Vijay Mohan,Tribune News Service,Chandigarh, February 9

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has, in a landmark judgment, ruled that a woman candidate cannot be permanently debarred from joining as a doctor in the Army Medical Corps (AMC) on the pretext that she had conceived during the selection process.The court order came on the petition of a woman doctor, who had wanted to join the Army as a Short Service Commission Officer, but was later denied the opportunity on the grounds that her pregnancy amounted to deterioration in health. The court ruled that denying appointment to the petitioner merely on account of her pregnancy was arbitrary and illegal.The petitioner was asked to join service in February 2014 after clearing all examinations and medical tests. Unlike other branches, married women till the age of 45 are eligible to join AMC and there is no training in a military academy. Selected candidates join a hospital closest to residence and are required to complete a basic in-service course of eight weeks within a flexible time period.However, between the period of her application and joining, the petitioner conceived and disclosed this fact on the date of joining after which she was not allowed to assume duties. Her candidature was cancelled and she was advised to undergo the entire selection process again in case she wanted to join AMC.Aggrieved, the petitioner moved the High Court in 2014, averring that pregnancy was not ‘deterioration in health’ but a mere incidence of marriage and womanhood. She pointed out that there would have been no problem had she not disclosed her pregnancy or had conceived the day after joining or had given birth before the joining date and that in paramilitary forces uniformed doctors were simply asked to join after childbirth in case any problem was envisaged due to pregnancy.The court directed the Army to offer appointment to the petitioner within a period of one month.

HC: Woman can’t be barred from joining AMC if she gets pregnant

Gurdaspur, February 8

The state government today gave an ex-gratia of Rs 25 lakh to the bereaved family of Captain Fateh Singh, who was killed in the Pathankot terror attack last month.Sewa Singh Sekhwan, Chairman, Punjab Technical Education and Industrial Training Board, handed over a cheque to Shobha Rani, the widow of Captain Fateh Singh, at Jhanda Gujjar village in Gurdaspur district.He said the state government had also given a cheque of Rs 25 lakh to the family of Havildar Kulwant Singh, who died in Pathankot.— PTI

t’s well-known: law & order completely broke down in Haryana for at least five days since Feb 19. It was as if the state abdicated its responsibility so egregiously that when mobs went about their vicious attacks, police posts were abandoned, Army’s hands tied and officials vanished. Was there a politics of silence in the government? The Tribune takes a look

Rohtak, Feb 21: Charred remains of shops set on fire by Jat agitators demanding reservation. PTI

Caught in the maelstrom of complete lawlessness, a localized incident on Feb 19 in Bhiwani, Haryana, gives you an idea of the mindlessness: A college girl walking to her home in the evening was prevented by stick-wielding youths. She called up her friends and there was a minor clash. The girl escaped in the melee. Later, everyone said the girl was a Rajput. A few hours later men from ‘OBC Brigade’ arrived and tried to disperse the warring sides and asked the Jat agitators to lift the road blockade. What happened next was unprecedented: it was Jat vs Rajput, OBCs and others with Punjabis getting caught in the crossfire. District policemen, sources said, were deployed elsewhere, so none came. Soon, it was nothing short of a full-scale caste war. The situation in Rohtak, the parliamentary constituency of Congress MP Deepender Singh Hooda, was explosive: Several residents said they themselves worked the phones to the Prime Minister’s Office, but the officials “concerned” expressed their inability to do anything. As violent mobs went on the rampage, no help was forthcoming. Recalls VK Juneja, owner of Silver Bells School on the Gohana Road: “On February 19, my school watchman called up saying a mob was about to set the school building afire. I immediately called up the local police and fire-station officials, but they plainly expressed their helplessness. The school building was ransacked and burnt.” Then on Feb 22, almost a day after the Army was deployed in parts of Hisar, despite curfew, an armed mob arrived in tractor trailers and motorcycles and looted houses located in the fields of Dhani Pal village. At least 20 houses were ransacked and burnt down. Policemen and an Army column failed to control the mob. Harphool, whose house was torched, said the rioters took away jewelry and cash. “The security forces were thinly spread out in the fields. We kept shouting for help, but no one came.” A day later, the body of a youth, Mintu, was found when security forces conducted a flag march. Off the record, top government sources said something akin to ‘politics of silence’ prevailed in the government, paralyzing law-enforcement. “For the Punjabi community in Sonepat, Rohtak, Gohana and Karnal, the violence resembled the Partition horror. “It will take years before inter-caste trust is restored,” said a government officer in Panipat. What could have been a controllable rural upsurge soon mushroomed into a caste conflagration: 30 people were killed (official count), hundreds injured, women assaulted, and property worth thousands of crores perished across the state. Worse, the inter-caste bond was allowed to be damaged. In the run-up to the reservation agitation, even when khaps and other Jat leaders were bitterly complaining against government “betrayal” and warning of an aggressive agitation, the state machinery, it’d seem, was at best sleeping, or worst, pretending to be talking. Here’s a surgical analysis of worst affected districts and the response, or the lack of it, from the authorities, especially the police. 

Administration gives in

Rohtak, Feb 20: A curfew was imposed on February 19 and the Army was called out. Jat protesters had dug up roads blocking access to the city. Army troops were airdropped to the Rohtak Police Lines. The troops carried ‘Army’ banners as they marched along with BSF and state police personnel. Yet the violence didn’t stop. This was the seventh day since NH 10 passing through Sampla was blocked.. When residents met Deputy Commissioner DK Behera a day before, his officials had told them quietly: “Don’t depend on sarkari help, you are on your own.” Says Sanjay Khurana, a community leader based at Patel Nagar: “After the district authorities expressed their helplessness, we formed groups of armed youths to keep a watch round the clock.” He says hordes of violent youths tried to enter their locality several times, but were met with equally belligerent response. Several shots were fired in the air to scare away the mob and keep us safe,” he said.The mayhem was in addition to the fear among thousands of people stranded on roads in and around Rohtak. Armed youth continued to vandalize public property as well as showrooms, shops, hotels and restaurants.”The people’s trust in the state machinery could have been saved to some extent had the police personnel and administrative officials stepped in. It was free-for-all,” said Lovely Mittal, a local resident. So bad was the situation that the police posts were abandoned and police stations locked by the very personnel. The result was all too clear: total anarchy in Rohtak and nearby Kalanaur and Meham.”Shockingly, for four-five days neither any MLA, nor did any community leader bother to approach the agitators for calm,” said a resident, Dinesh Kumar. Several prominent businessmen and industrialists are now weighing moving their operations/units to some other state. The educated and well-meaning members of the Jat community regret the large-scale devastation but intelligentsia sees it from a different perspective. “Economic frustration resulting from agrarian crisis has been vented out as caste frenzy. Law-enforcement agencies have failed the people,” says Dr Ravi Mohan, a leading medical practitioner. Dr Rajender Sharma, a Professor of Political Science at Maharishi Dayanand University thinks that in a democratic set-up, the shift of power should be accepted by the established political elites, including the members of the dominant communities.For Phool Kanwar, a former Air Force official, the cracks in communal harmony is the most unfortunate part. And for Vijay Balhara, Principal of Model School in Sector 4, destruction happened in minutes, but construction would take a long time. “The damaged buildings will get reconstructed, but the social fabric that has been destroyed will take a very long time to repair,” says Sandhya, a schoolteacher.Left to fend for themselvesJhajjar: Locals blame the police inaction, saying policemen bothered more about the safety of their officers while common man was left to fend for himself. “No policeman was present in any of the police posts,” said a resident. “The police have lost the faith of people,” said Om Prakash, another resident. Over 15 houses at Chhawani Colony, 20 business establishments, new buildings of PWD rest house, BDPO, Red Cross and Excise offices, Railway Station, Police station, Bank of Patiala, Chhotu Ram Dharamshala and over 50 roadways buses, government vehicles, private cars and two wheelers were set on fire in a town that aspires to be an industrial hub of the state.Most shops are still closed in all main markets. Residents in each colony take up thikri pehra (night patrolling) in self-defence in the absence of any worthwhile police help that suddenly vanished for four-five days since Feb 20.”How can you blame the police alone when the Army was also deployed? Arson and violence took place in the presence of army personnel who were mute spectators in the absence of orders,” said a police officer, claiming that the police did not receive any order to resort to firing to disperse the mobs.Om Prakash Dhankar, a leader of Dhankar Khap, said “We want to financially help families who lost their loved ones. The violence is the direct result of government ignoring the Jat community even as BJP’s Rajkumar Saini made inflammatory statements.””The police were nowhere to be seen when people were being thrashed and killed by hooligans,” said Ram Niwas Saini, a resident of Chhawani Colony where two men were killed and 20 others were injured when protesters attacked their houses. Said TV mechanic Anil Kumar whose shop was torched: “It was horrible. Let no suffer the way I have.”

Warnings ignored

Hisar: Feb 21, just when violence seemed ebbing in other areas of the state, caste clashes broke out in parts of the district. Jats hailing from Sisay village clashed with Gurjars and Sainis in adjoining villages of Sainipura, Dhani Pal and Jaggabara in the Hansi region. Senior Superintendent of Police Ashwin Shenvi said it was a free-for-all. “The area is wide, where houses are thinly spread out. So, we didn’t have a particular area to defend. Even then, we managed to prevent clashes,” he said.It all began from the district’s Mayyar village, the centre of Jat agitation in 2010-13. This time again, the All India Jat Arakshan Sangharsh Samiti (AIJASS) announced it’d resume the stir with a sit-in on the railway tracks. On Feb 12, AIJASS boss Hawa Singh Sangwan, addressing around 1,000 of his supporters, seemed undecided about how to reignite the stir. A group of 10 persons went into a huddle near him and announced: March to the railway tracks. “The government didn’t respond to our 3pm deadline. We had no option. Let the ‘OBC Brigade’ of Rajkumar Saini dare remove us from the tracks,” the Jats sounded the battle cry. Yet things were in a flux.Sangwan finally withdrew the stir after an assurance from state agriculture minister OP Dhankar on Feb 13. But a group of the Samiti was disappointed and refused to clear the blockade. The next day, this group too lifted the blockade. But some of them went to Sampla in Rohtak, the birthplace of legendary Jat leader Sir Chhotu Ram, where an indefinite dharna began.Meanwhile, sensing the buildup in the Rohtak region, the Yashpal Malik group, too, started a dharna on the railway tracks between Mayyar and Ramyana village in the district from February 17. The agitation thus split between the moderates and extremists.

Loud & clear

Bhiwani: Om Prakash Mann, state president of All India Jat Mahasabha and a khap spokesperson makes it plain: the community is a victim in Bhiwani district. “The Jat Dharamsala was vandalized and torched. At least 10 private properties of community members, including one belonging to me, were attacked by Rajputs,” he said.The Rajputs guarding a community centre attacked during violent situation, have a different story to tell. One of them claiming to be an ex-sarpanch said that the Jat agitation was a facade in the garb of disturbing law and order situation to malign the image of a non-Jat Chief Minister. The Rajputs as well as other caste members blame the police for inaction.Such is the caste divide that persons who are now coming forward to lodge complaints are questioning the caste of investigation officers or the SHOs concerned. A senior police officer admitted that there was a complete failure of the system in which even policemen had to run away. “Police posts at several places were burned down by goons who wanted to destroy their criminal records,” said an officer.Superintendent of Police Pratiksha Godara said the force could not dispatch reinforcements to rural areas as all the roads were blocked. “We had inputs that what happened in Rohtak on Feb 19 could be replicated in Bhiwani. So I and the Deputy Commissioner set up a control room to assess the situation,” she said.She said many individuals settled their personal scores taking advantage of the volatile situation. Deputy Commissioner Pankaj said they were told not to order firing until it was absolutely necessary, and that too, after permission from higher authorities. As the events unfolded, it’d seem no permission to open fire was sought.

‘Heavily outnumbered’

Jind: Former additional director general of police, Haryana, BK Sinha says the police force in the present agitation largely remained confined to their safe offices as its movement was restricted by agitating mobs blockading the roads. How else would you explain the burning down of around seven railway stations and a police post? However, the question is when the mobs were chopping over 5,000 fully grown trees to use them as obstacles, what was the forest department or the police doing? Senior police officers said since villagers didn’t allow policemen to move ahead, they had to take interior routes, which delayed the response, enabling mobs to loot and plunder.The district forest office deploys only one guard at every 10km. Officers said they were helpless when they were heavily outnumbered by agitators. Jind Deputy Commissioner Vinay Singh and Superintendent of Police , Abhishek Jorwal said ultimately it was people’s support that brought some semblance of order

Run-up to the caste conflagration

• February 2Sarva Khap Jat Panchayat threatens to intensify protest by blocking roads at about 40 places in the state on February 15 at a Jind rally.
• February 9 CM Khattar holds talks with a section of the community; sets up a panel under the chief secretary to review the quota. Jat groups put off the Feb 15 protest.
• February 12Jats unite under All-India Jat Arakshan Sangharsh Samiti, resume stir from Mayyar (Hisar) after a rally by blocking railway tracks on Delhi-Hisar section.
• February 14Khap and other leaders hold Swabhiman Rally at Sampla (Rohtak). Young members block the Delhi-Fazilka (NH-10) passing through Sampla.
• February 15Even when the CM and Agriculture Minister OP Dhankar are in Rohtak, protesters block roads linking the town to Delhi, Sonepat and Jhajjar.
• February 16The agitation intensifies. College students roughed up. Rohtak completely cut off. Agitation spreads to Sonepat, Jhajjar, Bhiwani and other towns.
• February 18Protesters and non-Jat activists clash. Scores of properties damaged in Rohtak. Police try to stop clashes. Uneasy calm prevails in city.
• February 19Protesters clash with police/BSF personnel, Jat and non-Jat members fight on the streets, setting buildings and vehicles ablaze.
• February 20After the police fail to control thesituation, the Army airdrops its men in Rohtak. Troops flag-march in eight other districts.

. Sunit Dhawan in Rohtak, Ravinder Saini in Jhajjar, Deepender Deswal in Hisar, Sat Singh in Bhiwani and N Kalia in Jind. Coordination & anchoring: Prashant Saxena

Tehri Garhwal kings had skirmishes with Mughal army that they successfully resisted

The Himalayan ranges as visible from Suwakholi, near Dhanaulti, depict the serene beauty of Uttarakhand. Photo courtesy: Bhumesh Bharti

Ajay Ramola

Tribune News Service

Mussoorie, February 21

Tehri Garhwal district is often described as the land of celestial beauty. It has towns such as Pratap Nagar, Kirtinagar and Narendar Nagar that were founded by kings and New Tehri town are worth seeing for their serene beauty.  The history of Garhwal is older than that of the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The worship of Lord Shiva is predominant in this region.Historically, Garhwal is believed to be the land where the Vedas and the Shastras were composed and the great epic Mahabharata was written.  Kanak Pal was the first ruler of the state of Garhwal in 823 AD. He came from what is now called Dhara Najari in Dhar. The rulers of Garhwal gradually expanded their kingdom and power. In fact, Garhwal was one of the independent kingdoms on which the mighty Mughals of Delhi had neither influence nor supremacy. The kings of Garhwal remained independent and were able to retain their diplomatic presence to some extent from the rule of Mughal emperors who swept the northern plains of India. However, there have been a few skirmishes with the Mughals for various reasons and they changed the course of the history of the region. The relationship between the Mughal rulers and the Garhwal kings was believed to be cordial, barring a few incidents from time to time.One famous instance mentioned in the annals of the history of Garhwal is of Rani Karnavati (also famous as Nak kati Rani), wife of Mahipati Shah. Karnavati is known to have cut the noses of Mughal soldiers who attacked Garhwal. She ascended to the throne in 1622 after the death of her husband and ruled the kingdom on behalf of his son Prithvi Pat Shah, according to some historians.Karnavati repelled the attack of the army of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan that was led by his chieftain Najabat Khan around 1,640. She is known to have cut the noses of the Mughal soldiers at a battle that took place near Srinagar, forcing Najabat Khan to retreat. Shah Jahan infuriated by this loss removed Najabat Khan from the post of Jagirdar and appointed Mirja Khan in his place. The monuments erected by Karnavati existed at Nawada in Dehradun district but gradually phased out due to government apathy. She is also credited with the construction of the Rajpur canal that starts from the Rispana river and supplies water to the Doon valley. It is believed that Karnavati had built present Karanpur.The instances of King Shyam Shah visiting Agra for meeting Mughal emperor Jahangir are also recorded in the history of Garhwal. However, this did not mean that the Garhwal kingdom was part of the Mughal empire.Mahipati Shah also did not have good terms with the Mughals but he did attend the crowning of Shah Jahan as Mughal emperor in 1628. Prithvi Pat Shah too while assuming the throne did not treat well the envoy sent by Shah Jahan to the Garhwal King court. Shah Jahan after hearing about the insult of the Mughal envoy ordered his commander Meer Mughal to capture the Garhwal king and bring him to the Mughal court.Prithvi Pat Shah faced by regular Mughal attacks sent several letters to Jahanara Begum, daughter of Shah Jahan, and requested her to involve Dara Shikoh in establishing some sort of truce with Shah Jahan. Dara Shikoh assured Prithvi Pat Shah of helping him. He did convince Shah Jahan to pardon the Garhwal king, leading to a treaty with Garhwal. Medani Shah, son of Prithvi Pat Shah, was sent to Delhi where he met Shah Jahan and offered him gold coins.Another interaction of Garhwal kings with the Mughals occurred after Shah Jahan was taken ill in 1657. Shah Jahan declared Dara Shikoh as his heir but other sons, namely Shah Suja, Murad and Aurangzeb, who all wanted to sit on the throne of Delhi, did not like it. Aurangzeb put his father and brother Murad in prison and declared himself the emperor of India. He sent a battalion to Lahore to capture Dara Shikoh. Suleman  Shikoh, son of Dara Shikoh, who was in Allahabad, came to know about Aurangzeb’s intentions and on the advice of King Jai Singh, who was his local guardian, marched towards Srinagar in Parui Garhwal. Though King Jai Singh deceived him on the way, Suleman still made it to Srinagar. Aurangzeb on learning about Suleman’s whereabouts threatened the Garhwal king to hand over him or he would capture Pataldun or Bhabhar.Medni Shah, fearful of Aurangzeb, is believed to have handed over Suleman to the Mughal army. Suleman saddened by the whole episode cursed the Garhwal king that his kingdom would be ruined very shortly.Delhi emperor bestowed Shah title on King Balbhadra PalThe Pal rulers later came to be known as Shahs, the title that a Mughal ruler gave them out of gratitude. There is an interesting story about how they got the Shah title in the first place. Historian Pandit Harikrishan Raturi states in his book “Garhwal ka Itihas” that Balbhadra Pal was known for his massive physical strength. Once he was on a hunting trip in the forest of Bhabhar, near Najibabad, and there he met the emperor of Delhi who was also hunting. One day when both were hunting together, Balbhadra Pal saved the emperor from a tiger attack by fighting the animal single-handedly. The emperor impressed by his valour took him to his palace in Delhi and extended his hospitality to him for several days. Some rogue fighters were harassing the emperor in the hills in the northeast of the country. Balbhadra finding the emperor tense over the issue offered his services in silencing the rogue elements, to which the latter agreed. Balbhadra with his Garhwali army defeated the rogue elements and killed their leaders. Balbhadra thus brought peace on the border and got a consent letter signed by the rogue elements that they would never attack the emperor’s territory again. The emperor pleased with the outcome granted Balbhadra the title of Shah and also changed his name to Bahadur Shah. Subsequently, Balbhadra’s successors started using the title Shah. Maharaja Mahipati Shah was another famous ruler who was strong enough to attack the Mughals and mount a punitive expedition into Tibet. Maharaja Lalit Shah was able to subdue their old enemy by invading and conquering Kumaon. He expelled the Chands and presented the throne to his younger son. But his sons quarrelled with each other and brought ruin upon themselves.

Sandeep Joshi

Recollect George Orwell and his wonderful 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language”.  Recall his warning about the use of language in political discourse: “Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”  Orwell needs to be recalled to understand how the issues are being framed in the JNU battle, in particular the tendentious juxtapositioning of “martyred” jawans and the university dissenters. In the short-hand language of the television anchor, it is about choosing in the “Nine Martyrs versus Five Anti-Nationals” fight. The dictionary meaning of the word “martyr” is “someone who chooses to be put to death as an act of witness to their faith, rather than abandon his or her religious beliefs.” In the military vocabulary, a soldier who dies in a battlefield, fighting the enemy, is honoured and remembered as a martyr. The preferred word in India is “shaheed” as in the hauntingly memorable song sung by Lata Mangeshkar: Jo shaheed huen hain unki zara yaad karo qurbani. Death on the battlefield, in a face-to-face combat with the enemy, in defence of motherland. The most glorious death a soldier could wish for.However, to pit the nine soldiers who lost their lives in an avalanche in the treacherous Siachen heights against the JNU dissenters is definitely a bit of an Orwellian stretch. The death of a solider is a national loss, any day, any place. Nonetheless, every commander who has led his men in a battlefield would know the difference: laying down life, fighting and defying the enemy, is one kind of death, for which he recommends a medal for his dead comrade, and, an accidental death is in another category. Both are to be mourned, yet the two are separated by acts of bravery, valour and heroism. To confuse the two or to equate the two diminishes the glorious martyrdom of the Major Shaitan Singhs and Havildar Abdul Hamids.Any language that is not able to make a distinction between fighting the enemy and fighting the elements unwittingly lends itself to a larger project of militarisation of popular culture and political debate. Every thinking and serving or retired General would be feeling uncomfortable at this gross exaggeration of the loss.   Even more disquieting to all sober and sensible Generals would be enlisting of the “martyred” soldiers in an ugly political  battle that is ideological and against the grain of the constitutional and republican values.  The martyred jawans are being recruited as posthumous foot soldiers by political leaders  who flaunt their spurious deshbhakti. The Army as an institution must do everything possible to remain immune from this contamination.  The soldier who enlists in the armed forces undertakes — willingly and cheerfully — to fight and, if need be, lay down his life in defence of his motherland. He does not enlist himself to be made a partisan in the partisan battles among partisan politicians, each pretending to be a better deshbhakt and rashtravadi than the other. The question that we must be asking ourselves is: why as a nation do we seem to be succumbing to the vendors of nervous nationalism?  Why are we re-fighting battles that we have already fought and won? Indian unity, our sense of nationhood, our self-assurance and our capability to get the better of our detractors had long been established. We are far too sturdy, far too self-assured, far too resilient to feel threatened by a few “anti-national” slogans on the sprawling campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University.  We have always lived with pockets of secessionism. And we can take legitimate pride in the knowledge that the Indian democracy has successfully coopted yesterday’s secessionists. Even in Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP is in alliance with a political party that fifteen years ago would have been dubbed “secessionist”. And, this alliance is being mid-wifed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh! A definite intent seems to be at work in making a great and prolonged political spectacle out of the “anti-national” slogans. Some may find unconscionable the inspired ugliness that was on display at the Patiala House Court but it does seem to be part of a political and electoral strategy. The agenda is to draw wider and wider, what Milan Kundera calls the “national circle of intimacy”. The ruling establishment would demand that every artist, writer, intellectual, journalist, architect, painter, scholar enter this national circle of intimacy. And those who refuse or demur from entering this circle should be made to feel the Delhi Police Commissioner’s baton.    From Dadri to Hyderabad to JNU, the country is being subjected to majoritarian demands. In Dadri,  those speaking in the name of majority asserted a right to determine what one could eat or not eat; in Hyderabad they insisted on defining who is a Dalit and who is not a Dalit; and in JNU, they are clamorously reserving the right to sit in judgment over this or that citizen’s national loyalty. There is a familiar ring to this kind of insistent demands. European history is replete with blood and genocide because of demands made by organised thugs in the name of this or that majority. Eastern European countries still continue to experiment with the exacting and ugly terms of co-existence among communities. Only a few months ago, the country had found itself engaged in a fierce “intolerance” debate. Those handful of people speaking in the name of the majority arrogated to themselves the exclusive licence to decide what was to be allowed, how much was to be “tolerated”. That round between the illiberal and intolerant forces and the liberal and progressive voices subsided only after the functionaries of the Supreme Court assured that their protection would always be available for democratic values and dissent. The battle has been renewed again. The only difference this time is the invocation of “national” themes. Who is a “national” and who is not “national” would be decided by the OP Sharmas. “Sedition” has been bandied about all too easily and all too glibly.The judiciary would be called upon to step in. It must be hoped that those who man the Bench, individually and collectively, have come a long way from the time when a court felt that a death sentence would ease the national conscience. Judicial decision-making, hopefully, would maintain its distance from the dramas being enacted in the streets across the nation.Above all, the quality and content of our nationalism cannot be dictated by a demagogue. Nor can our nationalism be sustained and extracted by the state’s coercive instruments. Those driven by vote-bank politics should not be allowed to demean and diminish the nobility of Indian nationalism.

Punjab and Haryana Governor-cum-UT Administrator Kaptan Singh Solanki and Lt Gen KJ Singh, GOC-in-C, Western Command, during a Civil Military Liaison Conference at the Haryana Raj Bhawan in Chandigarh on Wednesday. A Tribune photograph

Ramkrishan Upadhyay,Tribune News Service,Chandigarh, February 17

The UT Administration and the IAF will carry out a joint survey to find a workable solution for providing a shorter route from Chandigarh to the international airport in Mohali.The Administration raised the issue during the Civil Military Liaison Conference held today at the Haryana Raj Bhawan under the chairmanship of Punjab and Haryana Governor-cum-UT Administrator Kaptan Singh Solanki.During the meeting, Solanki called for a joint survey of the area for an early resolution of the matter.The Administration presented three options in this connection.While UT officials pressed for the shortest route from the existing route to the airport, they also gave presentation of developing two other roads — one from the Sector 47 side and the other connecting with the airport road in Mohali. In the last two cases, additional land will have to be acquired by the Government of Punjab and the Chandigarh Administration.These two routes would require an additional detour of about 10-12 km for the residents of Chandigarh, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.However, if the first option is followed, the distance from the city airport to the international airport would be merely 0.7 km.The Chandigarh Administration has again proposed to build an underground tunnel to have direct connectivity to the international airport terminal in the area of Punjab. Under the proposal, the tunnel will pass through the runway and connect with the road to the airport in Chandigarh.A senior UT official said though this plan was discussed with the Airport Authority of India earlier and the latter supported it, it could not materialise. “So we have requested the IAF to look into the matter again as we have no other option,” the official said.While appreciating the role of armed forces, Solanki said a country could progress only if its citizens felt secure and were at peace. He emphasised the importance of holding such meetings regularly so that issues of the defence personnel and the civil administration did not remain unresolved for long.UT Finance Secretary Sarvjit Singh assured that the issue of allotment of land for a girls’ hostel, Armed Forces Tribunal and the primary wing of Kendriya Vidyalaya in Sector 47 would be resolved soon.Home Secretary Anurag Agarwal said as far as reservation and pay protection of the ex-servicemen on re-employment in the civil administration was concerned, the UT had already adopted the pattern followed in Punjab. Similar was the case as far as giving compensation and concessional benefits to the next of kin of deceased defence personnel was concerned.Lt Gen KJ Singh, GOC-in-C, Western Command, appreciated the cooperation extended by the Administration from time to time in dealing with the issues pertaining to defence forces promptly. Meanwhile, he expressed concern over the security of military establishments and the Air Force Base in the wake of terrorist attacks in the recent past.

Security, welfare matters discussed

Tribune News Service,Chandigarh, February 17

The annual Civil Military Liaison Conference (CMLC) between the Headquarters, Western Command, Chandimandir, and the Chandigarh Administration was held here today to discuss matters related to security, land, welfare and other matters of mutual interest.The meeting was co-chaired by Punjab and Haryana Governor-cum-UT Administrator Kaptan Singh Solanki and Lt Gen KJ Singh, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Command. Senior civil functionaries from the UT Administration and military officers from the Command Headquarters attended the event.In his inaugural address, Vijay Dev, Adviser to the Administrator, highlighted the excellent rapport between civil and military officials in Chandigarh.Dev said the Western Command considered itself an intrinsic part of Chandigarh and would like to be actively associated with important social, cultural, recreational and sporting events being organised in the City Beautiful.The UT Adviser also appreciated the support provided by the Administration for organising events to commemorate the Golden Jubilee Celebrations of the 1965 Indo-Pak War, which included display of military equipment and band, ‘raahgiri’ at Sukhna Lake and the Martyr’s Day commemoration at the Chandigarh War Memorial.