Delhi underground

Musical dissent
Gone are the days when campus violence made headlines during students’ protests. This year,a new set of ‘Munnabhai protesters’ has taken centrestage. At recent demonstrations by students,yelling students and shaking fists were replaced by music and guitar-strumming as students sang songs to protest against the Commonwealth Games outside the Arts Faculty. The University Community for Democracy,a student body was holding a hunger strike to protest the eviction of students from the DU college hostels. “We ended up generating much more interest than sloganeering would have achieved,” said a student.

No country for the polite
It’s tough being a cop. You can never get it right. A female councillor from Ghaziabad has been going to town telling anyone who cared to listen that the cop cannot possibly handle the policing work in his area because he is so “soft-spoken”. The police officer was shocked to hear this from a victim who had come to seek his help. He politely pointed out to the councillor that he could help the victim despite being decent and soft-spoken. The councillor responded that she could shout at a higher pitch than him,and stomped off.

My court,my way
Additional Sessions Judge Santosh Snehi Mann of the Tis Hazari courts seems to take exception to the rule of the open-court system. The judge does not wait for the court staff to announce the list of cases to be heard on a particular day. Instead,she directly asks the occupants in the court room why they’re present and the matter they are involved in. If someone is found hanging around without a reason,she directs them to leave. Taking a cue,the police staff do the same,sometimes even to those from the media.

No room for delay
While recently a Delhi High Court judge hit upon a unique method of penalty for seeking adjournment by asking the DDA to pay a petitioner the expenditure of a hiring a senior advocate,another judge too discovered another atypical form of punishment. When a lawyer asked for some more time,blaming the clerk of being negligent in filing the application on time,Justice S N Dhingra made it clear that “he must understand the negligence is quite costly as it amounts to wasting time of the court”. The lawyer was then ordered to pay Rs 10,000 “from his own pocket”.

Lucky charm
The Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) believe they win the DU elections every time they host lunch meetings at the Embassy Restaurant in Civil Lines. The superstition found acceptance seven years ago when after a meet at the said restaurant,the ABVP candidate won. Since then they have been holding meets there and after three misses,their candidate finally won (last year and the year before that). This year too,the ABVP meet was held there. A joke doing the rounds was the JNU wing of ABVP should also host meets in the restaurant to raise their chances at JNU,where they have lost every election.

Saving face
Satish Bidla aka Shera is keeping very busy these days. As the Games scams hog the limelight,it is now up to Shera to save face for the Organising Committee. As the mascot of the XIX Commonwealth Games,Shera is now visiting city schools and interacting with students,answering all sorts of questions about the Games. Recently,he visited Sanskriti School to meet the students of the primary section. Guess only Shera can distract attention from the furore and generate some cheer and buzz for the Games.

Avoiding gaze
If whispers in the corridors are to be believed,senior officials at Delhi’s Health department have suddenly become a reclusive lot. Officials are going out to their way to avoid meeting ‘doubtful’ persons. “Suddenly everyone thinks all bureaucrats are involved in some scam or the other. No one talks about anything else except Games scams. The best way is to keep a low profile and not entertain people unnecessarily,” said a senior official.