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MC fails to lift filth from city areas
Pattern change in property sale & purchase via power of attorney |
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Inter-state gang of vehicle lifters busted; four held
STATE OF GOVT SCHOOLS
city streetlights
Honour for city farmer
Data on inflow of tourists, total strength of hotels
Tribune
Impact
Mobile phones recovered from 3 jail inmates
Teej festival celebrated
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MC fails to lift filth from city areas
Amritsar, August 23 Though the AMC has hired private trolleys for the purpose, it is still ill-equipped to handle the crisis. Consequently, trolleys overflowing with garbage and mounds of refuse can be found lying unattended in various parts of the city. Following repeated reports appearing in media about the problem, the civic authoirites had woken up from their deep slumber, but it was for a day only. The occasion was on August 7, when Municipal Corporation Commissioner Dharam Pal Gupta and health officer Dr Yogesh Arora personally went to observe their teams conducting the garbage-collection drive inside the premises of Guru Nanak Dev Hospital. Nevertheless, this “rigorous cleanliness drive” was conducted for just a day. Later, it was all back to square one. Today, the same place (about 250 yards) has become a garbage-dumping place littered with not only the hospital’s biowaste but with the neighbourhood’s refuse. Now it’s the most-preferred place for abandoned animals and mosquitoes to breed. The situation became dismal when yesterday’s showers left this place stinking with unbearable smell emanating out of it. One can well imagine the plight of patients who have been coming to the hospital for treatment. Another pathetic situation was found adjacent to the boundary walls of St Mary’s School and Sacred Heart School, where garbage bins cry for immediate attention. Nonetheless, with no breakthrough in sight between the civic authorities and Antony Waste Handing Company, it was evident that the situation would only deteriorate in the days to come. Since the new corporation house meeting has yet to take place, no decision could be made about hiring the new firm or settling the issues with the Antony Waste firm. To add to woes, the AMC’s safai karamcharis opposed the authorites’ decision of hiring private hands for picking up garbage after shelling out Rs 4.5 lakh per month. The safai karamcharis had also served an ultimatum to the authorities to withdraw this arrangement else they too would observe strike. According to an estimate, over 1,500 tonnes of garbage must be lying in various localities of the city, if their average daily pick of about 280-300 tonnes of refuse is anything to go by. The Tribune team took rounds of various corners of the city, only to find garbage scattered on roadsides or refuse set on fire in garbage bins. The key areas like Lawrence road, the Batala road, Queens road, Customs Chowk, Majitha road were some of the areas where garbage bins were spilling over with trash. It is an irony that these are the spots which are frequented by tourists the most. Now, what impression would they gather about the holy city is anybody’s guess!. This piled-up filth has put the residents to tremendous inconvenience. “The authorities should immediately break the impasse between them and the garbage collecting firm, otherwise it would become very difficult to breathe here, especially for those whose residences fall near these garbage dumps,” said Jagdish Singh, a resident.
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Pattern change in property sale & purchase via power of attorney
Amritsar, August 23 As per the new rules, the previous owner who had given the power of attorney must be present during the transfer of the property and he should declare that he had received the amount. Similarly, the buyer must disclose the source of the money. Though the move is aimed at keeping the investors away from investing in properties, it puts extra financial burden on the real buyers, especially those who are in the need of it. Registering a property with the Revenue Department requires hefty money, whereas the power of attorney comes at a few thousand rupees. It works as a strong lure for small buyers, who feel the pinch the most with the soaring land and construction material prices. The district administration has earmarked different rates for residential and commercial areas in the city popularly known as Circle Rate, which is paid in the shape of stamp duty. The Circle Rate varies from locality to locality. Surinder Singh said he procured a 100 square yard plot in New Golden Avenue, where the residential registry rate for a square yard of land was Rs 17,000 and the commercial rate was Rs 50,000. “I bought the plot near railway lines, where the price was much lower, between Rs 10,000 to Rs 12000,” he said. He added that as per the circle rate, I needed to shell out Rs 1.53 lakh more, nearly 9 per cent over and above the cost of property in the shape of stamp duty and other charges. He avoided the registry at that time to curtail the cost of investment. “I did not have any alternative, as I had to seek loan from family members and friends to procure the plot itself,” he uttered.
On the other hand, he got the power of attorney at the cost of nearly Rs 3,000, which includes Rs 1,000 stamps, Rs 300 government fee, Rs 1,000 to deed writers, Rs 300 miscellaneous expenses. Meanwhile, Property Dealers Association president Suresh Kumar Vashishth said the changes in the format of power of attorney would finish the business of small-level real estate investors. He said the state government must relax stamp duty to encourage genuine buyers and instead levy a tax on the failure to construct houses. He said soon a delegation of the association would hand over a memorandum of its demands to Revenue Minister Bikram Singh Majithia.
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Mystery shrouds married woman’s death
Amritsar, August 23 The police has registered a case under Section 306 of the IPC (abetment to suicide) against her husband, Dr Amritpal Singh Brar, who is reportedly working in Guru Nanak Dev Hospital and mother-in-law, Bhupinder Kaur, who was later arrested in the case. Gurnam Singh, ACP, said whether it was murder or a case of suicide would be confirmed in the postmortem report. For the time being, on the basis of the circumstantial evidence, the police had lodged an abetment to suicide case against her husband and mother-in-law. Rajinder Kaur, who hails from Sirhand (Fatehgarh Sahib), stated that her daughter was married in 1998 and had a son from the marriage. She alleged that her husband and mother-in-law, who had retired from the Education Department, used to harass her. She said on Tuesday, they received a call from Dr Amritpal, who asked them to take her away. “At 7.30 am today, we received another call that Mandeep had consumed some poisonous substance and her condition was very bad. We immediately rushed from Sirhand, only to find our daughter dead in the house,” she said, alleging that she had been killed, as her body bore injury marks. Gurnam Singh said a medical board would be set up for the post mortem examination to find out the nature of injury marks and the exact cause of the death.
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Inter-state gang of vehicle lifters busted; four held
Amritsar, August 23 Those arrested were identified as Harjit Singh and his brother Jasmeet Singh, both residents of Bhalla Colony, Chheharta, Balwinder Singh of Guru Amardass Avenue and Paramjit Singh of Dhapai. About the modus operandi of the accused, HS Brar, ADCP, crime, while interacting with mediapersons, said the accused used to finance the vehicles from different states and then lodge a complaint regarding the theft of vehicles with the Police Department concerned. They bring the vehicles in Punjab and change their chassis numbers and then sell the same after forging documents. The police has recovered five luxury vehicles from their possession which include two Innova, a Swift, one Bolero and one Skoda. All the vehicles bore fake registration numbers of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Ludhiana (Punjab). The ADCP, crime, said Harjit and his brother Jasmeet were also wanted by the Mumbai police where a similar case had been registered against them. Balwinder used to change chassis numbers in the vehicles. Brar said as some vehicles had the registration number of Ludhiana, the police would also look into the role of employees of the transport office at Ludhiana. A case under Sections 379, 411, 420, 467, 468, 471, 472 of the IPC had been registered against all the accused at C-division police station and further investigations were under progress, added Brar.
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STATE OF GOVT SCHOOLS
Amritsar, August 23 Situated in the constituency of Industry Minister Anil Joshi, the school provides education free of cost to children coming from low-income group families of surrounding areas. Parents of a majority of these students are employed with factories in the nearby Batala road area. The school has only 110 benches for 583 students. Hence, the students have no alternative but to sit cross-legged on the floor to take their lessons. These students from nursery to class V found it hard to concentrate on studies. What the students pray is that that the government becomes conscious of their plight well before the onset of winter. The problems do not end here, as the classrooms are congested with students, while inadequate number of teachers are available to teach them. Together these deficiencies accentuate the problem and defeat the main objective of imparting education. Each classroom consists of 40 to 50 students and consequently the grasping efficiency of students drops. For 583 students there are only 16 teachers, while the sanctioned strength is 19. Five teachers were sent out to other schools on deputation. For providing potable water, there is a concrete water tank with two taps in running condition, while four others are lying closed, besides another direct municipal supply tap. The prevalence of unhygienic conditions in the school premises belies the claims of providing decent meals to the students. Apart from this, an electric cable running over the school building poses a serious threat to the safety of the students and requires swift action on the part of the education department to rectify it. The predicament of the school can be gauged from the fact that there was a marginal increase of five students over the previous year’s strength of 578 students. The government is keen to implement the Right to Education (RTE) Act in private schools. However, it miserably fails to provide the same facilities to students in government schools. The Act seeks a playground, a library with sufficient reading material, ramp access for disabled students, among others for every school. But all these measures are absent from thIS school. The Act demands teacher-student ratio to be at 1:33. The school head teacher Gurbachan Singh accepted that the school was housed in a small chunk of land and there was no availability of playground for the students. He claimed that the hygiene level was up to mark and six cooks were employed to cook fresh meals. However, owning to the construction work going on in the school building, it was next to impossible to prevent construction material from spreading all over the place. He said about six months ago, the expansion of the school building was started to add four new rooms. He said after a month, all 14 rooms would be in working condition, besides 10 toilet sets (five each for girls and boys) have already been operationalised.
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city streetlights
Amritsar, August 23 The AMC provides streetlight services to a population of more than 15 lakh of the city and has the liability to maintain over 15,000 streetlight points in different pockets of the city, especially streets, busy markets, chowks and main bazaars. Although the AMC has given a tender of maintenance of streetlight points to five private electric companies, in the absence of any meeting and the long gap in the formation of new house, the process for the renewal of the contract of the maintenance or inviting new bids could not be executed. Even the officials said the contract of old companies was extended, but it too had crossed its deadline, which was July 15. The AMC at present has less than 40 employees for the maintenance of streetlight points. Patrolling for finding faulty streetlight points, attending complaints regarding faults and other electrical works is also the responsibility of the employees. Also, the cumbersome duty of the repair of streetlights in various government and corporation offices is also part of their job. At present, the corporation has only two junior engineers against the requirement of five, one XEN, one SDO, 11 streetlight patrollers and about 23 ad-hoc employees. Recently, a JE has been promoted to the post of SDO. According to the authorities, the Streetlight Department requires at least 12 patrollers. Besides, at least 20 more employees might be on a contract basis. The officials said they did not even have men for the corporation-owned Guru Nanak Bhavan City Centre. The slum areas of the city were creating more problems for the city, increasing the burden of the work. Officials said people in the slum areas had put up ‘kundi’ connections putting extra burden on the power cables of streetlights, due to which the wires got damaged and it took a lot of time for replacing and repairing the fault. In a case of administration apathy, around 25-30 streetlights installed on the middle of the elevated road connecting downward ramps (one leading to the Golden Temple) and almost similar number of lights on the Hussainpura bridge continue to remain defunct for the past several days, leaving commuters and pedestrians to tread the stretch in the dark every night. Both being connected to the busiest routes in the city, thousands of commuters pass through them everyday. In the absence of proper streetlights, pedestrians and those on bicycles fear in passing through the area. Even the drivers of two and four-wheelers have to be extra conscious while passing through this stretch.
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Honour for city farmer
Amritsar, August 23 Earlier, Director-General Dr S Ayyappan, Deputy Director General (agriculture extension), Indian Council of Agriculture Research, New Delhi, had visited his farm in June to observe the techniques and maintenance methodologies being adopted by Manmohan Singh. His farm has also acted as a guiding farm for fellow farmers, as he organises various group meetings and discussions by arranging resourse persons from Punjab Agriculture University, Ludhiana. The state department of horticulture and agriculture has also organised two district-level farmers training camps at his farms with a view to showing the visiting farmers the innovations being adopted in his farm. Elated over his achievement, Manmohan Singh said he had been upgrading his knowledge by attending various seminars and workshops on horticulture at Ludhiana, Jalgaon, Amrawati, Ooty, Hubli, Bangalore, Lahore, Rawalpindi and the Bakerfield area of California.
— TNS
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Habit-forming drugs seized, three held
Amritsar, August 23 CIA staff today seized a huge quantity of habit-forming drugs from three persons who were unloading the contraband from a canter. These persons told the police that they were sent by their owners to collect the consignment
and store it at the designated place. Among those arrested include Vikramjit Singh and William of Naag Kalan village, Majitha and Vikram Kumar Mehta, driver of the canter, while their owner Jaspreet Singh, alias Sherry, owner of Asia Biotech, located at Guru Amardass Market, Katra Sher Singh, was still at large. Investigations revealed that the Health Department had already cancelled the licence of Jaspreet Singh in February this year and his shop lies close in the market. However, he continued with his business unabated. Interestingly, he procured the contraband from one Prince Pharmacy, Ludhiana, which was also closed down on similar charges. He was serving jail term in Ludhiana for illegally selling habit-forming drugs. HS Brar, ADCP Crime, said more interesting facts were likely to come forward during the interrogation of Jaspreet Singh and raids were being conducted on suspected hideouts to arrest him. He said the driver of the canter, who brought the material, used to take double the money to deliver the consignment. The accused used to sell the contraband directly to chemist shops located in the rural areas. Investigations were being carried to identify his clients so that subsequent action could be taken against them, said Sukhwinder Singh, ACP, crime. The police had recovered habit-forming drugs, including injections, amounting to lakhs of rupees, besides a canter and an Activa scooter. A case under Sections 21/22/61/85 of the NDPS Act has been registered against the culprits.
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Data on inflow of tourists, total strength of hotels
Amritsar, August 23 Timely completion of the survey would mean that the government and the hospitality industry would know the exact number of rooms in various categories of hotels, number of inbound tourists, areas from where the maximum number of tourists arrive, types of hotels that attract more tourists, high and lean periods and other facts. District tourism officer Balraj Singh accepted that the project was delayed owning to non-cooperation and dilly-dallying attitude of hotel owners in providing data. He added that officials of the department had a tough time in convincing businessmen that eventually the data would be of great help to them, the state and Union governments in preparing the future development plan. The Punjab Heritage and Tourism Promotion Board (PHTPB) has initiated the process of accumulation of data only last year and anticipated it to be out early this year. However, about eight months have lapsed and the data is still being compiled. The statistical wing of the board, which was constituted in November 2010 only, is carrying out the survey. A manager and deputy manager-level officials of the wing are looking after the survey in the city. The survey would be the first-ever official and authentic data bank to ascertain the footfall of tourists visiting Amritsar. Sources in the department revealed that surveyors were astonished to find the total number of hotels, lodges and guest houses crossing the magic figure of 300, which was initially considered to be over 200 apart from SGPC-run six serais (inns) with 654-room collective capacity. On the other hand, Ludhiana has 60 and Jalandhar 55 hotels. Earlier, there was no mechanism to record the exact number of tourists visiting the city. So far, the Punjab government has been quoting the number that was made available by the SGPC, said Balraj. These figures could not be relied upon as there is a distinction between a pilgrim and a tourist. He said a pilgrim might stay here for four nights but generally would not go out or eat outside the Golden Temple complex, while a person is called a tourist when he stays on a paid accommodation for over 24 hours. He said the board got information from the BSF authorities, who look after the retreat ceremony at the Attari-Wagah joint check post, that about 15,000 people daily visit the place and on
Saturday and Sunday, the number usually goes up to 20,000. Hotel Association Walled City chairman Satnam Singh Kanda accepted that hospitality industrialists were reluctant to share the information fearing that it would attract various government enforcement departments. Satnam Singh Kanda said he held a meeting of the members of his association and highlighted the benefits of the survey. He said now all the members were cooperating with the survey teams of the statistical wing of the
PHTPB.
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Tribune
Impact
Amritsar, August 23 Ajay Chauhan, a teacher and press secretary to the Punjab State Aided School Teachers’ and Other Employees’ Union, confirmed that they had received a communication from the Education Department this morning. Over 500 teachers associated with around 40 government-aided schools here had complained of not been paid salaries for the past four months. The reason according to them was that the treasury branch of the government had not released their salaries. The government extends 95 per cent grant to aided schools, while the rest five per cent is contributed by their respective school managements to generate funds for the salaries of these teachers. Taking note of inordinate delay in getting salaries, promotion policies, filling up vacant positions, pension benefits or other allowances like medical and house rent, the teachers also demanded that they should be absorbed in the government schools on the same pattern as adopted by state governments like Haryana, Rajasthan and Himachal.
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Mobile phones recovered from 3 jail inmates
Amritsar, August 23 Separate cases have been registered against the trio at the Cantonment police station. “During a routine checking, our staff recovered three mobiles from their possession. We are investigating the sources through which they procured these mobiles in the jail,” a police officer said.
— TNS
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Teej festival celebrated
Amritsar, August 23 Folk singer Gumeet Bawa was the chief guest on the occasion, while Dr Sarvjit Kaur Brar, president of the Ladies Club, presided over. Dr Rajinder Kaur Pawar, Dean, Academic Affairs, members of the club and a large number of students were present on the occasion. Dr Sarvjit Kaur Brar exhorted to revive the forgotten tradition of festivals. She said: “Efforts will be made to celebrate these type of festivals so that our students could remember the value of our rich heritage and culture”. The programme started with folk songs sung by Gurmeet Bawa, followed by tappe, bolian and gidha by club members and students.
— TNS
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