Delhi underground

An eye on the sky
THE Football World Cup may have captured the attention of the country, but the Prime Minister’s Office apparently still has time to gauge the mood of the rain gods. Ever since the monsoon began, the PMO has been seeking ‘special’ monsoon reports to see if the rains, which still has a direct effect on the country’s agriculture and economy, will be normal or not this year. “I don’t know if the PM himself reads them, but there is a regular demand for weather information from his office,” said an official of the Met department.

Cooling down
SPURRED by Member of the Parliament Maneka Gandhi’s firebrand style of wildlife conservation, the Ministry of Environment and Forests, which was at the time looking for Gandhi’s support on the National Green Tribunal Bill, put in the public domain amendments to pet shop rules as suggested by her. Not surprisingly, the rules were quite strict, setting down rigid guidelines for the way pets are to be sold, even going on to prescribe pleasant temperature conditions for the animals. But after many pointed out that India does not have such regulated temperature conditions, the Ministry has hurriedly taken the middle path and revised the draft. Now, for Gandhi’s support for the new, more modest, guidelines. 

Come back, your Honour
AFTER serving as a judge in the Delhi High Court for over a decade, Justice Madan B Lokur had to bid adieu last week after elevation to the post of Chief Justice of the Gauhati High Court. His farewell was marked not only by an emotional reference by the High Court judges, but also the legal fraternity, who made it clear that they wanted their favourite judge back, this time in the highest court of the land. “My feeling is that Justice Lokur is only being loaned to Gauhati. The Delhi Bar is in a way envious and at the same time positive that he will soon come back to the Capital as a judge of the Supreme Court,” remarked Najmi Waziri, Standing Counsel for the Delhi government.

Double trouble
GRANTING bail to a former Border Security Force sub-inspector charged with driving his son to commit suicide, the Delhi High Court also directed him to provide ex-gratia relief to his first wife. She had not just lost her young son, but also needed monetary support to raise two other teenaged children, the court said. The counsel for the former BSF officer, however, claimed he was in the middle of a monetary crisis. Justice S N Dhingra, however, refused to budge and said, “If you can have money to maintain two wives at one time — which you did for years before you divorced your first wife, you must be having some money to help your first family. We cannot let you shirk the responsibility now, when you faced no difficulty in sustaining both wives and children from both of them in the past.” The counsel could just nod in agreement to the court’s condition for getting the bail.

An old problem
VARIOUS agencies are now working day and night to set things right for the July 3 inauguration of the Capital’s largest infrastructure development project, the IGI Airport’s Terminal 3. This engineering marvel, spread over four km, however, has various agencies bothered about their elderly clientele. “It is going to be cumbersome for the elderly to travel a distance of 3.5 km. It is too much to expect from our esteemed guests. The security agencies are going to have a hard time,” a senior airport official said.

Now to steal hearts
AFTER ‘super chor’ Bunty was released from Tihar last month, the man who nabbed him, Lodhi Road police station SHO Rajinder Singh, has been calling up friends and acquaintances hoping somebody would come forward to give Bunty a job and a shot at a decent, crime-free life. But on Saturday, when the police officer finally found someone willing to hire Bunty, the suave thief was missing. Singh said Bunty was busy interacting with the media, giving interviews, and loving the camera. In fact, Bunty, who spends a lot of time at the police station these days, as he has nowhere else to go, had told Singh he wanted Dibakar Banerjee, the director of the film Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, which was based on his life, to compensate him or at least give him a role in one of his films. Seems Bunty wants to take his celebrity status to the silver screen. The cop waited in his office so that he could personally convey the good news to Bunty. But Bunty preferred to smile on television instead

Burning data
A FEW days back, a fire broken out in one of the office rooms of the Delhi Police’s Special Cell. The room, along with its computers, was gutted, and the police are now hoping not much of the Special Cell’s database, mostly related to terrorist activities in the Capital, was lost in the fire. They are now scrutinising the hard drives of the computers installed in the room to assess the damage.

The unkindest cut
DELHI’S discoms face a peculiar problem. Despite the availability of enough power, the city has been hit by long and interminable power cuts, prompting many consumers to file complaints with the Chief Minister’s Office. But the discoms say they are not to be blamed this time. The problem, it appears, is the Commonwealth Games or rather the construction work being carried out for the big event. Various agencies such as the PWD, DMRC, DJB and MCD are damaging power cables in their rush to finish various Games-related projects, and the discoms say they just can’t fix the damage fast enough.

Power play
FORMER power secretary Rajendra Kumar will take over as the Health Secretary from J P Singh on Monday. After a stand-off with power regulator DERC over fixing the new tariff structure, Kumar was transferred from the Power department on June 1. Known for his intolerance to red tape, insiders hope the change will help resolve issues like corruption in transfers and postings in the Health department. “We hope that the corruption in purchase of drugs and equipment and transfers will be addressed and the new secretary will be able to bring in some positive change,” said a senior official in the Health department.