Sachets of Chinese ethylene powder in a mango box to ripen the fruit at the Sector 26 market in Chandigarh on Sunday. S Chandan

Ramkrishan Upadhyay

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 21

With the Health Department tightening the noose around traders to curb the use of calcium carbide for artificial ripening of fruits at the fruit  and vegetable  market in Sector 26, the traders have replaced it with the Chinese ethylene powder.The market is full of sachets of the Chinese ethylene powder, lying scattered all over the place after being thrown out of cartons used to transport mangoes.These sachets expose visitors to emissions of the hazardous chemical.Experts say exposure  to the chemical can cause the same ill-effects as caused by calcium  carbide. The packets are also dangerous to cows and other animals at the market that survive on vegetable  waste. While the traders claim the use of the Chinese ethylene powder is allowed, officers of the Health Department are waiting for a report of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India on it. The Department of Food  Safety has served notices on all 111 fruit traders warning  them of stern action, including termination of the licence, in case they are found using the banned calcium carbide for ripening of fruits.Sukhvinder Singh, designated officer, Food and Safety Department, said samples of ethylene powder collected  from mango cartons had been sent to the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India to check for artificial ripening chemicals beyond the permissible limit. “This ethylene is in the form of a starchy powder, which slowly releases ethylene gas that causes mangoes and other fruits to ripen. Sources said besides the Chinese sachets, the use of calcium carbide had not stopped completely in the  market despite thes crackdown.While checks are being carried out at the mandi, there  is no check in apni mandis  where “masala’ is mainly used for ripening of mangoes, bananas and papaya, and sometimes also for cheeku and tomatoes.” They said while the actual process required five to six days for repining of fruits, “with the use of calcium carbide, it takes a few hours to ripen these”.

Papaya gets costlier

Raids conducted by the department has increased the rates of papaya by two times. Papaya was available for Rs 40 a kg on Sunday, the highest this season. A trader said the supply of papaya had decreased by over 50 per cent  after the  raids, which had led to the increase in its prices.Over 3 tonnes of fruits  destroyed so farThe Department of Food Safety has destroyed over three tonnes of mangoes and papaya ripened by using calcium carbide in five raids  conducted in the past one  month.How to identify  artificially ripened mangoesExperts say an artificially ripened mango will have green patches. These patches are clearly distinguishable from the yellow and unlike a naturally ripened mango, it will not have a uniform blend of yellow and green. Artificially ripened mango  will also have an unnaturally bright yellow colour when compared to a naturally ripened mango. The artificially ripened mango causes slight burning in the mouth.

‘Have ordered regular checks’

“I have already issued directions to officers of the Department of Food Safety to carry out regular checks to curb the use of calcium  carbide  for ripening of fruits. The use of calcium carbide is dangerous for human beings.”Dr  Rakesh  Kashyap, Director,  Health Services Traders want an alternative    “The Administration has stopped the  use of calcium  carbide without  providing the traders any alternative. The Chinese sachets for   ripening of fruits are also not available in the  city,  causing a huge  loss to the  traders.”  Brij  Mohan, VP, Fruit & Vegetable Market Assn

India had officially applied for membership of the grouping in May last year. File photo

New Delhi, May 21

The next plenary session of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) is likely to be held in Swiss capital Bern next month, but the chances of any breakthrough on India’s entry into the elite group still look slim, given China’s persistent opposition to it.

India had officially applied for membership of the grouping, which controls export of nuclear materials, equipment and technology, in May last year.

The matter came up for discussion at the Seoul plenary session of the NSG in June last year, but yielded little result with Beijing scuttling India’s bid on the ground that it was not a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty (NPT).

Ahead of the next NSG plenary session, official sources say, India has renewed its efforts to become a member of the 48-nation group by engaging with all member countries, but resistance from China still remains despite the pro-India push from other key players such as the US, the UK, France and Russia.

China has been pressing for a two-step process which includes setting up criteria — a standard for admission—for the inclusion of countries that are not signatories to the NPT. Beijing also equates India’s case with Pakistan, which, too, has applied for the NSG membership.

The issue of India’s membership is expected to be discussed at the Bern meet, but the “status quo” still remains, a senior official says.

Indicating that there was no change in China’s position towards India’s NSG bid, Chinese Ambassador here Luo Zhaohui at an event last month had said, “On the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) issue, we do not oppose any country’s membership, believing that a standard for admission should be agreed upon first.”

India has repeatedly said that China is the “one country” which has been blocking its bid.

The two sides conducted two rounds of talks between China’s nuclear negotiator Wang Qun and India’s then Secretary for Disarmament Amandeep Singh Gill on September 13 and October 31 last year.

The NSG consultative group’s meeting in November last year also ended like the Seoul plenary session. It remained inconclusive on India’s application as China continued to oppose the entry of non-NPT nations and called for a two-step “non-discriminatory” solution for admission of such countries into the grouping.

Over the last one year, India has tried to get more support for its NSG bid, but not all its efforts have proved to be successful. For instance, Turkey has agreed to support India’s bid to the group, but it also favours Pakistan’s bid.

New Zealand has also not given any concrete assurance on supporting India’s bid.

“Prime Minister (John Phillip) Key stated that New Zealand would continue to contribute constructively to the process currently underway in the NSG to consider India’s membership. New Zealand is committed to working with NSG members to reach a decision as soon as possible,” a joint statement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Kiwi counterpart John Key said after the latter’s visit to New Delhi in October last year. PTI

General Bipin Rawat, Chief of the Army Staff, interacts with officials of the Chetak Corps in Bathinda on Saturday. A Tribune photo

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, May 13

General Bipin Rawat, chief of the Army Staff, visited the Chetak Corps here on Saturday. The one-day visit was in continuation of his visit to the Sapta Shakti Command headquarters on May 12.He interacted with Formation Commanders and was briefed by Lt-General Ashwani Kumar, General Officer Commanding, Chetak Corps, on training and operational matters.He was satisfied with the high standards of training and operational readiness of the Corps and complimented the Formation Commanders for maintaining and ensuring all-round professional excellence.

A security guard stands at the entrance to the opening ceremony of the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing on May 14, 2017. — AFP photo

Beijing, May 14

India on Sunday skipped the opening ceremony of China’s Belt and Road Forum following sovereignty concerns over the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

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No Indian delegation was seen at the opening ceremony addressed by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

When inquired, Indian diplomats here pointed to the statement issued by MEA spokesperson Gopal Baglay last night.

“…No country can accept a project that ignores its core concerns on sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he said.

Few Indian scholars attended the meeting. Media was not permitted into the conference hall, where the opening ceremony took place.

Indian scholars, who took part in the meeting, said no Indian delegation was spotted.

The meeting, called the Belt and Road Forum (BRF), is being attended by 29 heads of state and governments, including Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif and his Sri Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickrmasinghe, besides official delegations from other South Asian countries.

Leaders and officials from various countries, including Russia, US, Japan, UK, Germany and France, are attending the meeting.

In a strongly-worded statement issued on Saturday night, India had said that the connectivity initiative must be pursued in a manner that respects sovereignty and territorial integrity.

“Guided by our principled position in the matter, we have been urging China to engage in a meaningful dialogue on its connectivity initiative, ‘One Belt, One Road’ which was later renamed as ‘Belt and Road Initiative’. We are awaiting a positive response from the Chinese side,” Baglay had said in a statement. — PTI

The award of Commendation Card by the Army Chief to Major Leetul Gogoi has strirred a hornet’s nest. Those looking at rule-book correctness of the means employed need to remember that the rules are framed for normal circumstances. Irregular situations demand bending of those rules

• 

Major Leetul Gogoi: In eye of a storm

THE action of Major Gogoi, in tying an unarmed civilian on the bonnet of his jeep last month, aroused both admiration as well as scorn. Social media had a field day. The first to tweet was Omar Abdullah, who termed the action as shocking but his views no longer merit being taken seriously. The veterans were divided, with a majority applauding the officer’s action.The interest in the issue had barely begun to flag, when it hit the headlines again with the award of Commendation Card by the Army Chief to the officer. Both his action and the award merit discussion. Military operations seldom follow a predictable path.  This is even more true in the irregular scenario of counter-militancy operations. There are no chalkboard situations or template solutions. The proverbial fifty-third card invariably shows up. Tackling such situations demands out-of-the-box thinking and an innovative mind. Major Gogoi’s   action needs to be viewed in this light. Even with the sketchy information, one was convinced that Gogoi had displayed a remarkably quick-thinking mind. After he himself addressed the media on May 23, one also saw him as a mature commander possessing high equanimity in the face of adversity. As he explained, his small party was confronted with a nearly 1,200-strong  mob armed with stones, blocking his route. He announced on the hailer that he had come to collect the polling party  and requested for passage. Many in the mob would actually have taken this as a sign of weakness. The most obvious option for a conventional military mind would have been to use force to extricate his heavily outnumbered party.  But that would have caused dozens of deaths among the civilians. His maturity did not allow him to do so. On the spur of the moment, he thought of using one of the stone-pelters  as a deterrent. And that is how Ghulam Ishaq Dar got to travel on the bonnet of his vehicle. The mobsters were too stunned to act. Finding a window of opportunity, Gogoi managed a safe passage for his men. Thus using his wit instead of his weapons, Gogoi accomplished the rescue mission without letting even a drop of blood be shed.How does one view the Major’s action in doing what he did? Those seeped in Army’s conventional ethos and culture decried it. But they miss the point. The prevailing scenario of irregular proxy warfare, calls for an innovative approach. A straitjacket approach, which may work in a conventional setting, has no place in fluid and unpredictable situations that our commanders are encountering  almost daily. Given  the Army’s result-oriented culture and  philosophy, where methodology plays a subordinate role, Gogoi comes out with a high score.Critics who chide him with violation of human rights, are off-track. The most fundamental right of a human being is the right to life. And lives are what Gogoi saved through his unorthodox action. In the end, the result is what matters. Like the ditty goes, “I eat my peas with honey/ I have done it all my life. It may look funny/ but it keeps them on the knife”. Metaphorically, Gogoi kept the peas on the knife. He acted with honest intent. Flexibility should remain the cornerstone of Army’s functioning. Those who are looking for elegance and rule-book correctness of the means employed, need to remember the rules are framed for normal circumstances. Irregular situations demand bending of those rules.  I will say: “Well done, Major Gogoi”. I wish the Indian Army has more of his brand and ilk.The award of a Commendation Card by the Army Chief to Major Gogoi raked up a lot of heat, including by a few politicians from the Valley. Some even went to the extent of calling the Army Chief’s action as an insult to the Kashmiris. Strong words of condemnation were no doubt meant to please the ears of their constituents. One wonders how many of them spoke with conviction. It was even more disconcerting to see the leaders of some mainstream political parties, with high national visibility, speaking critically of the award.  But that is India, where freedom of speech is stretched to extremes. It may be advisable to eschew populist comments on subjects where one has no expertise.To every rational thinking Indian, the award is very well-deserved and timely. It serves a dual purpose. It sends out a clear signal to the Army rank and file to act boldly and that the hierarchy stands solidly behind them in their efforts towards normalising the situation.  Even more importantly, it is a signal to the militants that the Army means business and it is high time they stopped taking law into their own hands. The writer is a  former Deputy Chief of Army Staff

Attorney general defends Major Gogoi

N Biren Singh

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

Imphal, May 25

To end the decades-long insurgency in Manipur, the BJP-led government in Manipur is ready for talks with militants willing to lay down their arms. Chief Minister N Biren Singh, in an interview with The Tribune, said his government was working on surrender and rehabilitation package for armed militants in the state bordering Myanmar.“We are going to invite the insurgents for talks. We have deliberated on the issue in the Cabinet. I have already spoken to Home Minister Rajnath Singh for a package to ensure security, including financial security, to militants who surrender,” he said.Despite emerging the second-largest party in the state Assembly poll, the BJP was able to form a government. The CM, exuding confidence, claimed his government would last full term. “Stability is not a problem. People are with me. The Naga People’s Front is also a part of my government.” Biren Singh, who took over as the state’s first BJP CM on March 15, claimed militancy-related violence had come down.“My biggest challenge is insurgency. I want equal development of hills and plains.” he emphasised.“After their surrender, where will they (insurgents) live? How will they be integrated with the mainstream? We have to work out these things. Anybody surrendering will be taking a big risk. He will be under threat from his group members. The surrendered militants have to be given financial support for rehabilitation,” he maintained.A state with a population of barely three million, Manipur has over 30 militant groups, some demanding independence. As of now, surrendered militants are kept in camps, isolated from their families and society.Biren Singh said he expected a financial package from the Centre. “We have to construct a housing colony for the surrendered militants so that they can live with their families in a safe environment. Schools, banking facilities, everything has to be provided to them and their families. They should feel secure. We have to create that kind of atmosphere,” the CM said.Pointing out that the Centre spent a huge sum on counter-insurgency operations in the northeast, he said: “If we implement a surrender and rehabilitation policy, it will yield better results, both in terms of peace and development.” On the blockades imposed by the United Naga Council, an apex body of Naga insurgent groups, Biren Singh said the 139-day blockade of NH-2 and NH-37, to protest the creation of Sadar Hills and Jiribam districts by the earlier Congress government, was lifted four days after the BJP had formed government. “Besides, the Railway line from Giribam to Imphal will be completet by 2020. It will be very useful during such blockades.”On the demand by certain Naga groups for including Naga-inhabited areas of Manipur to form “Greater Nagaland,” he said: “The territorial integrity of Manipur will remain intact. Even the PM has said so.” He claimed his government was not aware of any talks between Naga insurgent group NSCN (IM) and the Centre in this regard.The Chief Minister, who has been a footballer, said his government wanted to encourage sports and tourism.

Culture has rarely tired of speaking about the weather. Pastoral poems detail the seasonal variations in weather ad nauseam, while the term “pathetic fallacy” is often taken to refer to a Romantic poet’s wilful translation of external phenomena – sun, rain, snow – into aspects of his own mind. Victorian novels, too, use weather as a device to convey a sense of time, place and mood: the fog in Dickens’s Bleak House (1853), for example, or the wind that sweeps through Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1847).

And yet the same old conversations fundamentally changed tense during World War I. Because during the war, weather forecasting turned from a practice based on looking for repeated patterns in the past, to a mathematical model that looked towards an open future.

Needless to say, a lot relied on accurate weather forecasting in wartime: aeronautics, ballistics, the drift of poison gas. But forecasts at this time were in no way reliable. Although meteorology had developed throughout the Victorian era to produce same-day weather maps and daily weather warnings (based on a telegram service that could literally move faster than the wind), the practice of forecasting the weather as it evolved and changed over time remained notoriously inadequate.

Changing the weather

English mathematician Lewis Fry Richardson saw that the pre-War practice of weather forecasting was much too archival in nature, merely matching observable weather phenomena in the present to historical records of previous weather phenomena.

This, he deemed, was a fundamentally unscientific method, as it presupposed that past evolutions of the atmosphere would repeat in the future. For the sake of more accurate prediction, he claimed, it was essential that forecasters felt free to disregard the index of the past.

And so, in 1917, while working in the Friends’ Ambulance Unit on the Western Front, Richardson decided to experiment with the idea of making a numerical forecast – one based on scientific laws rather than past trends. He was able to do so because on May 20, 1910 (also, funnily enough, the date of Edward VII’s funeral in London, the last coming together of Europe’s Royal pedigree before World War I) Norwegian meteorologist Vilhelm Bjerknes had simultaneously recorded atmospheric conditions across Western Europe. He had noted temperature, air pressure, air density, cloud cover, wind velocity and the valences of the upper atmosphere.

This data allowed Richardson to model a mathematical weather forecast. Of course, he already knew the weather for the day in question (he had Bjerknes’s record to hand, after all); the challenge was to generate from this record a numerical model which he could then apply to the future. And so he drew up a grid over Europe, each cell incorporating Bjerknes’s weather data, including locational variables such as the extent of open water affecting evaporation, and five vertical divisions in the upper air.

Richardson claimed that it took him six weeks to calculate a six-hour forecast for a single location. Critics have wondered whether even six weeks was enough time. In any case, the first numerical forecast was woefully out of sync with what actually happened. Not only did Richardson’s forecast take longer to calculate than the weather it was calculating took to happen, but it was also a prediction after the fact that remained manifestly wrong.

Yet scientific failures of this magnitude often have important consequences, not least in this case because Richardson’s mathematical approach to weather forecasting was largely vindicated in the 1940s with the invention of the first digital computers, or “probability machines”. These are still the basis for much weather forecasting today. His experiment also contributed to the development of an international field of scientific meteorology.

Literary weather

This “new meteorology”, as it was sometimes called, became culturally pervasive in the years following World War I. Not only did it lift the metaphors of trench warfare and place them in the air (the “weather front” taking its name directly from the battle fronts of the war), it also insisted that to speak of the weather meant to speak of a global system of energies opening, ever anew, onto different futures.

And it was reflected in the literature of the period. Writing in the 1920s, Austrian writer Robert Musil opened his masterpiece The Man Without Qualities (1930-43), a novel whose protagonist is a mathematician, with the scientific language of meteorology. “The isotherms and isotheres were functioning as they should,” we are told. “The water vapor in the air was at its maximal state of tension … It was a fine day in August 1913.”

What is interesting here is not simply that the everyday language of “a fine day” is determined by a set of new-fangled scientific abstractions, but also the fact that a novel written after the war dares to inhabit the virtual outlook of before.

Similarly to Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse (1927), where the pre-war question of whether or not the weather will be “fine” tomorrow takes on a general significance, Musil’s irony depends upon occupying a moment in history when the future was truly exceptional: what was about to happen next was nothing like the past. Musil’s novel – and Woolf’s, too – is in one sense a lament for a failed prediction: why couldn’t the war have been predicted?

Writing in the wake of his own initial failure as a forecaster in 1922, Richardson imagined a time in which all weather might be calculable before it takes place. In a passage of dystopian fantasy, he conjured up an image of what he called a “computing theater”: a huge structure of surveillance through which weather data could be collected and processed, and the future managed.

The disconcerting power of this vision, and of the mathematical model which underlay it, emerged from the idea that weather, encoded as information to be exchanged in advance of its happening, could be finally separable from experience. With the atmosphere of the future mass-managed in this way, we would never again need to feel under the weather.

Today, it has become commonplace to check our phones for the accurate temperature while standing outside in the street, and climate change has forced us to reckon with a meteorological future that we are sure will not be in balance with the past. With this in mind, it is perhaps worth returning once more to the cultural moment of “new meteorology” to contemplate its central paradox: that our demand to know the future in advance goes hand-in-hand with an expectation that the future will be unlike anything we’ve seen before.

Srinagar, May 19

A team of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) reached here on Friday to quiz separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani and three others, alleged to be involved in subversive activities and receiving funds from LeT chief Hafiz Saeed.

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The investigating agency has registered a Preliminary Enquiry (PE) against Geelani and Naeem Khan, who was seen on television during a sting operation purportedly confessing to receiving money from Pakistan-based terror groups, Farooq Ahmed Dar alias ‘Bitta Karate’ and Gazi Javed Baba of the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat.

An NIA spokesperson said the separatists were receiving funds from Pakistan-based Lashker-e-Toiba (LeT) chief Saeed to carry out subversive activities in the Kashmir Valley, including pelting  stones at security forces, damaging public property and burning schools and other government stablishments.

The NIA has also taken cognisance of a news item related to the recording of conversations between a TV reporter and leaders of separatist groups operating in the Kashmir Valley in this regard, he said. — PTI

High bidding, sand prices set to soar

Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 19

In Punjab, building a house will get a lot more expensive. For, the Punjab Government today made over Rs 200 crore from the auction of 51 sand and gravel quarries across six districts. With the bidding prices hitting the roof, the prices of sand and gravel are bound to rise manifold.(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)The reverse bidding (where the lowest bidder is successful) in 2014-15 had yielded Rs 45 crore. The progressive bidding of the 51 quarries today (51 more will be auctioned on Saturday) is expected to yield Rs 350 crore (including today’s bids). With the sites going at such high rates, the bidders would have to sell the extracted minor minerals (sand and gravel) at higher rates to cut even.The sand mining business in Punjab is cartelised. The auction today saw a rather lukewarm participation from the two main sand mining cartels, both dominated by Congress and SAD politicians. One lobby, led by a close relative of a Congress MLA from Majha and the son of a Congress MLA from Malwa, won bids for just four quarries – two in Jalandhar and one each in Hoshiarpur and Gurdaspur. The second lobby, comprising Akali politicians, won bids for one quarry in Jalandhar and the other in Amritsar. The remaining 45 quarries seem to have been taken by new bidders.The bids were allotted through e-auction, with a retired High Court judge monitoring the process.In the past six years, the then SAD-BJP government had gone for reverse bidding to keep the prices of sand and gravel under check. In the re-introduced progressive bidding, the cash-strapped Punjab Government would earn over Rs 350 crore by selling 2 croretonnes of sand and gravel — which is the annual extractable quantity from the 102 quarries being auctioned.The 20-odd quarries went for anything between 20-34 times higher than the reserve price. This has made these bids economically unviable. Their is speculation that many bidders could forfeit their deposits. The 51 quarries auctioned today are in Amritsar, Hoshiarpur, Pathankot, Gurdaspur, Ferozepur and Jalandhar. The highest bid received was for Rs 17.22 crore for the Chaharpur quarry in Amritsar, made against a reserve price of Rs 38.26 lakh. Officials in the Directorate of Mining, Department of Industries, said they saw no reason for the bidder backing off. Butt in case he forfeits his deposit, there would be a re-action within 15 days. “Though initially the prices may go up, but as supply meets demand, we expect correction in prices of sand and gravel,” said a senior officer.

Punjab auctions 51 quarries

• Already the prices of sand and gravel have shot up since the Cong govt put the brakes on illegal mining
• The price of sand has increased from Rs 14,000 per 800 cubic ft (in March) to Rs 19,000 per 800 cubic ft
• The price of gravel has zoomed from Rs 15,000 per 800 cubic ft to Rs 20,000 per 800 cubic ft

Punjab CM Amarinder Singh ropes in RIL tax adviser with minister’s rank

Ex-IRS officer will be CM’s financial adviser

Former Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer V K Garg, who worked as adviser to Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Limited as head of its indirect taxes division, is set to join as financial adviser to Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh. Faced with fiscal problems and debt burden, the Amarinder government has decided to appoint 1983-batch officer having a vast experience in financial matters as financial advisor to the Chief Minister. Garg will be accorded a state minister’s rank. He will be the sixth adviser to be appointed with CM.

Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Badal said Garg’s expertise in GST and other financial matters would be very beneficial to Punjab. The list of advisers already working with Amarinder includes Lt Gen T S Shergill (retd), who is senior adviser to CM and enjoys Cabinet minister’s rank, Bharat Inder Singh Chahal who is adviser in State minister’s rank and Khubi Ram who is CM’s security adviser, besides Lt Gen B S Dhaliwal (retd), technical advisor to former chief minister Parkash Singh Badal who has been retained by the Amarinder government.

Garg, an MBA in finance from Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad and a law graduate, served as joint secretary in tax research unit of Union government when Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister in UPA-II government. Garg, who served as Commissioner of Central Excise in Ludhiana from 2004 to 2007, told The Indian Express on Tuesday that he was ready to join and was awaiting formal orders.

Sidhu marks probe into Rs 40-lakh scam

Addl Chief Secretary summons Abohar Municipal Council record

Raj Sadosh

Abohar, May 19

The Additional Chief Secretary (ACS) has summoned the record of the Municipal Council as officials did not respond to directions issued by the Finance and Local Bodies Departments in 2015 in the Rs 40.49 lakh scam.Local Bodies Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu had marked the complaint to the ACS. Abohar MC Executive Officer has been told to reach Chandigarh with the record on Saturday.The Examiner, Local Funds, had asked the department on August 28, 2015, that the Inspector General of Police had through letters dated August 16, 1984, and February 23, 1987, opined that FIRs should be registered as per the Punjab Municipal Account Fund code if embezzlements were detected in such funds.The Deputy Director, Local Bodies, Ferozepur, and Regional Director (Audit), Bathinda, had conducted preliminary investigations and informed Chandigarh that the allegations levelled in the complaints by the Retired Employees’ Welfare Association were found substantial.The association had alleged that the MC staff had tampered with the conditions laid in the auction of the MC commercial property on Nai Sadak held on August 20, 2010, by allegedly forging the signatures of former MC president Shivraj Goyal (BJP) and former EO Jagsir Singh Dhaliwal to illegally benefit the allottees. The inquiry also put Goyal under the scanner alongwith the successor of EO Dhaliwal in this case.The SAD- BJP alliance took over in April 2015 but no resolution was moved to discuss the case. The scam pertains to the auction of 13 commercial plots on the Nai Sadak opposite the SP’s residence. In the forged copy, the rate of interest was reduced from 18 per cent to seven per cent, transfer fee from three percent to one per cent and the clause for 10 per cent extra charges against the corner plot was deleted.An inquiry revealed that most property sale deeds were tampered. Dhaliwal and the Deputy Director, Local Bodies, substantiated the allegations. It was found that the council had suffered a loss of Rs 40,49,314 in the case.The association in a fresh complaint to Local Bodies Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu had alleged that the preceding government as well as the council sat on the file allowing some erring officials to retire. The MC also passed the site plans for construction of two shops in the Nai Sadak market even when sale deed was yet to be registered.

Fraud alleged

• Retired employees had alleged that the MC staff had tinkered with conditions laid in the auction of an MC property on Nai Sadakin Abohar in August 2010 by allegedly forging signatures.

Order to vacate private buildings housing govt offices puts admn in fix

Dist Admn Complex still not complete; likely to miss July 1 deadline

The under-construction District Administrative Complex at Gurdaspur. Tribune photo

Ravi Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Gurdaspur, May 19

The Punjab Government’s order to vacate private buildings housing government offices has put the administration in a fix as the District Administrative Complex (DAC), also known as a mini secretariat, is still under construction and sure to miss its July 1 deadline.The government has ordered that all private buildings be vacated by June 30.The Rs 46-crore five-storey DAC, which has been under construction for the last three years, has since long been trapped in a plethora of problems.After the project was 75 per cent complete, the contractor informed officials that he could not dismantle the “malkhana” (warehouse) of the old DC building, which was to be a part of the new complex, since an unknown quantity of RDX was lying there. The explosives were remnants of the days of militancy in Punjab.Harried tax-paying residents say that the explosives should have been removed before laying the first brick.To compound matters, scores of judicial documents are to be shifted to the adjoining Pathankot district. This requires the cumbersome process of taking permissions of varied nature from different departments.Deputy Commissioner (DC) Amit Kumar says that the RDX issue has been solved and the explosives have been removed. “However, we are facing some problems relating to the judicial files. I recently called a meeting of SSPs and judicial officers to ensure that the files are shifted,” he said.The administration has now asked the departments, which are to be brought under the DAC’s ambit, to purchase new furniture. “These departments have decades’ old furniture. I have asked them to approach their respective heads of department to purchase new furnishings. Once these are in place the shifting will commence,” he said.However, there are clear indications that it may take a few more months till things fall in place and the July 1 deadline is sure to be given a miss.

Dist development bodies to be integrated under PUDA

PUDA was established in 1995 as the apex authority for providing planned residential, commercial and industrial spaces. Tribune file photo

Sanjeev Singh Bariana

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 19

The state government has initiated the process to integrate the working of various district development authorities under the Punjab Urban Planning and Development Authority (PUDA).Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh has sought a report on the functioning of these bodies following reports of inconsistent implementation of rules and plans.PUDA was established in 1995 as the apex authority for providing planned residential, commercial and industrial spaces. Later, the Greater Mohali Area Development Authority (GMADA), Greater Ludhiana Area Development Authority (GLADA), Bathinda Development Authority (BDA), Jalandhar Development Authority (JDA), Patiala Development Authority (PDA) and Amritsar Development Authority (ADA) were set up to facilitate decentralised, area-specific functioning.A director of a district development authority, requesting anonymity, said, “The government gave us powers to develop colonies, but did not share the earnings from the auction of government land under the Optimum Utility of Vacant Government Land (OUVGL) scheme. This money would have been a major source of funds for developing infrastructure.”Confirming that a draft proposal was being finalised, a senior official said: “We are looking into the financial and legal implications of the exercise.”According to a Principal Secretary, “Multiple agencies working on related projects are facing problems due to overlapping of functions and lack of coordination.”A former director of PUDA said: “District bodies have failed to check the mushrooming of illegal colonies. Executive engineers were found exercising control over housing projects, leading to rampant corruption. Mismatch in the figures of loans and balance sheets indicate that the system has failed.”

Plunder of riverbed unabated

Most of the trucks engaged in sand mining operations don’t have govt permits

Illegal mining being done on the Sutlej riverbed in Dharamkot sub-division of Moga district. Tribune Photo

Kulwinder Sandhu

Tribune News Service

Sanghera (Moga), May 19

Sanghera is a small village near the Sutlej river in Dharamkot sub-division of Moga district. Here the river flows the widest with its banks more than 1.5 km apart and touching Jalandhar and Kapurthala districts on the other side.During May and June — before the onset of monsoon when the flow is less — the sand bed is exposed at most parts of the river.One can see JCB machines and heavy cranes at work digging their arms deep into the riverbed, scooping out sand and loading it onto the trucks and tractor-trailers.A walk around the area presents a ghastly picture. At many spots, the dugout trenches can be seen filled with river water so that one cannot make out the deep holes made by the indiscriminate extraction of sand.Ranjit Singh (name changed to protect his identity), a resident, said that the mining mafia is operating in at least five locations in the area. Musclemen numbering 20 to 30 are on guard at each location throughout the day and night. They do not allow any stranger to enter the area or click photographs.A group of three youths took this correspondent to a location from where few photographs were clicked from a distance without being noticed by anybody. The youths claimed that they see mining taking place daily with heavy machines.Dharamkot sub-division in Moga district is one of the places in the state where sand mining has been taking place for years. More than 50 per cent of the sand requirement of the Malwa belt is met from sand extracted from the Sutlej.Most of the trucks engaged in sand mining operations do not have government permits.The mining mafia is also causing huge damage to the ecology, water resources, agriculture and the livelihood of people. It has reduced the forest area along the river belt.The riverbed has also gone down by 5-8m at many places over the years. As Sutlej sand is of high quality, indiscriminate mining has been going on for the past many years.The villagers allege that the district administration is aware of the illegal mining but has deliberately turned a blind eye. “We grow crops near the river that have been destroyed many times by trucks ferrying sand from the river. We have complained to the local authorities numerous times but to no avail. The authorities are hand in glove with the mining mafia,” alleged another local resident.On the other hand, the local officials claim that 375 criminal cases have been registered with regard to illegal mining in Moga district during the past few years but despite that, the situation on the ground presents a sordid picture.

Maluka accused of implicating people in wrong cases

Lakha Sidhana interacts with media persons in Bathinda on Thursday. Tribune Photo: Pawan Sharma

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, May 18

The Malwa Youth Federation leader and gangster-turned-politician Lakha Sidana today made an allegation against SAD leader Sikander Singh Maluka for getting wrong cases registered against innocent persons during the 10-year rule of the SAD-BJP government in the state.He also challenged Maluka for an open debate on the atrocities committed on people during the SAD-BJP rule.While addressing mediapersons at press club, Sidana presented a few families in front of the media.He alleged that these families had been harassed by the SAD leader. He also showed a few copies of FIRs of the cases saying that these cases had been registered as a result of vendetta politics.He alleged that no action had been taken against those who committed crime. Sidana said in the Goldy murder case, which took place outside Phul court, the police wrongly booked Rana Nambardar, Mithu Ved, Mahinder Singh, Pargat Singh, Bira, Sema Singh and their family members.He would apologise publically if he loses debate to Maluka, he added. When Sikander Singh Maluka was contacted over the issue, he said he would not comment on the allegations made by Sidana. He said Sidana read a script given to him. The Congress government has formed a commission and if the government is of the view that any wrong case has been registered, the commission should probe it, the SAD leader adde

‘Regular, reliable’ connectivity in the air

Sahnewal airport to start flights under UDAN scheme from next month, says MP Ravneet Singh Bittu

A file photo of the Sahnewal airport in Ludhiana.

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, May 19

Good news for Ludhiana residents, as flights will start operating from the Sahnewal airport under UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik) scheme from the next month.Ludhiana Member of Parliament Ravneet Singh Bittu said this after meeting Union Civil Aviation Minister Jayant Sinha and Punjab officials.Bittu said the state government would help the airlines company for better connectivity. Earlier, flights were suspended due to loss to the airlines company, but now the state and the Centre governments will provide financial aid to the airlines company if they suffer loss.Stating on the importance of air connectivity, Bittu said: “The industrial potential and the entrepreneurial spirit of Ludhiana suffers a major setback due to the lack of regular and reliable air connectivity. Despite the structural bottleneck of short length of the air strip, UDAN scheme will ensure regular and reliable connectivity.”The Punjab government apprised Bittu that it was actively cooperating with the Union government with respect to issues such as viability gap funding, relief on taxes on aviation fuel at refuelling facilities, exemption from landing charges and hanger facility. The matter of adding additional length to the air strip was also under active consideration of the state to help make the optimal use of Ludhiana airport.According to Bittu, Ludhiana should see regular flights from the month of June 2017, beginning with Alliance Air and later in the month of August joined by Deccan Charters. With 50 per cent of seats on every flight capped at Rs 2,500 per seat under the UDAN scheme and applicable for flights where the distance is less than 500 km or one hour, UDAN scheme will be a boon for the people of Ludhiana. Firstly, Ludhiana airport will handle flights till Delhi and thereafter to Mumbai and other important cities. Previous govt had a bias against Ludhiana, says BittuBittu lamented that the Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party (SAD-BJP) government had a bias against Ludhiana and favoured Bathinda airport over it. They lacked sincere efforts and deprived Ludhiana of the facility it deserved, he said. He further said: “The present government in Punjab is committed to restore Ludhiana’s place in the industrialisation of the state.”

Regular flights from June

• With 50 per cent of seats on every flight capped at Rs 2,500 per seat under the UDAN scheme and applicable for flights where the distance is less than 500 km or one hour, UDAN scheme will be a boon for the people of Ludhiana
• The city will see regular flights beginning with Alliance Air and later in August joined by Deccan Charters
• Ludhiana airport will first handle flights till Delhi and thereafter to Mumbai and other important cities