Jalandhar, November 18
Taking suo motu action, a team of the District Legal Services Authority (DLSA) led by its secretary Rana Kanwardeep Kaur, Civil Judge (Senior Division), conducted a midnight inspection at around 12:30 pm at two night shelters near the bus stand and the railway station.

While the night shelter near the bus stand was found abandoned and the caretaker was caught consuming tobacco, shockingly, the shelter near the railway station was found occupied by a few men, and some families, including women and children, were seen sleeping in the open fighting the chilling cold weather.

Shankari Devi, the woman found sleeping in the open under the Domoria flyover with her 5 children, informed that she had come to the city along with her 13 family members.

“We came here today from Rajasthan to sell balloons. Initially, we went inside the shelter but when we saw people consuming intoxicants, we came out,” said Devi.

She said despite people taking intoxicants in front of the caretaker, no action was taken in this regard.

The DLSA severely reprimanded the caretaker and took all the families inside the shelter home. Later, the secretary, along with her team, also visited the railway station and directed the policemen present over there to take all the people sleeping outside to the nearby night shelter under the Domoria flyover.

Earlier, the team checked the night shelter near the bus stand at 11:45 pm. The team found that the shelter home being built under the Khalsa College flyover with no street lights is inaccessible to the people due to darkness.

Also, the team found the home to be empty and the caretaker was found consuming tobacco. After reprimanding him, the DLSA team later visited the bus stand and directed the watchman over there to guide all passengers sleeping in the open to the shelter home.

The team caught a few child labourers sleeping in the open who later ran away on seeing policemen accompanying the team.

Rana Kanwardeep Kaur informed that the check conducted under the guidance of District and Sessions Judge Raj Shekhar Attri was aimed towards seeing the conditions at the night shelter homes in the city and also to make people aware of the facilities being provided by the government.

“Although the administration has built adequate number of night shelter homes in the city, there is a severe lapse in their maintenance,” said Rana Kanwardeep Kaur.

She informed that as claimed by the two caretakers, the MC has not released their salaries from the last eight months.

“This is again a severe violation of human rights. I have written to the MC to get their salaries released at the earliest,” said Rana.

The night shelters in the city were built at an estimated cost of around 80 lakh following directions by the Supreme Court. The court in one of its order dated January 23, 2012, quoted Article 21 of the Constitution and said, “No person should be deprived of his life except according to the procedure established by the court”.

After this, taking notice of the National Report on Homeless People in the same year, the apex court directed all the state governments to build night shelter homes so that nobody dies on streets due to extreme cold.

Although there are eight night shelters in the city, no shelter has been made exclusively for women and children. Even if a woman approaches any of these shelters with her kids, she is whisked away by the caretaker in the absence of a male companion.

Jalandhar, November 18
The visit of the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee president, Partap Singh Bajwa, in the beginning of Jan Sampark Abhiyan started by the party from the city has perhaps left party leaders and workers all the more divided and dislodged.

While the councillors closely associated with former minister Avtar Henry stole the show, those not owing allegiance to the group said they were ignored.

Henry was perhaps the only prominent face seen around with Bajwa during the day as other leaders, including MP Chaudhary Santokh Singh, PYC chief Vikram Chaudhary, former MP Mohinder Singh Kaypee, former MLA Jagbir Brar, former Jalandhar Improvement Trust chairman Tejinder Bittu and Anil Dutta were nowhere to be seen.

The Chaudhary father-son duo, Kaypee and PPCC member Manoj Arora were reportedly away to New Delhi for the 125th birth anniversary of first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru when Bajwa chose to hold the mass contact programme here.

When contacted, all four of them said they were not even aware of any such visit or programme being held in Jalandhar.

Among those who tagged along were Leader of Opposition in MC House, Jagdish Raja, District Congress Committee chief Rajinder Beri, councillor Tarsem Lakhotra, former councillor Harkrishan Bawa, Arun Jain, Paramjit Pamma and Paramjit Singh Kahlon.

Sushil Rinku, representing the dynamic group of councillors, said even as he had sent in a request for holding a programme in his area, the district committee had so far not conceded to it.

“No party chief ever comes to our Basti area, be it Bajwa or Amarinder. It was just Kaypee who came here and that too because he represented the area. The fact is that our area helped Chaudhary Santokh Singh lead with a margin of 21,000 votes in the recent Lok Sabha polls,” he said.

Wherever Bajwa went today, various questions were raised by party workers and supporters. Workers expressed their grouse that even as they had toiled for the party, their efforts were not being recognised.

They said those holding onto chairs were continuing to do so for long. At places, the supporters were, instead, all praise for former Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh.

Bajwa had to face queries as to why the party was not being able to confront the Akali-BJP leaders in an upfront manner.

Bajwa’s first rally was held at Adarsh Nagar, represented by former councillor Paramjit Singh Kahlon. This was followed by another at Sangat Singh Nagar, represented by sitting councillor Bunty Neelkanth. The third took place at Rainak Bazaar, where Arjun Sharma Pappi coordinated.

A lunch was organised at the residence of Leader of Opposition in MC House, Jagdish Raja, at Udham Singh Nagar. Three more rallies were held in the evening at Charanjitpura, Guru Nanakpura and Dakoha.

The Congress chief is scheduled to visit Adampur tomorrow where party leader Satnam Kainth has organised for a rally. A public meeting is scheduled for Reru village in the afternoon and a programme is also scheduled in the ward of councillor Reena Kaur in the evening.

Jalandhar, November 18
While the district administration is scratching its head over the problem of segregation of garbage to effectively implement the solid waste management (SWM) project in the city, Shubha Chauhan, a young college lecturer, is already running her kitchen on biogas generated through her household waste and has also produced around 20 kg of vermi-compost from it in the last two months.

She informed that being highly allergic to dust and smoke, she used to be highly bothered by burning of stubble and garbage in the city.

“Many a time, I doused the smoke by throwing water over it. However, I used to feel guilty and worried over the number of garbage dumps burning and releasing poisonous gases around us,” said the mathematics lecturer at Lyallpur Khalsa College.

She said initially, she planned the project for her house only, but to prevent further exploitation of the environment, she has now decided to share her ideas with society.

“It is a very simple and clean process. I have installed a compact bio-gas plant of one cubic metre capacity on my roof and connected it to a two burner stove in my kitchen. The entire household waste goes into the bio-gas plant that automatically generates gas to burn my stove,” said Shubha.

She claimed that with the help of her household waste, she could easily get around 2 hours of consistent supply of bio-gas every day.

She has also managed to generate around 20 kg of pure vermi- compost at her home through her kitchen waste.

Excited over the success of her two home experiments, now Shubha has planned to share her ideas with people.

“In reality, we do not require any solid waste management company. With little knowledge through various means of communication such as internet, one can easily process 100 per cent household garbage into ‘black gold’,” the lecturer said.

Recently, Shubha formed a self-help group ‘Samadhan’, initially for a group of women in Kartarpur, who would be able to sustain themselves by turning their household waste into compost.

“They informed me that due to the shortage of sanitation workers in their area, garbage is not being lifted every day. Due to this, I taught them the way to generate biogas and vermi-compost through the scattered garbage around them,” said Shubha.

She said one could also do the business of selling worms produced during the process of making compost.

The enthusiastic teacher also roped in children from her colony to form an awareness group who would go to a few houses every day and inform people about the benefits of garbage segregation.

The children also maintain a daily report of people who have segregated the garbage in their home or not by taking report from these houses.

She has also formed a group ‘Eco-Navigators’ on whatsApp to share her experience of moving towards an eco-friendly world.

Jalandhar, November 18
Institute of Road Traffic Education (IRTE) conducted a training camp for the city traffic police at the traffic police station today.

IRTE said the city traffic police were not well versed with the traffic management techniques and they required intensive training on traffic engineering.

Manoj Bisht, head of the Media Department, IRTE, said since the traffic police were not given any training prior to their joining duties in the traffic cell, so they remain ignorant about traffic regulations.

“We have organised a two-day training camp for traffic police in which more than 50 policemen from head constable to ACP rank are participating. Issues related to traffic regulation, traffic engineering and rules and regulations are being discussed in detail with the cops,” Manoj said, adding that until and unless the police have knowledge about traffic regulations, traffic problems will continue to be there.

Prior to the training camp, IRTE had also visited each nook and corner of the city to study the traffic issues.

Jalandhar, November 18
The implementation of the solid waste management project by JITF Urban Infrastructure Limited was disrupted all over again as the sanitation workers did not allow the employees of the company to lift garbage from the dumping sites.

In routine, the employees of the company pick garbage from eight sites in the city, they could lift garbage only from the dumping site at Rama Mandi.

Garbage was not allowed to be lifted from the other sites, including those in front of PIMS and Model Town, as the sanitation workers lodged their protest saying that the agreement reached between them and the Municipal Corporation during the recent meeting with Local Bodies Minister Anil Joshi had not been honoured.

Municipal Corporation Commissioner GS Khehra has now called a meeting of the safai karamcharis and the employees of the company tomorrow to settle the issues between them.

Jalandhar, November 18
A scooter-borne woman was killed after she was hit by a private bus on Cool Road. The deceased was identified as Geeta Rani.

The deceased had come to meet her sister in Jalandhar from Nawanshahr.

Police sources said the woman was heading to her sister’s home when she was hit by the speeding bus from rear. The woman sustained serious head injuries and died on the spot.

The driver of the bus fled away from the spot immediately after the accident.

Jalandhar, November 18
Vigilance Bureau sleuths nabbed an inspector of the Punjab State Warehouse Corporation red-handed while he was accepting a bribe of Rs 7,000 from a commission agent to verify his bills for paddy procurement.

Sources said inspector Raman Kumar had demanded Rs 10,000 to verify the bills but the deal was struck at Rs 7,000.

Vigilance sleuths caught the inspector while he was taking the bribe amount from Varinder Kumar of Varinder Trading Company at Hajipur village.

A case under Sections 7 and 13(2) of the PC Act, 1988, has been registered against the inspector. — TNS

Jalandhar, November 18
In order to promote the income of weavers, the Ministry of Textile has organised a 14-day exhibition of handloom products at Desh Bhagat Yadgar Hall. Weavers and handloom workers from across the country displayed their products such as phulkari, saris, shawls, suits and pashmina shawls.

Kundan Berry, exhibition in-charge, said the exhibition is part of exhibitions that are organised throughout the country. There around 30 stalls from the states J&K, Punjab, Haryana, Jharkhand, Delhi, West Bengal and UP have been set up. The exhibition was organised on November 16 and will last on November 29.

Patiala-based Honey of SS Phulkani Welfare Society, said it is hard to find skilled workers to make handmade Phulkari. However, the demand for the same has been growing for past couple of years. The younger generation is reluctant to adopt it as a source of income anymore.

Mukhram Ram of Berojgar Mahila Kalyan Sanstha, Jharkhand, said there is a group of women in their area, who had been weaving the Khadi for the past several years. The products are then furnished and printed at New Delhi. He said such exhibitions helps in enhancing their income. 

Jalandhar, November 18
Congress leaders have raised questions on the recent delimitation of wards in Nakodar and flayed the ruling party for delimiting wards as per their convenience.

Notably, MC Nakodar had 15 wards and after delimitation, its number rose to 17.

Former Congress minister Amarjit Singh Samra had also conducted a meeting with the former Congress councillors in Nakodar, yesterday. He claimed that Congress had filed objections with the director, Local Bodies, and they also threatened that if their objections were not accepted, they will knock on the court’s door for justice.

Objections were mainly raised by former Congress councillors of Nakodar including Kewal Singh Takhar, Ashwani Kohli and Satinder Singh.

“SAD-BJP had managed delimitation according to their whims and fancies to save their vote bank. We have filed our objections and if director, Local Bodies, does not listen to our demands, then we will knock on the court’s door,” said Kewal Singh Takhar, former President, MC.

As per the notification, wards should be made as per the specifications mentioned in the notifications, but ruling alliance had thrown all norms to the winds. Congress councillors felt that wards delimitation was not done as per the law.