New Delhi, April 1
With barely a few days left for the April 5 elections to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, the political activity has reached a feverish pitch. Corner meetings, padayatras, public meetings and door-to-door campaigning have become the order of the day.

Major political parties here attach considerable significance to the outcome of the civic poll as this generally sets the trend for the assembly elections.

While the ruling Congress and the main opposition, the BJP, have ambitious plans to field a host of senior party leaders and celebrities for the electioneering, other parties in the fray like the Janata Dal (Secular) and the Nationalist Congress Party have also planned a series of public meetings in the run-up to the poll in a bid to boost the prospects of their candidates.

On the agenda in the coming two to three days are hundreds of public meetings to be addressed by their national leaders as a last minute persuasion bid before the campaigning comes to an end. The Congress has roped in senior party leaders like Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, the MPs, Mr Sajjan Kumar, Mr Jagdish Tytler and Mr Ajay Maken as well as most of the Delhi ministers. East Delhi MP from Congress party Mr Sandeep Dikshit today campaigned for Congress candidatre from Khicharipur Ch Braham Singh. Mr Jagdish Tytler campaigned for Congress candidates from Inderlok and Rajinder Nagar Mr Tarun Kumar and Mr Balan Mani, Local MP Ms Krishna Tirath, MLAs Mr Sadi Ram and Mr Rajesh Lilotia were also graced the occasion.

The BJP too has decided to utilise the services of its national leaders like Prof Vijay Kumar Malhotra, Mr Rajnath Singh, Ms Sushma Swaraj, Mr Arun Jaitley, Mr Shahnawaz Hussain and Mr Vijay Goel for campaigning in various parts of the National Capital Territory of Delhi.

Besides, actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha, cricketer-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu and Mr Sukhbir Singh Badal are also scheduled to hold roadshows to sway the voters in party candidates’ favour.

New Delhi, April 1
The BJP has promised to make the singing of Vande Mataram compulsory in municipal schools here if it wins the MCD elections.

“Vande Mataram will be sung in every municipal school and no cow slaughter will be allowed if our party comes to power in the civic body,” city BJP chief Dr Harsh Vardhan said while releasing the party’s manifesto for the polls.

The manifesto promised to open 20 cow shelters and “compel the UPA
government to deport Pakistanis and Bangladeshis living illegally” in the city.

Appealing to Hindu sentiments, the party promised to bring back the “era of Lord Krishna on the banks of the Yamuna.”

“The banks of the Yamuna shall be beautified just like in the era of Lord Krishna,” said the manifesto. “All steps would be taken to make it clean and worth worshipping.”

The BJP also promised to build crematoriums in each assembly constituency and to modernise the existing ones.

The party also demanded that the death sentence given to Mohammed Afzal Guru for his role in the attack on Parliament be carried out immediately. 

New Delhi, April 1
Sixteen women protection officers have been appointed in the National Capital Territory of Delhi to help victims of domestic violence and prevent the harassment of women.

The appointments have been made under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act of 2005, according to sources in the Union Home Ministry.

The Act had come into force in October last year and the Delhi Police was already taking action against persons involved in incidents of domestic violence and harassment of women by registering cases under appropriate sections of the law, they said.

A circular has been issued by the police headquarters here to sensitise police officers and staff to take proper action in incidents of domestic violence and harassment of women.

New Delhi, April 1
The Delhi High Court has asked power distribution company North Delhi Power Ltd (NDPL) to refund more than Rs 20 lakh to the Delhi Bottling Company after it wrongly charged it for the amount in a bill.

Quashing the bill issued by the power company a decade earlier, Mr Justice S. Muralidhar, in an order passed on Friday, imposed Rs 10,000 as cost on NDPL and asked it to pay the amount to the bottling company within four weeks.

In December 1998, the then Delhi Vidyut Board had issued a supplementary bill of Rs 20,33,622 to the bottling company, alleging that it had sub-let supply and that the connected load was found to be more than the committed load between October 1988 and December 1991.

It also alleged the company was running as an industry without a municipal licence and that it had a low power factor due to non-installation of a shunt capacitor. 

New Delhi, April 1
Two years after a 30-year-old man died in an accident, a court here has asked an insurance company to pay Rs 4.04 lakh as compensation to his mother. The Motor Accident Claim Tribunal directed Oriental Insurance Company Ltd to pay the amount with six per cent interest from the date a petition was filed by the mother of Dilip Kumar, who was insured by the company and died in an accident while driving his scooter on March 26, 2005.

Kumar’s scooter skidded when he reached the Keshopur bus stand. As a result, he fell down and died on the spot.

Judge Prativa Rani asked the insurance company to pay the whole amount of compensation to Shakuntala, 59, a resident of Nangloi area in North-West Delhi. She had filed a petition in the court on December 2005 and sought compensation of Rs 5 lakh, citing the death of her only son who was financially supporting her.

“Keeping in mind the condition of the victim’s family, Oriental Insurance Company Ltd is hereby directed to pay the awarded compensation of Rs 4.04 lakh to Shakuntala with an interest of six per cent per annum from the date of filing the petition without any delay,” the judge said in her order.

New Delhi, April 1
Learning geometry and arithmetic for students in New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) run schools will not be a drab pen and paper exercise as they are ready to be introduced to new teaching aids which promise to make the subjects more interesting.

The NDMC is launching a special building and learning aids project with support from UNICEF from the coming academic year that focuses on practical orientation to subjects considered difficult.

Though the project will cover all subjects, special emphasis will be given to geometry and arithmetic which very often make the children sweat. Models will be used to teach triangles, quadrangles, trapeziums and other concepts in geometry.

The equipment has been specially designed for the purpose. UNICEF has also prepared guide books on how to use the equipment and how to teach students to help them comprehend the subject.

There will also be special equipment for understanding algebra and science. Teachers of primary schools under the NDMC will be provided special training on how to guide students to use the equipment.

The efforts of the NDMC assume significance in view of students faring badly in mathematics at the board exams. According to the analysis of results of the CBSE, the maximum number of students fail in mathematics.

The NDMC has also decided to introduce English as the medium of teaching in its schools from the next session.

Noida, April 1
Nisha, who worked as a maid in D-5 Nithari, has not been seen again. Is she missing or absconding, nobody seems to know. Her entire family is not to seen around Nithari. For some times, neighbours and her landlord thought she had been taken away by the CBI for questioning.

Even there is no word about Maya, another maid. Now that the inquiry is over, how is it that she has not been released by the CBI, and if released, why she has not come back.

Maya’s husband is also with her. His other wife, Gulabo, continues to live in Shakti Pandit’s house. But she does not know either the whereabouts of Maya.

Nisha used to work in D-5 prior to Nanda. However, after introducing Nanda as a domestic maid in D-5, she reportedly left the job. The CBI, it is learnt, had come to the conclusion that Nisha could provide some useful information about D-5. But when they tried to locate her, she was just not traceable.

Some residents in Nithari feel that she might be privy to secrets which could entangle her or other people. The landlord Mool Chand says he had not heard about Nisha or her family ever since they left the house.

Meanwhile, though normalcy has returned to Nithari, police force continues to be deployed there.

New Delhi, April 1
The Delhi High Court has pulled up Member of Parliament Kanwar Devender Singh Yadav for not demolishing illegal constructions in his private house in East Delhi despite repeated court warnings.

A division bench of Chief Justice M K Sharma and Justice Rekha Sharma said, “Last opportunity is granted to the petitioner to remove the unauthorised construction from the buildings in New Rajdhani Enclave.”

“We have some doubts over the bona fide of the petitioner and his architect,” the court said when the court commissioner submitted that the building was constructed to be a commercial complex without a partition, kitchen and bathrooms.

The court directed Yadav, a Lok Sabha member from Etah in Uttar Pradesh, to make the building adhere to the sanctioned plan by making it a residential complex.

Despite an order of the court, Yadav did not demolish the structures at plot no 6 and 19 of New Rajdhani Enclave, submitted the court commissioner during the hearing.

“Yadav being a legislator was deliberately flouting the law of the land. He wanted to outreach the court and law of land,” observed the court.

“He should have acted promptly to set an example to other citizens,” it added.

The court granted six weeks to Yadav to carry out the court order. The court commissioner and MCD were asked to file a status report by May 4, the next date of hearing.—UNI

Gurgaon, April 1
The Haryana Government or its agencies will not acquire land from farmers for the setting up Special Economic Zone (SEZ). This was stated here today by the Minister of Transport, Mr Randip Singh Surjewala.

Addressing a rally organised by the Hayana unit of Kissan Khet Mazdoor Congress, organised to felicitate the national chairperson of the organisation and former minister of Haryana, Mr Shamsher Singh Surjewala, the national chairman of the organisation Mr Randip Singh said that private parties will have to purchase land for the SEZ directly from the farmers for which floor rates will also be laid down through formulation of a new law by the government.

He asserted that it is for the farmers to decide to sell their land at market rate.

He said that in view of the increase in the price of real estate, the Haryana Cabinet recently took a decision to increase the floor rate of land falling within a radius of 20 kms of Gurgaon and Chandigarh from Rs 25 lakh per acre to Rs 35 lakh per acre.

In the other slab where the floor rate was Rs 8 lakh per acre, the rate has been raised to Rs 14 lakh.

With regard to the controversy on the SEZ in Gurgaon, he criticised the political opponents of the Congress, including the INLD, for misleading the public.

He said that the present government has not acquired even an inch of farmers’ land in its about two years of rule in Haryana.

The land was acquired by the HSIDC during the time of INLD government. The farmers whose land was acquired were given dismally low compensation of Rs 4 lakh per acre.

He urged the people not to pay heed to the rumours of the vested interests who were trying to mislead the public on the SEZ.

He said that presently only two per cent of the geographical mass of Haryana was under the cover of industrialisation. There was urgent need for not only 49 but more than 80 SEZ in entire Haryana.

With regard the compensation to farmers for the damage to the crops caused by recent hailstorm, he said that the assessment to the damage in Gurgaon district has been completed. It is to the tune of about Rs 104 crore.

The money will be disbursed among the affected farmers on April 30. The present Congress government in Haryana was already giving the highest compensation money, he added.

New Delhi, April 1
A city court has sentenced a woman to life imprisonment for killing her husband five years ago.

The Additional Sessions Judge, Mr S P Garg, who found 30-year-old Urmila Devi guilty of clubbing her husband Kanhaiya Lal to death, held that the chain of evidence was complete.

The court, which relied on circumstantial evidence, rejected her claim that the man was killed by his brothers who wanted to grab his property.

The court observed that when he went missing, Urmila Devi made no efforts to trace him or report the matter to police. The autopsy report found Lal had died due to a head injury caused by a blunt object.

The prosecution had said that on December 8, 2002 Hari Lal Bharti, the brother of the victim, received a call from one Nand Kishore Giri, who said Lal had not been sighted at his house at Meethapur in South Delhi for the past one-and-a-half months. Bharti went to Lal’s house and found only Urmila Devi and her brother Anil. They told him that Lal had gone to Ludhiana. A few days later, the victim’s elder brother Achhe Lal had also gone to the place and found the house locked.

After speaking with neighbours, Achhe Lal discovered that Urmila Devi and her brother were living in a house nearby. When he met them, neither of them was able to give satisfactory replies about the whereabouts of his brother, the prosecution said.

Achhe informed police, who arrested them. On being interrogated, Urmila Devi confessed that she killed her husband on October 19, 2002 with the “help” of one Anil, who lived with the couple, and dumped the body in a septic tank.

Noida, April 1
A ransom call has been received from the kidnappers of a six-year-old boy from Jharkhand. The boy was kidnapped because of some financial dispute.

An SOG and police team is understood to have left for Jharkhand though the parents of the child have not confirmed whether a ransom call has indeed been received.

Kamlesh lived in Sector-9 along with his wife Chanda and six-year-old son Abhishek. On Thursday some kidnappers had whisked away their son. The police had registered a missing case and put the phone of child’s mother, Mrs Chanda on surveillance.

That is how the police learnt about the ransom call on Friday having emanated from Jharkhand. Having determined the location of the call, a joint team of SOG and police is understood to have left for Jharkhand.

Though the parents have not yet confirmed about the ransom call, police said child’s father Kamalesh had some monetary dealings with the abductors for a couple of months. Both the boy’s parents and the kidnappers hail from Bihar and had known each other, the police said.

In view of the financial dispute, Kamlesh had
shifted to some relatives’ place along with his wife and son. But two persons Anant and Santosh abducted his son.

Meanwhile, a missing report has been filed in Sector-20 police station about a youth.

New Delhi, April 1
New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) is expecting a surplus of Rs 1.32 crore in the financial year 2007-08 without any new taxes or hike in water tariff for the residents of Lutyens’ Zone.

Presenting the Budget proposal for the year 2007-08, the Chairman of the council, Ms Shindhu Shree Khullar, said an expenditure of Rs 1163.23 crore was expected to be made against receipts of Rs 1164.5 crore in the financial year 2007-08.

In the revised estimates of 2006-07, it was envisaged that the year would close with the surplus of Rs 2.33 crore, with an expenditure of Rs 1118. 75 crore against the receipts of Rs 1121.08 crore. Giving details of the expenditure to be incurred in the ensuing year under various heads/sectors, Ms Khullar said Rs 460.99 crore would be incurred on electricity, Rs 157.02 crore on roads, public works and projects, Rs 114.66 crore on sports and social services, Rs 135.49 crore on sanitation and health, Rs 52.98 crore on water, Rs 63.85 cr on administration and Rs 5.02 cr on deposit works.

This year’s budget had been framed within the perspective of the forthcoming Commonwealth Games and also for the five-year plan of Delhi. The total estimated expenditure on major capital works proposed in the 11th Plan would be around Rs 1,311 cr. This is in addition to the Delhi Government’s funds of Rs 190.59 cr under Jawahar Lal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission.