Flowers first

Though the Chandigarh Administration has not received any official confirmation on the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the city to hand over the keys of the flats constructed at Maloya to beneficiaries from the EWS category under a rehabilitation scheme, officials have started making preparations for the visit. The CHB is the nodal agency for the ceremony. CHB officials recently placed an order for flowers to deck up the venue of the function. One of the officials involved in the preparations said arranging flowers at a short notice was not easy so they had placed the order with a florist for bulk supply of flowers. It is expected that the PM might visit the city in the last week of this month.

Groundbreaking event

Delay in completion of a government project is not a new thing, but a delay in starting a project even ten years after its foundation stone-laying ceremony was held is something unusual. This is what happened in the case of a UT Secretariat building. The then Adviser to the UT Administrator had laid the stone of the project in 2007 but the work could not be started due to paucity of funds. The UT Administration has now got funds and the contract for the construction of the seven-storey building has been allotted. But since it was not possible to lay foundation stone of the project now, officials have christened the even to be held on December 12 as groundbreaking ceremony.

VC invokes BHU link

Panjab University Vice Chancellor Prof Raj Kumar has always been proud of his Banaras Hindu University (BHU) connection. “I am from the BHU. So, I am not shy of taking ‘daan’ like Malviya,” he had said during the visit of Union Minister Vijay Sampla on the PU campus on December 4. During his first Senate meeting, the VC had told that Madan Mohan Malviya, the founder of BHU, had even taken contribution from beggars for setting up the university.

Contributed by Ramkrishan Upadhyay and Bhartesh Singh Thakur