Palampur, August 27
Mr Sat Mahajan, Revenue Minister, Himachal Pradesh, said here today that the state government had no plan to regularise encroachments on the government and forest land. He said that the previous BJP government had invited applications for the regularisation of encroachments on the government and forest land in the state, but the present government had come to the conclusion that this decision of the previous government was not in the interest of the state and if it was implemented it would only benefit a select section of society which included politicians and rich farmers, agriculturists and orchadists who had made large-scale encroachments.

He said the Congress government had not yet discussed this matter in detail but as far as forest land was concerned it was beyond the purview of the state government to regularise the encroachments. He said there were over 10 lakh cases of encroachments in the state and it was not practically possible to regularise these encroachments as many of them had encroached upon the government land just 10 days before the announcement of the policy for the regularisation of encroachments by the BJP government before the assembly poll. He said it was surprising that in such cases the encroachers had also completed the papers formalities by tampering with the officials records in connivance with revenue officials. He said the government would definitely consider those cases where the encroachers were landless and had applied for allotment of land.

Mr Mahajan said he had already ordered inquiry into all such cases and no one would be allowed to encroach upon the government land. He said the Cabinet had already restored the powers to forest officials to deal with the cases of forest land and now they had been vested with all powers to remove such encroachments without any delay.

He said revenue officials should initiate measures to remove the encroachments on government land. He categorically stated that there were specific orders from the government to all revenue officers, including SDMs, to personally look into such cases and no one should be spared.

Shimla, August 27
With five more patients testing positive for scrub typhus, the government today constituted a special cell in the Directorate of Health Services for monitoring the situation arising out of the outbreak of the disease in the state.

The five patients from Dharamsala and Shimla district, admitted to the Indira Gandhi Medical College (IGMC), have tested positive for the high grade fever. Four persons have already died due to the disease during the past several days.

According to the Principal of the IGMC, Prof L.S. Pal, all the patients were stable and responding well to treatment. He said apart from these five new fever patients had been admitted to the IGMC today, out of which, two were from Bilaspur and one each from Solan, Mandi and Chamba.

Presiding over a meting of the Health Department, the Chief Parliamentary Secretary, Mr Mukesh Agnihotri, directed the officials to furnish all information about the fresh cases so that timely steps could be taken. He also directed the IGMC and Health Department authorities to work in coordination.

The department will be issuing guidelines to the chief medical officers in the district to maintain vigil and send all samples for scrub typhus test directly to the Central Research Institute, Kasauli and to the IGMC. In case the need arises, the doctors in the districts would be provided with special equipment and given training to handle the situation.

So far three confirmed scrub typhus deaths have taken place at the IGMC, out of which two patients were from Bilaspur, while the third was from the Sanjauli area of the town.

At present 24 fever patients are undergoing treatment at the IGMC and a total of 25 patients have tested positive for scrub typhus this year.

The Director, Health Services, has already sent a detailed report about the outbreak of the disease mainly in the lower parts of the state to the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD).

Solan, August 27
Thousands of fish were found dead in the Sarsa near Kenduwalla village in Nalagarh, owing to discharge of toxic effluents from the Sandholi and Malpur nullahs yesterday. The villagers who spotted shoals of dead fish informed a local NGO, Him Parivesh, about the mishap.

This is the ninth case of fish death in the region in the past few years. The officials of the State Environment Protection and Pollution Control Board collected samples of the dead fish and water both from upstream and downstream of the nullah for chemical examination to ascertain the cause of the incident.

Mr Gyanendra Bhardwaj, president of the Him Parivesh, said it was unfortunate that the industrial units, which had promised to check toxic effluents by constituting a committee, had not bothered to translate it to reality. He said such irregularities could prove fatal as the ground water could also get contaminated.

The member secretary of the board, Dr S.S. Negi, said action would be taken against erring units, adding preliminary reports of water samples indicated a high levels of sewage content in the water.