Amritsar, April 18
The distribution of liquor and drugs to woo voters during elections is an open secret. As the polling day is approaching, the seizure of illicit liquor on the rise. The Excise and Taxation Department, along with the police, claimed to have confiscated a huge quantity of illicit liquor that was being manufactured in the rural belt of the constituency. The illicit liquor is being manufactured on a large scale in the rural belt. Urea and limestone and inferior quality of jaggery are being used as raw material in the preparation of liquor.

At least, 15 cases pertaining to illicit liquor and other intoxicants were registered in the official crime diary today.

In the first instance, the police confiscated 200 bottles of illicit liquor and arrested Harjinder Singh, alias Jindhi, of Gumtala under Section 61/1/14 of the Excise Act.

Similarly, in another case, the same quantity of liquor was recovered from Rajbir Singh of the Chheharta area.

In another case, the Chheharta police have booked Kishan Singh of the Kot Khalsa area. He was held with 50 liquor bottles. The Maqboolpura police have arrested Amarjit Singh, a resident of Lopoke, with 2 kg of poppy husk powder.

in another instance, the Gate Hakima police booked three persons and arrested one of them on the similar charges. The accused has been identified as Kuldip Singh of Indra Colony. As many as 105 bottles of illicit liquor were recovered from him. Two persons managed to flee but the police recovered 82 bottles of liquor from them.

Similarly, the C-Division police have arrested one person while the other person was released on bail under. According to the police, the accused, Gurjinder Singh, alias Bittu, of Gurdaspur was arrested with 29 bottles of illicit liquor while Bhupinder Singh, alias Sonu, a resident of Fateh Colony, was held with 9 bottles of liquor. Later, Bhupinder was released on bail

The A-Division police have arrested Harinder Singh, alias Makko, of Beas area with 18 bottles of countrymade liquor while another person, Paramjit Singh, alias Pappu, of Mohkampura was released on bail. Around 6,930 ml of illicit liquor was recovered from him.

Excise and taxation officials claimed to have seized a huge quantity of liquor during raids from various villages in the past two days.

They seized 1.50 lakh ml of illicit liquor from Manga Singh of Teda village in Ajnala yesterday. They also raided at Chak Mishri Khan village from where they recovered 1.12 lakh ml of illicit liquor from a villager, Ranjit Singh. They seized 12,200 kg of lahan, a countrymade liquor which was found abandoned in Ugar Aulakh village. Lahan was destroyed by the excise officials. The excise and taxation officials also recovered 720 kg of lahan from Billu of the same village.

Amritsar, April 18
Shunning some traditional ways of campaigning, political parties have incorporated some uncoventional ways to woo the voters, especially youngsters.

The candidates are distributing flowers among residents, organising early morning walks to meet the common people, staging street plays and musical acts. The political parties are trying every trick to woo the voters.

BJP's Arun Jaitley has come up with a special creative team of young artists who performs musical acts and street plays for the party. AAP is carrying out its "wake up" campaign and volunteers the party ring doorbells early morning to wake up the people. The distribution of flowers has become a common practice.

Gurvinder Sandhu, a senior artist and social activist, has arrived from Chandigarh with his team to implement creative campaigning strategies for the BJP. "Most of the people who attend election rallies are not interested in long speeches. Since we are aiming at the youth, there is a need to adopt some innovative ways to attract them. So, we started organising nukkad nataks and musical performances to catch their fancy." Sandhu said.

With over 3,300 young volunteers joining his team, he says 1,300 are girls and they compose promotional songs and give live performances during election rallies. "We have a band of young singers, who play guitar and give live performances. We carry out door-to-door campaigning in an equally innovative way."

Not lagging behind, AAP is also using offbeat methods for campaigning. Its candidate Dr Daljit Singh took out a "rickshaw rally", tying friendship bands and distributing flowers besides carrying out door-to-door campaign. Mohalla sabhas are being organised and social media campaigns are also in full swing.

"There is a need of new ways to say the things are needed to be said. To attract the youth, some creative methods of campaigning are required. The social media has been exploited to its potential," Gurvinder says. 

Amritsar, April 18
The landmark judgement by the Supreme Court, providing an option called NOTA (none of the above) to the voters on electronic voting machines, is being lauded by the district administration and the general public. The district administration, under the supervision of ADC Pardeep Sabharwal, has roped in volunteers to spread the message among the residents.

Leading them is Parbodh C Bali, district president of NGO People's Union for Civil Liberties. He has taken up the task of educating people about their right. He has got published pamphlets, stickers and other informative material on NOTA.

"The Parliament cannot remain without its representatives. If a voter does not like any of the candidates, he must press the NOTA button to record their choice," he says.

Bali has put up audio-visual canopy stalls at different places in Amritsar and accompany the SVEEP team of Amritsar district for a live demonstration on EVMs.

The Supreme Court had held that a voter can reject all candidates by pressing the none of the above (NOTA) button on the electronic voting machines.

Though NOTA option will not affect the outcome of elections, it would create an environment for the elimination of unwanted candidates in future.

Now, there are 23 candidates contesting from Amritsar. One EVM has only 16 buttons to the maximum, so two EVMs will be before the voters to cast their vote. On the first EVM, all 16 buttons are allotted to different candidates and there is no NOTA option on it.

On the second EVM, the first seven buttons are allotted to the remaining candidates while the eighth button is fro NOTA option. 

Amritsar, April 18
As the agricultural produce has started arriving at the local grain market, the Mandi Board has made elaborate arrangements to facilitate the procurement process.

Officials at the Bhagatawala grain market said ripening of wheat had delayed due to prevalent weather conditions but the produce had started arriving. “The arrival of the agricultural produce will pick up the pace in a week. At present, only a few farmers have arrived with their produce,” said a worker at the grain market.

The Mandi Board has made arrangements for electricity, drinking water and tents. The officials said they were ready for the procurement process and all arrangements were in place.

The grain market at Bhagtawala, which is the largest in the district, does not have a wall around it due to which farmers often complain about the theft of their produce.

Baltej Singh, a farmer, said, “Farmers need to be vigilant. These unscrupulous elements roam freely around the grain market as beggars.” He said a wall should be constructed around the grain market. He added that farmers also faced a problem in finding food in the market.

Sukhwinder Singh, another farmer, said, “Though a dhaba is working here, the quality food is not good at the dhaba. A farmer cannot go to far off places when his produce is lying in the mandi.” He said the mandi officials should rope in some dhabas, who could provide good quality food at nominal charges.

An official at the mandi said the Mandi Board was providing washrooms, drinking water and electricity to farmers. “The facility of washrooms was added recently. More facilities will be provided at the market soon,” he said.

Amritsar April 18
Unlike the BJP and the Congress, who used the fame of celebrities for campaigning, AAP’s candidate Dr Daljit Singh will get a helping hand from the party's Chandigarh candidate Gul Panag. Gul will start her roadshow from Ram Bagh at 10.30 am tomorrow. Gul Panag's roadshow will culminate at the AAP’s Lawrence Road office.

Taking a note of Bollywood star Suneil Shetty’s visit to the city a few day ago and Vivek Oberoi’s roadshow in support of BJP candidate Arun Jaitley , Dr Daljit Singh said, “I am a bit amazed at the tactics being adopted by Arun Jaitely to take the attention away from the real issues. I have nothing against people like Suneil Shetty and Vivek Oberoi but what do they know about Amritsar?"

Meanwhile, Oberoi campaigned for the BJP on Lawrence Road. His truck was parked just outside BBK DAV College for Women to catch the attention of girls. It is a strict no parking zone. Meanwhile, the cops turned a blind eye towards the chaos. “How can we expect anything good from such leaders, indulging in sensationalism? Their promises are sensationalist, their acts are sensationalist and their words are also sensationalist,” Dr Daljit Singh said. 

Amritsar, April 18
Infuriated at assigning of poll duties to pharmacists, the Punjab State Pharmacists' Association has announced to boycott all emergency and VIP duties. Around 75 pharmacists in the district have been assigned poll duties at various polling booths on the election day. At present, pharmacists accompany ambulances during visits of VIPs and at other social or religious gatherings.

In a protest outside the Civil Surgeon Office today, association president Shamsher Singh Kohri said pharmacists were often sent on emergency and VIP duties. “We have been performing these duties on short notices but now we have decided to boycott all such duties.”

The association said the technical staff working under the Health Department as pharmacists, nurses, radiographers and laboratory technicians should not be assigned poll duties as their services are required to run emergency health services.

Kohri said instead of assigning poll duties to them, those who are not required for any emergency service should be given poll duty. He said as per the Election Commission guidelines, the technical staff of the Health Department could be assigned poll duty.

The district Health Department had earlier requested the administration not to assign poll duty to their staff as they would be required for emergency services. However, the administration has not cancelled their duties. “We have been given assurances but our duties have not been cancelled so far,” said Kohri.

Employees of various government departments generally are not keen on election duties as it is a tedious job. 

Amritsar, April 18
A 14-year-old girl allegedly committed suicide by hanging herself with a dupatta at her uncle’s home yesterday. Her family members said she was depressed.

The deceased has been identified as Balwinder Kaur. Her uncle Sarwan Singh said they had adopted Balwinder a year ago from his brother Swaran Singh. He said, he along with his wife, had gone to the market when the girl committed suicide. The police have registered an FIR.

In November 2012, a 10-year-old girl had committed suicide in the city .The police had claimed to have found a suicide note from her school bag, in which she had stated that she was depressed as her mother rebuked her. Namita Kalia (10), a student of Class V, had jumped from the fourth floor of her school.

A local psychiatrist, Balwinder Singh said, “ Children are not able to handle stress these days. Parents and teachers should handle children with care and they should be taught to handle stress."

Retired college teacher MP Singh said, “Parents are busy in earning money these days and teachers are not sensitive towards their students' problems. Society will have to learn to listen to children carefully and patiently.”

Amritsar, April 18
Senior government officials, including Principal Secretary, Health, Vinni Mahajan, conducted inspection at Government Medical College and Government Dental College here today.

During the inspection, the officials held interaction with the staff of the college. At Government Medical College, the president of the Nursing Association, Raj Bedi Anand, highlighted the non-disbursal of salaries to contractual nurses for the past many months.Bedi said many of the contractual workers had not got salaries for months. "There are cases where salaries have not be disbursed for around 10 months," she said.

Government officials asked the employees to work for the betterment of services for the general public. Bedi said the services couldn't be improved unless the employees start getting salaries regularly. 

Jalandhar, April, 18
In order to make students aware of the importance of elections and encourage the first time voters to vote, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication of Maharaja Ranjit Singh Regional Campus of Guru Nanak Dev University today organised a signature campaign.

Thousands of students from all over the country in the departments, including Journalism and Mass Communication, School of Legal Studies, Information and Technology, Punjabi and English, pledged to vote.

Speaking with Jalandhar Tribune, Associate Dean, Academic Affairs and Student Welfare, Dr Kamlesh Singh Duggal, said it was all due to the efforts of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication that this campaign was organised. “There were nearly five per cent students of some departments who did not know that polling would be held in the state on April 30 and most of them were first timers,” Dr Duggal added.

An election campaign has already been launched by the district administration in which officials have been visiting schools and colleges to encourage voters, especially the first time voters to use their right.

Dr Duggal said no official from the district administration had ever visited their campus with regard to this campaign. “I got to know that there are some students of the campus who are not aware of elections. Therefore, I planned to organise this event,” he added.

They said they would vote for a person who would make the country corruption-free and would not indulge in dirty games based on caste, religion, region and creed to polarise voters. Students also said they would vote for a candidate who would bring a sense of security among women. 

Amritsar, April 18
A sudden drop in temperature has had the Amritsar residents confused about the summer season, which was believed to be already there a few days ago. Heavy rainfall marked the beginning of the season. The drop in temperature has pushed further the hot summer a bit more ahead. Withthunderstorm throughout the day, the city witnessed a different mood altogether.

The weather has been quite unpredictable this year. The winter stretched out till late March and now the rainfall at this point of time is welcome for a change. The Meteorological Department has predicted that the showers would continue for a couple of days. “It’s a good as well as bad news. Though the temperature has come down and the harsh summer is yet to begin, it is not a good news for farmers,” shared Gurbaksh Singh, a retired government officer.

While youngsters gave mixed reactions to the sudden showers, the kids had a fun. Seen soaking in the rain, enjoying the breeze and crowding numerous roadside rehriwallas for masala chai and pakoras, the rain brought in many moods of the city residents.

But it also brought in numerous traffic jams and clogged roads. Inconvenience was evident on city roads as the heavy traffic areas suffered traffic jams.