The Tribune, Chandigarh, India - Delhi and neighbourhood

	Judges to visit Yamuna riverbed Vibha Sharma Tribune News Service New Delhi, January 2 A double Bench of the Delhi High Court has decided to visit the controversial site of the 2010 Commonwealth Games village on the Yamuna riverbed. Rajendra Singh of the Water Conservation Institute ,INTACH, Manoj Misra of Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan and Sanjay Kaul of Urja had filed a petition in the Delhi High Court against “despoliation and damage to river Yamuna which the ongoing construction in the riverbed are creating”. The constructions include the Yamuna metro depot and other constructions by the Delhi metro. Besides a residential complex consisting of around 1160 flats for Games village are also being constructed on the riverbed. The petition is being herd by a double Bench of the Delhi High Court comprising Justice A.K. Sekri and Justice Rekha Sharma since October 2007. Today the court, on the basis of submissions by the petitioners and the Solicitor General on behalf of the DDA and Government of India, decided to make a site visit to the riverbed to ascertain the correct situation. The site visit is likely to take place on Thursday afternoon. The court has also accepted the request of the council for petitioners Sanjay Parikh that they may be allowed to make a brief power point presentation to the court at the site. This follows another significant development of mid-December where Justice Geeta Mittal had issued a hard-hitting order against the construction of flats for the village. The order came follwing a petition by Vinod Jain of NGO Tapas where he raised similar issues before the court, including the question of long-pending river regulation zone notification by the MoEF on the lines of coastal regulation zone. Comander Surveshwar Sinha of Pani Morcha, who has been fighting the cause of Ganga and Yamuna in the Supreme Court as well as in the High Court since 1993 has welcomed this initiative on the part of the Court.
	Round up JNUSU took up workers’ cause Akhila Singh Tribune News Service New Delhi, January 2 One of the major issues that made headlines from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) last year has been the workers’ minimum wage struggle. The university administration and students’ union had come face to face in the process and JNUSU office bearers were suspended from their respective courses. After almost one year of continuos struggle, students were successful in getting a mechanism worked out in this regard. A one of its kind in the whole country, Workers’ Committee has been set up in the university. “We have been successful in pushing the administration to construct a workers’ committee that includes the students’ union representative as well,” said Sandeep, president JNUSU. “However, it’s in our hands to make it functional now.” Former JNUSU president Dhananjay feels that “mere existence of such a committee was not sufficient. We have been demanding three student representatives to be part of the workers’ committee but they (administration) has only allowed one,” he said. “This committee has to be structured properly so as everyone knows about its existence. It has to be made autonomous, same on the lines of gender sensitisation committee against sexual harassment (GSCASH).” Meanwhile, the committee has already prioritised its agenda for the next term beginning this month. “We have categorized the workers in three layers as their demands are different,” said Sandeep, who is also the only student representative in the committee. The first layer comprises daily wage workers. “These people have to be regularised on temporary basis,” said Sandeep. The second layer is of contract workers, who are not being provided with many of their legal rights such as medical aid and provident fund. The third layer is of the most vulnerable section that comprises construction workers. “These people are extremely poor and we demand that basic facilities like drinking water, toilet, place for kids, should be ensured for them on the campus,” he said. The contractors providing workers on the JNU campus have also started gearing up against the socially sensitive students. The construction workers deployed on the site for new hostels are being guarded by private security. “The contractor has deployed his own men to avoid any dialogue between the students and the workers. These men do not let any student go near the workers,” said Dhananjay. With many new challenges in the next semester, the committee has to establish itself so that workers can approach the representatives if there was any infringement
	GGSIU gets NAAC A grade Charu Singh Tribune News Service New Delhi, January 2 Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University (GGSIPU) university was accredited with an ‘A Grade’ (institutional score between 85% to 90%) by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) in April 2007. The accreditation is valid for a period of five years from 31 March, 2007. The NAAC team placed on record that the university, within eight years of its establishment, has evolved as a successful professional university in the country with a diversified programme option and modernized curricula. The university also started several new programmes , including, a Master of mass media (with 40 seats), Master of Occupational Therapy (18 seats), B.Sc. Medical Technology Radiotherapy (with 4 seats), M.A. English and Communication Studies (with 30 seats), B. Tech Civil Engineering (60 seats) and MBA (part-time )(with 60 seats), MBA Consultancy Management (10 seats), M. Tech ,Information Security, M. Tech Digital Communications and two new courses for working women ,including MBA Enterprise System and M. Tech Electronics & Communication Engineering. In another major step, the university increased its intake by adding the above mentioned new courses as well as increasing the number of seats in several of its existing courses. The university has added around 1850 seats this year. Further, the varsity also granted affiliation to eight new institutions– Government Engineering College at Jaffarpur, Gobind Ballabh Pant Government Engineering College at Okhla and Bhagwan Parshuram Institute of Technology at Rohini, Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Centre, Rohini, Aditya College of Pharmacy and Science, Vasant Kunj, BLS Institute of Technology and Management, Bahadurgarh, Trinity Institute of Professional Studies, Dwarka and Chandra Pradbhu Jain College of Higher Studies, Narela. In an additional development a training programme for Delhi Police Officers was held at the varsity. The university conducted a month-long training programme for officers of the Delhi Police in November 2007. Almost, 50 police officers of the rank of Assistant Sub-Inspector, Sub-Inspector and Inspector participated in this training programme, which updated the knowledge bank of serving officers on various new enactments, rulings of apex courts and directions from various national and state statutory bodies relating to human rights, women, child and SC/ST communities etc. The university has also collaborated with several foreign universities/ institutions, this year to encourage academic exchange at various levels. Noteworthy among these are a tie-up with Deakin University, Australia and the Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.
	Rang Mahotsav with Vedeshi flavour New Delhi, January 2 With the advent of New Year, theater lovers in the Capital will have a treat with a distinct foreign flavour as National School of Drama(NSD) offers them a plethora of foreign plays. The NSD, one of the foremost theatre training institutions in the world, will mark the 50th year of its existence with a riveting theatre festival from tomorrow to january 20 titled the ‘Tenth Bharat Rang Mahotsav’ 2008. Representation of contemporary international theatre will be showcased in this festival with plays from Poland, Switzerland, UK, Norway, China, Japan, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. As a special aspect of its golden jubilee celebration, the NSD would showcase works of more than 60 of its alumni from across India, Bangladesh and Nepal. Habib Tanvir’s evergreen ‘Charandas Chor’ in a Sri Lankan production, Tendulkar’s Ghashiram Kotwal in a Manipuri adaptation ,dramatized versions of short stories by Hari Prakash, Kamatanath, Jainendra Kumar ,a docudrama, using rare archival footage and live acting on the correspondence between Gandhi and Tagore, and Gandhi and Nehru are some of the highlights. ‘’our alumni are involved, in some capacity, in all the plays featuring in the festival this year, barring the foreign productions,’’ NSD director Anuradha Kapoor said. The festival would feature 76 plays of which 57 are from india and 19 from international groups, including Afghanistan and Arunachal Pradesh who are participating for the first-time in this festival. A distinctive feature of this year’s festival will be the India premiere of Pina Bausch’s new piece ‘Bamboo Blues’ and a 360-hour long performance of ‘the glass house project: a reality performance by a practising actor. The fortnight-long festival will kick start with a performance of ‘’prologue’’, the first part of director Ratan Thiyam s ‘’Manipur Trilogy’’ at the capital’s Kamani auditorium tommorrow.Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit will inaugurate the festival, in the presence of Ebrahim Alkazi, distinguished theatre personality and former director of the NSD. The NSD has shown a remarkable achievement in these 50 years and has gone beyond training. It has its own repertory, publication and a separate division for children. ‘’We are proud to celebrate 50 years of NSD as it has achieved a lot over the past many years. We have grown tremendously and reached even the remote areas of the country through our efforts and work. Today, our annual festival is acknowledged as the largest theatre festival of Asia and is firmly established on the international theatre festival map,’’ NSD chairperson Amal Allana told UNI. As in the past, the festival shows are expected to run to full houses, attracting over 50,000 spectators during the 18-day festival here. ‘’We are very happy with the response we get every year. Now, people have started looking for change as the electronic media has stretched itself completely. They are thirsting for something refreshing and such festivals not only provides them a change but also gives them the opportunity to choose.’’ Allana said. Theatre lovers will have a bouquet of five to six plays per day staged at seven venues, including Kamani auditorium, Shri Ram Centre, Siri Fort auditorium, LTG theatre and the three theatres on the NSD premises — Abhimanch, Sammukh and Bahumukh. She said theatre students from other parts of the country specially come to see Rang Mahotsav. ‘’Had we a separate directorate of theatre then we would have done more work. The government can’t support repertories like we would want them to. Despite limited backing from the authorities, we see lots of personal initiatives to keep the theatre culture alive.’’ she said with a sense of pride. — UNI
	Coldest morning Tribune News Service New Delhi, January 2 The National Capital Territory of Delhi today recorded the season’s coldest morning, with the minimum temperature plummeting to 1.9 degrees Celsius, five degrees below normal. The Met office has forecast that the minimum temperature would be around one degree Celsius for the next couple of days. Chilly weather is likely to continue for a few more days in the Capital. It was the coldest New Year morning yesterday, with mercury dipping to 2.6 degrees Celsius, in the last five years. The minimum temperature had dipped to around zero degree Celsius, in 2006.
	Rape on JNU campus Tribune News Service New Delhi, January 2 A mess manager’s wife at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus alleged today that her husband had raped her niece on December 31. She registered a complaint in this regard at the Vasant Vihar police station. The mess manager, Tiwari, is absconding. The victim has been sent out of the city. Mess manager Tiwari allegedly raped his wife’s niece at his residence near the central KC market on the university’s old campus.
	Crime rate down: Dadwal Sandeep Yadav Tribune News Service New Delhi, January 2 Delhi Police Commissioner YS Dadwal said that there were various factors that affected crime depending upon the characteristics of a city and a comparison between the crime graphs of two cities did not reflect the whole story. He said this at the annual press conference of the Delhi Police held at the India Habitat Centre here. He added, “Incidence of crime in the city by itself is not a reliable barometer to measure the functioning of the police.” Dadwal was reacting to the studies that has put Delhi high on the crime graph in the country. “Socio-economic factors like — unemployment, disparities in income, adverse sex ratio, continual immigration, consumer culture and desire for a life style that many want but cannot legitimately obtain are leading to various kinds of crime in the Capital. This aside, the Delhi Police has to deal with a large number of VIP movement and protest programmes, which leads to a substantial commitment in terms of manpower”, said Dadwal. Pointing at the dip in the total crime figures for the year 2007, the commissioner of police said that the above factors notwithstanding, the Delhi Police ensured that the incidence of crime showed a declining trend for the year. Compared to 84,484 crime reported in 2006, 74,111 criminal cases were reported in 2007. “Due to our force’s efforts, the over all incidence of crime showed a declining trend, though heinous crimes remained almost constant. The Delhi Police upped the detection rate of heinous crimes from 87.9 per cent to 89.4 per cent”, claimed Dadwal. Talking about the cases of corruption in the force and whether he is taking some step to curb it, the commissioner maintained that any complaint received would be thoroughly probed and, if the officer was found guilty, he would be severely punished. “Integrity and honesty should be the hallmark of all our officers. In my interaction with the officers, I have very clearly put across the message and I believe it is being followed”, said Dadwal. He added that the performance of the officer would be closely monitored and any inefficiency would not be tolerated. Talking about he abysmal traffic scene in the Capital, the commissioner of police accepted that a lot needs to be done before the city’s roads could be prevented from choking. “There is a new buzz in the traffic policing with emphasis on chase and challan. The introduction of police patrol 24x7, the multi-tasking of 50 PCR vans to perform traffic duties, the emphasis on traffic inspectors and zonal officers being mobile has helped in giving a new edge to traffic management” claimed Dadwal. He added that with the introduction of 225 motorcycles in the coming days, traffic patrolling would get a boost. 1 cop for 3070 vehicles With 31,183 kilometers of road length and 4,216 traffic policemen to manage 56.12 lakh vehicles, traffic management in the Capital turns out to be a Herculean task. According to the report published in the annual review released by commissioner of police Y S Dadwal today, on an average, there is one traffic policeman deployed for every 7.39 Kms and 1,304 vehicles in the Capital. Even if 15 per cent of the force is on leave and field deployment is calculated on the basis of two shifts per day, there would roughly be one traffic policeman for every 17.4 Kms and 3,070 vehicles. The figures indicate that shortage of manpower is the major cause of traffic mismanagement on Delhi roads. However, Dadwal said that the government had sanctioned 1,000 traffic posts of various ranks in wake of the Commonwealth Games 2010. He claimed that with such initiatives traffic would be put to order. “Under section 279 of the IPC, we try to deter rash and dangerous driving, particularly jumping red-lights at high speed,” said Dadwal. He added that there had been a decrease both in fatal and simple accidents by 3.5 per cent and 8.3 per cent, respectively in 2007. The Blueline buses accidents too declined from 103 in the third quarter of 2007 to 83 in the fourth quarter. Rape cases decline According to the annual review report – 2007, released by the Delhi Police, the city has witnessed a decline of over 4.6 per cent in rape cases. As compared to 609 rape cases registered in 2006, 581 cases were reported in 2007. Moreover, 95.18 per cent of rape cases were solved in 2007, as compared to 93.92 per cent in 2006. However, the saddest part of the story is that in 98.28 per cent of cases, the victim knew the suspect. Of the persons arrested on rape charges in 581 cases, 62 were relatives, 94 were friends, 340 were neighbours and 17 were colleagues. Only in 10 cases, the suspect was stranger to the victim. A study of the educational profile of the suspects revealed that 68 per cent were illiterate or school dropouts, 24 per cent were matriculates and 1.9 per cent were graduates. Sixty-four per cent of the total rapes were committed in the house of the victims, while 5 per cent in the J.J clusters and 31 per cent in other places.
	Easycabs’ New Year gift Tribune News Service New Delhi, January 2 National radio taxi operator Easycabs has completed a year in the National Capital Territory of Delhi. The company on its anniversary has also announced another New Year gift for its customers in Delhi with a special fare of Rs 350, for all passengers, going to the domestic and international airports. Within these last 365 days, Easycabs with 350 radio taxis has plied nearly 4,00,000 customers. Around 35 % of these have been hailed by residents and travelers in the NCR, a release claimed. “It has been exactly a year since we started our services in Delhi and looking at the heavy demand we will be adding anothrer 650 taxis to our already existing fleet of 350” ,said Rajiv K Vij, managing director, Easycabs. “Our endeavor to provide safe transport to customers in Delhi has been successful with more than 50% of our bookings coming from women and children, and 30% of the total usage being at night” he further added. Easycabs has been approved by Indira Gandhi International and Domestic Airports. At the airports the company has serviced nearly 2,00,000 customers ,10% of them being foreigners in the past six months. “Our 24x7 call centers have received more than 10,00,000 calls till now, proving not only that the services are required, but also that people are appreciating the quality we provide”, said Ashok Vashist, chief operating officer, Easycabs.
	Fair price shops sell poor stuff Syed Ali Ahmed Tribune News Service New Delhi, January 2 Certain Antodaya card holders in the national Capital are neither getting regular nor quality food items from fair price shops of the Delhi government. Mohan Kumar, a resident of Sultanpur Majra , alleges that he did not get ration from the fair price shop for the past few months. As and when he went for ration, the shop was closed. He had made several complaints ,but to no avail. Sadab ,a resident of Mustafabad in East Delhi ,said that the quality of goods was not good. Either wheat is rotten or sugar is of poor quality. In reply to questions in about these complaints, Delhi Food Supply Minister told the House that quality food items were available at every ration shop. Quality of food items were ascertained by the Food Corporation of India. The shopkeepers had been directed to display samples. The quality of pulses is checked in the PFA laboratory. This year the department received two complaints and action was taken against the shopkeepers concerned, the minister said.
	IGNOU to set up call centre Tribune News Service New Delhi, January 2 Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) is all set to establish its call centre service to answer queries of over 1.7 million students seeking courses through correspondence. The proposal for the call centre would be approved in a meeting on January 7. The proposed call centre would be outsourced to a private company that would attend calls round the clock. “We would invite applications from companies for this. We have to provide them with the data for each section — admissions, courses and examinations, to ensure that students get the accurate information. The entire process would take at least 45-50 days,” informed IGNOU vice-chancellor VN Rajsaekharan Pillai. The call centre would deal with queries related to study materials, examination, admission and course details. The university has also started an online grievance redressal system for students, where they can send their feedback or register their grievances that the university officials address in a maximum period of three days. “We realise the difficulties of students. Therefore, we have proposed to develop a more systematic mechanism for answering queries of students pursuing courses through correspondence,” said Pillai.
	Infant burnt to death New Delhi, January 2 A one-month-old infant girl, Monica, was burnt to death in a fire caused by a petromax in Police Colony in the Narela area here yesterday evening, a fire brigade official said. The fire occurred while her mother was cooking at 1735 hours in their house in Police Colony. — UNI
	Police station inaugurated New Delhi, January 2 Alok Kumar Verma, joint commissioner of police (crime) today inaugurated the economic offences wing police station at Malviya Nagar in South Delhi. The police station would function from the PTS complex. Cases related to financial frauds, land and building rackets, cyber crime and intellectual property rights can be registered here.Kumar said that the police station would remain open for 24 hours to the public. — TNS
	Walia announces power committees Tribune News Service New Delhi, January 2 State finance and power minister A.K. Walia has decided to constitute committees that would deal with power problems. Walia announced this while giving heed to the demand of the MLAs. Such a committee would be constituted in all assembly constituencies in the Capital. A committee comprising 10 members would be constituted in each assembly and the area MLA would be its chairperson. Each committee would have two representatives of Discoms and two business managers, who would deal with the billing system and infrastructure development. The other members would be nominated from the RWAs, trade bodies and social organisations. The committees would look into the complaints of the consumers and review the billing system. The minister said that they would also be asked to expedite infrastructure development. Each committee would meet at least once a month. He reiterated that Discoms must avoid power cuts. Discoms have also been asked to send SMS on loadshedding to all elected representatives in the Capital. Walia has further instructed power companies to concentrate on infrastructural development, which would improve power supply in the Capital. They have been asked to submit a list of those transformers, which are the cause of frequent power cuts. In a meeting attended by senior officers of the power department and Discoms, it was found that around 25 lakh meters had been installed in the Capital. The NDPL, the BRPL and the BYPL have to change 87,000; 2.75 lakh and 1.50 lakh meters, respectively. Delhi unit BJP president Harsh Vardhan alleged that the government was misleading people announcing such a committee, as the like of it already existed in the power department.