Delhi underground

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Staff shortage
The Delhi government may be planning to set up new fast track courts, but employees of city courts feel the government should first address the issue of staff shortage in lower courts, especially of those assisting judges. An employee at a city court said, “Look, if even one court staff goes on leave, all the work gets stacked up. We don’t have enough employees to assist the court. Today, I asked a colleague from another court for help, so that I could finish the work on time. The government should look into appointing more staff so that judicial work can be put on the fast track.”

Good advice
As AAP MLA Rakhi Birla’s birthday celebrations turned sour amid allegations of her receiving an expensive SUV in gift, a police officer’s juniors were proud of their sixth sense for having stopped their boss from attending her birthday celebrations at her residence. Before leaving, the officer asked his subordinates if they were going to the party. They said they weren’t and urged him not to. As it turned out, a brawl between supporters of party MLA Rituraj Jha and a group of protesters erupted at the venue.

Crowd-puller
It was perhaps the afternoon sun or the long wait for the chief minister that probably made the crowd in Mundka unenthusiastic. Last week, Arvind Kejriwal addressed Outer Delhi’s farmers whose crops were destroyed by untimely rains. As usual, he highlighted what his government had done so far. But when he uttered his rhetorical question in his characteristic style, “Galat toh nahi keh raha na ji?”, the crowd’s languid response, as if on cue, turned into an energetic applause.

Unenthusiastic
Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia may have organised a value-education camp for teachers to introduce a ‘new way of learning’, but teachers do not seem enthusiastic. The sessions not only saw principals and teachers falling asleep, some even got into arguments with the speaker. “Sir, you may have come to teach us values, but first someone should teach you what is happening on the ground. Schools have no desks, no infrastructure, not even clean toilets. What we need first is a decent place for us to sit and teach students the values that you are teaching us,” a teacher told the speaker, who came all the way from Chhattisgarh.

Thanking God
Speaking to the graduating class of students at Delhi University’s St Stephen’s College, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said he had been an atheist as a student, but started believing in God after the success of the Anna movement. “I now believe there is some higher power running everything,” he said, referring to the success of the India Against Corruption movement and the AAP’s win in Delhi.

Who is at fault?
After the Ghaziabad Nagar Nigam began work on deconcretising the city, beginning with pavements in Kavi Nagar, officials of the municipal agency blamed the Ghaziabad Development Authority for the problem.
A civic official said, “The GDA is in charge of construction. But after people move into a colony, the maintenance rests with us. If the concrete pavements were illegal in the first place, shouldn’t they be cleaning up their own mess, and not we.”