Delhi underground

Glad tidings
After a brief impasse, the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee and the Games Federation seem to be coming to a better understanding. During a recent press brief, the CGF chief Mike Fennel expressed satisfaction at the progress of work in Delhi and also commended OC Chairperson Suresh Kalmadi for the work put in by him and his team. Kalmadi said he is, “satisfied and extremely happy”, and have credit to the holiday season to the positive turn of events. “The last time Fennel visited, things looked bleak. However, it is all fine now. I think it is the festive season that has brought about the change in mood. The next time I need to call any foreign delegates for inspection, I will ensure they visit during Christmas,” he said.

Up in smoke
The Ministry of Environment and Forests advocates going paperless, but several of its records are in paper files. For an annual award that the Ministry gives for wildlife preservation by individuals in rural areas, the Ministry has called for nominations. It has specified that those even who had applied in 2007-08 can reapply. Reason?
The official notice sheepishly admits that old proposals for the same award — among many other paper documents — were gutted in a fire that broke out in Ministry in April this year.
And for the same reason, no awards were given for the previous year.

Road laws
During a Delhi High Court hearing on the guidelines for the police over sharing of information about investigations in criminal cases, Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam had to appear for the Centre. He, however, got a little late in reaching the court and expressed his apology saying, “I am sorry for reaching late — I got stuck in a traffic jam.” The Bench, which had minutes ago dismissed a PIL for opening the BRT for all vehicles, had a suggestion in store. “You (Government) can certainly make an exception on the BRT for your law officers so as to avoid traffic snags,” the Chief Justice said in a lighter vein. Subramaniam, did not mince words and replied, “Being an amicus curaie, I shall be the last one to seek an exception for myself.”

Tower of Babel
If the Assembly session is supposed to be a war of words and political banter, the recent session of the Delhi Assembly surely lived up to the mark and better still, also witnessed political duels in different languages. While BJP MLA Harcharan Singh Balli delivered most speeches in Punjabi, in one of the meetings held last week, BJP MLA Anil Jha took offence to Finance Minister A K Walia answering one of the questions put to him by the opposition in Punjabi. Jha, who is the ‘Bhojpuri face’ of the BJP in Delhi, resisted ‘Punjabi’ dominance and rattled out a sentence using words from four different languages — Hindi, Bhojpuri, Tamil and Telegu. “I can speak 11 different languages,” he told the bewildered House.

Image makeover
With ‘development’ being its prime agenda, the Haryana government is planning to rope in NRIs from the state for the Department of Public Relations, Information and Cultural Affairs. The newly-appointed director of the department, Shiv Raman Gaur, recently revealed that an annual get-together of the NRIs of Haryana would be held. Asking his officers to contribute for the preparation of an NRI directory, Gaur also advised them to enrich their vocabulary. Interestingly, the director also plans to organise workshops for the officials with a focus on English, in which veteran mediapersons would give them tips on preparing press notes.

Weathering the jibes
Weathermen who usually remain anonymous in the media seem to have had enough of the jokes and cartoons surrounding them. Recently, when they gathered in the capital to talk about climate, a weather expert mentioned how the jokes have entered the silver screen too. In the recent Bollywood movie Tum Mile, weathermen are depicted as a bunch of lazy buffoons who are too busy playing carrom to check weather updates or signal a warning when heavy rainfall is knocking on the computer screens. He said that all this has ‘tarnished’ the reputation of weathermen who do play carrom but also take their jobs seriously!