Mohali,

The President of the Punjab Olympic Association (POA) Mr. Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa today voluntarily resigned from his office after which the Vice President Mr. Brahm Mohindra was nominated as the Working President till the elections to the association are held.

Chandigarh, To prepare a comprehensive master plan for the conservation and management of water resources to tackle declining ground water in Punjab, Water Resources Minister Sukhbinder Singh Sarkaria on Saturday met a three-member team of experts from Israel in Amritsar.

The experts team along with senior officers of the Water Resources Department had earlier visited various parts of the state to assess the present situation and the challenges being faced by the state in dealing with the water sector.

Chandigarh,

The Social Security, Women and Child Development Minister, Punjab, Mrs. Aruna Chaudhary today presided over a meeting with the senior officers of the department in which all the District Programme Officers of the State were also present. The minister reviewed the various schemes for the welfare of children and women and directed their effective implementation.

Chandigarh, The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today expressed solidarity with striking medicos who are agitating against attack on doctors of the NRS College in Kolkata which has led to violence against doctors across the State and urged West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee to take immediate action to protect the life and liberty of doctors.

In a statement here, SAD vice president Dr Daljit Singh Cheema said it was extremely unfortunate that the West Bengal chief minister had failed to move swiftly and take action against a mob which attacked and critically injured a doctor of the NRS College in Kolkata after the death of a terminally ill patient. He said this had aggravated the situation and presently doctors were being attacked at several places in West Bengal. “This has paralysed medical services in the State and is now threatening to effect medical services across the country with doctors striking to express solidarity with their West Bengal counterparts”.

Jalandhar: The School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Lovely Professional University organized ‘Seminar on Agriculture and Biodiversity' for farmers of various villages at Sh Baldev Raj Mittal Auditorium of the university. Organization was held in collaboration with Punjab Biodiversity Board, Chandigarh and was sponsored by National Biodiversity Authority, Government of India. The theme of the seminar was “Our Biodiversity, Our Food, Our Health”. For this, more than 120 farmers from more than 20 villages like Kultham, Mehli, Talwandi Jattan, Ghumna, Daduwal, Mehtan, Hardaspur, etc participated and got awakened about the importance of medicinal plants and soil testing practices. Students from the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Agriculture, Basic Sciences, Bioscience and Biotechnology also participated in the seminar.

Chandigarh, After the sealing of 45 abandoned borewells in Punjab, the Deputy Commissioners have been asked to initiate criminal action against people who don't plug borewells, according to an official here on Thursday.

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had ordered plugging of all open borewells to prevent recurrence of the tragic incident in which a two-year-old boy died after being trapped in a borewell for 108 hours.

Director of Tandrust Punjab Mission K.S. Pannu said the abandoned borewells were a cause of concern for the safety of people, especially that of children, as well as a source of contamination of ground water.

Chandigarh, Rejecting the allegations of water shortage in the state, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, here on Thursday, said surplus river water was being discharged to Pakistan as a precautionary measure to prevent flooding along the banks of Sutlej and Beas rivers. Also, water levels at Bhakra and Pong Dams were higher than last year.

The Chief Minister was reacting to legislator Sukhpal Singh Khaira's allegations that canals in the state would go dry as the Punjab government was releasing water to Pakistan.

Chandigarh,

The Aam Aadmi Party has accused Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD-Badal) of misleading the Sikh ‘sangat’ living in the country and various other parts of the world on the missing of rare of the rarest documents, some of them having immense religious value, from the Sikh Reference Library, which were reportedly seized by the Indian Army during the Operation Blue Star (1984) just to distract their attention from the raging charges of having sold them at a price under their (Badals) watch.

Amritsar, Thirty-five years have gone, still there is no whereabouts of over 16,000 artefacts relating to the Sikh religion and history after they were allegedly taken over by the Army following Operation Bluestar from the Golden Temple complex.

The Shriomani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) says 15,000 rare books, 16,000 artefacts related to Sikh religion and history and handwritten 'birs' (copies) of Guru Granth Sahib were among the items that had gone missing.

Chandigarh, Within hours of Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh's orders for closure of all open borewells, 45 of them have been sealed in a bid to prevent recurrence of the tragic incident in which a two-year-old boy died after been trapped inside a borewell for 108 hours, officials said on Wednesday.

Deputy Commissioners have submitted reports on the status of the borewells in their respective districts to the Chief Minister, who had sought details on open borewells, with directions for their immediate closure.

The reports indicate that of the 45 borewells sealed so far, 26 were located in Fatehgarh Sahib district -- 13 each in Bassi Pathana and Khera blocks.