Delhi Underground:What about quacks?

Umbrella with holes
The East corporation on Friday evening announced that the safai karamchari strike had been called off. However, a number of workers maintained that this was simply not the case. As the day’s events unfolded, it became clear that though an umbrella body of unions had called off its strike, a number of unions not registered by the corporation continued to protest. All this while garbage continued to rot in the streets of East Delhi.

Barely legal
Even though the NGT’s directions last week brought some relief to the “sealed” budget hotels near IGI Airport, a DPCC official said the hotels weren’t quite back on the expressway yet. “Most of the hotels we checked didn’t have the requisite papers. A number of them are in unauthorised areas and almost all of them are drawing water illegally. If any hotel is found trying to operate again without getting the necessary permissions, we will close them down,” an official said.

Going down
The Delhi Secretariat is rife with speculation by senior officials apparently keen to hear about the next AAP leader in some sort of trouble. With one of their ministers under arrest for getting “fake” degrees, an official commented, “Who is the next one going down for a fake degree? Or is it for something else this time?”

Policemen, trending
The past week saw Delhi Police dominating news space with high-profile cases such as the arrests of a Delhi minister and singer Mika Singh. The government’s Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) was also in the news. Names such as Delhi Police and Deepak Mishra (special commissioner of police, law and order) were trending on Twitter over the week. And then there was M K Meena, who was given additional charge as joint commissioner of the ACB. “I was trending third on Twitter the day I was given the additional charge, you know,” beamed Meena.

Second chance
Days before his arrest, former law minister Jitender Tomar had sent a list of approved names for confirmation on the Delhi government’s panel of lawyers to the Delhi High Court. With the court on vacation, the list is yet to receive the stamp of the chief justice. Now that a new law minister has taken the seat, jockeying for a position on the government panel has started anew with lawyers hoping to get an approval.

Take it with a grin
While the AAP smarts under the wrong kind of limelight, with several of its MLAs under the scanner, the situation is also giving rise to some wry humour. As senior leadership grappled with unsavoury news, such as Somnath Bharti being accused of domestic violence, one leader remarked, “Maybe there is a reason God gave us 67 seats. If it continues like this, we will need that many.”

Cool it, please
In the hour-long heated arguments between the counsels of Delhi Police and former minister Tomar, the Delhi court judge asked for a pause. “It is getting suffocating,” the judge tersely said of the packed courtroom and ordered the maintenance staff to put the air conditioners on minimum temperature.