Chandigarh, October 20
The rural districts of Hisar, Jind and Sirsa will be major beneficiaries of the new ambitious transport policy of the Haryana Government which was unveiled recently in a bid to improve connectivity to the remote areas in the state.

While Hisar district has been allotted 328 bus permits under the new stage carriage permit scheme, Jind will be offered 242 bus permits followed by Sirsa, which will get 238 bus permits. On the other hand, the urbanised Faridabad district will have the least bus permits (62) followed by 68 for Panchkula and Haryana's Millennium City Gurgaon (90).

The backward district of Mewat will also have only 90 permits, according to a notification issued by Ramendra Jakhu, additional chief secretary (transport).

The Haryana Cabinet, at a meeting presided over by Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, on September 28 approved the new policy aimed at adding around 4,100 buses to the existing fleet in the private and public sectors. While 3,519 permits are being offered under the new scheme covering 1,017 routes to private bus operators, the Haryana Roadways will add nearly 600 buses to increase its fleet strength to 4,150 during the current financial year, official sources said.

The sources said the routes having originating and terminating points in the state and not connecting two district headquarters have been included in the scheme with a view to providing a viable transport in the remote areas. Currently, commuting from remote areas to the nearby towns is a Herculean task against the backdrop of the huge gap between demand and supply of transport services.

The following is the number of bus permits allotted to each district: Ambala (198), Bhiwani (220), Fatehabad (188), Jhajjar (160), Kaithal (224), Karnal (182), Kurukshetra (134), Mahendragarh (102), Palwal (112), Panipat (218), Rewari (160), Rohtak (173), Sonepat (194) and Yamunanagar (136).

A senior functionary of the state government claimed that every effort would be made to prevent the replication of the Punjab pattern, where influential politicians, including from the ruling SAD party, are ruling the roost in the lucrative transport system. No society, firm, company or family shall be granted more than one permit under the scheme, he added.

Gurgaon, October 20
High drama prevailed in South City here today when a dharna organised by residents took an ugly turn and ended up having a spat with officials of private coloniser, Unitech.

The South City-I Residents Welfare Association (SCRWA) organised a four-hour dharna outside Unitech House today to protest against the coloniser's alleged apathy towards the colony. Around 200 residents reached the Unitech office and sat there.

Foreseeing trouble, the company officials had reportedly locked the office and left. This is what enraged the residents.

"Rather than listening to us, they got goons who were eventually joined by the security staff and even bouncers to scare us away. These people didn't spare even senior citizens and women," said SCRWA president Ashok Bhardwaj.

The residents said the police remained a mute spectator during the spat between them and the company security staff. "We are demanding our rights. We are the oldest private colony in Gurgaon, established in 1980, but Unitech doesn't care about us anymore. The state of roads is worse than even unrecognised housing projects. When we raised our voice, they roughed us up," said Bhardwaj. While the company spokesperson could not be contacted for comments, a local official said, "There were no goons or bouncers but our security staff which tried to ward off their illegal intrusion."

Ambala, October 20
Seven students of a private school were injured this morning when the driver of their school bus lost control of the vehicle and it rammed into a tree on the Sahazadpur-Sadikpur road, about 25 km from here.

The injured, all students of Maa Bhagwati Niketan School, Sahazadpur, were identified as Yogendar Singh (8), Dinesh Kumar (12), Sachin (11), Sanjul (8), Lakshya (6), Khushi (7) and Vishabh (8) residents of Sadikpur, Burj and Bibipur villages, were rushed to MM Hospital, Mullana.

Chandigarh, October 20
The Haryana State Board of Technical Education, Panchkula, has decided to incorporate environment education as a compulsory subject in all diploma courses in the polytechnics of the state following an order by the Division Bench of Justice Jasbir Singh and Justice Rakesh Kumar Jain.

Karnal, October 20
In a ghastly incident, a one-year-old girl was allegedly subjected to unnatural sex and refused medical treatment by a private hospital and the Civil Hospital under pressure from some powerful persons of the locality and finally compelled to reach a compromise to hush up the case.

The incident dates back to July this year, the victim’s family who hailed from Bihar and lives here has alleged that 15-year-old boy Dheeraj had indulged in unnatural sex with their daughter, the accused was caught and thrashed by the victim’s mother, but he managed to escape.

The mother ran from pillar to post for her unconscious kid’s medical treatment, but was denied treatment by Mahavir Dal Hospital and the Civil Hospital on the pretext that it was a police case and shown the door.

Bringing these facts to notice in a memorandum submitted to the Karnal Superintendent of Police, Preetpal Singh Punnu, chairman of the NIFAA, said the hapless mother had to get treatment at a private hospital that cost her Rs 4,000.

The next day a male member of the family was called to the police station on the complaint of Dheeraj’s mother who alleged that her son was beaten up.

Mahendergarh, October 20
Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda has urged Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal to "sympathetically consider" the demand of the residents of Pali and Jant villages in the district for reservation in jobs and admissions at the Central University being set up on their land.

In a demi-official letter written to the union minister, Hooda has mentioned that the panchayats of the aforementioned villages had given their land free of cost for the construction of the Central University of Haryana.

"The villagers have been demanding 10 per cent reservation in jobs and admissions at the university," the letter maintains, adding that the demand may be considered sympathetically.

However, the Chief Minister has not mentioned in the letter that the villagers had been promised reservation in jobs and admissions before they gave their land to set up the university. Nor does the letter mention the breach of trust by the government in this regard, which led to a long-drawn struggle by the villagers to claim their promised dues.

The panchayats of Pali and Jant villages had leased out nearly 500 acres of their land for the university at a token rate of Re 1 per acre per year on the promise of reservation in university jobs and admissions.