• Students hold rally against Pakistan
• Foreigner's body found

HP seeks debt relief package
Tribune News Service

SHIMLA, June 14 — Mr Prem Kumar Dumal, Chief Minister, urged the 11th Finance Commission to either recommend the writing off of 25 per cent of the central loans outstanding against Himachal Pradesh till March, 31, 2000 or assure a surplus of at least 10 per cent over and above the total revenue account deficit assessed by the state government for the period 2000 to 2005 in its award. Pleading the state's case before the commission, headed by Prof A.M. Khusro, here today, he said with the liability on account of interest payments estimated to be over 18 per cent of the total revenue expenditure during the year 1999-2000, the commission should come to the rescue to the state with an appropriate debt relief package so that the state was in a position to use the revenue receipts for fruitful developmental purposes. He said the ever-increasing outstanding debt of special category states needed special consideration of the commission.

Reiterating his plea for the restoration of pre-ninth Finance Commission practice regarding the central budgetary support as part of the Central plan to the special category states, including Himachal Pradesh, the Chief Minister urged not only for covering plan resource gap but also their non-plan gap so that the injustice done by Ninth Finance Commission was undone.

He said the conferment of statehood on Himachal Pradesh was not on account of its ability to exist as a viable fiscal and economic unit but rather in recognition of special needs and aspirations of the people of the state which also made state's case strong for special financial support from the Centre.

A special category state was characterised by a low ratio of own tax revenue to the state domestic product as compared to the average of all states in the country. Mr Dhumal said in a hilly and backward state like Himachal there was a relatively poor-co-relation between the per capita state domestic product and the potential for raising tax revenues as compared to the mainstream states, as per capita income in hill states had to be viewed in the context of higher costs for basic minimum needs as compared to the plains.

The Chief Minister said the existing pattern of financing the state plan of special category states with the grants and loans in proportion of 90 per cent and 10 per cent respectively should be changed to a 100 per cent grant pattern as it would reduce considerably the debt burden on account of the 10 per cent loan component of the plan assistance, he added.

He suggested modifications in the existing schemes for calamity relief in respect of the state as sizeable part of the state was prone to natural calamities. He said the commission should recommend the annual entitlement of Himachal Pradesh equivalent to at least 25 per cent of the average of the annual damages assessed since 1995-96.

Taking into consideration the poor resources of special category states, the calamity relief fund should be contributed 100 per cent by the Central Government instead of existing ration of 3:1 between the Central Government and the state.

The demand of Himachal Pradesh of Rs 2539.17 crore for upgrading the standards of administration should be considered sympathetically and amount allocated for the purpose.

Mr Dhumal also urged the commission to allocate Rs 127.59 crore to the state to implement the recommendations of the state Finance Commission to strengthen the panchayati raj institutions and urban local bodies for 2000-2005 so that the democratic institutions were provided more teeth.

Mr Dhumal also urged the commission to recommend the case of Himachal Pradesh to the Centre for 7.19 per cent share in Bhakra Nangal and Beas projects from the appointed day as specified in the Punjab Reorganisation Act or the date of commissioning of the project whichever was later and 12 per cent free power to the state from the hydro-electric projects commissioned before September 7, 1990.

The members of the Council of Ministers, the Chief Secretary, Additional Chief Secretary, secretaries and other senior officers participating in the meeting. Mr Gulab Singh Thakur, Speaker, Himachal Vidhan Sabha, also called on the chairman and member of the 11th Finance Commission and presented a memorandum.

He apprised the commission of the details of the works, proposed, completed and undertaken by the Vidhan Sabha with the funds made available by the 10th Finance Commission.

Holistic plan for rural poor

SHIMLA, June 14 (PTI) — The Himachal Pradesh Government has taken up a holistic programme under rural development and poverty alleviation scheme to help the rural poor who make up more than 90 per cent of total population living in villages in the state. To redress the difficulties and hardships of the rural people, various schemes such as the irdp, trysem, the dwcra, sitra (supply of improved tool kits to rural artisans) were added over the years to facilitate the rural population.

Of late, the multiplicity of programmes, being viewed as separate programmes in themselves, resulted in lack of proper social intermediation, absence of desired linkages among these programmes as it focused more on individual targets rather than on substantive issue of sustainable generation. To rectify the situation, the Central Government decided to restructure the self-employment programmes. For this, a new programme Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana was launched from April this year by margining programmes such as the irdp, trysem, the dwcra, sitra and the mws. The state also implemented this programme from April, 1999.

The Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana would cover all aspect of self-employment such as organisation of the poor into self-held groups, training, credit, technology, infrastructure and marketing. This ambitious scheme would be funded by the Centre and the state in the ratio of 75:25.

The aim of this programme was to bring the assisted poor families above the poverty line within three years by providing them income-generating assets through a mix of bank credit and government subsidy. It would be insured that families have a monthly net income of at least Rs 2,000.

An official spokesman said yesterday to know the latest number of families living below poverty line, a fresh household survey on scientific methods, was conducted by the state government. In this survey, monthly per capita consumption expenditure of Rs 289.31 has been taken as basis instead of annual income of the family.

To assist these families to come above the poverty line within three years, the state government was providing a subsidy of Rs 7,500 and Rs 10,000 to non-SC/ST and SC/ST families, respectively so as to give them an opportunity to establish and expand their assets and skill base in three years.

The Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar yojana aims at establishing a large number of micro-enterprises in the rural areas building upon the potential of the rural poor. Emphasis would be laid on the cluster approach to establish micro-enterprises. For this, four to five key activities would be identified for each block based on the resources, occupational skills of the people and availability of markets. Selection of key activities would be done with the approval of the panchayat samities at the block-level and the zila parishads at the district level.

Under the scheme, the rural artisans would be covered in a significant manner. unemployed educated youth would also be given priority in this scheme. Some of them would have been trained in the recent years under TRYSEM.

HP forests burn as Centre sits on funds
From Rakesh Lohumi
Tribune News Service

SHIMLA, June 14 — Himachal Pradesh has recorded the highest ever number of forest fires even as frequent rain during the second half of the summer saved the forests from colossal damage.

As many as 1941 incidents of fire had been reported in the state up to May 31 as against about 1,400 recorded in 1995, the worst year. This was despite the fact that the state had been having regular rain since May 15. In all over 46,000 hectares of forest area has been affected this year.

The highest number of 527 fire incidents took place in Kangra where 6836 hectares of forest area was burnt. However, the maximum damage was caused in the Nahan forest circle where 12,600 hectares of forest area was affected in 276 incidents of forest fires. As per the preliminary estimates the total loss in the state had been put at over Rs 4 crore.

The unusual whether conditions prevailing in the region over the past nine months, which rendered the state's forest cover exceedingly prone to fires in the first half of the summer, also helped in dousing these in the latter half.

Normally only sporadic incidents of forest fires are reported up to May 15 and most of the fires occur during mid June when the summer is at its peak. However, this year a prolonged dry spell created June-like conditions in April Itself. Lack of snow fall during winter and the prolonged dry spell which followed it exposed the forests to the fury of fire.

The sudden rise in mercury in April and the lack of moisture on the forest floors which is covered with a thick layer of the highly inflammable pine needles, created conditions conducive to the outbreak of fires. Preventive measures taken by the Forest Department includes control burning over 38,656 hectares of forest area and created 936 km of fire lines, proved inadequate. It was the unseasonal rain in May and June which saved the forests from fire much to the respite of the department which had a tough time. In fact one forest guard was killed and three foresters were injured in the fire-fighting operations.

The incident of forest fires has been on the rise over the past few years mainly because of laxity in carrying out preventive measures by the Forest Department. In 1995, the worst year, certain residents filed a public interest litigation in the high court which directed the state government to prepare short and long-term plans to find a permanent solution to the problem.

The department conceded that it had been neglecting preventive measures as it did not have funds for the purpose. It received Rs 3,56 from the Centre to implement short-term measures in 1996. It also submitted a long-term plan of Rs 15 crore to the Centre. However, so far it has not been sanctioned.

The situation might not change appreciably even after the release of adequate funds by the Centre, senior officers of the department felt. The preventive measures, they pointed out, were not being carried out in the field in the right earnest.

The responsibility, had been left to guards and foresters and officers seldom visited the forest areas to ascertain whether or not controlled burning creation of fire lines and other measures were being implemented in the field. As such the measures would largely carried on papers only. The situation would not change unless effective steps to monitor the preventive measures were taken and proper utilisation of funds was ensured.

Mounting tax arrears concern
Finance panel
Tribune News Service

SHIMLA, June 14 — The Chairman of the 11th Finance Commission, Prof A.M. Khusro, has expressed concern over the mounting arrears of tax and non-tax revenue in the state, but has at the same time said the special category states should be given special treatment in the devolution of finances by the Centre.

Mr Khusro was talking to mediapersons here today after meeting the Chief Minister, Prof P.K. Dhumal, and other senior officers of the state.

He said the arrears of tax revenue were also mounting and although as percentage of tax revenue, these may be around 15 per cent. He said the state government should take effective steps to recover these arrears.

Professor Khusro pointed out that the state's non-tax revenue arrears projected at Rs 98.13 crore during 1999-2000 would be around 66 per cent of the non-tax revenue due for collection in the current year. Most of these arrears were on account of unrealised amounts from forestry and wildlife, especially from the State Forest Corporation.

He said it was disturbing to note that the state continued to incur heavy non-plan revenue deficit and the deficits were mounting despite the substantial financial assistance provided by the Centre in the form of grants.

He stressed that the gram panchayats and zila parishads should take steps for their own resource mobilisation.

Professor Khusro said the private sector should be involved.

The Finance Commission Chairman was confident that the commission would submit its report to the Centre by the end of December. He said the coming Lok Sabha elections and Assembly elections in certain states would hamper the work of the commission and about two months would be lost in elections.

Two booked for cheating farmers
Tribune News Service

SHIMLA, June 14 — The Vigilance Department has booked a branch manager of the cooperative bank at Chamba and secretary of a cooperative society for the alleged misappropriation of Rs 16.66 lakh.

According to the Additional Director-General of Police (Vigilance), Mr V.K. Malik, the amount was to be distributed among farmers of Lehal and Basu villages in Chamba for the development of land and purchase of bullocks.

A case of embezzlement and cheating had been registered against the two.

These officials allegedly spread a rumour that agricultural loan was likely to be waived by the government and thereby allured a considerable number of farmers to come forward and get the loan. They allegedly prepared false cases for the purpose of withdrawal of the amount from the bank. Some of the recipients of the loan were not owning agricultural land and thus not entitled for the loan while in many other cases inflated figures regarding their holding were given, making them entitled for larger amounts of loan. In certain clean cases, the loan was shown to have been distributed among persons whose whereabouts could not be ascertained. Some of the farmers who are shown to have received the loan amount were not entitled for the same as per the scheme, as their land was already mortgaged with the government.

It was also revealed that in many cases the full sanctioned loan amount was not released to the farmers and substantial amount was cornered by the two officials and the farmers were cheated.

A case had also been registered against a horticulture officer for having assets disproportionate to his known sources of income. He could not explain pecuniary sources of income amounting to Rs 5,13,250. The Vigilance Department had obtained permission of the government to register a case against him.

A delayed engineering feat
From C.M. Kumbhkarni

The indigenously designed 1500-mm Nathpa-Jhakri power project in the Sutlej river basin in Kinnaur and Shimla districts of Himachal Pradesh is coming up as a master piece of modern technology in the field of harnessing river waters for power generation.

The execution of the project has been somewhat slow, which to an extent is being attributed to geological surprises encountered in the process. This is the first project taken up for execution by the Nathpa-Jhakri Power Corporation, which came into being in May, 1988, as a joint venture of the Government of India and the Government of Himachal Pradesh to plan, investigate, organise, execute, operate and maintain hydro-electric power projects in the Sutlej basin.

The NJPC had some anxious moments when last year the financing agency, the World Bank, unhappy over the slow execution of the project warned it of suspending further loan, which is the largest underground hydro-electric project in Asia.

The relief came when some months later the World Bank agreed to provide finances for the remaining works. The WB is further reported to have agreed to provide funds for three more projects-viz 600 MW- Rampur (II), Kol Dam and Parvati.

A reason for the delay seems to be the lack of understanding and team spirit among the staff members of the NJPC, Himachal Pradesh State Electricity Board and private companies executing the project.

According to the former Chief Minister, Mr Virbhadra Singh, the main reason for the slow progress of the project was that top officers in the NJPC had been trying to execute the project through remote control from Delhi. This government had manage to get the head offices of the corporation moved to Shimla. But after the change of government, the officers moved back to Delhi.

The project was initially estimated to cost Rs 4,338 crore, and the revised estimate in October last year was to the tune of Rs 7,666 crore. The Himachal Chief Minister, Mr Prem Kumar Dhumal, informed the Vidhan Sabha recently that as per the latest estimates the project would cost Rs 8,058 crore.

The project was scheduled to be commissioned by December, 1998. As per the revised commissioning schedule, approved by the Central Electricity Authority, first of its six units is now scheduled to be commissioned in December 2001, the second in January 2002, the third and the fourth in February 2002 and the remaining two in March 2002.

The project is being financed in 1+1 debt equity ratio. The equity portion is being shared by the Government of India and the Government of Himachal Pradesh in the ratio 3:1. The debt finance comprises loans from various international agencies, particularly the World Bank.

However, it is no small achievement that about 50 per cent work is reported to have been executed, which includes about 95 per cent excavation done in the 27.4 km long head race tunnel (HRT), while works on many other components already stand completed.

The HRT has been day-lighted at yet another point between Nathpa downstream and Sholding upstream. The zero error joining have been indeed remarkable feats of Engineering. This was the third such day-lighting achieved during July last. Being mostly an underground project, tunnelling has been a challenging task, executed commendably.

For the past some months workers of construction companies including those led by the CITU, have been agitating. The Himachal Pradesh Government, which has been criticising the NJPC for the delay in the execution of the project, has itself faltered on payment of its equity share. The amount outstanding against Himachal Pradesh towards the cost of the project till recently was reported to be to the tune of Rs 150 crore.

Explaining the project at Nathpa, Mr V.K. Sharma, acting General Manager of the project, said it has several unique features. The underground desilting complex would be one of the largest underground complexes in the world to exclude sediment particles above 0.2 mm so as to prevent these from entering into the head race tunnel and in turn into the turbines. The 10.15 m diameters and 27.4 km-long head race tunnel would be one of the longest power tunnels in the world. Similarly, the 301-metre-deep surge shaft would be one of the deepest surge shafts in the world. Besides, it would be the largest underground power house in the country to house six units of 250 MW each with an aggregate capacity of 1500 MW in a single underground cavern.

The excavation and concreting of power house-cavern and transformer hall have been completed. Exuding confidence, Mr Sharma said the odds were not many, and it would not be difficult to commission the project within the revised schedule.

‘Vidya upasak’ scheme generates heat
From S.P. Sharma
Tribune News Service

SHIMLA, June 14 — The BJP-HVC combine government of Mr P.K. Dhumal is heading for a controversy over the recruitment of 2100 "vidya upasaks" for which over 1.57 lakh applications have been received.

The scheme to recruit "vidya upasaks", introduced by the BJP government to back up elementary education, has already come under a cloud with doubts being expressed that the scheme was an exercise to " infiltrate" BJP and RSS cadres into the education set-up.

The job of selecting the "vidya upasaks" has been assigned to the Subordinate Services Selection Board (SSSB) set up by the BJP government with most of its functionaries being retired persons.

All this has put a question mark on whether the selection would be on merit or based on political considerations.

It is learnt the SSSB is itself confused as to how to go ahead with the selection process with the skeleton staff available with them which has not yet been able to fully scrutinise the applications.

With the minimum qualification for the post having been fixed at matric and the maximum age for reserved categories being 43 and for general categories 38 years, it is learnt there are instances where all or more than two members of a single family have put in their applications.

The recruitment tests for the posts of "vidya upasak" will be held districtwise, with the experience that is gathered from the first test having been fixed in Una district on June 27. The dates for the tests in other districts will be finalised later on, sources said.

It is learnt the SSSB authorities were facing the uphill task of conducting these examinations as they had to come here all the way from Hamirpur to tie up things with the Education Department for manpower support. Mr Dhumal had fixed the headquarters of the SSSB at Hamripur, which is his home district.
The newly set up SSSB has raised a substantial amount of funds out of the application fee for these posts for which a fee of Rs 50 each was fixed for the general category candidates and Rs 25 each for the reserved category applicants.

The issue of recruitment of "vidya upasaks" has generated much heat in the state and it has been alleged that the scheme has been framed to induct RSS activists.

The government has been claiming that the scheme was duly approved by the National Council of Teachers Education. Under the scheme vacant posts of teacher will be filled in the primary schools which are located in remote, backward and tribal areas. The trained teachers in the urban areas are not willing to serve in the remote places as a result of which most of the schools in remote and inaccessible areas are without teachers.

It may be recalled that many teachers were recruited under the volunteer teacher scheme which was launched in 1985. This did not have a very pleasant experience and the scheme was modified from time to time.

Plea to call PCC meeting
From Our Correspondent

MANDI, June 14 — Former minister and AICC member Thakur Natha Singh told mediapersons today that he had written to the PCC chief, Mr Sat Mahajan, to immediately call a meeting of the PCC with the view to mobilising the Congress organisation to help the families of the martyrs who laid down their lives defending the frontiers against intruders.

He said a large number of Himachal soldiers were fighting infiltrators in Jammu and Kashmir and a few of them had sacrificed their lives. "We are proud of our soldiers and want to convey them that the whole nation stood with them".

The whole nation and all political parties were solidly behind the government in defending "our territory against the Pakistani intruders."

He regretted that in this period of crisis on the borders Himachal Chief Minister opted to criticise the former Prime Minister Jawhar Lal Nehru for the Kashmir problem. "Let us not play politics at this juncture. All our energies should be diverted to throw out the enemy from our land," he said.

Adopt uniform relief policy: Mahajan
From Our Correspondent

DHARAMSALA, June 14 — The Pradesh Congress Committee chief, Mr Sat Mahajan, has said the government should adopt a uniform policy in granting relief to the families of those killed in action in Kargil, irrespective of their ranks.

The leader said the government should ensure that a job, befitting the rank of the soldier killed, should be given to his wife or any other family member. "If need be, the government should not hesitate to allow relaxations in the qualifications, as these brave soldiers are sacrificing their lives for the country", he said and added that the family member being given the job could be asked to improve his qualification over a period of time.

He said the financial assistance being given to the families of the deceased soldiers should be raised to Rs 3 lakh and it should be given in cash.

Mr Mahajan said a befitting tribute to the killed soldier would be that a government institution in the village should be named after him.

The PCC chief said he visited the house of soldier, Khem Raj at Parol village, near Shahpur, yesterday, Khem Raj, of the Grenadiers, was killed in Kargil on June, 5. Mr Mahajan also put forth a demand to rename the road to Parol after the brave soldier. He said the benefits offered, by the government should be time bound.

Students hold rally against Pakistan
From Our Correspondent

HAMIRPUR, June 14 — Hundreds of students of various schools here today took out a procession raising slogans against Pakistan for its anti-India stance. Led by youth leaders of various political parties, the students also held a massive demonstration against Pakistan and demanded immediate withdrawal of its forces and intruders from Jammu and Kashmir.

The leaders blamed Pakistan for fomenting trouble on the Jammu and Kashmir border. They paid tributes to jawans who had laid down their lives while fighting against Pakistan.

Foreigner's body found
From Our Correspondent

MANALI, June 14 — The body of a foreigner was found near old Manali village bridge, about 2 km from here, yesterday. According to police sources, the deceased has been identified as Ewen Livingston, a resident of the UK. The cause of the death is not yet known. The body has been sent to the district hospital, Kulu, for a post-mortem.