Lawyers’ Chambers Issue

HC issues notice of motion to UT
Chandigarh, December 6

A day after a section of the UT District Bar Association sought a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the ‘criminal’ wastage of money in the construction of the lawyers’ chambers building in Sector 43, the Punjab and Haryana High Court today issued notice of motion to the UT and others.

The petition has been filed by the construction committee constituted by the investor-members of the District Bar Association for the allotment of chambers in the Sector 43 district courts complex. It has been filed through its members, including HS Awasthi, Vinod Choda, RS Walia and Amar Singh Chahal. The chambers are being built on self-finance basis.

The petition says the CBI may be directed to register a case on the basis of a complaint dated November 6 sent by the member-investors of the chambers building. Directions have been also sought to “undertake investigation of the same for the purpose of prosecution of persons responsible for the offences so committed by them, as stated in the complaint”.

The petitioners said their grudge was that amount “running into crorers, collected from some members of the District Bar Association had been wasted on the basis of forged bills, use of substandard material, procurement of forged documents and showing purchase of material on false documents”.

Elaborating, the petitioners said the total contract money was Rs 13.30 crore, while the amount paid to date to the contractor was Rs 14.60 crore. As such, an excess payment of Rs 1.30 crore was made, while 40 per cent work was yet to be completed. “The estimated money wasted could well be more than Rs 5 crore,” the petitioners alleged.

Chandigarh doctor gets prestigious award

CHANDIGARH: Dr. Dharam Vir , faculty speech and hearing, department of ENT, PGIMER, Chandigarh has been awarded talented scientist award for his contribution to alternative medicine on the occasion of XXVI National Medicos Congress at Hoshiarpur. The award was given for contributing a tool to assess the prevalence of articulation errors/defects in the Panjabi speaking children and adult population.

'Speech' is the auditory-vocal form of expressing and comprehending languages. A person with an articulation problem is the one whose production of speech sound varies too widely from the average values. This variation interferes with communication.

Around the globe, Punjabi is spoken by more than 80 million people. Need was felt to develop a specific tool to assess the prevalence of articulation errors/defects in the Panjabi speaking children and adult population. The tool thus developed is known as Punjabi Articulation Test (PAT). No such test was available for Punjabi Language prior to it.

The study made to develop the test examined the articulation errors of consonants on normal pediatrics population of Punjabi speaking children between the age ranges of 8 and 10 years. The present study examined the Punjabi Consonant Errors of Punjabi speaking children of rural (130) and urban (70) population of the Punjab State of India.

This Punjabi Articulation Test (PAT) will be very useful for the North Indian Punjabi speaking population as well as for the Punjabi speaking folks living in Pakistan and elsewhere. This test can be administered on different types of speech and language disorders of Punjabi speaking population.