New Delhi, October 16
Much before the Narendra Modi-led Central government's Clean India Campaign, in Delhi community representatives under the banner of Right to Sanitation Campaign (RSC) have undertaken the task of maintaining hygienic conditions, working towards clean toilets, women safety among others in their local areas, mostly urban poor settlements.

While as a part of the RSC — "We are ready.... Are you ready? has been launched here with an aim to improve access to sanitation, social activists from the Centre for Advocacy and Research (CFAR) in partnership with National Forum for Action on Convergence (NFAC) and RSC - civil society organisations - today called for positioning right to sanitation and hygiene for all in the development of the UN's post-2015 framework and SAARC agenda.

They want the Indian government to work towards a separate target for "universal access to sanitation" and look at sanitation from development perceptive.

"In order to build a smart city landfill sites are being pushed to the slum and urban poor settlement areas. Sanitation has to be seen for sustainable development goals and India has to be more accountable and take all sections along towards development," said Avinash Kumar, director (programme and policy), WanterAid India.

"Sanitation has to be looked in totality linking it to health, women’s needs, and access by deprived and disadvantaged sections. We are advocating convergence and that it should be understood from the community point of view," said NFAC convener Rashmi Singh, former executive director of National Mission for Empowerment of Women.

There were several community leaders who shared their experiences, such as Vimla of the Mahila Pragati Manch said, "The root cause of diseases are unsafe drinking water and unhygienic living conditions. Go to a resettlement or slum area and heaps of garbage and uncovered drains would tell you about the health of people living there. Please do not associate communities only with problems. They have as much stake in finding right solution as anyone else. We have been engaging people through our community groups and government via the gender resource centres in our areas."

"There was an open drain in our area in which kids have met with fatal accidents. People were suffering from diseases and so we women got it covered," said Jayanti, a community representative of Subhash Camp.

Meera of Sunlight Colony said, "I, along with other women, stop people who throw garbage in the drain in the locality. We educate the harms of poor hygiene."

New Delhi, October 16
The DDA Housing Scheme -2014 launched on September 1 ended yesterday. During one and half months time the DDA received at total number of 7.5 lakh applications, said an official.

The new scheme offered over 25,000 flats across various categories.

The fate of these applicants would be decided next month, as the housing authority has kept November 5 as the tentative date for the draw of the lots, the official said.

The DDA website had crashed within a few hours of its launch on September 1, prompting authorities to upgrade its server to meet the "exponentially increased user traffic".

The official said a dedicated server would be temporarily set up to cope with the anticipated rush of online traffic during the draw time. The server will have load-balancing facilities, to avert chances of crashing the website due to heavy traffic.

The website had crashed during the launch and the draw time of the previous scheme (DDA 2010 Housing Scheme). Keeping this in view the DDA is taking all precautionary measures this time, he said.

The procedure for the draw has also been uploaded on the website and applicants can now also check the status of their application online.

New Delhi, October 16
In the wake of the steep hike in parking rates announced by the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) today questioned the rationality behind such a move saying that the sole "motive" of the move and likely to be followed by other two corporations soon, is allegedly to serve the interests of parking mafia flourishing with political patronage across the national capital.

Pointing that when the SDMC has no idea how much revenue will be generated from this proposed hike and how it proposes to utilise it, the party said then there is no justification in having taken this decision and the AAP will launch a campaign against the corporation to highlight its "inefficiency and connivance in corruption with the sole intention of helping the parking mafia, which has become a source of permanent harassment for the public".

"The municipal corporations have outsourced the parking lots to private contractors and with active connivance of local political contacts, these unauthorised parking lots are mushrooming across the city. There are no uniform parking rates and the MCD is allowing the private contractors to fleece the people in order to allow their contacts to make money through unjustified means," said a party statement. It said the corporation needs to explain to people of Delhi the reason behind such a step.

It hit out saying that the corporation has allegedly turned a blind eye to the thriving business of outsourced illegal parking lots across the city and it has no details of how many of its parking lots are authorised and how many are functioning illegally.

New Delhi, October 16
A 26-year-old property dealer, who was allegedly abducted on Monday, was rescued in the wee hours here today from Ghaziabad and one of his kidnappers was arrested, said a police officer.

The kidnappers had demanded Rs 4 crore from his father Harish Chand, who lived in Kanpur, UP.

"The incident was reported at the Seemapuri police station on Tuesday evening by the victim's maternal uncle Sunil Kumar Kanojia. Rishabh Verma was rescued within 24 hours at 2.15 am today from Gagan Vihar in Ghaziabad. One of the kidnappers, identified as Saurabh has been arrested," said DCP (Northeast) RA Sanjeev.

The police suspect that some close relative had passed on the information about Rishabh to the abductors. Movements of Rishabh must have been kept under close watch for sometime before the plan to abduct him was made.

"Rishabh was found drugged, hands, legs tied with ropes and mouth gagged. He was found blind folded in a very poor state of health and hygiene," said DCP.— PTI