Private clinic raided
Amritsar, October 9
The Health Department today raided a private clinic at Madan Mohan Malviya Road here.

Amritsar, November 9
The Amritsar Municipal Corporation (AMC) continues to adopt silence over the issue of the high-mast lights which were damaged about three years ago.

The lights were installed at Novelty Chowk in the year 2003.

The lights, worth over Rs 6 lakh each, were erected on 25-metre high beam pole. These were damaged in August 2010 during a repairing job undertaken by the civic body’s electrical wing. Ironically, no accountability of this lapse has ever been fixed on any official.

Sources said the files pertaining to these lights reportedly went missing from the MC records.

City resident Rajesh Sidhana approached the MC exercising his rights to information and inquired about the lights. But even after a lapse of over a year, the MC has been silent over furnishing any reply to his queries.

Sidhana had categorically asked the MC authorities about the exact date when these lights were installed, how they were damaged, whether any effort was made to rectify them, which officials were held accountable for the damage, the antecedents of the private firm which was hired for maintenance of these lights and whether any penalty was imposed on the firm or any official for lapse in duty.

The response to his query is still awaited despite repeated reminders.

About a decade ago, the Municipal Corporation had conceptualised the idea of illuminating the key roundabouts and chowks with high-mast lighting system.

The idea was to illuminate the larger portions of the street which otherwise remained engulfed in darkness or low light in the absence of proper street lighting.

The one under question was installed in the centre of the city, Novelty Chowk, which leads to Lawrence Road, Mall Road and MM Malviya Road. The chowk now is engulfed in darkness during night.

• The RTI activist had asked the MC authorities about the exact date when these lights were installed, how they were damaged, whether any effort was made to rectify them and which officials were held accountable for the damage

• He had also inquired about the antecedents of the private firm which was hired for the maintenance of these lights and whether any penalty was imposed on the firm
• The response to his query is still awaited despite repeated reminders

Amritsar, November 9
A person was killed and four others were injured when the car they were traveling in collided head-on with a speeding canter on Amritsar Airport road last night.

The victims were returning after attending a function from Kot Isse Khan village located on the Amritsar-Ajnala highway.

The deceased was identified as Prabhjit Singh of Guru Arjun Dev Nagar, Putlighar. Among the injured are Suramdeep, Lovejot and Vineet Rai. —TNS

Amritsar, November 9
The state government has so far earned over Rs 25 crore for regularisation of properties and illegal colonies constructed and raised in violation of law in the district till November 5.

After the deadline (November 5), the government permitted the departments concerned to accept applications for regularisation of properties and colonies at increased fine by extending its date up to November 15.

The revised fine for illegal colonies is 25 per cent while it is 10 per cent for plots. After the November 15 extension in deadline, the proportion of fine would be raised to 50 per cent for unauthorised colonies and 20 per cent for plots.

The government assigned the job of collecting revenue from the public to the Municipal Corporation in its jurisdiction and to Amritsar Development Authority (ADA) in the rest of the district.

There are about 405 illegal colonies in the city. Of these, 242 illegal colonies are under the Municipal Corporation (MC) and 167 under ADA.

On behalf of the MC, the Municipal Town Planning department collected Rs 15 crore from nearly 10,500 individuals and 71 colonisers.

A total of 3,800 individuals and about 125 colonisers submitted their applications along with Rs 10.32 crore to the ADA.

As per the Regularisation of Unapproved Colonies Act, specially constituted committees would start working from November 16 to identify the evasive colonisers. These committees would comprise a senior official of each departments concerned (MTP and ADA), SDMs concerned, District Town Planner, and a Superintendent Engineer-level official.

These committees would have to identify the colonisers and then extract composition charges from them. They would need to consult registries and farads of such colonies, which is available with the revenue department to identify the colonisers. These committees would have penalising powers like recommending discontinuing sewerage, water supply and electricity connections to illegal colonies and individuals.

Amritsar, October 9
The Health Department today raided a private clinic at Madan Mohan Malviya Road here.

Health officials received a tip-off that expired medicines, physician samples and local brand medicines were being sold at the Dr Gulati Clinic.

Anupama Kalia, drug inspector, said though the department did not find any expired medicines, physician samples and local-brand medicines were seized from the clinic. She said the doctors could not sell physician samples.

The department collected the samples of different medicines which would be sent for analysis to the chemical examination laboratory in Chandigarh.

Amritsar, November 9
Life has never been the same for public prosecutor RK Salwan ever since he was designated by the Home Department, Punjab, to fight three cases pertaining to the much-talked about kidney scam which has again hogged the limelight after the conviction of five doctors and a former Haryana policeman who was the recipient of organs.

The multi-crore scam involving influential doctors, lawyers and middlemen came to light in 2002 after the then SP city-I Kunwar Vijay Partap Singh busted the racket and brought the victims before the media.

“Through all these years since the scam came to light and came up for trial in court, I have been receiving continuous threats from several persons on phone and on court premises. Some of them even offered me huge amounts of money to weaken the case,” he said.

“My social life has come to an end as I remain indoors most of the time. I and my family have not attended any functions during these 11 years owing to these threats,” said Salwan.

Ironically, the police department failed to provide him and his family adequate security even as he took up the matter with the authorities a number of times.

“Even though the government has now provided a policeman for my security but what about my family? I fear for them and advise them not to go out of home needlessly,” he told.

Salwan said that during the 11-year-long trial, the witnesses in the case turned hostile and even police filed the investigation report favouring the doctors.

“About four months ago, some important documents, including hospital records relating to the case of illegal transplantation of kidney of 17-year-old Bagicha Singh went missing under mysterious circumstances which could have hampered the trial,” he added.

When the court of Additional District and Session Judge GS Bakshi pronounced imprisonment to the convicted doctors and former cop yesterday, Salwan said he was much relieved.

“I am satisfied with the judgment and I hope it would strengthen other cases relating to the scam,” Salwan said.

He urged the police authorities to provide adequate security to him and his family since many accused are very influential.

Amritsar, November 9
The Sri Guru Ram Das Jee International Airport has started the construction of a building to house the state-of-the-art airport surveillance radar and monopulse secondary surveillance radar.

Airport Director Suneel Dutt said the construction of the building was started after the Airport Authority of India (AAI) approved the installation of these two radars which would boost the aviation vigilance at the key airport.

Staff at the Air Traffic Control (ATC) will come to know about the movement of aircraft from 80 miles away. These radars will offer the ground staff at the ATS to learn the position of the approaching aircraft in the Sky with a mono pulse.

Apart from consolidating the air surveillance and traffic around the airport, these hi-tech gadgets would need not to waste fuel by hovering around the airport waiting for clearance. This will help in ensuring timely landing of aircraft.

The Amritsar airport is gradually incorporating apparatus. Earlier, it introduced gadgets to keep birds away, which started delivering the desired results. For this, the apparatus comprising a six-shot launcher device was imported from Germany, a laser gun-cum-torch brought from Canada and a LPG cylinder-fired 10 zone guns procured from the Netherlands.

When fired, the six-shot launcher blasts at a certain height in the sky, without leaving any residues on the ground beneath. The laser gun-cum-torch has a range of 2 km and it scares away nocturnal birds. The zone guns have been placed at a distance of 200 feet from each other along the runway and gas from the cylinder causes a loud explosion to keep the birds away from the airport complex in general and operational area in particular.

The Airport director said ever since the gadgets were installed incidents of bird-hit had been curtailed. Dutt said it was a non-lethal system to scare birds away from the airport complex.

Earlier in June, the AAI engaged Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) to install wi-fi connectivity for the convenience of passengers. Besides, the Amritsar airport became the first AAI-governed airport in the country to have made a Facebook page with helpline numbers and photographs of the airport.

Over back-to-back technology upgrade, airport director Suneel Dutt said the installation of the technology at the airport was an ongoing process. “In the current scenario, it is necessary to provide class facilities to customers.

Devotees and passengers from various parts of the world and the country visit the holy city and our effort is to provide them a hassle-free pilgrimage.” He anticipated that it would help in tourism promotion.

Amritsar, November 9
A meeting of the representatives of several NGOs of Amritsar was held in the office of Deputy Economic and Statistical Advisor. The meeting was presided over by Charanjit Singh, Deputy ESA, on behalf of the Deputy Commissioner, Amritsar.

During the meeting the NGOs rued that most of the government schemes and aids do not reach the NGOs while only a handful of societies have been allocated the schemes. “ So we have proposed to formulate a conglomerate, Go-NGO, comprising of various active NGO’s and government officials, which will ensure proper utilisation of government funds and provides full transparency, said Gurbhej Singh, General Sectretary, Mission Aghaaz, one of the members of the proposed Go-NGO Club.

Ensuring full support from the district administration,Charanjit Singh promised to give a green signal to the Go-NGO initiative, after the consideration from the Deputy Commisioner. This club shall have the representatives of all Government departments and NGOs as its members, who will form a committee with the Deputy Commissioner as its chairman, to monitor the implementation and progress of government schemes.

“We will involve Public Heath Department, police and other services to cover all major public areas with welfare schemes. With Go-NGO, we want to bridge the gap between government aid and common man,”said BM Sharma from Bharat Vikas Parishad, another NGO and member of the Go-NGO group.

The proposed member NGOs for Go-NGO club are Mission Aghaaz, Bharat Vikas Parishad, Amritsar Vikas Manch, Jan Kalyan Sangathan, Lok Kalyan Smiti and others.

Amritsar, November 9
The two-day seminar on “Water and Food Security in India”, organised by an NGO-Institute of Development and Planning and sponsored by Indian Society of Agricultural Economics, concluded today.

In the third session, which was chaired by Prof Vikram Chadha, Punjab School of Economics, three papers were presented focusing on the growing inequalities in the access of both surface and groundwater across the environment setting such as water-endowed Bihar: water scarce: Rajasthan and over-exploited in Punjab.

The prevailing institutional arrangement and public policies were held responsible for such inequity in exploitation of natural resources in general and water in particular. To mitigate theses inequalities, strengthened and sustainable institutional arrangement and efficient infrastructure facilities were required.

Political consensus on natural resources management is crucial. In certain environmental conditions where rainfall conditions are substantial, the promotion of cultivation of crops like basmati was suggested. The need of effective legal framework was also proposed that can be helpful in resolving the water and food crisis.

The fourth session, which was chaired by Dr Randeep Kaur, Head, Department of Agricultural Economics, Khalsa College, three papers were presented. The scholars realised the importance of crop diversification for resource conservation and enhancing the purchasing power of farmers in general and marginal and small farmers in particular. They stressed the importance of value addition of agricultural produce and the promotion of cultivation of nutritious food crops like maize, jowar, barley. The production of pulses that is major source of protein is at the decreasing trend. There is need of policy intervention and market incentives to encourage the cultivation of pulses in the country.

The welcome address was made by Dr T S Chahal, Director of Institute of Development and Planning.

The seminar was inaugurated yesterday by renowned Agricultural Economist Dr SS Johl, Chancellor, Central University of Punjab. In his inaugural speech he pointed out there was no shortage of foodgrain in the country. During the recent decades there is a sharp increase in the availability of foods like edible oil, sugar and milk products. He pointed out that there is a substantial change is the food habits of the people.

Jalandhar, November 9
Tension prevailed at Hirapur village on Kapurthala Road after a religious book placed in a Gypsy was allegedly set on fire. Heavy security had to be deployed to ensure that there was no untoward incident in retaliation to the incident.

Rajinder Kumar, president of Sri Guru Ravidass Mandir, blamed several persons for the incident in his complaint given to the Lambra police.

The president of Sri Guru Ravidass Mandir alleged that he had parked the Gypsy as usual at his place at 8.30 pm last night. Some persons of the village did not want the temple to come up near the site and had deliberately indulged in the act.

However, Station House Officer (SHO), Lambra, Surinder Pal Singh, said a probe had been started in the matter and adequate security arrangements had also been made at the place.

The SHO further said that all-out efforts were being made to avoid any untoward situation. The situation was under control, he said.

Amritsar, November 9
PSM Senior Secondary School, Kharkoda, Sonipat stood first and Shah Satnam Ji Boys Secondary School, Sirsa, stood second in overall team championship of the All India CBSE National Judo Championship finals that concluded here today.

Organised on the premises of Bhavan’s SL Public School, Vineet Joshi, CBSE Chairman, Dr Sadhana Prashar, Director Academic, Research and Innovation of the CBSE and Dr Kaustubh Sharma, Deputy Commissioner Police gave trophies to the winners.

In girls- U-12 age group, ASN Senior Secondary School, Delhi,U-14 Shah Satnam Ji Girls Secondary School, Sirsa, U-16 Woodstock Public School, Batala, U-19 Shah Satnam Ji Girls Secondary School, Sirsa, stood first.

Among boys, U-12 Bhavan’s SL Public School, U-14 PSM Senior Secondary School, Kharkoda, Sonipat, U-16 Shah Satnam Ji boys Secondary School, Sirsa, U-19 Ganga International School, New Delhi, Swada, stood first.

Host school’s monthly magazine ‘Bhavan’s Darshan’ was also released on this occasion.

Amritsar, November 9
North Eastern Zone today won the match by 5 wickets against North Zone on the third day of the five-day All India Inter-zonal Cricket Tournament of the Airport Authority of India (AAI).

In the second match, East Zone won the match by 38 runs. — TNS