Jalandhar, July 5
Six months after a local retired government official filed an application under the Right to Information Act seeking information from the Public Information Officer (PIO) about the status of the recruitment of physical education lecturers held three years back, she was not given the reply.

Failure to provide the requisite information to the application is deemed as denial under the act. The former official further approached the State Information Commission and has been looking forward its timely reply.

Surinder Kanta, a retired government official, had approached the PIO and the State Information Commission to know about the names of all women category lecturers in Physical Education Department who were selected during the second scrutiny held on November 21, 2007.

She also wanted to know about the appointment letters issued to selected candidates, name of the selected candidates whom official orders had not been issued and likely date of issuing appointment letters to the leftover candidates. Kanta had filed the application to the PIO on January 21 this year. When no reply was given to her by the PIO, she filed another RTI with the State Information Commission, but of no avail.

The Directorate of Public Instructions (DPI) Secondary Education had advertised 431 posts of headmasters, 651 posts of lecturers, 2,614 posts of master cadre and 849 posts of PTI in 2006.

And, even after three years, a majority of the selected candidates were not aware of the status of their employment.

Tilak Raj Arora, one of the affected parent, said the Department of Education had adopted the pick and choose policy in this case. “My daughters had applied for the posts of PTI teachers which was conducted by C-DAC. It had been more than three years and till date they don’t know the status of their employment. The Education Department issued appointment letters to a selected few and in turn, left the rest of the candidates fuming,” he added.

It might be noted that the DPI Secondary Education recently issued a public notice in this regard for the convenience of the selected candidates but it failed to serve the purpose. Though the notice read that the selected candidates could find their details on the official website of the department, no such information was available on the website.

Lambasting at the Education Department, Arora said how could the education authorities expect to improve the standard of education in the government schools when there was shortage of teachers across the state. “Even after conducting the recruitment for the required posts nothing substantial has taken place. The lackadaisical attitude of the authorities concerned has put the future of scores of candidate at stake,” he said.

Amritsar, July 5
The police has booked 10 persons, including four women, for allegedly impersonating during IELTS exams held yesterday. Out of these, five accused who were giving the exams on behalf of others, have been arrested.

The accused are Seema Rai of Jalandhar, Shivani of Amritsar, Subash Sehgal of Civil Lines area, Surinder Singh of Ludhiana and Saurabh Dinkar of Jalandhar, while those arrested are Gurdish Gill, Gurinder Kaur, Rajdeep, Rajwinder and Navdeep.

A case under section 420 of the IPC has been registered against them. The arrested were sent to police remand till July 7, said SHO Ranjit Avenue police station Surinder Kumar.

The complaint was lodged by Himanshu, Assistant Manager of the institute, conducting the examination. According to the information, the accused who had impersonated on behalf of others have pasted their photographs after tempering with the roll number-cum-identity cards.

Amritsar, July 5
Even as the general secretary of the state BJP Rajinder Mohan Singh Chhina claimed that he would take over as chairman of the Amritsar Improvement Trust within the next few days, there was no confirmation from the BJP regarding the post.

National leadership of the BJP was seized of the matter as MP Navjot Singh Sidhu reportedly did not approve of Chhina’s elevation. Sources in the party maintained that Sidhu asked the leadership as to what yardstick had been used to appoint leaders to the posts of trusts and boards. They said Sidhu pointed out that he had been trailing by 30,000 votes from the west constituency in the Lok Sabha election from where Chhina had contested the assembly elections.

The central BJP leadership is learnt to have given time to hear Sidhu on Monday (July 6) while they listened to the Punjab leadership of the BJP yesterday.

Sidhu objected that the state leaders of the BJP did not consult him before elevating a leader from his area.

Meanwhile, Chhina maintained that though he could join the office on any day but he has been waiting for the central and state leaders of the party to spare time to bless him on the occasion of swearing in.

He brushed away rumours of his differences with Sidhu and added that he was unaware on how a communication gap remained and the local MP was not informed beforehand of his appointment.

He stressed that his relations with Sidhu were cordial and he would invite him (Sidhu) to participate when he joins office.

Having associated with two leading educational and art organisations of the city for the past many decades, Chhina had been a known face in the academic circles. He dabbled in politics for the first time by joining the saffron party two-and-a-half-years ago.

Hence, Chhina’s elevation was appreciated by intelligentsia, artists and academicians besides rank and file of the BJP. The Indian academy of Fine Arts and Kishore Kumar Memorial Society appreciated appointment of Chhina as Chairman of Improvement Trust.

Batala, July 5
The residents of Batala and nearby villages flayed the increase of fuel prices by the Central government. According to farmers of Hardeo Jhande village (6 km from here), the fuel price hike would lead to increase in prices of essential commodities. 

The residents said the rate of vegetables would increase, which will affect the common man. Industrialists S.P. Marwaha, V.M. Goel and J.S. Nagi urged the Prime Minister to roll back the price hike.