Delhi-NCR news live: HC seeks AIIMS response on plea to stop sewage treatment plant construction near residential colony

The Delhi high court Tuesday sought AIIMS reply on a plea seeking that the construction of a sewage treatment plant (STP) near residential colony of Gautam Nagar be stopped as it will be a health hazard for the residents and lead to stench. Justice Prathiba M Singh asked the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) to file a detailed reply to the plea and listed the matter for further hearing on April 27.

The Fire Department received a call of the collapse of the house from Qureshi Nagar, gali Charkhi wali, Sadar Bazar at 10.30 a.m. after which the fire tenders were pressed into action.

Delhi was enveloped in a dense cover of fog on Tuesday morning, reducing visibility to zero in some parts of the city, MeT officials said. The minimum temperature at 7.8 degrees Celsius was one notch below the average in the season, said a MeT official. Air quality in Delhi was poor, with index value of 300 at 9 am, showed realtime data of the Central Pollution Control Board.

Petrol and diesel prices on Tuesday climbed to fresh highs in the country as rates were hiked after a three-day hiatus. Petrol and diesel prices were hiked by 35 paise per litre each, according to price notifications of state-owned fuel retailers. The increase took petrol prices to a fresh high of Rs 87.30 a litre in Delhi and to Rs 93.83 in Mumbai. Diesel rates rose to Rs 77.48 per litre in the national capital and to an all-time high of Rs 84.36 in Mumbai.

Actor Deep Sidhu, who was wanted in connection with the Red Fort incident on Republic Day, has been arrested by the Delhi Police, officials said on Tuesday. The arrest has been made by a team of Delhi Police's Special Cell, said Sanjeev Kumar Yadav, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Cell). The police had announced a cash reward of Rs 1 lakh for information leading to Sidhu's arrest.

With no major trouble having been reported from farmers’ protest sites in the past few days, the Delhi Police top brass has decided to withdraw additional personnel deployed from across the city at the border points of the capital. The personnel have been instructed to go back to their respective units and districts. Sources say the decision has been taken as day-to-day functioning of the police force was being heavily impacted. Investigating officers couldn’t even go to court for trials and proceedings, they said.

A college in the border area of Arunachal Pradesh’s Bomdila, another in Ladakh and an institute catering to the tribal population of Madhya Pradesh — Vidya Vistar (V2S) will now connect all of them, and many more, with Delhi University. Under the scheme, proposed by acting vice-chancellor P C Joshi and launched this year, DU colleges will collaborate with those in backward areas across the country to share their academic expertise and conduct joint research. Many DU colleges have already chalked out plans to share their lectures, laboratories and libraries, and will also conduct student exchange programmes and push for mutual research. DU colleges can choose their own partner institutes under V2S.

The diminishing fear of Covid-19 is clearly in evidence at Kalkaji Mandir in south Delhi, where the number of daily devotees is rising to the pre-pandemic levels. On Monday, the queue waiting to enter Goddess Kali’s temple was several hundred metres long. Within however, an important change has come. After Delhi High Court’s intervention in a dispute over one of the Bhardwaj families — the custodian Brahmin priests of the temple —conducting rituals and sharing the donations, the 38 donation boxes placed across the shrine have been marked with digital numerical stickers and fresh steel locks.

What began as a dispute over the rights of a woman member of the priestly family to conduct puja sewa in Kalkaji Mandir in south Delhi culminated on Monday with Delhi High Court ordering a major clean-up of the complex, while appointing receivers to take stock of the daily donations that run into several lakhs of rupees. Delhi High Court secured the right of the woman petitioner, Kamlesh Sharma, to conduct prayers in the temple but through a male nominee as per mandir traditions. It rejected the stand of the current priests that a woman could not be allowed to oversee the prayer ceremony. The contending priests and the woman are legal heirs of the chief priest.

After a turnout of 74.4% for Covid vaccination in Delhi last Monday, the count has remained below 55% for the past seven days despite inclusion of frontline workers among beneficiaries and addition of around 80 inoculation centres. On Monday, 9,740 of the 18,000 expected beneficiaries turned up to get the shot. The turnout was 54.1% as compared to 53.1% during the last vaccination session on Saturday. Only 11 adverse events were reported.

Anand Vihar in east Delhi, already a big transport hub with a railway station, two Delhi Metro corridors and two inter-state bus terminals, will get an addition in the form of the underground station of the 82-km Delhi-Meerut Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) corridor. The construction of the station began recently. National Capital Region Transport Corporation (NCRTC), which is building the RRTS corridor, disclosed it has commenced the construction of the Anand Vihar station. “Activities such as soil investigation, identification and diversions of utilities are under way. Tunnel boring machines are expected to arrive in the latter half of 2021,” an NCRTC spokesperson said. “We have designed the station to be seamlessly integrated with Delhi Metro’s Blue line (Dwarka-Vaishali/Noida Electronic City) and Pink Line (Shiv Vihar-Majlis Park).”

The Delhi zoo has remained closed for nearly a year now, earlier due to he Covid-19 pandemic and now the recent scare of bird flu cases.

Electricity demand in Delhi is picking up in the new year, recovering from the coronavirus pandemic-hit 2020, with January registering 19 per cent more peaks on 23 days than that in the last year, officials of power distribution companies said on Monday. Delhi's peak power demand was 3,504 MW (megawatt) on December 1, 2020. Since then, it has increased by over 50 per cent, said a BSES spokesperson.