UnderThe world: Off the record

Who’ll blink first?

A few scribes were discussing what could be a logical solution to the stalemate in the much-delayed Charkop-Bandra-Mankhurd elevated Metro with MMRDA Commissioner Rahul Asthana. The construction of the corridor,to be completed in 2014,is yet to start due to differences between MMRDA and the Reliance Infrastructure-led consortium over suitable land for the car depot and acquiring full right of way. Can the contract be axed,who will take the first step,the reporters asked.

One said,“Is it just a question on who will blink first?” Slightly amused,the MMRDA Commissioner replied,“Yes,but the government never blinks.”

For some fresh air

Habits,they say,are difficult to give up. Officials working in the vicinity of Oval Maidan do not seem to be happy these days. For years,they enjoyed the breeze blowing in through their office windows. But with their workplaces being renovated and centralised air conditioning in place,this simple pleasure has been lost. One can often see the officials outside,soaking in fresh air. Nostalgia seems to have taken over. There were dark cramped spaces,but there was a closeness officials shared. The daily cuppa does not seem to taste the same.

Perfect stymieing

During the standing committee meeting on Thursday,MNS’s latest effort to score over Shiv Sena seems to have backfired. With an eye on the media,MNS corporator Sandip Deshpande dramatically raised a point of order,taunting the Sena on the condition of Shivaji Park. “The lamppost does not work,grass has grown near the statues,the Shivaji statue has been poorly maintained and there are potholes on the ground. How does the Shiv Sena plan to have its Dussehra rally here then?” In a swift move,Sena’s Rahul Shewale,who is also the standing committee chairman,retorted,“We’ve already spoken to the Municipal Commissioner on this,we are on the job. You don’t worry too much about the rally.”

August reminder

While the BMC has asked Raza Academy to pay for restoring the Amar Jawan Memorial,the Shiv Sena has been rather quiet on the issue. During the standing committee meeting,BJP corporators cried hoarse demanding that the miscreants pay for desecrating the monument. Meanwhile,the Sena,whose chief Uddhav Thackeray recently inaugurated the revamped memorial without giving so much as an invitation to his BJP allies,said nothing.

However,Sena corporator Anuradha Pednekar did raise one point on the issue. “The memorial was desecrated in August not November,please make the correction in the standing committee agenda,” she noted.

Write or wrong?

Doctors have gotten away with bad handwriting for far too long. But a division bench of the Bombay High Court,which had to painstakingly read an ossification test report written in awful handwriting,decided that it was time that doctors were taken to task for this trait.

The court summoned the doctor from the civil hospital in Thane and asked her to read her own report. Even as the case was concluded,the court asked the doctor to file an affidavit stating that she would henceforth write in good and legible handwriting.

Sound of silence

Every now and then,the Bombay High Court is asked to decide on giving permission for a public event in a silence zone. In a recent case,the judges decided to find out how acceptable noise levels in a silence zone really sound like.

They did this by using decibel (dB) meters even as the case was being argued in the courtroom. The courtroom was mostly empty and the decibel levels of the lawyers’ arguments could not have been high,relatively speaking. However,the levels marginally crossed the acceptable limit — touching 55 dB,while the limit is 50 dB.

Tech handicap

The CBI anti-corruption wing suggested its head office in New Delhi recently to subject three Urban Development department officers named accused in the Adarsh missing papers case to layered voice analysis (LVA),only to be told the system was available at the directorate of forensic sciences,Gandhinagar,alone.

Now,the agency is contemplating subjecting the three to a psychoanalysis test. LVA,an Israeli technology for truth verification and deceit detection,was used extensively in the then US President Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal.