Delhi underground : Sneaking in for a byte

Happy for themselves

Coming to terms with their defeat in the Municipal polls,Congress was all smiles for the picture gallery. The party called all 77 winning candidates at its Delhi Pradesh office to pose for cameramen. “The party might not have emerged victorious in the three corporations,but nonetheless,we are happy for our individual selves. This occasion is to forget our defeat and look for a new start,” said one of the winning candidates. Although it was supposed to be a session for the media to interact with the new Congress councillors,the winning candidates spoke less and smiled more.

Race on for next top cop

With a little more than two months left for police chief B K Gupta to retire,the race for the new police commissioner has begun. Neeraj Kumar,a 1976 batch IPS is one of the frontrunners for the police chief’s post. Kumar is presently posted as the Director General of Tihar Jail. Other names doing the rounds are those of Ajay Chaddha,presently posted in the Ministry of Home Affairs and B S Bassi,who is Special Commissioner of Police (Administration). Gupta is set to retire on June 30.

Unsung leader

Even as the BJP celebrated what it called a ‘thumping victory’ at the municipal polls for the three new Municipal Corporations of Delhi and celebrated the occasion with several press conferences,veteran party member and leader of the opposition in Delhi Legislative Assembly Vijay Kumar Malhotra was missing. Even as key party members Venkaiah Naidu,Nitin Gadkari,Vijender Gupta,Vijay Goel and others held a press meet,Malhotra gave it a miss. He was sitting in the Delhi BJP office quietly reading the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act book trying to figure out how the new Corporations will be constituted.

Court’s time is precious

The 2G spectrum case trial has gone a little cold of late,thanks to the cross-examinations of various witnesses taking far too much time,with every counsel for the defence insistent on probing the minutest of details. The delay has gotten to everyone,especially the CBI judge hearing the case who was moved this week to declare that he would impose heavy costs on the lawyers if they continued to waste the court’s time. The judge spoke after a senior lawyer asked D S Mathur,former telecom secretary and key witness in the case,whether he had actually gone through his statement made to the court before signing it. He then also asked the witness if he was hearing the dictation by the judge while his statement was being recorded. At one point,this got too much for the judge who said that the questions were totally irrelevant. “If such questions are persisted with any further and are ruled to be irrelevant,they shall be subject to heavy cost as this is leading to wastage of time of the court,” he said.

Showers of praise

Delhi’s elite may release self-authored hard-bound books on profound themes at posh soirees but the Delhi CM’s information officer on Thursday showed everyone who was the boss. On attendance at the release of Sat Pal’s book of previously published “apolitical,Delhi-centric” Hindi satire were the CM,the Speaker,Ministers A K Walia and Ramakant Goswami as well the Chief Secretary. If the high-profile turnout was not enough,the dignitaries showered the twice-published author with vague praise. While Dikshit called the satire “contemporary and precise”,Goswami,according to an official statement on the event,gave his approval saying: “I have been regularly reading Hindi satires by Sat Pal being carried by Hindi dailies.” Walia was more generous and hoped that Sat Pal’s new book would be “liked by one and all”,like the information officer’s last book — ‘Teen Main N Tere Main’.

Errors delay poll results

The official results of the MCD elections were released by the State Election Commission at a press conference organised at the Nigam Bhavan on the day of counting. Even as he distributed bare results,which did not mention margins,Chief Electoral Officer Rakesh Mehta admitted that his team needed to improve on their information technology skills. The problems became evident over the next four hours as the detailed results were not released until 9.30 pm. A generic “server error” was attributed to the problem. The SEC sent a second mail at 11 pm,clarifying that the data released at the press conference was wrong: “Please ignore the reports given during press conference at SEC,Kashmere Gate,Delhi,due to some clerical errors in the report. We regret the same.”

No need to reply

As soon as the counsel stood up to present the government’s reply to the high court’s earlier order asking for details on how many EWS seats were vacant in Delhi’s public schools,the judge smiled and told her that the government’s argument was “all over the papers already”.