Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was among ‘several’ representatives of non-BJP ruled States, who were left pondering over the seemingly “different yardsticks” - especially when it came to access to smartphones - for invitees at an event hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi here on Saturday.
Mr. Kejriwal was ‘among a selected group’ to be asked to ‘cough up their phones at the door’.
Mr. Kejriwal was allowed to attend the meet only after depositing his phone.
When Mohammad Khalid - the man recently arrested for allegedly sending obscene messages to 1,500 women - was paraded before the media, he made a request that drew peals of sarcastic laughter from journalists and policemen.
Khalid requested the photojournalists not to publish his photograph in newspapers.
"My parents' reputation will be hurt," he said.
When Khalid was being escorted out of the police station sometime later, he again requested that he not be walked past his aged parents who were waiting outside.
That came across as ironic, for the allegations against Khalid suggested he did not care about the reputation of women he allegedly harassed.
Victims had said that they would beg Khalid to spare their reputation, but he would mock them.
While the police claimed they had strong evidence against Khalid, his parents have maintained that he was mentally unstable and was being falsely implicated.
Waterlogging on Thursday evening led to massive traffic jams around the city and the little rainfall brought Delhi to a standstill. While Delhiites stuck in massive traffic jams blamed the authorities for the mess, officials of the municipal corporations were also caught in the traffic.
A senior municipal officer left for his home in South Delhi from the Civic Centre headquarters at 6 p.m. and reached at 9.30 p.m.
What usually would take him half-an-hour, took him three hours longer because of the waterlogged roads.
Maintaining that his ordeal was not the corporations' fault, the officer blamed the Delhi government for failing to remove silt from the big drains around the city.
Not only officers, but political leaders ended up missing important events due to the rain. Several BJP councillors couldn't make it to the meeting of the South Delhi Municipal Corporation's Appointments Committee because of the rain, they claimed. The ruling-BJP ended up losing an important vote to the Congress.
When Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday rebuked his Minister Sandeep Kumar on Twitter to abort the 'anti-begging' drive, it exposed the equation between the Social Welfare Department's officials and the Minister.
The top officials of the Social Welfare Department were clueless of the Minister's plans to kick-start such a drive.
In fact, when The Hindu did the same story on July 2, the officials called the reporter to tell that the story required to be verified as the file was never moved in the department.
Turns out, in the three meetings held on the anti-beggars drive, no bureaucrat was ever invited. The Minister along with his 'advisors', who are AAP members, discussed, finalised and prepared the blueprint of the proposal.
(Contributed by Jatin Anand, Shiv Sunny, Damini Nath and Maria Akram)
