The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

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Regional potpourri

BERTH PANGS
Not one to be cow-ed down

PUNJAB

ABOHAR
Protest: Residents of Ramsara village sat on a dharna in front of the Sadar police station in protest against letting a culprit who had santched a gold earrings worn by Raja Ram’s wife. He had scaled the wall of the house to commit the theft. He was nabbed and handed over to the police by the panchayat. But the police failed to take any action against and released him. Instead Raja Ram was taken into custody and forced to withdraw the complaint.

Kidnapped: A few residents of Gobindgarh village thrashed and kidnapped a woman in the subdivisional complex on Saturday. She, along with her daughter, had come to pursue a case against in-laws of her daughter. Paramjit Kaur said she was thrashed and forcibly put in a car. Manjit Kaur was rescued from a house at Gobindgarh village. A man identified as Makhan Singh was taken into custody. Others managed to escape.

Two booked: The local police has booked two persons for allegedly kidnapping and raping a minor. Her parents had found the victim in the shrubs near Dhaani Kadaka Singh on Friday in semi-conscious state.One of the accused has been identified as Tirlok Singh.

Dharna: A dharna was organised under the banner of the Shri Ram Setu Raksha Manch near the Shaheed Bhagat Singh Chowk here to mobilise people against the demolition of the 2-km-wide bridge that, according to belief, linked India with Sri Lanka during the Ramayana period.

BARNALA
Seminar: The general category association organised a seminar on the subject “Sixty years of Independence- an insight” at Sri Parshuram Bhawan here on Sunday. Association state unit president Rajeev and brahmin sabha district president Ram Niwas Sharma expressed concern over criminalisation of politics.He urged people to join hands for making India economically independent.

Fire: One of the Trident group’s unit caught fire on Saturday night. In charge Rupinder Gupta said the unit No. 2 of the factory located at Raikot road caught fire. About five fire tenders from Bhadarwarh and Sangrur Air Force stations were called to control the fire. It took 3 hours to douse the fire. About 200 workers joined the rescue operation. Cotton worth lakhs of rupees was destroyed in the fire.

Kapurthala
Bank schemes: The State Bank of Patiala’s Sultanpur Lodhi branch organised a meet for farmers at Shahwala Andirese village. Farmers from Bhago Arian, Shahpur Sadha, Rame and Jabbowal also participated. Deputy general manager of the bank’s Jalandhar zone A.K. Pasricha informed the farmers about the various agricultural schemes.

Ludhiana
RATION: Monthly ration was given to the needy women was given by members of Shri Gyan Sthal Mandir Sabha at Gyan Sthal Temple on Sunday. The monthly ration was distributed under the supervision of Jagdish Bajaj and the chief guest, Manoranjan Kalia, minister for Local Government Industries and Commerce. Sanjeev Kalra, IPS, IG Jalandhar, was the guest of honour. More than 700 women were provided ration here. Manoranjan Kalia gave a sum of Rs 1 lakh from his discretionary fund to the organisation.

HOSPITALS: A delegation of Shree Manav Sewa Welfare Bureau an NGO, visited Civil Hospital Bundari village, District Ludhiana, here on, Friday. They appreciated the work done by some doctors and pharmacists but have urged the government to release sufficient funds for up gradation of rural hospitals.

Mandi Ahmedgarh
PILGRIMAGE: To spread message of communal harmony and respect for all religions a jatha of devotees left for a pad yatra to pay obeisance at Naina Devi Mandir for navratras. Bimal Sharma, president, Bhartia Mahavir Dal and Navdeep Sharma general secretary, Har Har Mahadev Sangh, flagged off the yatra. The jathas included members from hindus, sikhs and muslims.

Nawanshahr
Protest demonstration: Activists of various religious and social organisations, under the aegis of the Sri Rameshwaram Ram Setu Raksha Manch, held a protest demonstration at Municipal Committee Chowk here today. Addressing the protesters, VHP leader Ram Saroop Joshi criticised the nefarious designs of the foreign powers which had been misleading the Union government on Ram Setu. “The Hindus would not tolerate any harm to Ram Setu as their religious sentiments were deeply attached with it,” he said.

Shiv Sena rally: To protest against the decision of the Central government to withdraw forces from Jammu and Kashmir, the Shiv Sena (Bal Thackeray), under the leadership of Sandeep Kulkarni, has started a “chetavani rally” to Srinagar where the members would unfurl the Tricolour. The rally would reach Nawanshahr on Monday at about 5 pm.

Fee anomaly: After the BDS students of 2004 batch brought the issue of fee anomaly to the notice of SGPC president Avtar Singh Makker, the 2003 batch students of the Sri Guru Ram Dass Institute of Dental Sciences and Research, Amritsar, have also complained of the same and urged the SGPC chief to include their case too in the agenda of the scheduled meeting.

New session: Amardeep Singh Shergill Memorial College, Mukandpur, organised a function to mark the inauguration of the new academic session. Known story writer Baldev Singh Dhindsa announced “Karam Kaur memorial scholarships.”

HIMACHAL PRADESH

CHAMBA
Suicide: Kishan Chand, a bank manager, hanged himself from the rafters in his residential room at Garola about 60 km from Chamba on Saturday. He was working in a rural bank at Garola and his family had been informed. The police recovered a suicide note from his room. The police has registered a case.

Kumarhatti
Job offers: Aditi Gautam, Abhinav Bhatnagar, Sunny Rana and Anuradha of the Institute of Engineering & Emerging Technology (IEET), Baddi, have been offered jobs by Hyderabad-based software company Sierra Atlantic at a campus placement. They have been offered an annul package of Rs 2.2 lakh for the first six months.

Girl dies: Aamreen (23) was killed after she fell from the roof of her rented accommodation in Manpura village, near Nalagarh, while talking to somebody on the phone on Saturday. Aamreen, who hailed from Nahan, was killed on the spot. She was employed with a unit at Baddi.

NURPUR
Judicial staff body: The following have been elected office-bearers of the local unit of the Himachal Pradesh Judicial Employees Welfare Association. President - Makholi Ram; senior vice-president - Sawroop Kumar; general secretary - Sanjay Kumar; joint secretary - Jiwan Singh; cashier - Sanjeev Kumar; and adviser - Rajiv Sood. A six-members executive committee was also formed on the occasion.

Regional potpourri

BERTH PANGS

Driving coaches from Jammu to Srinagar for launching the internal rail network in Kashmir valley has proven to be a unique experience for Indian Railways.

The exercise to drive these coaches started last year, but Northern Railway was unable to meet the target of inaugurating the network in the valley in March last because the Jammu-Srinagar highway had been blocked due to bad weather.

So far, eight coaches and two diesel moving units (DMUs) have been transported to Budgam along the 300-km-long highway, clearing the decks for a trial run of the first-ever train within Kashmir. The valley does not have its own rail network and many of the people there have never seen a local train. Another project to link the valley with the rest of the country by rail is being executed on a war footing.

Hundreds of people lined up on the road when the first coach, pulled by a truck, entered the valley last year. It was a rare spectacle for tourists and Vaishno Devi pilgrims and many of them tried to capture it on their cameras.

Railway engineers have started re-assembling these coaches in the Budgam workshop, where these were driven from Jammu with a modified base of truck tyres. For the railway engineers, it was the first such experience to drive the coaches and DMUs through mountainous roads. The drivers of the private company that has been assigned this task initially conducted a mock exercise by towing a trial compartment.

Shiv Ram, a divisional railway engineer, says that 10 more coaches are parked at the railway siding at Jammu for transportation to Srinagar. The work was scheduled to be completed in two months so that a set of two trains could run simultaneously in the valley. However, it got delayed because of snow and frequent blockage of the Jammu-Srinagar highway by landslides.

Men of the Railway Protection Force (GRPF) have also been deployed at the railway stations and other installations of the Railways in the valley.

Not one to be cow-ed down

Hari Ram Gupta

An animal lover of Ahmedgarh town in Sangrur district, Hari Ram Gupta, has played a major role in giving shelter to stray cattle which would otherwise have destroyed standing crops and contributed to road accidents over the years.

A former patron of the Gaushala Mahasangh Punjab, Gupta, along with his associates, started a gaushala on a 2-acre plot in 1956. “We were pained to observe that the sacred animal that has been worshiped in India was suffering neglect, simply because stray cows are perceived as a nuisance. That’s why we decided to start the gaushala,” says Gupta. The organisation owns about 100 bighas now and more than 800 animals have taken shelter at this gaushala at present.

“Had the social organisations not made arrangements to feed the stray cattle, the farmers of the area could have suffered massive losses due to uprooting of standing crops,” he points out, claiming that thousands of cows have been domesticated at the gaushalas in Punjab.

The team led by Gupta has also mobilised financial aid from various agencies, including the state government and Animal Welfare Board of India, Chennai. A government veterinary dispensary is functioning at the gausahala and a team of doctors from the Animal Husbandry Department visits the cattle regularly.

Calling upon the social organistions of the state to open new gaushalas, Gupta suggests that the sale proceeds from cow dung, cow urine and milk can make these institutes self-reliant in future. He wants the agricultural department of the state should extend all possible help to this cause.

Contributed by S.P. Sharma and Mahesh Sharma