New Delhi, July 1
To contain irregularities, the Delhi government has decided that people can get their property registered online.

This decision has been taken after the government received information about the alleged irregularities in the sub-registrar office. Under the new scheme, people can get their property registered while sitting at home.

Initially, the registration system will be made available at the Mehrauli sub-registrar office on Monday and within the next few months, it will be extended to the remaining 12 sub-registrar offices.

A government official said that the system will be highly secured. The online system will ensure transparency and eliminate the role of middlemen in the registration process.

Under the new system, registration fee will also be online. People will get appointments with senior officials of the sub-registrar office for verification of documents.

The sub-registrar office in Mehrauli has been renovated. The remaining 12 sub-registrar offices are also being given a facelift to provide people various facilities like including tea, coffee and snacks.

All the sub-registrar offices will have enough computers to help people get any information.

The government has set a target of collecting Rs 4,300 crore from stamps and registration fees in 2012-13.

The government had increased the registration fee for properties valued above Rs 50 lakh and lifted the upper cap of Rs 50,000 as maximum registration, resulting in increase in the registration fees for high-value properties.

Sources said that this is one of the ways that the government has explored to get revenue so that development work can be done in the neglected areas.

New Delhi, July 1
It is surprising that while the majority of Delhi areas remain parched due to shortage of water this summer, localities in the prime New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) face no such woes.

This after the Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit promised that VVIPs residing in the Lutyens' Zone areas too would have to take 50 per cut in supply so that there is equitable distribution of water, especially in the areas where people queue up for municipal supply just to fetch a pail of water for daily use.

Denizens of northwest and southwest Delhi rely on water reaching them through tankers even as the taps remain dry. Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party legislators from Bijwasan, Palam Vihar and Kirari Sat Prakash Rana, Dharmdev Solanki and Anil Jha respectively have repeatedly underscored this issue by raising it in the Assembly in the recent past. Their prayer to the Chief Minister was to provide water to the people of their constituency in her capacity as the Chairperson of the Delhi Jal Board (DJB).

With the blazing summer sun adding to their miseries, the situation spun out of control when people came out to protest demanding that the government provide them with water. Considering the gravity of the situation, Delhi Chief Minister met her Haryana counterpart Bhupinder Singh Hooda, seeking water from his state. When Haryana expressed difficulty in releasing additional water, Sheila Dikshit announced that 50 per cent water to the NDMC areas should be curtailed to fulfill the needs of the neglected areas.

Was it a case of grandstanding? So it seems for the diktat from the CM lasted just two days. Normal water supply to the areas serviced by NDMC was restored and confirming this, DJB officials insisted that there is no need for effecting a cut.

DJB Chief Executive Officer Debashree Mukherjee told The Tribune that the quantity of the major supply to NDMC is procured from Chandrawal and Wazirabad water treatment plants. A minor portion of the quantity is supplied through Haiderpur water treatment plant.

When the raw water supply to Chandrawal and Wazirbad treatment plants fell short, the cut was announced by the Chief Minister, the official said. Now these plants have sufficient water. Hence, the supply to the NDMC areas is restored to normal level of 120 million litre daily (MLD).

When the Chief Minister directed that the water supply be curtailed, the DJB slashed it to the NDMC areas by making available only 60 MLD, leading to a crisis in the places which house VVIPs as also some colonies inhabited by the government employees.

Was the normal water supply restored to the NDMC areas under pressure from the above? Senior officials at the DJB said on the condition of anonymity that the Centre too sought a reversal of the decision on 50 per cent cut even as the majority of Delhiites thirst for water.

New Delhi, July 1
The greenery is the latest victim of water shortage in the national Capital. The parks in most of the areas have gone dry without sufficient supply of water.

The scarcity of water in the city has affected the maintenance of parks which is done by the municipal corporations. According to officials of the horticulture department, it has been difficult to arrange water for the upkeep of parks for the last one month.

They said that most of the tubewells in the parks were not working and so they could not water the plants.

"The scarcity of water is already a big problem in the city. We use treated sewage water for watering the plants, but even that is not available for some time now. We dug borewells, but the depleting water table makes them useless," said a senior official of the department.

The parks are also shrinking as municipal corporations do not have sufficient gardeners to look after them. The councillors alleged that the civic agencies had been unable to recruit more staff or arrange for better maintenance.

They said that they had raised measures to simplify the recruitment procedure of gardeners, but all in vain.

The erstwhile Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) looked after the maintenance of 15,000 parks, for which there are only 4,500 gardeners that have now been divided among the three corporations leading to an acute shortage of staff.

After trifurcation, over 6,300 parks have fallen in the jurisdiction of the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), 6,500 parks in the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) and around 2,500 in the East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC).

"Around 120 rainwater harvesting plants, of which 90 are in south Delhi, were set up but barring a few, all have collapsed because there is no mechanism to clean the units," said Mahender Nagpal, Leader of the House in the NDMC.

The councillors of the SDMC said that cleaning of parks, removal of garbage, painting grills, cutting grass, maintenance of composting sites, etc., will be taken up as priority work.

New Delhi, July 1
Leader of opposition in the Delhi Legislative Assembly Vijay Kumar Malhotra today asked the Delhi government to immediately rollback the hike in power tariff announced recently or be prepared for a public backlash.

Addressing protest meetings at several places in the Capital, Malhotra said the Sheila Dikshit government had abandoned its responsibilities towards the people of Delhi and was blatantly encouraging private power supplying companies to loot and fleece the helpless residents of the city.

Malhotra lashed out at the government, accusing it of misleading people on the quantum of power tariff hike.

"The hike is not 26 per cent as claimed by Dikshit, but three times more than that. In an ordinary household, the consumption of electricity ranges from 200 to 400 units a month. Earlier, one unit used to cost Rs 3, now it will cost Rs 5.18.

"The attitude of the government towards the people is becoming despotic and cruel. The citizens of Delhi are already reeling from unprecedented price rise, corruption, law and order problems and now Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit has dealt another blow to them. She seems to be more interested in pleasing the private power distribution companies by giving them subsidy while imposing taxes on the already overburdened people.

New Delhi, July 1
With the arrest of a person, the west district police has claimed to have busted a notorious gang of vehicle thieves and solved three cases of two-wheeler theft.

Ajay Kumar was arrested in Paschim Vihar. Police officials said he was driving a motorcycle stolen from Sector 5 Gurgaon. Later at his instance, the police recovered two more motorcycles stolen from Paschim Vihar.

In view of an increase in the incidents of snatching and vehicle theft in the west district, the police had been holding picket checking at different locations.

"While conducting checking at a picket on Balbir Singh Marg in Paschim Vihar around 3 pm, a person on a black Pulsar bike came from the Jwalaheri side. He was stopped and asked to produce the documents of the vehicle. On interrogation, it was learnt that the motorcycle had been stolen," said V Renganathan, additional commissioner of police, west district.