Haryana villagers fund `1-cr bridge

18
INDIA DIGEST
Aseemanand
gets parole
The Punjab and Haryana
high court on Tuesday
granted 10 days parole to
Swami Aseemanand, an accused in the 2007 Samjhauta blasts case. A division bench headed by
Justice S S Saron granted
him parole to meet his ailing mother in Kolkata.
Goa minister in qualification row: Goa tourism
minister Dilip Parulekar is
facing questions about his
highest educational qualification in two sworn election affidavits.
TN village ransacked:
A group of vanniyars ransacked houses belonging to
dalits in Somampatty after
a vanniyar girl married a
dalit man on Monday.
L
ate one night a mugger
jumped into the path of a
well-dressed man and stuck a
gun in his ribs. “Give me your
money,” he demanded.
Indignant, the affluent man
replied, “You can’t do this. I’m
a politician!” “In that case,”
replied the robber, “Give me
MY money!”
Stray humour, author unknown
TIMES NATION
Haryana villagers
fund `1-cr bridge
TOI
Netas To Be
Kept Out Of
Inauguration
Manvir.Saini@timesgroup.com
Chandigarh: You don’t always need a Dashrath Manjhi
to
single-handedly
cut
through a mountain and
build you a road. As residents
of 11 villages in Haryana’s
Sirsa district have shown, all
you need is a strong collective
will to cut through a mountain of red tape.
When politicians and bureaucrats ignored their requests to build them a bridge
over the Ghaggar river so that
they could reach Sirsa town
with their farm produce faster, the villagers teamed up
and collected Rs 1 crore. With
it, they funded a 250-foot-long,
14-foot-wide bridge connecting Aleeka and Panihari villages with Sirsa.
Work started in April
2014. Today, the bridge is near
completion and the 25-member
committee
which
is supervising the construc-
The bridge will cut the distance between Aleeka and Sirsa by 30km
tion has requested local
saint, Mahant Brahm Dass,
to inaugurate it.
Once completed, the
bridge will be a lifeline for 1.
25 lakh people as it will cut
the distance from their villages to Sirsa town by at least
30 km. They will also get easier access to markets in Punjab for their farm produce.
“We have no place for politicians or bureaucrats in our
list of invitees for the bridge’s
inauguration,” says Hardev
Singh of Panihari village.
“For us, a labourer who
contributed Rs 500 and a wid-
ow who contributed her pension of Rs 1,000 are more important than those who
fooled us for more than three
decades,” says Hardev Singh.
“From Devi Lal to current
chief minister Manohar Lal
Khattar, we had represented
our case to all. Except for Sirsa MP Charanjit Singh Rori
and former minister Gopal
Kanda, who contributed Rs 1
lakh and Rs 5.51 lakh from
their personal funds, no one
even bothered to look at us,”
added Singh.
For full report, log on to
www.timesofindia.com
Software tracks changes on
Nehru’s Wiki page to govt IP
Sandhya.Soman
@timesgroup.com
Mumbai: A software that
tracks anonymous Wikipedia
edits has found that mischievous changes were made to
the entries on the country’s
first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his forefathers
on June 26. The revisions,
which originated from a government of India IP (Internet
Protocol) address, said Nehru’s grandfather Gangadhar
Nehru was a Muslim.
These edits were later delet-
ed by volunteer editors of the
online encyclopedia. The discovery was broadcast by
@AnonGoIWPEdits — the
Twitter handle of the software
created by Pranesh Prakash.
Prakash, policy director
at Centre for Internet and Society, noted that all these edits
originated from the same IP
address. When the IP was verified on whois.domaintools.com, it was found that it belongs to government-owned
National Informatics Centre.
When asked if the user
could be pinpointed, he said
that it would be difficult as it
isn’t clear as to who all have
access to the NIC network.
The malicious edits stated,
“Gangadhar was born as a
Muslim by the name of Ghiasuddin Ghazi but changed his
name to a Hindu Ganga Dhar
to escape British clutches.”
Edits were made on the pages
of Gangadhar’s son Motilal
Nehru. On the former PM’s
page, salacious details of his
“affair” with Edwina Mountbatten, the wife of British India’s last viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, were also added.
* THE TIMES OF INDIA, BENGALURU
WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 2015
CRIMINAL LOVE
NEWSICLE
A Thane woman moved court recently to
marry gangster Abu Salem. Though she has
cited “desperation” as the reason behind
her decision, many others have approached
notorious inmates with marriage proposals
borne of love, or some such thing:
Akshaya.Mukul@timesgroup.com
CHARLES SOBHRAJ
RICHARD RAMIREZ
It was “love at first
sight” for Nihita Biswas,
a Nepalese, when she
met the bikini killer at
Kathmandu central jail in
2008 while playing
interpreter
for his French
lawyer. They
got married
the same
year. Nihita was
20, Sobhraj
64.
She was a virgin and he a serial rapist. Devout Christian Doreen
Lioy wrote Richard Ramirez, a satan worshipper, 75 love letters
over a period of 11 years and eventually married him in 1996.
At the time of his death, he was engaged to another 23-year-old
woman. Richard, the Night Stalker, was convicted of several
murders and sexual assaults among other charges.
CHARLES MANSON
Afton Elaine Burton aka Star, 27, and the infamous killer, 80, were
granted a marriage licence last year after the duo reportedly got
romantically involved following correspondence through letters.
Manson was convicted of murder, including that of actor Sharon
Tate, 17 years before Star was born. Last heard, the wedding
had been called off
JOHN KILLICK:
In 1999, librarian Lisa Dudko hijacked a helicopter and picked up the
history-sheeter robber from an Australian prison yard amid a hail of bullets from prison guards.
They were on the run for over six weeks before being caught.
Saibaba gets bail, but his
failing health worries kin
Shreya.roychowdhury
@timesgroup.com
look at him,” she says.
Saibaba is 90% disabled
and uses a wheelchair and
New Delhi: For Vasantha, at the time of his arrest, he
the joy of her husband, GN already had cardiac probSaibaba, being granted bail lems and hypertension.
is tempered by the reality of “Now his spine is bent and I
his failing health.
was told some of his
When she landed in
vertebrae are disloNagpur two days
cated. He’s in a lot of
ago – she was relievpain. There are
ing her brother-instones in his gall
law who had been by
bladder and kidneys
the Delhi University
that will have to be
teacher’s side since
removed surgically.
he was moved to a Saibaba
Doctors have also
hospital last Thurssuggested an anday – she found his condi- giography,” she says.
tion much deteriorated.
Vasantha is keen to get
“I’m happy he’s been him to Delhi. Saibaba is curgranted bail, but he’s in rently admitted at the Censo much pain, it’s hard to tral India Institute of Medi-
JEE rankings
delayed; IIT,
NIT counselling
hangs fire
cal Sciences at Nagpur – a
private hospital – and funds
are running low.
Over the past 11 months,
Vasantha has been helped
by Saibaba's colleagues in
Delhi University, his students and human rights activists. Their contributions
have sustained his household as the college where he
taught English –– Ram Lal
Anand ––suspended him in
May, 2014. “With no regular
salary, treatment in a private hospital will be difficult,” says Vasantha. “Once
the court order comes and
Saibaba is released, I am hoping to take him to Delhi.”
Her daughter and mother-in-law are still in Delhi.
New Delhi: Common counselling for admissions to NITs
and IITs was conceived as a
noble idea but it has turned
out to be a nightmare for students and parents as the wait
is getting endless.
Till late on Tuesday, CBSE,
which conducted this year’s
joint entrance exam (main),
could not make public the All
India Rank. That meant the
Joint Admission Board that
conducts JEE (advanced) also
had to postpone ranking since
the joint seat allocation (JoSA)
had to be done. “Registration
and filling-in of choices in JoSAA (JoSA authority) portal
can begin ONLY AFTER CBSE
announces JEE (Main) 2015 Paper-1 and Paper-2 ranks. After
CBSE announces the ranks, it
will take at least 2 to 3 hours to
open the JoSAA portal to the
candidates for online registration and choice filling-in,” the
IIT JEE (advanced) website announced. The JEE (main) rank
list was expected on June 24.
Senior officers in CBSE say
the delay has been caused by
“external factors”. “Class XII
results of state boards do not
come at the same time, and
ranking has to give 40%
weightage to the results,” one
officer said. “We will have the
ranking very soon, may be on
Wednesday,” he added.
HRD ministry sources say
the entire operation could
have been planned well by the
CBSE. For instance, state
boards could have been told to
declare Class XII results earlier. One HRD official said, “A
bigger problem could be in
store when the actual joint allocation begins. There will be
technical glitch and that could
delay the process further.”