Spiritual gift
This time round, Mayor Arti Mehra decided to go spiritual with her New Year gifts. At the annual lunch hosted by her, the BJP-led MCD decided not to gift the usual diaries and calendars to its guests. Instead, everyone was given a pocket Bhagvad Gita, all hard bound with gilded edges. The BJP, which in a city like Delhi treads carefully around hard-line Hindutva ideals, seems to have made its stand clear this year. So along with lunch, desert and coffee, scribes in the Capital received large doses of Hindutva as well.

Charge of the Cong brigade
It was an unusual conference in which the personalities addressing the issue were bigger in stature than the issue itself. Reacting to a ‘jail bharo’ demonstration called earlier by the BJP against the demolitions in the city, Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee Chief JP Aggarwal had gathered a star studded galaxy. The routine BJP agitation got a shot in the arm when Congress heavyweights decided to take on the “battle”. For the first time, MP Sandeep Dikshit and Union Minister Ajay Maken were seen on the same platform, an unusual sight as the two are often thought to be in opposing camps. Apparently the press conference came immediately after Aggarwal was pulled up by the high command and asked to become more active. A panic stricken Aggarwal decided not to go the whole mile alone. The result — charge of the Congress brigade!

Objection, My Lord
A round of hotly contested arguments took place in the High Court for the bail of a man facing trial on serious criminal charges. While the accused was defended by a senior and respected lawyer, the prosecution was represented by an eager greenhorn. The young prosecutor presented a strong case against the accused by calling him a “danger to the society”. The prosecutor, anxious not to let the case slip away from him, interrupted the defence counsel’s arguments repeatedly until the latter turned to his younger colleague and asked: “Will you let me speak or would you like to prosecute as well as defend my client?” Well, the order, as expected, went in favour of the senior lawyer, with the court noting that it would not be proper to put the accused under continued incarceration.

False alarm
The Police Control Room of east Delhi recently went into a tizzy on receiving a call from a popular mall at Anand Vihar alerting them of a kidnapping. Rushing to the spot, the police discovered that the ‘victim’ had fainted at the mall and had been taken to a nearby hospital by her own family. A bystander, presuming that the girl was being kidnapped, had immediately called the police.