New Delhi, August 5
The Comptroller and Auditor-General of India (CAG) has said that there were serious irregularities in awarding the construction contract of the residential complex at the Commonwealth Games Village in PPP mode to Emaar MGF Constructions Pvt Ltd.

According to the CAG report, presented in Parliament today, Emaar MGF also illegally constructed 17 additional dwelling units in the basement meant for parking at the residential complex. The DDA allowed several financial concessions to Emaar MGF, including revision of milestones and delayed/non-levy of liquidated damages, said the report.

It also said that there was a series of misrepresentations and accommodations at various stages that resulted in Emaar MGF Constructions Pvt. Ltd, emerging as an eligible (and successful) bidder through the consortium route.

It also stated that key issues related to the selection of site for the Commonwealth Games Village (CWG) were not properly addressed.

The CWG Village, near Akshardham Temple, had three major components - a residential complex for housing the athletes and officials, practice areas for athletes, and temporary structures (overlays) for the international zone, village operations and other areas.

Besides, the report states, there was no evidence of compliance with the mitigation/abatement measures on Yamuna as stipulated by the ministry of environment and forests while according conditional environmental clearance. The DDA essentially attempted to abdicate responsibility for this issue.

The report added that the Central Building Research Institute (CBRI), Roorkee, was appointed by the DDA as the third party independent quality inspection agency for the residential complex only after most of the foundation work was executed.

It pointed out serious lapses in construction work through 13 reports between June 2008 and October 2010.

The DDA also purchased four 1,250 KVA-each generating sets with excessive and undue redundancy, which are now lying idle, the report said. - IANS

New Delhi, August 5
The much-awaited event of the year at Delhi University, the students' council elections has arrived. With the university announcing the election schedule today, the students' parties have already starting digging deep for hard-hitting agenda pointers.

While last year the parties had enough issue regarding the Commonwealth Games, this time around, every party is aiming to focus on different aspects.

The elections will take place on September 9, almost a week later than last year. The final dates of counting of votes have still not been disclosed.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP), which bagged three out of four seats on the DUSU council, including the president, said this time round the party would focus on why the university faced such high cutoffs this year.

"There has been no new college in the university over the past 12 years and the rush has been increasing day by day. If the university finds it hard to open more colleges, the least that can be done is starting evening colleges with already existing morning colleges. The 100 per cent cutoff was a shock for everyone this year. Our main focus will be on the increasing seats in evening colleges so that more and more students can be part of this university," said Rohit Chahal, state secretary of the ABVP.

The list of agendas of the ABVP will include the hostel and college fee hike in several colleges, security of girl students, especially in evening colleges and in South Campus, among other issues.

Regarding the nominations this year, Rohit said, "We have currently rounded off 12 candidates but some of them are still waiting for their results."

The NSUI, on the other hand, said their agenda points hadn't been decided yet. Party national secretary Mohit Sharma, said, "Our main focus is to win all four seats. Also, speaking of agenda, while we still think there are lots of issues to be addressed, the issue of hostel fee hike is something that the party has been protesting against for the last one year. The hostel fee hike is a prime issue. Also, several colleges are now withdrawing the new facilities and still charging the hiked fees."

Greater Noida, August 5
Farmers of Noida Extension villages were about to reach a verbal agreement with the development authority at a meeting held last night, but the talks broke off at the last moment. Today also the authority tried to strike a deal with them.

Minister of UP Jaiveer Singh, MP Surinder Singh Nagar, District Magistrate Hridesh Kumar, chairman of the authority Mohinder Singh and CEO Rama Raman were present at the meting.

From the farmers' side, Ajay, pradhan from Roza; Resh Pal Yadav, pradhan from Patwari; Amod Kumar from Bisrakh, Ramesh Kumar of Haibatpur and other farmers participated in the negotiations.

The talks started yesterday at 11 am and continued till 11.30 pm. As per the agreement, the authority promised to pay Rs 550 per sq mtr extra. The developed land was promised to hike from 6 per cent to 8 per cent. The third agreement was ababdi land, on which the authority had agreed to leave the land as out of acquisition.

"Our talks failed as the authority was not ready to put all the agreed demands on the documents," said Resh Pal.

Authority officials said at least some progress had been made. Now the authority knew the terms on which the farmers had given their approval. Only hitch was the written agreement. The authority did not want to put the amount to be paid by builders on the agreement document.

"We want to negotiate and settle the issue as we are also concerned about investors' interests, but the authority seemed to be fooling us and trying to get our signature on the unapproved documents," said one of the farmers.

At a meeting held between Noida development authority chairman Balvinder Kumar and farmers of Gejha village, the chairman assured them the developed land. Here too, the farmers demanded 5 per cent developed plots. The chairman told them that the villages which were acquired between 1976 and 97 could not be given the benefit as the facility was applicable only from 1997 onwards.

At Badalpur too, the farmers held a panchayat and decided to move the court.

Meanwhile, industrialists of Noida under the banner of the Noida Entrepreneur Association has also demanded residential plot scheme exclusively for the industrialists. They said when the authority could float a scheme exclusively for the farmers, why not for the industrialists who have been giving thousands of crores revenue to the state and Central governments.

New Delhi, August 5
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) House today unanimously passed a resolution rejecting division of the civic agency, as proposed by the Delhi government, in a special meeting chaired by Mayor Rajni Abbi.

"The Delhi government wants to usurp the powers of the MCD through trifurcation. The government is interfering with the MCD because it is insecure about its own image being endangered by the efficiency of the civic body," said Subhash Arya, leader of the House.

The Delhi Cabinet in April decided "in principle" to split the MCD into five smaller bodies ahead of the 2012 municipal polls. The proposal has been sent to the home ministry for consideration.

Councillor and former Mayor Farhad Suri said: "The main contention is not about the granting or denying powers to the MCD, but about providing relief to Delhiites who are already over-burdened."

The House resolution has placed a set of further demands before the home ministry, including giving Delhi the status of a state, that the Delhi government not be allowed to override the constitutional rights of the civic body, that the civic agency should be allowed to function independently, and the election of the mayor be done by a mayor-in-council for a term of five years. - IANS

New Delhi, August 5
Passengers heading to the international airport between 7am and 11 am will now be able to catch a Metro train on the Airport Express Line every 15 minutes.

Taking note of the suggestions and requests from frequent travellers on the line, DAMEPL, the Reliance Infrastructure-led consortium which operates the line, today increased the train frequency from 20 minutes to 15 minutes between 7 am and 11 am. The line is operational from 5 am to 11 pm everyday.

Also, an extra train has been included to ply during the peak service hours. Now, four trains will ply on the line.

By August-end, Reliance Infra plans to increase the frequency of trains to 15 minutes throughout the day.

"We received commuters' demand about an increase in the train frequency through a survey, 'Voice of Commuters'. Responding to our valuable passengers' request, we planned to increase the frequency during the peak hours. We have selected the morning hours as an internal study has proved that the ridership is high during this time," said an official statement from Reliance Infra.

The 23-km Airport Metro Express line takes passengers from the heart of the city, Connuaght Place, to the airport in just 18 minutes.

The ridership of Airport Metro has been increasing at a rate of 10 per cent every month since the line opened to the public. At present, over 10,000 commuters use the line every day, while around 500 passengers avail themselves of the check-in facility at New Delhi and Shivaji Stadium stations. 

New Delhi, August 5
In a serious bid to beat overcrowding, Delhi Metro has now decided to introduce eight-coach trains.

Delhi Metro chief E. Sreedharan stated this to the Standing Committee on Urban Development, a report from the urban development ministry tabled in parliament Friday showed.

"Our major problem today is severe overcrowding in these trains for which we have taken steps to order more number of coaches," Sreedharan was quoted as saying.

He said by about October, all trains in Line II and Line III would be fully six-train coaches.

"We want to lengthen the trains even to eight coaches trains for which we have placed orders of rolling stock," he said.

Sreedharan said "certain problems" plaguing Delhi Metro had been set right.

He said the Metro had prepared detailed project reports for cities like Pune, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Kochi and Ludhiana.

"Once these are sanctioned, we will certainly help the cities ... We are also now taking up the detailed project reports for Metros in Bhopal, Indore and Kanpur."IANS

New Delhi, August 5
A 27-year-old Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) constable shot his female colleague before killing himself with the same gun at the Yamuna Bank Metro station in east Delhi, this morning.

According to the police, the incident was reported around 7.10 am from platform number 2 of the Metro station.

Constable VN Pillai fired six shots at constable NVS Teja from his AK-47 gun, killing her on the spot. He then shot himself in the head.

Both were rushed to Lal Bahadur Shastri Hospital, where Teja was declared 'brought dead' while Pillai died soon after.

"Teja had come to the Yamuna Bank Metro station from the Ashok Vihar station after finishing her night duty and was supposed to go to her CISF camp at Indirapuram, Ghaziabad. At the Yamuna Bank station, she met Pillai, who had joined duty there in the morning. When she got down at platform no 2, Pillai met her there, and according to eyewitnesses, the two had an intense conversation. After some time, Pillai, in a fit of anger, fired upon Teja and then shot himself," said a CISF official posted at the Yamuna Bank Metro station.

He added that the incident happened on the spur of the moment and did not look like a pre-planned one. No suicide note was recovered from Pillai.

According to him, the duo was in a love relationship and something seemed to have disturbed Pillai.

"The two fell dead a mere 2 feet from each other and even their blood got mixed," said the official.

The gunshots created panic among the commuters even as senior police officials rushed to the spot. According to BS Gurjar, additional DCP (Railways), the cause of the dispute between the two constables is not clear.

"Preliminary investigation reveals that there was some dispute between the two, but the exact cause of the dispute is not known," said Gurjar. He added that the victims' colleagues were being questioned.

Teja hailed from Andhra Pradesh and Pillai from Kerala. Both joined the CISF in 2009. 

New Delhi, August 5
A 32-year-old reporter of an electronic news channel, ETV (Urdu), from Amroha (UP), was shot dead by some unidentified persons in the Jaffarabad area of north-east Delhi this morning.

According to the police, Akram was on his way to ETV office in Jhandelawalan when the incident took place around 11 am.

"Akram was shot in stomach when he was walking on road No-66 in the Jaffarabad area. He was rushed to GTB Hospital where he died in the evening. According to Akram's wife Sazia Latif, he was receiving some threat calls of late, but he did not pay much heed to them," said a police official.

A case of murder has been registered at the Welcome police station.

Prime facie, it looks like a case of personal enmity since no robbery attempt was made.

"He had come to Delhi regarding some work at his office this morning and when his wife spoke to him last time he was passing through Ghaziabad. It is not clear as to how he went to Jaffarabad. We are investigating the matter," said the official.

Noida, August 5
The Noida police has arrested three vehicle thieves and seized eight cars from them.

The accused have been identified as Raju, Shamshad and Shakil. Their two accomplices, Sikandar and Rajkumar, are on the run.

The accused have revealed that their gang operated in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarkhand and Delhi. They used to steal luxury cars. Shamshad is a computer expert and used to prepare fake documents for the stolen vehicles. The gang also used the vehicles as private taxis after pasting stickers of 'press' and 'police' to evade checking.

Eight cars, including a Safari, two Bolero, four Santro and one Indica, were seized from them, said Anant Dev, superintendent of police.