Ajay Devgn & Ramdev tango
Ajay Devgn will be coming out with a biopic on yoga guru Baba Ramdev. Titled as ‘Swami Baba Ramdev – An untold story’, the short film will revolve around Ramdev and his deputy Balkrishna’s lives. Planned for the small screen, research for the project has been going on for past few months and the film is likely to be ready by the end of this year. The film will be directed by Abhinav Shukla. Ramdev, who was born in 1965 in Jeend, Haryana, took yoga to every home in the country in 2003 when he started appearing on television. He made yoga look simple, which had made him very popular. In the past decade, he courted controversies, too, but his popularity kept soaring. This film is likely to bring out some interesting hidden facts of his life.
Yoga reaching remote hills
Ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi threw his weight behind popularising yoga, this art of physical exercise has become popular, not just in cities but also in the hills of Uttarakhand. These days, Kumaun university’s yoga department has been holding yoga camps in various parts of the hill state. To make its reach more comprehensive, the department has made elaborate arrangements for practising yoga on June 21. This has been confirmed by the head of the yoga department Dr Naveen Bhatt. According to him, on June 21, the department will make arrangements for 10,000 people to do yoga at a yoga camp. People will practice ‘pranayaam’, ‘suryanamaskar’, ‘kapal bharti’ and various other asanas. It may be remembered that like Uttar Pradesh, which has a BJP government and is making special efforts to popularise yoga, Uttarakhand, too, is making special efforts to take yoga to every nook and corner of the state.
NH scam: Officers raided
The Special investigative Team of Uttarakhand probing the National Highway-74 scam, raided houses of nine officers on Wednesday and seized important documents. A report will be submitted after examining these documents. Prominent among those raided include, SDM Anil Kumar Shukla and SDM D.P. Singh, and other employees of revenue department. According to Circle Officer Swtantra Kumar, who has been investigating the matter, important documents were discovered at Shukla's house. However, no cash was recovered. It may be recalled that soon after taking the charge of the state Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat had recommended a probe into the alleged Rs 300 crore NH 74 land scam, which took place between 2011 to 2016 in Udham Singh Nagar and had suspended six SDM level officers. The CM had written to the centre demanding a CBI probe into the matter, but the centre had turned down the request. Union minister for road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari reportedly told the chief minister that any such inquiry would have a demoralising ‘effect’ on NHAI officials. The 300 km long highway connects UP with Uttarakhand and around 153 km of it falls in Uttarakhand.
100% employment
This small region of Uttarakahnd, in Tehri district boasts of 100 per cent employment. Chopria village comprises of 26 families and at least one person from every family is employed. Villagers say that this became possible only because of renowned environmentalist Sunder Lal Bahuguna, who exhorted the villagers to make arrangements for educating their children. Before his efforts, majority of inhabitants of this village were illiterate. There are 53 teachers from this village serving in various schools of the region, three are in army and one is employed in the forest department. Migration for employment is almost zero. According to Kushal Singh, a social worker, there is one person with a the government job in every family.
