Sonepat :
One Love Johar of Delhi Camp colony was killed and three others — Umesh, Kamal and Monu — of his family were injured after they were allegedly attacked by a group of armed youths in the colony here on Sunday night.

On the complaint of deceased’s brother Ajai, a case of murder and attempt to murder has been registered at the Civil Lines police station against eight persons. The accused have been identified as Dinesh, alias Bunty, his wife Geeta and his two sons, his cousin Mukesh and three others.

Demanding immediate arrest of the accused, Love’s kin, including his wife Kavita, blocked the Bahalgarh Road on Monday morning, disrupting the traffic movement.
Civil Lines SHO Narender reached the spot and persuaded the protesting members of the family to lift the blockade. He assured them that the accused would be arrested soon. Love Johar’s body was handed over to his family after a postmortem at the Civil Hospital.
The SHO said there was a dispute among the members of a WhatsApp group over a photograph posted and it resulted in heated arguments on the group. Following this, Love Johar was asked to meet other members of the group. When the victim came out of his house on Sunday night, he was allegedly attacked with sticks and sharp weapons and he died on the spot, said the SHO. Three others were also injured and admitted to a private hospital, the SHO added.

Samalkha (Panipat) :
Giving a clarion call to oust the BJP government in next year’s Vidhan Sabha elections, Congress leader and two-time Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda launched the second phase of his “Jan Kranti Rath Yatra” from Samalkha.

Considering Panipat to be auspicious, Hooda had launched his tirade against Om Prakash Chautala from Panipat in 2001 and ended up staying at the helm of affairs as Chief Minister for two consecutive terms. Braving the heat, when temperatures stayed north of 40 degree Celsius, the mood of the people was palpable. The grain market overflowed with supporters, outnumbering capacity.

Those who could not manage a chair or squat anywhere returned to their vehicles, parking these on the main Grand Trunk Road to catch a glimpse of Hooda travelling in a makeshift rath on a modern-day bus. More than the number, it was the mood that enthused party workers and supporters. Every time Hooda questioned the BJP government over “failed promises”, cheer ripped through the tin covered “anaj mandi”.

Hooda was apparently in sync with the mood of party workers and supporters, who felt powerless on account of being part of the opposition, repeatedly raising slogans in favour of Hooda and his son Deepender, Member of Parliament from Rohtak.

The only other Congress leaders the crowds cheered for were Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi. Hooda received an overwhelming applause each time he said the BJP government had failed on every count.

“It was important that I was voted out of power, do you know why? The answer is that it has given the people a chance to evaluate my 10 years of governance and compare it to the government subsequent to mine,” he said.

The rally was scheduled for 10 am, but Hooda arrived at the venue around 1.40 pm in his specially designed rath. He was accompanied by Kuldeep Sharma, former Speaker and sitting MLA; former MLA Dharam Singh Chhokkar, organiser of the rally; Phool Chand Mulana, former president, Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee; and Raghubir Singh Kadyan, former Speaker.

The crowds kept coming since the morning from various segments of Karnal, Panipat and Rohtak parliamentary constituencies. Incidentally, the Congress does not have any sitting MLA in the entire stretch of the GT Road belt between Samalkha and Kalka.
All Congress leaders, including Hooda, who addressed the rally from either the temporary stage or Hooda’s rath, said the BJP had failed to fulfil its major pre-poll promises on the basis of which it had come to powser.

There was disillusionment among all sections in the state, be it farmers, government employees, students, youth, traders or industrialists, on account of which they called the BJP’s policies anti-people, they said.

Hooda said instead of helping farmers or getting Swaminathan report implemented to improve the condition of farmers, the government had been issuing notices for forcible acquisition of land of farmers in debt to auction these for recovery. He promised that land of no debt-ridden farmer would be acquired if the Congress formed the government in Haryana next year.

Coming down heavily on the government, Hooda said the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna had been launched by the BJP government to benefit insurance companies and not farmers. Four companies which had carried out crop insurance made profits to the tune of Rs 9,000 crore and collected premium of around Rs 22,000 crore, he pointed out.
He said the government had failed to provide the jobs it had promised and on the other hand, due to inept pleading in the High Court, even those who were in service had been dismissed. He asked the government to make legislative provisions to re-induct the 50,000 people who had lost their government service jobs. He said if voted to power, his government would do the needful. He criticised functioning of the Haryana Service Selection Commission, accusing it of selling jobs for cash.

Hooda cited several instances of the BJP government having failed to live up to its promises and listed what his government would undertake to deliver after the next elections if given an opportunity to serve the state and its people. He announced between six and eight such rallies every day in all parliamentary constituencies till the 2019 General Election.

Rally triggers woes for locals      

• Hundreds of people reached the rally venue on foot in the scorching heat due to massive traffic jams.
• Traffic in both service lanes remained disrupted and people parked their vehicles on roads and flyover in Samalkha.
• People seating on mats and chairs stood up when Bhupinder Singh Hooda started his speech.
• Peoples reached the rally on tractor-trailers with pink turbans and Congress flags in their hands.
• People want to listen to Hooda and they started hooting when former Speaker Raghubir Singh Kadyan was addressing the rally.
• Common people had to face problems due to traffic jams on the National Highway-1.

Chandigarh :
Posting a message on Facebook against a Punjab and Haryana High Court Judge has landed a lawyer in trouble. Making it clear that the dignity of the judicial system can be lowered with the publication of a Facebook post as well, a Division Bench has sentenced contemnor-advocate Manish Vashishth to a month’s simple imprisonment.

The suo motu contempt case had been initiated against the Narnaul-based advocate after he posted on Facebook remarks against a High Court Judge in connection with a judicial order passed by him on August 24 last year. The Bench noted that the order was passed in some personal litigation involving the contemnor.

In his Facebook post, Vashishth alleged that the judgment passed against him by the High Court was “not speaking” and a better decision could have been written by a magistrate. He claimed that the Judge had not uploaded the judgment as he might not have understood what was to be written.

The Bench asserted that such a derogatory remark was contemptuous on the face of it and as such, the contemnor was held guilty of having committed contempt of court.
The Bench noted that the general public’s faith in the judiciary would be shattered in case punishment was not awarded to a person scandalising and lowering the authority of not just the court but also the judiciary in the eyes of the general public by his publication.
“The dignity and authority of the court has to be maintained not only by the general public, but also by advocates, who constitute an important part of the system of the administration of justice and are considered as officers of the court,” asserted the Bench of Justice MMS Bedi and Hari Pal Verma.

Before parting with the order, the Bench stated that the order of sentence would not be implemented till the Supreme Court reopened after the summer break on July 2 for enabling him to avail the statutory right to file an appeal.

He should surrender in the Narnaul CJM’s court on July 31 to undergo the sentence, the Bench ruled. In case of failure, it would be open to the CJM to issue warrants of arrest against the contemnor, subject to any order passed by the appellate court, the Bench concluded.

Chandigarh :
Deputy Commissioners (DCs) in Haryana have been exercising powers of District Magistrates (DMs) for over four decades without a notification by the government empowering them to exercise such powers.

A reply to RTI pleas by Hemant Kumar, an Ambala-based advocate, has revealed that no such notification has been issued by the government ever since the present Criminal Procedure Code, 1973, has come into force from April 1, 1974.

“You are informed that the matter regarding declaration to empower all DCs to act as DMs in their respective districts in terms of provisions of Section 20 of the Criminal Procedure Code is under consideration of the government and as and when it will be decided, the decision will be conveyed to you,” said an interim reply given by the office of Additional Chief Secretary, Administration of Justice Department, to Kumar’s RTI query.

Kumar filed an RTI plea in December last year, demanding a copy of notification issued under the CrPC for empowering DCs as DMs in their respective districts.
The department, in turn, forwarded Kumar’s plea to all DCs asking them to reply it.
When he did not get any such notification from any of the DCs, Kumar moved another application, this time quoting an SC judgment (in Ajaib Singh vs Gurbachan Singh) that said a notification under Section 20 of the CrPC was mandatory to empower DCs with magisterial powers.

In an interim reply to his second plea, the department said it was under consideration of the government. “I stumbled upon this issue while going through the gradation and distribution list of IAS officers of the Haryana cadre and the HSC officer executive branch. I noticed that while the government had issued a notification for empowering additional deputy commissioners as additional district magistrates and sub-divisional officer (civil) as sub-divisional magistrates, but no such notification had ever been issued with regards to DCs, though they acted as DMs in their respective districts,” said Hemant Kumar.

Rohtak :
The Haryana Government will file an appeal in the Supreme Court against the verdict of the Punjab and Haryana High Court quashing the regularisation of employees carried out by the previous Congress government.

Interacting with mediapersons here on Sunday, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said the state government would try its best to protect the interests of its employees.

“The state government had strongly pleaded the regularisation policy in the High Court, but the court cancelled it due to some shortcomings in the policy under which the employees were regularised,” he said, adding: “We do not want the recruitments to be cancelled.”

Khattar said that more than 24,000 recruitments had been made in the state in a transparent manner. “Some old gangs were found cheating innocent people to make money. Eight persons have been arrested and they are being questioned,” he said.

“Since aspirants twice the numbers of vacancies are generally called for interview, only half of them are expected to get jobs. But this gang used to trap these people and demand money from them,” he said.

Referring to the recruitments being made in the state, he said people were satisfied with the functioning of the government. As many as 24,500 candidates had joined on various posts without encountering any difficulty in recruitment. “Still recruitments to nearly 13,000 posts are pending due to stay orders. Altogether, 54,000 posts are to be filled. Apart from this, 38,000 posts are to be filled by the Haryana Staff Selection Commission,” he said, adding that around 1 lakh people would be recruited by the state government in the near future.

‘Farmers being misled’
The Chief Minister has stated that farmers would never forgive those who have thrown their vegetables and spilled milk on the roads. “The self-styled leaders and vested interests who are misguiding the farmers into doing so are their biggest enemies,” he said, while talking to mediapersons after an interaction with employed youth on the Maharishi Dayanand University (MDU) campus here.