Colonies rush to win legal status

Swept out of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, the Congress is playing Santa to regain lost ground. Sensing this, illegal colonies are queuing up to be regularised.

The party-run Delhi government received applications from 1,539 such colonies — a change in official status will guarantee them legal access to basic amenities like water and electricity. “Applications for regularisation were invited in 2002, but almost a thousand requests have come in the past few weeks,” a senior official said.

Residents of these colonies, who live under constant threat of demolition, vent their ire at the Shiela Dixit government in the civic elections. Now, authorities have decided to liberalise conditions for regularisation.

According to Ajay Maken, Union minister of state for urban development, once they make the grade, the colonies will be exempted from punitive action. He told Parliament recently that it will be up to the civic authorities to provide facilities aimed at ensuring that these colonies are integrated into the city’s planned development.

Lift scare for director

The script went awry for Madhur Bhandarkar last week: the director was stuck in an elevator for 45 minutes.

Bhandarkar got into the lift to get to his fifth-floor flat in Khar with a 75-year-old neighbour and a security guard.

Suddenly, the lift stopped between the third and the fourth floors and the lights went off. In no time, the trio started feeling claustrophobic. “Initially, I thought there was a power cut, but later discovered that it was a major snag. A few minutes later, the senior citizen (neighbour) inside the lift panicked and fainted,” said Bhandarkar.

When the filmmaker, who has asthma, started feeling uneasy, he called his wife Renu who, along with society members, informed the fire brigade and the Khar police station. They were finally rescued by fire officers, who managed to bring the lift down to the third floor.

Guests genial, hosts uptight

The guests didn’t make a fuss, but the hosts more than made up for it. Last month, when Chinese vice-foreign minister Dai Bingguo met national security adviser M.K. Narayanan in picturesque Coonoor, an iron curtain around the venue meant not a word went out.

Scribes waited endlessly during the two days outside The Taj Garden Retreat, a quaint 150-year-old British-style structure.

“Only photographers may take some pictures of the dignitaries strolling around the Botanical Garden (in Ooty). If a reporter dares ask a question, our people in mufti will bodily remove you from the scene,” a police officer warned journalists.

But when some intrepid scribes put up a few queries, Narayanan and Dai obliged without any tantrums.

Ghalib revisited

A hundred and fifty years ago, the poems and couplets of Ghalib and Zauq resonated in the court of Bahadur Shah Zafar.

Recently, some 200 Delhi enthusiasts clapped and laughed in excitement as students and professors of Jamia Milia Islamia University staged a mushaira describing the last days of Delhi before the fall to the British.

Original poems interspersed with the works of Ghalib and Zauq, Zafar’s poet laureates, brought alive Delhi’s cultural history. A few poems from the Mughal period — written by a water seller at Chandni Chowk, a barber, a courtesan and others — were also recited.

Rakshanda Jalil, who directed the programme Dilli ki Aakhri Shama, said it was the start of a series of such events to mark 150 years of the 1857 uprising.

Mumbai: Have a passion for freezing frames? You could join Satyam National Academy of Photography’s summer workshop. Full-time batches, each of eight days’ duration, are planned till May 21. The academy is next to Vivekanand Classes, Senapati Bapat Marg, Dadar (West).