New Delhi, May 24
Reaching the President, the PMO and the Human Resource Ministry the opposition on the matter of Delhi University's transition to the Four-Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP) has grown louder and joining the ranks of critics are now former chairperson of UGC and space scientist Prof. Yash Pal, Man Booker nominee of the year and author Prof. U.R. Ananthamurthy, noted historian Romila Thapar, eminent critic Namvar Singh and poet and former chairperson, Lalit Kala Akademi, Ashok Vajpeyi.

In a letter addressed to the President, Pranab Mukherjee, they have expressed deep concern over the reports emerging from university about its new undergraduate programme and the manner in which it is being introduced from this academic year.

Instead of the hurried switch they have called for a revisit of the national policy and adequate discussion before introducing the revision and suggested the government to constitute a committee of nationally recognised scholars to examine the proposed format before it takes off.

"The structural change that DU is gearing up for goes beyond the National Policy on Education (1986) as it violates the 10+2+3 structure mandated by it and so the university should not be allowed to proceed. We urge the government and the President to intervene without further delay and save the lives of lakhs of youngsters from being manipulated through an ill-conceived educational experiment," they said.

"It seems that the university has failed to create consensus within its own academic community over a major shift that affects so many young people. By definition, a university is an institution that promotes a culture of dialogue and consensus," they stressed.

Rejecting the HRD Minister, Pallam Raju's, stand of noninterference on grounds of autonomy, they lamented over the divided community within the university itself and wrote, "We are distressed to hear that despite protests by senior scholars and public intellectuals, the MHRD and the UGC have decided to maintain distance from the conflict afflicting the University of Delhi. In our view, this decision is tantamount to abdication of responsibility."

New Delhi, May 24
A delegation of deliberative wings of all three Municipal Corporations of Delhi today met the Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit, to discuss several problems of their respective corporations. 

The delegation included Mayors of south, east and north Delhi, Sarita Chaudhary, Ram Narayan Dubey and Azad Singh, respectively, along with respective leader of the Houses of the corporations. The representatives of the three corporations raised number of issues like nomination of the councillors in Delhi Jal Board, DDA, DUSIB, property tax, shortage of staff, etc. — TNS

New Delhi, May 24
Ahead of the forthcoming Delhi Assembly elections, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is all set for its electoral debut as it announced a list of names of 44 shortlisted candidates for 12 constituencies today.

"The final 12 names would be selected after recommendations of grass-roots level workers and selection committee after proper consultations among them," said AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal.

The selection of the candidates was done by candidate screening committee co-chaired by Manish Sisodia, who himself was shortlisted for Patparganj and Sanjay Singh through several steps like screening, interviewing and verifying about their criminal antecedents and popularity among locals.

"Our focus is to ensure that candidates do not have any criminal case against them, they are honest, have a clean image. One member from a family has been considered and we have discouraged nepotism and dynastic politics," Kejriwal said.