PATIALA, Aug 9: Mata Kaushalya Hospital Bachao Committee has threatened to boycott the deliberations at the Chief Secretary level as a reaction to a recent statement of Finance Minister Capt. Kanwaljit Singh, on the hospital-courts complex row at Patiala, while meeting district bar association.This was stated here today by Dr M.S. Randhawa, convenor of the Hospital Bachao Committee, who maintained that since cabinet was a collective responsibility, the finance minister's statement on the subject just could not be ignored.Finance minister had stated that the state government has already decided the matter in favour of courts complex and there existed no dispute whatsoever on the subject.the committee felt that even if the statement of the FM was untrue, it certainly reflected what was going on behind the scene and committee did not want to be a party to any `eye-wash exercise' to befool the general public. The Hospital Bachao Committee urged Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to clarify the stand of the Punjab government on the issue which was engaging public attention for past five months.NZCC function today: The North Zone Cultural Centre is celebrating 50 years of India's independence at Guru Teg Bahadur Hall, of Punjabi University, here tomorrow. Punjab Governor Lt Gen B. K. N. Chhibber (retd) will preside over the function and Murli Manohar joshi, Union Minister of Human Resource Development, will be the chief guest, according to an NZCC press release issued here today.More than 300 artists are likely to participate from all over India. A special ballet on freedom and folk dances from Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Assam, Karnatka, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh will be presented. Singer Gurdas Mann has been specially invited to participate in the function.According to S. K. Ahluwalia, director, NZCC, the teams participating in the function here will also present programmes at Kurukshetra, Shimla, Ropar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Fatehgarh Sahib, Mansa, Moga and Muktsar.
