Delhi underground

Penning the difference
While the election for the Shahdara Court Bar Association is not far away,a ‘pen drive’ is the latest bone of contention between the Bar and the Election Committee. While the Committee wants a post-holder of the Bar to hand over the pen drive,as it purportedly contains significant information about the enrolled lawyers (who will be voting),the member claims that the pen drive had no such information and that after it accidentally fell into water,it is no longer working. But that is not holding any water with the Committee,which has refused to release funds or lend its support to the election until the pen drive is made available.    

Fighting poll blues
Despite BSP’s poor show in the Delhi Lok Sabha elections and Behenji’s diktat to dissolve all state units,the party’s billionaire candidates are trying to keep their spirits high. The South Delhi candidate Kanwar Singh Tanwar,after garnering the highest number of votes among all BSP candidates in the city,was in London this month,while others said they had returned to “social work” drives,and respective businesses. After all,they can’t let election blues get to them.  

Saved by appetite
BJP president and MP from Ghaziabad,Rajnath Singh,had a difficult time during a recent visit to his constituency. Faced with questions about his party’s debacle in the Lok Sabha polls and the growing differences between the party leaders,Singh first attempted to avert the grilling but when that failed,he took recourse to an older method. He suddenly declared that lunch had already been served and the discussion could be held later. His party workers could then be seen digging into the food,much to his relief.

Stuck in the lift
Some authority needs to ‘lift’ this problem on its shoulders or else the officials and people visiting the Gurgaon Mini-Secretariat will continue wheezing up six floors by stairs. The five of the six lifts in the building have not been working since their installation several years ago. And the only one that does work gets stuck frequently due to overuse and overload. However,the HUDA,which constructed the building,cites its “helplessness” as the maintenance is allegedly the responsibility of the PWD (B&R) wing. Meanwhile,the PWD maintains it is yet to take over the responsibility.

Argument continues
The stand-off between the BJP-led Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit saw an interesting week of action at the civic body’s weekly meetings,which were usually called off mid-way or disrupted by sloganeering by BJP and Congress councillors. The Standing Committee meeting left the House in splits as members of the Committee at one point simply kept shouting slogans deviating from the agenda. Allegation and counter allegations dominated. While Congress councillors defended the CM,BJP councillors jeered at the poor performance of civic bodies like the Delhi Jal Board. A councillor even commented: “CM ko aaj kal zyada bhook lagti hai kya? Unhe MCD bhi chahiye aur Delhi Police bhi. Jo hai usko toh pehle sambhale.” (Is the Chief Minister feeling too hungry? Now she wants both MCD and the Delhi Police. She should manage what she has first.) 

Missing the target
It seems the summer camps,launched with much fanfare,aren’t such a hit after all. Initiated in the city by the MCD to bring out-of-school children into the folds of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA),by first training them and then mainstreaming them into regular institutions,the project so far has been able to get only a few thousand children as against the target of 10,000. While officials put the statistics at “more than 3,000”,some agree wasn’t so effective after all. MCD claims the parents are tough to convince because they’d rather have their children earn and also,they might not know that primary education is free in government-run institutions. The SSA officials,however,feel the project could have been advertised better.