New Delhi, June 1
About 400 shacks were destroyed when a fierce fire engulfed a slum in Sadar Bazaar early this morning. Two persons, including a Delhi Fire Service (DFS) official, were injured in the fire.

Sources said no deaths had been reported. Most of the residents of the area are scrap dealers who had godowns there which were also destroyed.

The residents have complained that the government neglects them and are apathetic to their plight.

"Such instances of fire occur almost every year. It is hurtful to loose a house. The government does not understand our anguish and has failed to help us," said a slum dweller.

The slum was built in 1978 when migrants from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal arrived in Delhi.

The fire department said they received a call regarding the incident at 1.10 am. They were informed that a fire at Sadar Bazaar had gutted a few godowns and about 400 shanties. Twenty-five fire tenders were rushed to the site. There were at least 100 DFS personnel, who brought the fire under control at 6 am.

The fire had got uncontrollable because of the explosion of LPG cylinders in most of the houses. The blaze then spread rapidly and engulfed the shanties.

According to the police, the cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained. Sources said the blaze possibly started due to short-circuiting in the electrical system.

Sources said the government would provide shelter to the victims in 24 hours.

New Delhi, June 1
With the heat wave continuing to grip the Capital, the power demand of the city today again rose a little to 5,178 MW, the highest of the season so far.

The last highest power demand of 5,155 MW was recorded on May 30 when the maximum temperature was 45°C. Today, the maximum temperature was 44.4°C.

Adding to the summer woes of the Delhiites are frequent power cuts. The city is experiencing outages because of the tripping of major power transmission lines.

Power department officials said the 220-kilo volt line between the Badarpur thermal power station (BTPS) and Okhla tripped yesterday, causing power cuts in various areas of south Delhi.

The situation became worse when the BTPS-Mehrauli line also tripped in the afternoon, leading to power cuts.

Power supply to the tune 400 MW was affected due to the tripping of the two lines, which were repaired around 5pm, the officials said.

Transco officials blame unauthorised structures along the transmission network for the frequent trippings.

"The BTPS-Mehrauli line tripped due to unauthorised constructions along the line in Sangam Vihar," Delhi Trasco spokesperson Rishi Raj said.

New Delhi, June 1
Colleges of Delhi University have come up with ''additional'' guidelines for the admission in commerce stream. Most of the students with a non-commerce background apply for BCom and BA economics, so the colleges created additional categories.

This year, applicants will encounter five categories for BCom (hons) in Sri Ram College (SRCC), the most sought after college offering commerce at the DU.

Category A will include students whose subjects in Class XII include accounts, business studies, economics and maths. Category B will include students with at least three of these subjects. They will face 1 per cent higher cutoff than category A. Category C includes students who passed with at least two of these subjects and category D includes students with at least one of these.

Category C will face a hike of 1.5 per cent while category D will face an additional 1.75 per cent than category A. Category E includes students with none of the abovementioned subjects, i.e. who are either completely science or arts students with a minimum of 60 per cent in each subject.

At Hindu College, BCom (hons) will see three categories. The first category includes English and three commerce subjects in Class XII. Second includes those who had English plus three science subjects, while the third includes one language and three academic subjects. Cutoff for the third category will be 3 per cent higher, while for category one, the cutoff will be 2.5 per cent higher than the first category.

Similarly, at Hansraj College, students from non-commerce stream, who will apply for BCom (hons), will face a 2 per cent higher cutoff than commerce students with an additional compulsory factor of maths being one of the studied subjects in Class XII.

At Kirori Mal College, applicants need to have studied maths or business maths in Class XII for BCom.

New Delhi, June 1
The MLAs today demanded for their security just after a Congress MLA from Narela said in the House that someone from his constituency asked him for a ransom of Rs 50 lakh.

Jaswant Rana, who represents the Narela Assembly constituency, said that on May 25, a man, who introduced himself as Neeraj on mobile phone, asked for the ransom. He threatened him that if the ransom was not paid, he would be killed.

This complaint was taken seriously by the Speaker, Yoganand Shastri, saying that he would meet the LG, Tejendra Khanna and the Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit. He also directed the Delhi Police Commissioner to come to the House for clarification.

He appealed to the Speaker to discuss the issue of MLAs security with the LG.