Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar, who is in charge of the crucial portfolios of agriculture, consumer affairs and food and public distribution in the Union Cabinet and has been under fire from a section of Congress leaders who have questioned his ability to handle all three of them simultaneously, on Monday threw the ball back in the court of the Congress.

Chief minister Sheila Dikshit on Monday said that there will be no hike in electricity rates for the ongoing financial year. The statement has come after disagreements on the issue in between the Delhi government and regulator DERC over fixing new power tariff.

A 18-year-old woman working as a domestic help was found dead in mysterious circumstances at the servant quarters of a businessman’s residence in west Delhi on Monday morning.

With the onset of monsoon, the city is now dealing with the problem of waterlogging, which is likely to get worse with all the digging being carried out for various Games projects. On Monday, the MCD control rooms received 95 complaints of waterlogging. However, the MCD claimed that it was prepared to deal with the problems of waterlogging.

The NDMC and the traders in Connaught Place are awaiting anxiously these days for the two Games projects currently going on at Connaught Place, to get over at the earliest possible. While the CP restoration project is nearly 90 to 95 per cent over, the other project of installing four escalators in CP’s outer circle and laying of duct for wires in the middle circle is keeping the authorities on their toes.

While Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikhsit on Monday said that the “Bharat Bandh” organised by the Opposition parties was a “flop show”, she also stated that the price rise is a “matter of concern” for the Delhi and the Central governments.

The “Bharat Bandh” was supposed to be an effort on the part of the Opposition parties, particularly the BJP, to show that they care for the common man reeling under high price rise. However, as it turned out, the people on the road found it difficult to concur with the political parties’ views, caught as they were in some of the worst traffic

The city witnessed traffic snarls and chaos on Monday as the BJP, the Janata Dal (U) and the Left parties hit the streets with Bharat Bandh call in protest against price rise of petroleum products. Several leaders courted arrest and thousands of others were detained at various places. A large number of people found themselves stranded for well over a couple of hours, even as the police maintained a vigil in large numbers.

A Delhi court on Monday sentenced six Uttar Pradesh policemen, including a superintendent of police, to two years in jail for illegally confining the relatives of a man and fabricating evidence against them for his act of marrying a girl against the wishes of her family.

India is all set to roll out its indigenous naval Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) at the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) facility in Bengaluru on Monday, which will be witnessed by defence minister A.K. Antony.