Tarn Taran Diary: Confusion prevailed over name of Goindwal Sahib Power Plant

Despite the Punjab government having purchased the Goindwal Sahib thermal power plant from the private sector with much fanfare, there are many officials in the Powercom and administration who are not aware of the exact (correct) name of this thermal plant. A full page advertisement released by the state government to different newspapers on the day of the function on February 11 at the site of the plant in Goindwal Sahib followed by a mass rally in Sheron showed the name of the plant as ‘Sri Guru Amardas Thermal Plant, Goindwal Sahib’. On the stone laid jointly by Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal, the Chief Minister of Delhi, the name was still creating confusion. On the stone, ‘Sri’ with the Guru’s name was missing. There was one more technical error as ‘Power’ was written with the thermal plant, whereas thermal itself means power generation. It was more shocking that at the bottom of the stone, there were four names, that of senior officials who visited the spot before the laying of stone but failed to notice the error. These were Harbhajan Singh ETO, Power Minister, Punjab, Sandeep Kumar, Deputy Commissioner, Baldev Singh Sran, CMD, PSPCL, Patiala and Tejvir Singh, Additional Chief Secretary, Electricity Department, who failed to notice the error. The error has become a part of history as the photo was released by the Information and Public Relations Department, Punjab, on the day of the function, which was February11. The stone is still at the site. Who is to be blamed for the error as the name of senior officials was there who happened to overlook it before it could be rectified.

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1989 Lok Sabha elections saw Simranjit Singh Mann’s historic win

The elections to the ninth Lok Sabha held in 1989 created history in Tarn Taran (presently the name of Tarn Taran constituency has been changed to Khadoor Sahib) in which Simranjit Singh Mann of the SAD (Amritsar) was elected the winner by a huge margin of 4,80,417 votes. In that election, after Ram Vilas Paswan who won by the biggest margin in the country, Simranjit Singh Mann was the next to be elected to Lok Sabha by a huge margin. In 1989, terrorism in Punjab was at its peak and people had high hopes that the election process would help bring peace. In the elections, there were a total of 11 candidates in the fray but Simranjit Singh Mann, a 1967 batch IPS officer who was in Bhagalpur jail since 1984 for his advocacy of devolution of powers to Sikhs, was the only candidate who was the people’s choice. In 1984, he was on deputation to the Government of India. Simranjit Singh Mann was in jail from where he filed his nomination from Tarn Taran for the Lok Sabha elections. He was not released on parole even to launch his election campaign. There were nine assembly seats in the Tarn Taran Lok Sabha constituency. Simranjit Singh Mann’s father Joginder Singh Mann launched poll campaigning for his son. In the results, Simranjit Singh Mann polled 5,27,707 votes (88.1%) and his nearest rival Ajit Singh Mann of the Congress party could secure 47,290 votes (7.9%) while the rest lost their security deposits. Such scenario in elections has never been seen since 1952. (Contributed by Gurbaxpuri)