Delhi underground

Fact correction
In the Capital,one of the most envied and admired places of residence is at Lutyens’ Delhi. For years,Sir Edward Lutyens has been credited for the construction of nearly 200 bungalows that dot the landscape here and are home to MPs and government officials. With the Commonwealth Games approaching,however,the Tourism department says it is keen to set the record straight. The credit for the bungalows,according to the Tourism department,should go to the man who actually built them — Sir Herbert Baker. The Tourism department is also planning to include interesting facts about Delhi in the tourist booklet they come up with and one of the objective would be to clear several of what they term are ‘misconceptions’ about Delhi. 

Colour coded
The visually pleasing campus of the St Stephen’s College,with its vintage red brick walls,is set for the new sporting facility that will be used for the Commonwealth Games. While the college will be making some changes for the sporting event — students will be asked to leave in October to accommodate Games visitors — it has asked the Games committee to ensure that its trademark is evident even on the new complex. The result: the new facilities,being created where the Stephen’s football field was,are surrounded by the famous red brick walls.

Testing regime
Testing for use of dope during a sports event is a serious matter and authorities at the recently concluded Hockey World Cup ensured that it stayed that way. For the tests,only urine samples are usually collected and athletes have to report to the testing station after a match,without a visit to the restroom. So,when after a match,at 10.30 pm,a player pleaded that he had an “empty bladder”,he was told the anti-doping regime had no place for this. The entire team had to then wait till 1 am for the player’s urine test.  

Return to auto-pilot
Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit’s statement in the Delhi Assembly last week about phasing out auto-rickshaws has sent the officials in the Transport department in a tizzy. While Transport minister Arvinder Singh Lovely was caught scampering for answers and looking for details on the phaseout plan,Transport Commissioner R K Verma was seen trying to pacify the agitated auto-rickshaw unions over the next few days. Verma assured the unions that there were no immediate plans for the phaseout and he had not received any such orders from the CM’s office.

Safety first
When Lalit Modi,chairman of the Indian Premier League,tried to enter the Kotla Stadium in Delhi for the last IPL match played there through the cricketer’s entrance,he could not secure an entry even after several minutes of arguing with the CRPF personnel posted there. Modi eventually had to back out and enter through the gate for which he had a valid pass. Later,cricketer Virender Sehwag,too,had to face problems when he chose to arrive at the stadium in a private car instead of the cricketer’s bus. The police stopped him at the entrance but finally let him go.

Experience counts
It took the Civil Aviation ministry at least two months to find a new commissioner for Civil Aviation Security when the previous Commissioner R P Sahi retired on January 31. And even after a two-month long search,the ministry could not find an IPS officer with a background promising enough to deal with security. The current Commissioner of Civil Aviation Security is Rohit Nandan,a 1984-batch IAS officer,with no experience in security matters.