Bathinda, November 29
The district administration, the police and all the other departments concerned have made a fool-proof plan for the opening ceremony of the fourth World Cup Kabaddi at the Multipurpose Sports Stadium in Bathinda on Saturday evening.

Elaborating on the plan for the ceremony, Deputy Commissioner Kamal Kishore Yadav said separate entrances points had been marked for the event. He added that the entire ceremony and all the matches would be videographed. Eight medical teams, two recovery vans and five fire engines will also be stationed at the stadium to handle any contingency.

He added that a committee comprising of Justice (Retd) RR Mongia, IAS (Retd) TC Gupta, and former Olympian Harmit Singh had been constituted to ensure transparency in all the matches and address complaints. He also stated that three control rooms, at the DC office, stadium and police control room have been set up to ensure smooth proceedings.

Ensuring that the comfort of public was the priority of the administration, he added that an exhaustive communication plan had been chalked out for crowd control and other problems. He also stated that the traffic route map had been released by the administration and the signages displaying the same will be put up across the city on Saturday.

SSP Gurpreet Singh Bhullar added that three-tier security had been put into place. He stated special squads have been formed to keep a check on the hideouts of anti-social elements. He also mentioned that anti-agitation teams had been formed to curtail possibility of any kind of protests.

During the tournament, 48 matches will be played at 13 venues all across the state during the tournament. Out of the 12 mens’ teams and eight women’s teams, six men’s teams will stay in Bathinda at Sepal Hotel, Comfort Inn, Krishna Continental, Bahia Resort and Best Western Stella.

Bathinda, November 29
Northern Railway has planned to spend Rs 2,000 crore on the Ambala-Ganganagar section. The money will be spent on doubling and electrification of lines, automatic signalling and other facilities. This was stated by the General Manager of the Northern Railway, VK Gupta, during his visit to Bathinda Junction early this morning.

Elaborating on the plans, he added that while Rs 600 crore were being spent on the electrification of the Jakhal-Rohtak track, Rs 150 crore are being spent on the automatic signalling on the section and work on doubling the Mansa-Maur Mandi track had also begun. He added that automatic ticket vending machines would also be introduced to check the rush of passengers at ticket counters.

VK Gupta (right), General Manager, Northern Railway, along with Ambala DRM Anil Kumar Kathpal, intracts with mediapersons in Bathinda on Friday. Tribune photo: Pawan Sharma

Auguring good news for the Malwa region, he said, “We keep getting conflicting and competing demands. But extending the rail link to Talwandi Sabo is on the radar and the work will begin by next year.” He added that the work on the Jammu-Jaisalmer defence line was also on the cards.

He also candidly confessed that extension of concessions to passengers under various categories and providing food at subsidised rates was causing huge losses the railways. “We keep getting complaints about the lack of facilities at the railway stations. I would like to explain to the complainants that the kind of concessions and food that we provide are not provided by any other mode of transport. And these concessions are causing losses to the railways,” Gupta said.

Talking about the lack of sanitation at the Bathinda junction, he urged the passengers to inculcate a civic sense and help the railway authorities and workers keep the stations and trains clean. He expressed the need of implementing the rule against littering.

All India Guards’ Council, Railway Passengers Welfare Association, Northern Railway Men’s Union, All-India OBC Railway Employees Union and Koshish Welfare Society and former municipal councilor, Vijay Kumar, submitted their memorandum of demands to the GM.

Though Gupta’s visit was a much-talked about event yet he left the junction without inspecting the station which looked clean and painted like never before. “The mere purpose of my visit is to put things into order. It is not surprising to see that the junction is unusually clean today. You will also find a large and disproportionate number of the RPF personnel on the junction today,” he said.

Bathinda, November 29
Tomorrow Bathinda will earn the distinction of hosting the opening ceremony of three consecutive Kabaddi World Cup tournaments tomorrow. But much to its disappointment, no player from the district could make it to the national men’s kabaddi team. In fact, not even a single player was even shortlisted for the training camp from the district.

Bathinda, November 29
Engineers of the PSEB Engineers Association (PSEBEA), Guru Nanak Dev Thermal Plant region, have decided not to work beyond the duty hours as a mark of extending non-cooperation to the power board.

The engineers are protesting against the disciplinary action taken against six officers of the Guru Nanak Dev Thermal Plant (GNDTP) after oil starvation in unit number 3 turbine on June 13. At the emergency general house meeting of PSEBEA, GNDTP region, today, the engineers said BHEL was the main culprit behind the incident instead of the GNDTP engineers. No engineer will work beyond the duty hours. Only in a case of emergency like accident, risk of seizure of turbine, motoring of generator, spillage of oil and incident of fire, the concerned agencies are exempted. The engineers said they would not cooperate with the management in case of a strike by the subordinate staff during the ongoing agitation. The PSPCL management would be responsible for the loss of power generation and delay in commissioning unit number 4.

The engineers apprehended that the unit number 4, which is scheduled to be synchronised in February 2014, might get further delayed by many months, causing heavy loss to the PSPCL.

The engineers will also keep their mobile phones switched off from 9 am to 1 pm from December 2 to December 13. We would hold rallies outside the gate of the thermal plant at 5 pm on December 4 and December 11, said regional secretary Devinder Goyal, executive members of the association Ashok Arora, Manjit Singh and Rajinder Singla. — TNS

Bathinda, November 29
The governments of the north-Indian states should learn lessons from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu to quicken the pace of removing organs from the brain dead donors so that increasing need of kidney transplant could be dealt with.Chief kidney transplant surgeon and consultant urology at Fortis Hospital, Mohali, Dr Priyadarshi Ranjan, said while talking to The Tribune here today.Dr Ranjan was in the city with a kidney cancer patient he treated recently. He said that the need of kidneys is rising . “Sixty per cent patients on dialysis die before the fifth year of their dialysis procedure, whereas a kidney transplant patient lives successfully and healthily more than 15 years of his or her life. This clearly shows how important is the kidney donation,” he said.

Dr Ranjan added that the governments of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have sensitised general public, police, students and administration about the urgency and correctness of harvesting organs from the brain dead people and transplanting them. In south India, harvesting organs and getting them for transplant is matter of few hours.“However, in the north India, especially in the private hospitals, getting organs from the brain dead people is a nightmare. We need paraphernalia of the police, postmortem labs and other doctors. When a kidney transplant surgeon is involved in all such tedious works, how will he have energy and time to do the transplantation procedure? It affects the productivity of surgeon,” he added.

he said to prevent kidney stones, people should take more than three litres of water everyday. He also advised against excessive consumption of salts. 

Bathinda, November 29
On Day 2 of the 59th National School Games, netball, basketball, hockey, circle kabaddi and boxing competitions were held at various venues across the city.

In the 30 kg category of the under-14 boys’ boxing, Aman from Haryana beat Ritesh of Jharkhand. In the 42 kg category, Saurav of IPSC beat Vishal of Chandigarh. In the 50 kg category Sachin of Haryana beat Shubham of Jharkhand.

In the league matches of hockey (Under-17 girls’ category), Punjab beat Gujarat 6-0, Madhya Pradesh beat Kerala 6-1, Delhi beat J&K 5-0, Chandigarh beat West Bengal 18-0, Himachal Pradesh beat Vidya Bharti 14-0, Chandigarh beat Gujarat 3-0, Uttarakhand beat Chhattisgarh 4-2 and Gujarat beat Maharashtra 4-3.

In the boys’ under-17 hockey competitions, Punjab beat NVS 16-0, Odisha beat Vidya Bharti 10-0, Haryana beat Madhya Pradesh 9-0, Chandigarh beat West Bengal 6-0, Delhi beat J&K 16-0 and Haryana beat Andhra Pradesh 8-0.

In the under-19 girls category of netball, Karnatka beat Jharkhand 32-2, Chhattisgarh beat IPSC 28-1, Andhra Pradesh beat Madhya Pradesh 30-10 and Delhi beat UP 34-10. In the under-19 boys category of netball, Delhi beat J&K 34-4, Punjab beat Madhya Pradesh 58-8 and Maharshtra beat CBSE 23-18.