government and government-aided private colleges sat on dharnas and raised slogans against the officials and submitted a memorandum to the Chief Minister through district officials.

Teachers of Kurukshetra University (KU) and Maharishi Dayanand University, Rohtak, submitted a demand charter to the Governor through their respective Vice-Chancellors.

The HFUCTO leadership accused higher education officials of keeping “hostage” the promise of the Haryana Chief Minister to implement the UGC recommendations in Haryana.

In the memorandum, HFUCTO president Pradeep Chauhan and general secretary Attar Singh said that the officials had made a mockery of the government notification dated July 21, 2011, as it has not been implemented so far.

HFUCTO vice-president and president of the HCTA, Dr Rajbir Parashar, accused the bureaucracy of being short-sigthted, anti-teacher and anti-quality education in its dealing with their issues. Chauhan said the benefits withheld included advance increments for higher qualifications, implementation of CAS, extension of the date of the API system.

Teachers have also demanded that their age of retirement be raised to 65. In case the demands were not met, HFUCTO would go ahead with the state-level call for strike, rally and fast on August 25 at KU, they said.

Rewari, August 13
A striking initiative taken by the Lookhi village panchayat, near Kosli, to rehabilitate a seven-year-old ‘deserted’ girl Himanshu, granddaughter of Pratap Singh Yadav, has become the talk of the Rewari region.

Himanshu, who was reportedly born of Satpal Yadav’s “illicit” relationship with a woman of Uttar Pradesh and who was now studying in class III at Mahipalpur (Delhi), was brought from Mahipalpur to Kosli by train on Wednesday night by her stepmother, Saroj Yadav, wife of Satpal Yadav (who at present is living in abroad in connection with his business), under a wayward machination.

Later, when Pratap Singh and Saroj was bringing Himanshu back from Kosli station to Lookhi village in a tractor-trolley, they threw the girl into a canal. However, the destiny willed it otherwise and Himanshu, who had a miraculous escape after she got stuck in hedges grown along the bank of the canal, somehow reached Lookhi village next morning and narrated the incident to the villagers.

Later, the villagers convened a panchayat on Saturday and also constituted a seven-member high-level committee. Pratap Singh confessed his “sinful” act before the panchayat. The committee then slapped a fine of Rs 11,000 on Pratap Singh and directed him to execute a fixed deposit of Rs 5 lakh in Himanshu’s name and also arrange Rs 10 lakh to cover her educational and other expenses. Besides, the committee instructed him to allocate one-third of Satpal Yadav’s property to Himanshu.

After Pratap Singh gave a solemn commitment to carry out these directives in two months, it was decided that the matter would be kept out of the police’s purview.

Veer Singh, a member of the committee, said, “At present Himanshu is staying with her uncle, Chanderpal Yadav, elder brother of Satpal Yadav, at Lookhi village.”

Hisar, August 13
Executive committee members of the All-India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti will meet Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda tomorrow to press their demand for reservation for the community in government jobs in Haryana.

Addressing the jat kranti rally at Kharar Alipur village, president of the Haryana unit of the Samiti Hawa Singh Sangwan said the date and venue of the next meeting of the samiti would depend on the outcome of the talks with the Chief Minister.

He said the samiti would resume its stir under three circumstances. The first was if the Haryana Backward Classes Commission gave an adverse report on the demand. Secondly, if the government tried to put the report in the cold storage. Finally, if the Centre delayed the decision on giving the benefit of reservation to the Jat community.

Sangwan reiterated that the jats were united and firm on seeking social justice.

Samiti chief Bhagat Singh Dalal said the jats in Haryana wanted reservation at both the state and central levels. He said they should be treated on a par with their counterparts in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Bihar and Himachal Pradesh.

Hisar, August 13
The 600 MW Unit-1 of the Rajiv Gandhi Thermal Power Project (RGTPP), Khedar, near here, has been synchronised after engineers overcame the turbine vibration problem.

A spokesman of
Haryana Power Generation Corporation (HPGCL) said here today that Unit-1 had been facing the problem of high vibration and temperature in turbine bearings since December, 2011. The problem had now been solved and the unit was generating to its rated capacity.

He added technical experts from the Shanghai Electric Corporation (SEC), China, had been camping at the plant since May last for solving the vibration problem. The unit would generate about 144 lakh units of electricity daily when operating at its rated capacity.

He said the machine had been under a forced shutdown since April 28 last due to the vibration problem.

The spokesman said the turbine vibration was now within the specified limits.

Chandigarh, August 13
The Haryana State Pollution Control Board has directed all rice shelling units in the state to ensure proper handling, storage and transportation of rice husk and rice husk ash to check environmental pollution.

As per the guidelines issued by the board, the industry would ensure adequate dust extraction from various points of dust generation, starting from unloading section up to paddy cleaning section. As the dust particles extracted from the paddy are very fine, the extracted dust shall be filtered through a bag filter type control device.

A low cost bag filter made of cotton bags with a manual shaker type cleaning arrangement could be installed. The filtered fine dust shall be collected in bags and sealed and then disposed of along with the bag, so that the fine dust does not get airborne again due to secondary wind blowing.

The industrial units shall provide a closed room type enclosure for blowing and storage of rice husk. This room type enclosure shall be closed from all sides and have an access door for loading and handling of rice husk. A vent above the roof level shall be provided on this enclosure connected to a bag filter to arrest or filter the fine particles. No activity regarding blowing and storage of rice husk shall be carried out outside this enclosure.

The industrial units shall have a minimum area for closed storage of rice husk in the plant premises. The units shall decide the size of the enclosure based on their milling capacity, operating hours and utilisation of husk. The rice bran generated during polishing of raw rice, which is fine in size and can get airborne with wind, shall be stored in “closed sheds only”. The fine particles escaping from the air vent shall be connected to a filter bag arrangement to ensure that only clean air is released into the atmosphere.

All the belt or chain conveyors conveying husk from the de-husking section to the storage and from the storage to the boiler section shall be covered from all sides to prevent wind blowing of the husk.

Rohtak, August 13
While the police is claiming to be on high alert in view of the Independence Day celebrations, there appear to be some points in the district where the security appears to be lax and vulnerable to any untoward incident.

“No policeman was posted at the barricade near Shiela Theatre around noon today,” claimed Vijay, a local resident. He said though several barricades had been put up, random checking of the people was missing.

Savita, another resident, said though policemen were visible at the local bus stand, nobody was checked on Monday.

The only shopping mall in sector 3 reportedly has its own private security.

However, the police spokesperson claimed that security had been tightened in the city. He said 1,500 jawans and policemen had been posted for round-the-clock security and an additional police force had been deputed at the railway station, radio station, bus stand, markets and the local police grounds where the Independence Day function is to be held on Wednesday.

Rohtak, August 13
Going by the number of violations apparent, the drive against the use of black films on vehicles in the district fails to have gathered momentum. The state authorities had recently issued instructions to the district police officials to ensure the removal of black films from the vehicles in a short time. The district police has claimed to have taken action against about 60 offenders in the past one week.

"Every third vehicle in the city has a black film on its windows and in the absence of a proper drive and awareness, the offenders have been virtually going scotfree'', claimed Somvir, a resident here.

The use of dark black films on vehicles helps the motives of criminals and other anti-social elements.

"Since the apex court had recently pulled up various states for the delay, the local police had recently started checking vehicles and had even got removed the films from some of the cars," claimed a local advocate. He said the district police needed to launch a comprehensive campaign so that the people do got a strong message.

"Educational institutions, including schools, colleges and social organisations, were also required to be roped in creating awareness and sensitising the residents about the importance of traffic rules,'' said MS Gehlot, a university professor here.

A police spokesperson said a drive had been on in this regard. 

Hisar, August 13
Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University has developed a new mustard variety RH 0749 which has been identified for cultivation under timely sown, irrigated conditions in zone II comprising Haryana, Punjab, Jammu, Delhi and northern Rajasthan.

Dr R P Narwal, director of research, said the yield from this variety was 15 per cent more than the existing high yielding varieties. This variety gave an average yield of 26-28 quintals per hectare in about 150 days. Its seeds were bold and had 39-40 per cent oil content.

Dr Dhiraj Singh, head of the oilseed section, said weed experts of the university had devised a technique for the management of orobanche parasitic weed. The validation of this technology would enhance the crop productivity and production of rapeseed and mustard.