New Delhi, August 1
The power situation in Delhi today remained normal after almost two days of blackout in the city, owing to the collapse of the northern grid.

All the power generating stations of Delhi were functioning to their capacity.

The peak load met during the past 24 hours was 4,045 MW of which 1,448 MW was met from generating stations in Delhi and 2,597 MW was taken from the central sector stations.

"The total demand met in 24 hours from the midnight of July 30 till midnight of July 31 was 70.809 million units," said an official of the Delhi Transco.

Weather plays a big role in the electricity consumption. The weather in the city remained pleasant with rain lashing for the second consecutive day which led to less consumption of electricity. It's raining for the last early morning and received 15.6 mm of rain till 8.30 this morning. The minimum temperature was recorded at 26.6° C, normal for this time of the year.

New Delhi, August 1
A 32-year-old engineer allegedly set his room on fire and jumped to his death from the sixth floor of Aashiyana Apartments in Mayur Vihar early Wednesday morning.

The police has claimed to have found a suicide note allegedly written by Mridul on a wall in the house. In the note, he has blamed a relative in Kuwait for his extreme step.

Mridul Sahni (32) lived with his father VK Sahni (80) at the apartments. Mridul, an engineer, had been jobless for the past few months. He was unmarried.

Mridul's mother had passed away in 2000 and he had been under depression since then. He was allegedly being treated at Apollo Hospital.

On late Tuesday night, Mridul was reportedly playing loud music and neighbours had complained about it to the guard. Around 4.15 am on Wednesday, the guard saw Mridul's body lying in a pool of blood on the ground. He immediately informed the police and fire department.

The fire department personnel rescued Mridul's father from the balcony of the house.

Meanwhile, the police rushed Mridul to a nearby hospital where doctors declared him 'brought dead'.

According to investigators, the suicide note on the wall has been written in blue ink with a thumb. Mridul's family is being questioned.

New Delhi, August 1
Five persons were arrested for allegedly selling an apartment at Munirka Vihar to four persons and cheating them of more than Rs 4 crore, the police said today. Two of the arrested individuals are a woman and her son, who is the main conspirator and was later blackmailed by the other three into selling the flat to the fourth victim.

The woman Narmada Devi and her son Deepak Varshney, who are residents of Haridwar in Uttarakhand. The other three arrested individuals are Naveen Kumar, alias Ganesh, Bijender Tokas, both residents of Munirka village and Rochak Sharma, who stays at Munirka Vihar. They all were arrested on July 29.

The accused would sell their apartment to a victim. "Devi would convince the buyers to rent out the flat to her by pretending to be helpless over the illness of her husband. She would then sell the apartment to other buyers," said DCP Chhaya Sharma.

The case came to light on July 8, when Mahesh Verma lodged a complaint at the Vasant Vihar police station. He said that he had purchased a Delhi Development Authority (DDA) apartment from Devi. He then mortgaged his house to IDBI Bank and took a loan of Rs 45 lakh. He rented out the apartment to Varshney.

He later found some persons other than his tenants residing in his flat. When he enquired, they said that they had purchased the flat from Devi.

The police learnt that Devi with her son had sold the same apartment to three more buyers. They were planning to settle permanently in Nepal.

On July 29, the police was tipped off that Devi with her son would come to R.K. Puram. They were arrested from there and Rs 1.10 lakh was seized from them.

Varshney had lost a huge amount of money in the share market. To pay the debt he took loans from money lenders at high interest rates. He started cheating people by selling his apartment at Munirka Vihar.

He received Rs 90 lakh from the first buyer, Mahesh Verma, and then paid some debts. Varshney said that he had taken loans from Gajender, Naveen and Rochak at high interest rates. They got aware that he had sold his flat to more than two persons. They blackmailed him into selling it to the fourth.

New Delhi, August 1
The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) will run 160 extra train trips tomorrow, the day for the celebration of Raksha Bandhan and will deploy additional personnel to cater to the extra rush of commuters.

Trains will be run at peak-hour frequency from 8 am to 8.30 pm and over 20 trains which are normally withdrawn from lines during off-peak hours (12.30 pm to 4.30 pm) will be kept in service performing over 160 extra trips, making a total of about 2,900 trips tomorrow, said a spokesperson for the DMRC.

The DMRC will also deploy more customer facilitation agents (CFA) to help and guide commuters on the day. A total of 182 shifts of CFAs of four hours, each have been arranged for this purpose at 93 Metro stations. The prominent stations to have extra CFA deployment are Dilshad Garden, Shahdara, Welcome, Seelampur, Shastri Park, Pitampura, Rohini East and West, Rithala, Jahangirpuri, Adarsh Nagar, GTB Nagar, Yamuna Bank, Uttam Nagar East, Nawada, Noida City Centre, Botanical Garden, Noida Sector 18, MG Road, HUDA City Centre, Sarita Vihar, Lajpat Nagar, Badarpur Peeragarhi, Nangloi, Mundka, etc.

"In addition, extra personnel will be deployed to handle the increased load on the ticketing system and the ticketing staff on 93 stations will do 228 additional shifts of four hours each," he said.

The Delhi Metro, normally, witnesses a huge rush of commuters on the Raksha Bandhan day. In 2011, around 17 lakh passengers traveled on Raksha Bandhan by the Metro. At present, the Delhi Metro ridership has already increased substantially as the Metro carried over 19 lakh passengers per day in July 2012 which is the maximum average ridership registered so far in any month.

On the other hand, the Delhi government has also announced free ride for women in the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) buses on the occasion of Raksha Bandhan. This was announced today by Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit. "The decision has been taken to ensure that women could reach easily to the places of their brothers," she said.

Minister of state for Transport Arvinder Singh Lovely said women would be able to travel free of cost till 5 pm. However, the free travel will not be allowed in AC buses.

New Delhi, August 1
The Delhi BJP has called a conference to protest against alleged commercialisation of basic requirements like power and water in the city.

The party has invited more than 3,000 resident welfare associations (RWAs) and traders' organisations for the meet on August 4.

The event will see the participation of experts on energy and water policies from across the country. Water expert professor Bhagwati Prasad from Udaipur will present a detailed agenda on "commercialisation of water".

"The BJP has resolved that it will not allow the anti-people government of Delhi to continue in power. The Chief Minister of Delhi has announced that the entire system of water supply will be privatised within the next two years. During the last 10 years, there has been 1,700 per cent increase in the power tariff in Delhi. After privatisation, it will further increase by many hundreds and the people of Delhi will not be able to bear the burden," said Vijender Gupta, Delhi BJP chief.

Gupta said that a large number of RWAs were being contacted for the conference.

"Organizations are being invited through SMSes, e-mails and letters. The office bearers of the party have been given the responsibility to personally contact the RWAs," said Gupta. 

New Delhi, August 1
All seven bar associations representing the advocates of the Capital have formed a co-ordination council to deal with the issues related to the fraternity.

Rajiv Jai, president of the New Delhi Bar Association (Patiala House courts) and Saqib Quereshi, vice-president of the bar association of the Karkardooma courts, have been appointed as the chairman and secretary-general of the council, respectively.

The council represents all the bar associations of the Supreme Court, high court, district courts and other courts, including the Central Administrative Tribunal.

"We will look into the needs of the advocates such as housing, insurance, medical claims etc and create a welfare fund for them," said Rajiv Jai.