New Delhi, March 28
Sanitation, water shortage, bad housing infrastructure and lack of parking spaces, these are the primary issues that most residents of the New Delhi Parliamentary constituency assert, need to be dealt with.

In view of the forthcoming 2014 Lok Sabha elections they expect the candidates of the different political parties to resolve such issues, which are not new and which is affecting them on a daily basis.

The New Delhi constituency consists of prominent locations of historical importance such as Rajpath, Janpath, Connaught Place, Rashtrapati Bhawan and posh residential colonies near Teen Murti. But it also has colonies such as Ranjit Nagar, Masjid Moth, Joshi Road and Jodhpur Mess, where infrastructure problems are abounded.

A retired government servant Inder Bir Singh (71), who resides at Ranjit Nagar, said that the main problem in his colony is the sewage system. "The sewage system was constructed for single-storey houses. What is happening now is that people are constructing four-five storey houses. And the sewage system is not capable of handling the pressure from these multi-storey buildings. As a result, the sewage seeps on the streets outside our houses," he said.

Far away from Ranjit Nagar is a crowded locality called Masjid Moth. A resident Suresh (45) said that water supply to the colony lasts for a few hours every day. "It comes in the morning and in the evening. But there is no fixed timing for it. And the water is as bad as the sewage," she said.

Another Masjid Moth resident, Rekha Saini, said, "There was no water supply on the day of Holi. People were aware that such a thing would happen and so they had filled their buckets on the night prior to the festival," she said.

While taking into account the basic requirements of proper sanitation, clean water supply, housing and roads, the candidates from the main political parties, Ashish Khetan of the AAP, Meenakshi Lekhi of BJP and Ajay Maken of the Congress, have asserted that infrastructure development is one of their main priorities for the elections.

Speaking to The Tribune, Lekhi said that there has to be budgetary allocation and formulas for solving problems regarding infrastructure. "The budget is not being allocated for the provision of finances for preventing these problems. There also has to be housing and proper infrastructure at a large scale. This is the key plan of the BJP, of setting up 100 new 'smart cities' with planned infrastructure, sewage system, water, electricity and zoning of industrial and residential areas," said Lekhi, who is contesting the elections for the first time.

She is a national spokesperson for the BJP and is a Supreme Court lawyer. Her rival, Maken is an MP of the 15th Lok Sabha and a former union minister. He has been an MP from the New Delhi constituency for the past 10 years. In 2004, he had won over the BJP candidate, Jagmohan, by a margin of 12,784 votes. Then in 2009, Maken won over senior BJP leader Vijay Goel by a margin of close to two lakh votes.

Khetan, who is an investigative journalist and was running an online news portal called Gulail.com, agreed that water, electricity, streets, sewage and corruption are the main issues in the New Delhi Parliamentary constituency. "Everyone has to deal with them. And do not consider these as local issues, but as national issues. We will raise them in Parliament," he told this correspondent.

He believes that the AAP chief, Arvind Kejriwal's win over the former Delhi Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit, by a margin of more than 25,000 votes from the New Delhi Assembly constituency during the Delhi Assembly Elections, will benefit him for the Lok Sabha elections.

Lekhi, Maken and Khetan are among the 29 candidates contesting the elections from the New Delhi constituency.

New Delhi, March 28
The BJP candidate from the New Delhi Lok Sabha constituency, Meenakshi Lekhi, today said that the CBI inquiry should be done to know how the government had decided to shift Kathputli colony located in the constituency.

The government wanted to shift the residents of 40-years-old Kathputli colony in a transit camp at Anand Parbat, saying that each family would be allotted flats in 14-story high-rise buildings in Kathputli Colony. But they have not been given full plan. The building will have a lift. But, the residents wanted to know who will maintain the lift and other things in the colony as they are poor and they on their own cannot maintain the things, said Patel Nagar MLA R.P. Singh.

Lekhi said that residents are being cheated by the government as the land has been sold to a private builder at a cost of Rs 6 crore. Area of the colony is 60,000 sq yards.

The colony is a slum which houses families of puppeteers, magicians, folk singers, painters, dancers, acrobats, jugglers, storytellers, etc. It is estimated that there are about 2,800 families that live in this slum.

The residents originally belong to Rajasthan, Maharashtra, UP, Bihar and Gujarat and some other states. They earn their livelihood through performing folk dances, traditional singing and magic, small handicraft businesses and also working as support to the adjoining affluent colonies.

Addressing a conference, Lekhi said the sitting MP has never visited the colonies where people do not have basic amenities like sewer and water. If voted to power she assured to provide all the basic amenities, death and birth certificate within a day and land related documents within a week, employment for youths and women security.

When asked that the Congress said that the BJP would make entire country Gujrat, Lekhi expressed positively and said the country would be developed on the basis of Gujrat model. All the villages will be provided drinking water, good roads and 24 hours power supply.

New Delhi, March 28
After a decent outreach on the social media, the AAP is now connecting to its supporters through a new android mobile application whose downloads have crossed 20,000 over the last one week since it was put up on the Google Play Store.

Developed by a party volunteer, Kripacharya, the app was uploaded on the party website for six days and until Wednesday the party saw a total of 15,000 downloads from smart phone users, said Ankit Lal, party in charge of IT cell.

Equipped with varied features, the new app informs those interested with all that is latest about the party with updates of the past 24 hours and from them the information will be disseminated to more people.

"The app will enable the mobile users to reach out to all with our press releases and updates related to the party. They can have access of news and videos from Youtube and share feeds, of our Facebook and Twitter accounts. It bridges android and whatsapp and thus increases the connectivity. The idea is to link all possible channels of communication," said Ankur Shrisvastav, another party member.

Even before the party made the app public, the supporters had started using it, but the Google Play Store takes about 24 hours to reflect the status, added Shrisvastav. The app downloads have spiked in the past two days with nearly 5,000-7,000 downloads until Tuesday.

New Delhi, March 28
Parents waiting to get their children admitted in nursery will have to wait some more time. The Delhi High Court today said its stay on fresh draw of lots for admission will continue till April 2 when it hears pleas against admission guidelines.

A bench of acting Chief Justice BD Ahmed and Justice S Mridul renotified the petitions, in which the fresh draw of lots were stayed and the admission process has been put on hold, saying it has to think on how to resolve the issue.

The bench also invited suggestions from all the parties so as to enable the court to take an informed decision.

Meanwhile, one petition challenging the alumni and sibling categories in nursery admission was dismissed as withdrawn after the Delhi government submitted data which showed that a majority of the children admitted in the first draw of lots belonged to 70 pointers who came under the neighbourhood criteria.

The petition was withdrawn in view of the data submitted by Delhi government which said that as per information received from 723 schools around 60 per cent of the general category seats in these institutes were given to 70 pointers.

As per the Lt Governor's nursery admission guidelines, out of 100, 70 points are given childrem who reside within 0 to 8 kms of a school, 20 points to a child whose sibling is studying in the same school and 5 points are earmarked for students whose parents were alumni. — PTI 

New Delhi, March 28
Indo-Pak's all women painting exhibition "Colours of Hope" was inaugurated today by the Pakistan's High Commissioner Abdul Basit.

The five female artists from Pakistan and four contemporary female artists from India are jointly exhibiting their paintings for the first time.

The core idea of this venture is to create the sense of amalgamation.

With the provision of sharing lifestyle, the artists will be provided scope to interact with the Indian youth by going to college, schools and other habitat places.

"Colours of Hope" is being organised by a non-government organisation, Empowerment.