New Delhi, July 26
Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit today launched a greening drive in Delhi and inaugurated setting up of a city forest at Rewla Khanpur-III in southwest Delhi where 10,000 saplings are to be planted.

One hundred sixty children who were part of the greening drive planted 1,000 saplings in the city forest.

The Chief Minister said that in all nine forests in different parts of the city would be set up and 12 lakh saplings planted during the greening drive in Delhi.

Launching the drive, Dikshit said that Delhi had become greener city in the world.

Entire credit of large-scale greening activity went to school students who had become a role model in this field. Delhi would soon have 41 city forests. With this green cover, more than 20 per cent of total area of the Capital would become forest.

She further stated that it was essential to grow more trees to maintain ecological balance in view of large-scale concrete jungle coming up in the city.

The expansion of greenery would also help in curbing challenges arising out of climate change.

New forest is being developed in a 17.68 hectare land. The department of environment has constructed a boundary on this land.

The location has been envisaged to be developed into a city forest keeping in view the necessity of a place for urban recreation and quality green spaces in the metros for fulfilling the urban forest requirements.

This would also provide a source of carbon sink and the green machinery for improvement of the physical and natural environment by controlling various kinds of pollutants.

It would also help in developing potential habitat for resident and migratory wildlife in urban and nearby areas, the Chief Minister said.

Trees such as neem, pilkhan, dhak, kachanar, amla, lasoda, arjun, amaltas, bahera, siris, semul, alstonia, bakain, peepal, begonia, etc. are being grown in this city forest.

The environment and forests department is all set to make the tree plantation drive a success. It has been decided to plant at least 12 lakh saplings this year.

Apart from this, more than six lakh saplings would be distributed free of charge from DMS booths, Mother Dairy booths, Kendriya Bhandars, petrol pumps, etc. The department is committed to improving the ecological balance in the Capital. 

New Delhi, July 26
In early 2006, Sawhney Builders Pvt Ltd had advertised about a plot allotment scheme, ‘Amare Towne’, at Morta Village near Ghaziabad on NH-58 in various newspapers and hoardings.

The scheme that promised to hand over the possession of plots to investors by December 2006 lured many.

Three years have passed and 46 people who had invested Rs 3 to 10 lakh to book the plots have been running from pillar to post to get back their money from Sawhney Builders.

After the company’s managing director D.S. Sawhney failed to return the amount, an investor Dr D.P. Sachan has filed a complaint against the company with the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Delhi police.

EOW officials said the complaint was filed on July 6 and the department has started investigation.

“We have received a complaint against Sawhney Builders from Dr D.P. Sachan who had given Rs 3 lakh to the builder to book a 180 sq. yard plot. The investigation has started,” confirmed a police official close to investigation.

Dr D.P. Sachan said he had invested in the plot with the hope that it would provide him security in his old age but the builders did not shy from cheating an old man like him.

“I am a retired man and had saved some money over the years for rainy days. A part of it has gone now. Sawhney Builders had promised me a plot in the township within six months but more than three years have passed, I have neither received the money, nor the plot,” rued Dr Sachan.

According to sources, there may be more than 100 investors waiting for their money, but as of now The Tribune is aware of 46 people whom Sawhney Builders owe the money. Nand Kishor (Rs 4.25 lakh), Amit Goel (Rs 4.25 lakh), Prabha (Rs 3 lakh) and many of their relatives who have invested over Rs 45 lakh in the scheme are some of the victims.

“As D.S. Sawhney always promises to do something worthwhile, we refrained from filing a complaint against him. Now I realise that it may be Rs 4.25 lakh for me, but he must be owing crores to people who invested in the scheme,” said Nand Kishore.

In spite of our repeated attempts to contact D.S. Sawhney and his son Samir Sawhney, the two did not respond. 

New Delhi, July 26
Delhi police commissioner Y.S. Dadwal today inspected the spot where an aide of Himanshu Sabharwal, son of slain Ujjain professor H.S. Sabharwal, was found murdered three days ago.

Dadwal, who was accompanied by joint commissioner of police (northern range) Karnal Singh and deputy commissioner of police (north Delhi) Sagarpreet Hooda, inspected the spot near the Khalsa College in DUnorth campus where Parminder Singh’s body was found with stab wounds late on Thursday night.

Singh worked as an accountant with Himanshu , whose father was killed due to beatings by students in an Ujjain college in Madhya Pradesh three years ago.

A court later acquitted six activists of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the students’ wing of the BJP, accused of beating Prof. Sabharwal to death, for lack of sufficient evidence.

Parminder Singh was last seen with Himanshu, freelance journalist Pooja and student leader of Ramjas College, Saif. Singh along with Himanshu and Pooja had gone to put posters for a gathering and a candle light vigil called ‘Justice for Professor Sabharwal’ to be held on Sunday.

The police, who has already announced Rs 50,000 reward for those providing clues to solving the case, is now questioning Himanshu, Pooja and Saif.

Dadwal also asked the Delhi police’s elite special cell and crime branch for coordination and assistance with district police to solve the murder case.

“We will not comment about who all are suspects. We are yet to reach any conclusion and the matter is being investigated,” Karnal Singh told reporters when asked if Himanshu was a suspect in the case.

The police had questioned Himanshu twice so far to corroborate sequence of crime and ascertain various facts.

New Delhi, July 26
Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has placed an order to purchase 300 air-conditioned CNG buses to act as feeder buses connecting Metro stations.

The DMRC officials said the buses would be manufactured by Swaraj Mazda and the first lot of 75 buses would be delivered within six months. Thereafter, 75 buses per month would be delivered for the next three months, so that all 300 buses are delivered within nine months.

“Each bus will cost over Rs 19 lakh and would have powerful air-conditioners to achieve a temperature of 27 degree Celsius within 10 minutes of start of the engine even in extreme summer conditions,” said Anuj Dayal, spokesperson, DMRC.

The buses would also have pneumatic air suspension just like the one in DTC low-floor buses, wide, power-operated by driver and semi-low floor design, 650 mm from road level.

They will be customised for DMRC’s requirement and the interior side paneling will give the feeling of Metro coaches. Each bus will have a seating capacity of 26 with the seats being along the walls. The flooring would be made of 12 mm. fire retardant plywood plus silicon-embedded vinyl and each bus would have two fire extinguishers, besides a first-aid box.

Destination display boards would be installed on the front and side of the buses. The buses would also have public address system and provisions for ticket vending machines. The six-wheeled buses will have Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) fuelled engine, power steering and ergonomically designed driver’s work area.

“The other bidders for the supply of the buses were Tata Motors and Chongqing Hengtong Bus Corporation of China. Tata Motors had supplied the 120 non-AC buses presently running as feeder buses on 15 routes,” said Dayal.

DMRC presently has 68 stations and another 76 are scheduled to be added by the completion of Phase-II.

Noida, July 26
Shoddiness has been noticed in the construction work connected with Metro's extension to Noida. A team of engineers which had come to inspect Metro track here has reportedly found cracks in two cantilevers of two pillars.

Pillar No.10 near Sector 15 gate and Pillar No. 14 near Gole Chakker in Noida were inspected by engineers in the presence of DMRC chairman Sreedharan on Saturday.

The engineers reportedly found cracks in the cantilevers of the pillars. A decision to provide support of iron grills to the affected pillars has been taken. Couple of other shortcomings were also noticed in the construction work, for which engineers were instructed to take remedial steps.

It has been decided that an ultra sonic test will be conducted to determine whether the cantilevers of pillars have cracks or not. Further action will be taken only after this test.

It may be recalled that the cracks in cantilevers of pillars where accident occurred in Delhi recently were about 4 metre long, while here the cracks are reported to be 2 metre long.

After the recent mishaps in Delhi, Metro chief Shridharan has taken it upon himself to check all construction works.

Each pillar was reportedly checked in his presence. A team of experts is minutely examining the DMRC construction work in Noida.

Metro trial in Noida is slated to start 10 days later. So the DMRC authorities are not leaving anything to chance and want to be sure that all shortcomings or defects are removed before the trial rerun starts early next month, it is learnt. 

New Delhi, July 26
Reacting to the decision of Delhi government to sanction Rs 398 crore for the projects connected with the Commonwealth Games (CWG), BJP Delhi Pradesh vice-president Nand Kishore Garg said the government just wasted public money in the name of Games.

Instead, the government should have provided basic amenities to the citizens of Delhi, he added.

About 10,000 sportspersons are expected to participate in the Games. Thousands of crores of rupees have been spent on preparation of the Games.

This amount could be spent to provide basic amenities in the unauthorised colonies. Residents in these colonies do not have proper water supply, power and sewerage. People drink handpump water there, he claimed.

No new college has been opened in Delhi for the last many years. Thousands of students have thus been deprived of higher education, Garg added. 

New Delhi, July 26
How about some sausage omelette for breakfast, sausage rice and vegetables for lunch and sausage rumali roll or sausage chaat for a quick snack when guests drop by? Yes, India is gradually putting sausage - predominantly chicken - on its plate, but with a desi touch.

Sixty-year-old Chitra Singh, a grandmother from Panchsheel Park in south Delhi, is a sausage addict.

“It is a common breakfast and snack at home,” says the petite old lady.

Chitra usually “shallow fries” chicken sausages and adds a bit of minced green chilli and garlic to it for taste. “Sometimes, when there is nothing at home, I even add tomato ketchup or chilli sauce while frying,” Chitra told IANS.

She was at the MGF Mega City Mall Saturday evening in Gurgaon to take part in a unique “My Sausage Recipe Contest”, as part of a sausage carnival, “Keells & Krest Sausage Festival”, organised by John Keells Foods India Pvt Ltd, a market leader in processed and frozen meat products.

Ritu, a housewife from Gurgaon Phase II, makes sure there is always a pack of chicken sausages in her freezer.

“Since my husband loves salad, I toss lightly-fried sausage salads in combination with eggs and vegetables. It’s value for money and much better than seafood,” Ritu said.

Sausage — mostly made of processed chicken — is becoming popular on the Indian plate in indigenous avatars. And people are going out of their way to improvise the meat product — one can also make curd sausage or sausage salad to go with the main course.

Tanu Goswami, a housewife from south Delhi, also keeps her freezer stocked with chicken sausages of all varieties. “Usually I fry the sausages and serve them with bread, but sometimes, I improvise. I make sausage omelettes,” Goswami saidS.

Sausage omelette is simple snack - two rows of plain egg omelettes flavoured with black pepper and table salt with a filling of diced sausage between them.

The omelette at the top, which is uncooked at the bottom, binds the sausage filling and the omelette at the base, once put in a frying pan.

“The raw egg white and yolk acts as the binder. It is a desi sausage recipe,” the housewife explained.

Sometimes Tanu rustles up sausage rice for lunch - stir-fried diced sausages mixed with rice and diced vegetables, cooked in light fish and flavoured with garlic and cloves.

The history of sausage, says master chef Vivek Saggar of Delhi-based Food Art, goes back to nearly 2,000 years when meat was salted, smoked, pounded and stuffed into casings of animal intestines in Europe and even in China for storage and consumption.

Since then, sausage has evolved as a complete meat meal worldwide and a number of food festivals centre around sausages in Britain, France and Germany. History cites that the earliest sausage was made around 589 BC in China with lamb and goat meat filling. The Europeans later used pork, veal and beef.

“The popularity of chicken sausages is growing in India. It is easy to cook because part of it is pre-cooked. It is chicken ‘keema’. The easiest way to cook it is to saute it lightly with a tablespoon full of oil,” Saggar said.

His signature recipe is the sausage rumali roll - the traditional Indian meat roll in a casing of white-flour wafer-thin large chapatis. Only the meat is replaced by diced chicken sausage and the vegetables are lightly fried to keep the taste of the chicken intact.

Saggar also recommends another of his speciality, the sausage chaat. It is a dish of diced sausages flavoured with minced (raw) coriander, ginger, garlic, onions, bell pepper bits, salt, chilli powder and lemon juice — like the normal ‘aloo chaat’.

Sausages are best preserved at -18 degrees Celsius — the usual freezer temperature and can last for months, Saggar said.

The penetration of sausage as a popular snack, however, is still every niche, said Saumitra Prasad, head of sales and marketing of John Keells Food India.

“It is just 4 per cent. But we are trying to make it popular as a snack. In Sri Lanka, our products are popular school tiffin for children. We are currently available in 270 outlets in the capital. An AC Nielsen study says our market share is 12 per cent in just seven months since January,” Prasad said.

The company, a market leader in Sri Lanka on packaged foods, launched its meat products in the country in January 2009. — IANS

Noida, July 26
A bride in village Kacheda under Badalpur police station allegedly fled with jewellery, expensive clothes and cash from the house of her in-laws after first night of her marriage. According to reports, a man, posing to be the brother of his wife, got her married to his friend.

After the marriage, as per their plan, the ‘bride’ decamped with all jewellery and cash from her in-laws’ place.

The victim family has lodged a complaint against five persons.

According to the police, Satinder of Kacheda village and Prem of Garhhi Dadri village were friends. Satinder was unmarried.

This prompted Prem to hatch a conspiracy to befool Satinder. Prem told Satinder that he could arrange his marriage.

He took Satinder and his two friends— Sanjay and Sunder—to Meerut on June 5 to see a prospective bride. Here, Prem showed his wife Bimla to Satinder and his friends.

He told them that he was like brother to Bimla. Satinder approved the girl and the marriage took place in Ghaziabad on July 6.

Two days after the marriage, one Vinode of Meerut and Prem went to Satinder’s house, and as per marriage custom, asked Prem’s permission to take Bimla to her parents’ house.

After some days, Satinder’s parents wanted to know the welfare of their daughter-in- law and they tried to contact her on the telephone number given to them by Prem.

But when they did not get through, they got suspicious.

They checked the cash and jewellery kept in house and found that all valuables were missing.

Ultimately, Satinder learnt that Prem was Bimla’s husband and that the couple had three children.

Noida, July 26
Officials and experts of many departments in the UP government have spread a carpet of greenery in the Central Park Plaza being developed on the Yamuna bank on the periphery of Noida.

About a lakh of saplings have been planted here in the last fortnight. The saplings and plants have reportedly been brought all the way from Andhra Pradesh. Besides, grass from a number of west UP districts has been transplanted here. The result is that a carpet of greenery greets you on the land which about a fortnight back was a barren concrete ground.

It may be recalled that after the issue was raised in Central Environment Committee, Parliament and apex court, action on “operation greenery” was accelerated.

The Central Enviornment Committee (CEC) had heard this matter on July 8 when the CEC had made it clear that any action could be taken only after a visit of the site. The next inspection by the CEC is scheduled for August 3.

After a hearing in the CEC, the Supreme Court had refused a stay on July 10, advising the appellants to take the case to the Allahabad High Court to register objections to the case.

Subsequently, the central forest and environment ministry deputed a senior expert, Mr Zaidi to inspect the park. Besides, union minister of forest and environments Jairam Ramesh told Parliament that a committee to enquire the matter had been set up and that a notice had been sent to the UP government.

Meanwhile, it is gathered that all the officials of civil engineering and horticultural departments of Noida authority have been asked to concentrate on this park’s green belt. Even services of officials from Hapur and Pilkhua development authorities are being utilised for taking care of green belt on the Yamuna bank in Noida.