President to leave for winter sojourn Thursday
New Delhi: President Pranab Mukherjee will Thursday head to Hyderabad for the customary winter sojourn that will ends Dec 31, the Rashtrapati Bhavan said Wednesday. Mukherjee will stay at Rashtrapati Nilayam in Secunderabad. He will then visit Tamil Nadu and Kerala and return to Andhra Pradesh. In Tamil Nadu, he will inaugurate the 28th Indian Engineering Congress and the School of Commerce and Economics of Loyola College at Chennai. In Kerala, he will unveil a statue of late K. Karunakaran, a former chief minister, in Thiruvananthapuram. He will also inaugurate the 150th birth anniversary celebrations of Mahatma Ayyan Kali at Kochi. (IANS)
No LTC benefits for employee facing disciplinary enquiry: Govt
New Delhi: An employee facing disciplinary enquiry will not be able to avail benefits of Leave Travel Concession (LTC) allowance as per rules, the Government said on Wednesday. It said all government policies, including LTC policy, is timely reviewed and amended to check bogus claims and inflated air travel bills by government employees. “During the pendency of disciplinary proceedings, the government servant shall not be allowed the next two or more sets of LTC in addition to the sets already withheld,” Minister of State for Personnel V Narayanasamy told Lok Sabha in a written reply. In case of any fraudulent activities coming to the notice of designated body or agencies, the irregularities are looked into in terms of Rule 16 of CCS (LTC) Rules, 1988 and disciplinary proceedings are initiated against the government servant on the charge of preferring a fraudulent claim which may result in imposition of penalties. (PTI)
India to upgrade 73 roads along China border
New Delhi: The government has planned 73 critical and strategically important roads for development under Indo-China Border Roads Project and 61 of them have been assigned to Border Roads Organisation. Defence Minister A K Antony told Rajya Sabha said that during the last five years formation of 12.16 km of such roads have been completed in Sikkim, 419.98 km in Arunachal Pradesh, 186.73 in Uttarakhand, 114.05 in Himachal Pradesh, 384.28 km in Jammu and Kashmir. Out of this, he said, surfacing of 7.63 km of roads has been done in Sikkim, 392.16 km in Arunachal Pradesh, 56.96 in Uttarakhand, 71.92 in Himachal Pradesh and 328.38 in Jammu and Kashmir. There is, however, no plan to construct any four-lane road near China border, he said. (PTI)