Jalandhar, December 19
While the ambitious meritorious school project, given a go-ahead by the Punjab Chief Minister here yesterday, makes a noble promise of educating underprivileged meritorious students across government schools in the district, even before its start, it is being met with scepticism.

Even as every meritorious school, coming up across six districts in the state, promises to enlist 1,000 meritorious students (500 girls and as many boys) - covering 6,000 across the state - the number of meritorious students in the state last year is almost half the number the scheme promises to enlist.

While across the state, only 3,300 government school students scored over 80 per cent marks, in the district the number of students scoring above 80 per cent marks last year was just 183. On the face of it, the government seems to chasing unrealistic targets.

Officials lauding the scheme are themselves unsure about how the 1,000 student target will be met. Conservative projections say even after including meritorious students from the neighbouring districts, many seats will remain vacant, which will be a waste of infrastructure.

DEO Neelam Kumari said, “We had 183 meritorious class X students last year, but more might be added from neighbouring districts like Kapurthala, Hoshiarpur etc. While exact specifics about the working of the schools are yet to be received, it is clear that by the implementation phase, the numbers will be fulfilled.”

Another education department official said, “The numbers at the face of it don’t seem to add up but probably they will also include students presently studying in class XI right now in the first phase. Things will be clearer after the schools start.”

Education minister Sikander Singh Maluka, however, said the target had been arrived at after a lot of thoughtful considerations.

The education minister said, “The merit school projects will be completed by July 2014. It’s true that last year there were 3,300 meritorious students, but we have devised the present targets after a lot of deliberations and the targets are expected to rise by then. We are hoping for a lot of enrolments in the schools which will be a boon for underprivileged students.”

When questioned, the minster denied the possibility of a relaxation of the merit target to less than 80 per cent, even if as many students do not make it to merit.

Speaking on the staff recruitment (which will be independent of other government recruitment), the minister said the special committee (which has the DGSE, DPI (S) and education secretary as its members) constituted for the purpose was in the process of making these and the staff would be finalised soon.

In the first phase of the project, the meritorious schools are expected to come up in Jalandhar, Amritsar, Ludhiana, Bathinda, Mohali and Patiala.

Jalandhar, December 19
The cold wave intensified in the region as the maximum temperature witnessed a further dip.

Meanwhile, fog threw normal life out of gear here today.

According to the meteorological department, the minimum temperature was recorded as 10 degrees Celsius, while the maximum temperature was 15.9 degrees Celsius in and around Jalandhar city on Thursday.

Fog continued to hit rail and road traffic as visibility was less than 1 km.

According to the forecast by the meteorological department, fog will continue to engulf Jalandhar city and surrounding areas during the first half of Friday.

Jalandhar, December 19
The CIA staff of the Rural Police today made a recovery of 1.1 kg of heroin and arrested three persons, including a Gurdaspur-based sarpanch.

The police arrested Jarnail Singh of Batala at a naka at Laroya village and recovered 200 gm of heroin from his possession yesterday.

The CIA staff in charge Angrez Singh said during interrogation, he revealed that he had bought the heroin from Dhyan Singh, three-time sarpanch of Mustfapur village of Gurdaspur for Rs 2.43 lakh.

“He had revealed that Dhyan Singh was coming to give him more supply on his scooter PB-06-T-2456 near Bhogpur when the sarpanch and his accomplice Daljeet Singh of Mahilpur were arrested with 900 gm of heroin. The sarpanch already has three cases of opium smuggling against him at the Gurdaspur police stations,” said the CIA staff inspector.

Daljeet, too, has one case against him under the NDPS Act. Jarnail Singh has 10 cases against him for heroin and smack smuggling and theft. He had been arrested by the CIA staff three months ago with 170 gm of heroin and got bail from the Kapurthala jail on December 2.

After the revelation of a drug-smuggling racket operating on cellphone from the Kapurthala jail in the Shinder Pal’s case last week, the Rural Police have revealed that Jarnail Singh was operating on the directions given on phone by Lucky Bhullar who, too, is lodged in the Kapurthala jail. Bhullar was further operating through his man Jagga. The SSP (Rural) said acting on his information, the jail authorities had recovered a phone from him and booked him at the Kotwali police station, Kapurthala.

Jalandhar, December 19
As the strike by the Suwidha Centre employees reached day four today, the magnitude of problems of the applicants has got amplified.

Hundreds of people whose certificates and pending files are lying inside the Centre have been making rounds almost every day to procure them, but to no avail. They have been meeting the concerned officials of various branches in this regard who too have expressed their helplessness.

Even as the employees of the Suwidha Centre had announced that they were going on strike well in advance, the administration failed to get possession of the keys of all almirahs, documents and even the passwords of computers. An attempt by Deputy Commissioner Varun Roojam to deploy his staff on the job also failed due to the above said reason.

Going by the fact that an average of 400 certificates and licences are delivered by the Suwidha Centre each day, the work of nearly 1,600 people has got affected till now, leave aside the problems of fresh applicants.

Rajjat Kumar, a B Tech student of St Soldier Engineering College, said that he had applied for residence certificate at the Suwidha Centre for availing scholarship from the college, which he was to get this Monday. “The college authorities have asked me to submit the certificate by tomorrow. In case the centre does not even open tomorrow, my case might not be taken up,” he said.

Paramjit Singh, an NRI from Shahkot, said he had applied for arms licence for which additional documents had been sought. “After the strike by the Suwidha Centre employees, I was told to directly go to the arms licencing branch, but my work could not be done there. I was told that the systems there were linked with the Suwidha Centre computers and consequently they were also not functioning,” he added. 

Jalandhar, December 19
Following several reports of problems in the DTO office for the past one month, officer Kehar Singh faced a charge that he was taking his cousin along during vehicule challaning.

The agitated autorickshaw drivers who had been challaned gathered at his office and roughed up Kehar Singh’s cousin, sitting there, blaming the DTO for involving his family member for official work.

The DTO and his guard immediately came to his cousin’s rescue.

Auto union leader Ravi Sabbarwal said he would lodge a complaint in this regard with the administration. As the crowd gathered there in support of the union, the DTO himself walked into the DC’s office for conveying his side of the story.

The DTO confirmed that his cousin was there with him. “But he had come just to meet me for personal reasons,” he clarified.

DC Varun Roojam said that though no written inquiry had been marked, he had verbally asked the SDM to check the matter.

Jalandhar, December 19
Sainik School, Kapurthala, will organise the 52nd Alumni Meet on December 21. A large numbers of ex-students of this school presently serving as senior officers in the Defense and civil establishments were expected to participate in this meet, said principal of the school Col Sadhanshu Arya while interacting with the media on Thursday.

Air Marshal PS Gill, AVSM, VM, AOC-in-TRG Command, IAF, has consented to be the chief guest during this event and besides this, Lt Gen(Retd) Gurdeep Singh, PVSM, AVSM,VSM, ADC, Lt Gurmit Singh, AVSM, VSM, GOC , Srinagar Corps, Air Marshal Ramesh Rai, VM, SASO, Central Air Command, Maj Gen Balbir Singh, YSM, GOC, Pathankot division, have already given their consent to attend the same. SSP, Chandigarh, Sukhchain Singh and Raj Pal Sanhu from PAP, Jalandhar, will also attend this meet.

Arya said Sainik School, Kapurthala, was a pioneer among the 24 Sainik Schools of the country in organising this meet every year with the motive to provide a platform to the present generation of cadets to interact with and also share their experience with their illustrious predecessors.

Amritsar, December 19
Two mobile phones were recovered from a prisoner in the Amritsar Central Jail. The undertrial has been identified as Narinder Singh, a resident of Batala, lodged in the jail.

According to information, the mobile phones were seized during a routine checking in the jail. Deputy Superintendent of Jail RK Sharma said two mobile phones- IEMI number 8685866003064363 and 868566003364867, without SIM, were recovered from the accused.

A case under Sections 420 of the IPC and 42, 52 under the Prisoners Act was registered against the accused at the Cantonment police station.