In a service towards downtrodden and poor families, the Nishkam Sewa and Virdh Ashram of Raikot, with the help of Lions Club Raikot and NRI Avtar Singh Katri, today helped 14 couples to get married. The couples had arrived here to solemnise the marriage from far-off places of Barnala, Sangrur and Moga districts, besides Ludhiana district.

The mass marriage programme was organised by the organisation at the their place in Barnala Chowk as per the Sikh rites by Bibi Sharanjit Kaur, Gurpreet Kaur, Bhai Gurcharan Singh of Preet Ragi Jatha.

Bibi Harjeet Kaur, president of the old age home, Ravi Devgan, principal, of the school run by the organisation, president of the lions club Mukesh Gupta, Dr Durgesh Sharma, KK Sharma, Dr Naresh Goyal, Dr Vishal Jain, Dr Surinder Singh, Subhash Passi, advocate BR Sharma, Dr BL Bansal, Sandeep Sharma, Gurnek Singh Grewal, Jaswant Singh, Kamaljit Singh Behal, Baldev Khurana and many other persons visited the old age home to bless the newly married couples. A common kitchen was arranged for all visitors and families of the mass marriage programme.

The society is serving the needy persons of the city for the past 27 years. Utensils and goods of daily needs were given to the newly weds, including cloths, utensils, beddings, furniture and make-up kits, besides watches and gold ornaments. The newly weds expressed their gratitude to the visitors for blessing them.

The Punjab agriculture department, through its district chiefs, has started an experimentation campaign. Under the campaign, Dr Gurcharan Singh Kalkat, chairman, Punjab Farmers’ Commission, along with Balwinder Singh Sidhu, director (agriculture), Punjab, Inderjit Singh, director (dairy development), Punjab, and Dr Yadwinder Singh Cheena, chief agriculture officer, Ludhiana, visited various farms and sites within the district.

Dr Kaura and Dr PS Rangi, consultants of the farmers’ commission, Dr Sukhpal Singh, agriculture officer, Ludhiana, agriculture development officers Dr Amanjit Singh, Dr Nirmal Singh and Dr Parkash Singh accompanied the visiting team and examined the results of the experimentation.

Talking to farmers, Kalkat said there was no other way for farmers but to resort to experimentation, alternative farming and allied farming to enhance their levels of profit.

Sidhu said farmers who were part of the endeavour were provided with inputs free of cost, including machinery, insecticides, pesticides and fertilisers.

He said keeping all other things on a par with conventional cultivation, a farmer could save Rs 8,000 per acre on the cost itself while the productivity remained the same.

In the long run, the fields under the new technique would demand lesser insecticides, pesticides and fertilizers and would enhance their profits.

The team visited the farm of Nirmal Singh who had adopted the stubble melting technique on his two acres of agriculture land out of 12 acres. In this technique, the stubble of paddy was not burned and wheat was sowed using Happy seeder, the wheat sowing machine that saved water and diesel for irrigation purpose in wheat crop.

Nirmal Singh, who has been experimenting for some time, said the results were great without a decline in productivity.

Currently, 40 farmers in the state were carrying out experimentation on over 70 acres of farmland.

CAO Chhina said the department currently had just 14 Happy seeders and seeing the response of farmers, the department was going to acquire 80 more such machines. Two hundred such machines were expected to be given to farmers and societies on subsidy through the farmers’ commission.

Earlier, the team visited the Bija Dairy Development Training Centre for inspection.

Later, it visited a banana farm in Kular village. The farm had been developed by Mewa Singh, a progressive farmer who had undertaken alternative farming for greater returns.

The team finally visited the state-of-the-art diary farm of Daljit Singh, president of the Progressive Farmers’ Association, Punjab.

Various farmers, including Parminder Singh Lalton, Nirmal Singh, Sarabjit Singh, Ravinder Singh, Hardev Singh, Babu Singh, Balwant Singh, also accompanied the inspection team to observe the results of various experiments in the fields of dairy farming and farm cultivation

Over 200 students of Government College, Karamsar, were felicitated for their distinguished performance in various fields at the annual prize distribution function organised on the college campus yesterday.

Amrit Varsha Sharma, principal of the college, presided over the function, while Dr Neeru Katyal Gupta, SDM, Payal, was the chief guest.

Harbans Singh Jhajh, senior professor at Punjabi University, Patiala, was the guest of honour.

While addressing students, Neeru Katyal exhorted them to acquire excellence in their respective fields of education. She asked them to equip themselves to meet future challenges.

Referring to the importance of education in the development of rural areas, Katyal said educated people played a vital role in improving social and economic level of all sections of an agrarian society. Education was of utmost importance as it helped curb social evils also. Appreciating the achievements of the college, the SDM said the institution was one of the pioneer institutions engaged in promotion of rural education.

Amrit Varsha Sharma, besides, proposing the vote of thanks, highlighted the achievements of students in various fields.

Parkash Singh, convener of the function, congratulated award winners. The college colour was presented to 10 sportspersons and seven students for achievement in academics. Five brilliant students who bagged top positions in university examinations were also felicitated.

The ‘Business Opportunities Aapke Ghar’ expo, jointly organised by Franchise India Holdings Ltd and Indian Franchise Association, held here today presented 100 business opportunities from leadings brands, with over a thousand visitors attending the event.

The one-day event offered prime investing options for local businessmen.

Franchise India Holdings CEO Sachin Marya said, “The expo has been organized to create an economical, efficient and trusted way of business development giving a wider reach to small towns in the country. The idea was to bring back the confidence of the common man to invest in safer and respectful business options offered by leading companies. At the same time, an effort has been made to ensure franchise sale and to offer a campaign wherein we’ll be able to educate and organise small and medium business community on how franchised businesses make better sense.”

“The show kicked off to a really good start and the footfall was more than our expectations. We’re hoping for a similar kind of response to the expo in other cities”, Marya added.

About 500 buyers in the city benefited from the expo, which also assisted several companies in their franchise search. Leading brands like Reebok, Next, Gitanjali, Club Laptop, Coffee Nu, Asmi, Sangini, D’damas, Hauck, Nirvana, Nakshatra Jetking, Veta, Eurokids, ICICI Securities, Angel Broking and Remax presented the best of business opportunities to visitors and business seekers.

Business opportunities explored during the seminar included franchises, dealerships, distributorships as well as retailing.

A block-level seminar to improve the sex ratio in Punjab was held at the Primary Health Centre (PHC), Dakha.

The seminar was attended by SMO Sahnewal Dr Gurjeet Singh, Nagar Council president Telu Ram Bansal and SHO Dakha Jangjit Singh.

The sarpanches, panches and social workers of the area attended the seminar. Dr Sudeep Kaur Sidhu, in charge of Dakha PHC, Dr Chanchal Jaggi, Ayurvedic Medical officer Dr Rashmi Gill, gynecologist Dr Bhupinder Singh, staff nurse Charanjit Kaur and ANM Sarabjit Kaur were present.

A number of causes and remedies to female foeticide were discussed.

The menace of dowry was adjudged as the main cause for declining sex ratio.

Dr Sudeep Kaur Sidhu said the actual position of the society was worse as the government had only the record provided by the ultra sound scanning centres regarding the female foeticide.

She said scanning was one way to determine the sex of an unborn child and that too, at a later stage of pregnancy. She said there were at least 110 alternative tests, which a person could do at home and go for illegal abortion in case there was a girl child in the womb.

SMO Gurjit Singh said the government gave incentives to villages to improve their sex ratio.

Bairsal Kalan and Lobangarh villages under the Machhiwara block were given grants of Rs 1.5 lakh each for improving the sex ratio of their village beyond the ratio of 1,000 girls per 1,000 men, the SMO added.

He said it was unfortunate that there were many loopholes in the PNDT Act and MTP Act. Moreover, he added that the over burdened officials were unable to implement the existing Acts.

The management of Hotel Majestic Park Plaza organised blood donation camp with the support of DMCH on occasion of Women's day. 52 volunteers donated blood. S. Jagpal Singh Khangura (Chairman) Arun Jaie (Area Director) were also present on this occasion.

People are the most important asset of any institution, establishment, country or family, said Dr Mohan Joseph Modayil, member, Agriculture Scientist Recruitment Board, New Delhi.

He said an establishment with huge money, buildings and infrastructure could enjoy success only when the people working were dedicated to their responsibility.

He was delivering a lecture and presentation on ‘People First’. He was here on invitation by Dr VK Taneja, Vice-Chancellor, Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University.

He said as a teacher, his priority was student first and he worked on it for a quarter of a century, but for the last 10 years he had been working on people first.

Dr Joseph said human resource was the soul of every establishment. “No success has been achieved without people and the level of success depends on the level of people,” he said.

He shared a number of tips to become a ‘total quality person’ (TQP). He said one’s conscience guided him whether he was a TQP or not.

He said timely decision, control on anger, usage of ‘thank you’ and ‘please’, cordial relations with everybody and quest for knowledge were the main characteristics to become a TQP.

Dr OS Parmar proposed the vote of thanks. After the presentation, Dr Joseph visited the College of Veterinary Science, the College of Fisheries, the College of Dairy Science and Technology, the dairy farm and the poultry farm along with Dr Simrat Sagar Singh, dean, Dr AS Nanda, director, research, and Dr KS Sandhu, DSW. He also discussed a number of future plans with Dr Taneja

An awareness camp was organised to mark the Farmer’s Day at Kailpur village, near here, yesterday. The camp was organised under the national project of organic cultivation.

Dr Rajinder Pal Singh Aulakh, agriculture development officer, Ludhiana block, presided over the camp and highlighted the benefits of organic cultivation to villagers.

“The earth had sufficient recourses to fulfil the needs of human beings but not the desires of the human race,” he said.

The camp was inaugurated by Farmers’ Advisory Committee, Punjab, chairman Maghar Singh Braich.

Braich asked farmers to conserve natural recourses for the next generation by using it optimally.

Appreciating the training camps conducted by the agriculture department, he said such camp not only made farmers aware of making maximum profits from agriculture and allied business but also provided information on latest technologies.

Dr Sukhpal Singh, agriculture development officer, Ludhiana, highlighted the schemes offered by the government for farmers.

He said farmers could avail of benefits by making agriculture development clubs.

He called upon farmers to intensify their efforts to enhance the agriculture productivity.

During a technical session, farmers were asked to adopt organic methods of cultivation.

Dr Baldev Singh Sivia, agriculture development officer, stressed that organic methods were much more effective as compared to chemical fertilisers and insecticides.

Dr Virender Kaur Randhawa, head, home science extension department, PAU, stressed the establishment of self-help groups by womenfolk of villages.

Amanpreet Ghai laid stress on the intervention of government to develop needed machinery to be used in organic cultivation at concessional rates, while Dr Rajinder Pal focussed on government intervention in marketing organic products as well as produce.

‘Asal’, a self-help group of Barewal village, exhibited its edible produce and distributed plants of shadow, fruit and of medicinal values free of cost among farmers.

The Ludhiana District Weightlifting Association (LDWA) will organise the 33rd Ludhiana District Weightlifting Championship at the Ludhiana Weightlifting and Bodybuilding Club near Rakh Bagh here on March 14.

According to Parvesh Sharma, a former international weightlifting star and general secretary of the LDWA, competition in the men’s as well as women’s sections will be conducted during this one-day championship.

Interested participants have been asked to report at 6.45 am at the venue. The body weighing will start at 7 am and the competition will commence at 9 am, said Sharma.

Urging the Centre to make public the “black list” of Sikhs, Congress MLA Jassi Khangura on Tuesday demand- ed a “pragmatic review”, saying a number of blacklist- ed persons had never been involved directly or indirectly in militancy. “The list must be made acces- sible under the Right to Information Act. It needs to be pragmatically reviewed as it includes numerous injustices,” the Qila Raipur MLA said at a press conference.

In this list, he said, a dis- proportionate number of Sikhs feature who had been black- listed since the days of mili- tancy. “Many Sikhs have been added to the list based on poten- tially spurious allegations,” he said. The MLA demanded dis- closure of the principal reason behind inclusion in the list, cat- egory of offence or allegation.

He said it had become nec- essary to have a fresh risk assessment of every Sikh name featuring on this list in view of changed circumstances. It was also unjust that those featuring on the “black list” were neither made aware of the issues that necessitated their inclusion nor were they offered any opportunity to plead their case, he argued, saying: “This must change.”

Many blacklisted NRI Sikhs, he said, were victims of the police-led Punjab land mafia.
Khangura said: “Property worth thousands of crores of NRIs in Punjab has been usurped by the police by fabricating evi- dence, recording false state- ments and filing false FIRs with the objective of adding names to the `black list’.”

He said Sikhs who had made secessionist demands be given an opportunity to submit an affidavit rejecting their earli- er stand and swearing alle- giance to the Constitution of India. “If this country can allow Parkash Singh Badal, who had insulted the Constitution out- side of Parliament, to hold high office without even a morsel of apology, then surely we must not exclude from India those persons now prepared to reject their earlier views,” he said.

The MLA said that many NRI Sikh mediapersons fea- ture on the list on the basis of statements they had allegedly made in the past due to vari- ous compulsions. “Time has been a great healer. Views have changed.” He cautioned that resentment might rise if these issues were not addressed promptly.