The Delhi government  said it will allot free houses to slum dwellers belonging to the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes communities in the capital.

“Funds in the SC/ST Commission will be utilised for this purpose as the commission will contribute Rs 60,000 on behalf the candidate,” Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit told reporters.

“These flats, which used to cost them Rs 3,34,000, will be more or less free,” she added.

She said that in addition to the Rs 1,19,000 assistance being given to them under the Rajiv Ratan Awas Yojana, land owning agencies will provide a sum of Rs 93,000 for each eligible candidate.

According to the chief minister, around 16-17 percent people in slum clusters will benefit from the scheme.

Last month, the Delhi government decided to rehabilitate people in 33 slum clusters in the capital.

The Bharatiya Janata Party will go into the Municipal Corporation of Delhi elections, due early next year, on the issues of corruption and price rise, while at the same time urge the people to vote for the party that will provide them the blueprint for best delivery in the health and education sectors.

Elaborating the party’s plans at an interaction of the media with Mayor Rajni Abbi, Leader of MCD House Subhash Arya and MCD Standing Committee chairperson Yogender Chandolia and Delhi BJP president Vijender Gupta said a survey conducted by the party through a private firm revealed that there was great resentment among the people on the twin issues of price rise and corruption.

Mr. Gupta claimed that due to the good performance of the BJP-led MCD, which has been awarded AA-rating by global rating agency Fitch Ratings Limited, the survey had revealed that support for the BJP in MCD was intact.

After much delay, the Youth Congress has finally set in motion the process for holding the organisational elections in Delhi for the first time with the launch of its membership drive on September 9. After taking over as the party general secretary in charge of the Youth Congress and the National Students Union of India (NSUI), Rahul Gandhi decided to bring about internal democracy by holding elections in both the organisations.

Gandhi kicked off the election process from Punjab in December 2008 and since then it has been completed in most of the country. The membership drive in Delhi will close on October 7 and soon after the election process will commence.

Accordingly, the Delhi Pradesh Youth Congress Committee (DPYCC), headed by MLA Anil Choudhary, stands dissolved, a senior office bearer said.

The elections in Delhi will be held as per the new election model introduced recently by Gandhi to break the trend of political scions and those with sound financial background getting plum posts.

The proposal for the MCD trifurcation is yet to be cleared by the home ministry, but chief minister Sheila Dikshit has set in motion the preparations to boost the chances of a Congress win in the municipal polls slated for early 2012.

Each of the six ministers in her cabinet will be assigned an area under each of the seven parliamentary constituencies. They will co-ordinate with the MLAs and councillors of that area to strengthen the party’s base in the run-up to the elections to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), which is now under the BJP.

Sources said that during the meeting with her cabinet colleagues, the CM proposed to meet Union home minister P Chidambaram to seek an early clearance of the MCD trifurcation proposal so that a special session of the Delhi Assembly could be called to get its seal. She wants the 2012 polls to take place under the new system, they said. The proposal also calls for reservation of 50% of the seats for women.

Dikshit reportedly told all the ministers to focus on building momentum at the grassroot level. According to the plan, each of them will be assigned the area of a parliamentary constituency. Delhi has seven parliamentary constituencies with 70 Assembly seats and 272 municipal wards. Each minister will be required to meet the MLAs of that parliamentary constituency and find out the problems and concerns to figure out the important issues and get feedback through them from the councillors and party workers in the area. This feedback will be utilized for framing poll strategies.

With just five months to the municipal elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has begun identifying candidates who could turn the tide in their favour. Delhi BJP president Vijender Gupta said the party would judge potential candidates on four parameters — dynamism, performance, capability to win and delivery strength — before releasing the final list.

The party has also commissioned an internal survey to a Gurgaon-based consultancy firm to judge the mood of the electorate. “The survey will also work as performance audit of the incumbent candidates,” said Gupta.

The BJP currently has 172 councillors in a 272-strong MCD, which is India’s largest and world’s second largest civic body after Tokyo. The Congress has 73 while the Bahujan Samaj Party has 16. The remaining 10 are either independent or represent smaller parties.

The municipal elections to be held in Delhi in February 2012 will be the first major elections after the strong anti-corruption movement that took not just Delhi but the entire country by storm in August this year.

The elections are likely to be a litmus test for both the BJP — which is ruling party in the corporation — as well as the Congress — which is in office in the state assembly and has its candidates in the Lok Sabha from all seven parliamentary constituencies in Delhi.

The Election Commission of India has asked the Centre to impose a minimum punishment of two years to anyone found guilty of indulging in the malaise of paid news.

Chief Election Commissioner SY Qureshi said during a discussion here that the Commission could only act if it was given sufficient proof. He said the Commission had set up a Media Monitoring and Media Certification Committee to keep a check on the media during elections.

He also said new guidelines had been issued for publications owned by people associated with political parties.

He said there was also a proposal to ban government-sponsored advertisements relating to its achievements at least two months before the elections.

Qureshi was speaking at a discussion on ‘Paid News’ organised by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust after the screening of the hour-long film ‘Brokering News’ by Umesh Aggarwal exposing this malaise.

Former Bihar chief minister Lalu Yadav expressed reservations on Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement, a Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) member has quit the party in protest against the party supremo’s comment.

Asif Mohammad Khan, currently RJD’s only member of Delhi’s Legislative Assembly, said he does not agree with Yadav’s comment against Hazare and has therefore decided to resign from the party.

Khan had won the South Delhi-located seat of Okhla in the 2008 Delhi assembly elections.

Yadav had criticised Anna saying Parliament is supreme and neither Anna nor anyone from the civil society can pass instructions to Parliamentarians.

With municipal elections scheduled early next year, the Congress-led Delhi Government has decided to focus on its crucial vote bank in the unauthorized and resettlement colonies in the city. With the state failing to deliver on its regularization promise to residents of 1,639 unauthorised colonies, chief minister Sheila Dikshit has now constituted a Group of Ministers (GoM) and sought a report within a month on how infrastructure can be fast-tracked here.

With a huge chunk of funds allocated to departments in the 2011-12 budget still unspent, the GoM has been tasked to suggest infrastructure development projects in unauthorized colonies and rural and urban villages – vital pockets which the Congress-led government feels can help win the civic polls. Shockingly , barely 14% plan outlay has been spent in the first quarter.

Congress student’s wing NSUI on Saturday won the Delhi University Students Union President’s post while candidates of BJP’s ABVP swept the other three top posts of the body.

National Student’s Union of India nominee Ajay Chikara won the President’s post of the DUSU, while Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad candidate Vikas Choudhary was elected as the Vice-president of the student’s body in the low-turnout elections that were held on Friday.

Ajay Chikara defeated his nearest rival Neha Singh of ABVP by a margin of 2,357 votes. While Chikara polled 11,164 votes, Singh got 8,807 votes. The posts of Vice President, Secretary and Joint Secretary were all won by the ABVP, whose campaign was centered on alleged corruption in the Congress-led UPA Government.

Vikas Choudhary polled 11,855 votes, while NSUI’s Bhupinder Choudhary got 8,075 votes in the elections to the Vice President’s post. In the contest for the Secretary’s post, ABVP’s Vikas Yadav won by a margin of 2,351 votes defeating his nearest rival of NSUI’s Parag Sharma. ABVP’s Deepak Bansal will be the new Joint Secretary of the DUSU as he trounced his NSUI rival Asish Choudhary by 2,105 votes.

As many as 41 candidates fought for the four top posts of the student’s body, but the main contest was between the NSUI and ABVP, the two major participants.

Election season at the Delhi University (DU), short and muted as it is after the implementation of the Lyngdoh committee recommendations, officially began on Thursday.

The University Elections office released the final list of candidates and all major political factions started campaigning for their panel of candidates who will contest to the post of president, vice-president, secretary and joint-secretary of Delhi University Student Union (DUSU).

After withdrawals and disqualifications, only 14 out of the 77 students who had filed nominations to the president’s post remained in the final candidate list. Nine students out of the 60 who had filed nominations for the vice-president’s post are on the final list. Ten students will contest to the post of Secretary and eight to the post of joint-secretary.

Neha Singh, an MA Buddhist Studies student is the presidential candidate for ABVP, which won last year’s DUSU elections. The organisation is fighting this election raising the twin issues of corruption and the need for more colleges in DU, starting with the setting up of evening colleges in existing North Campus colleges.

National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), the other main player, has issued a charter demanding everything from the setting up of a ‘Center for Entrepreneurship Development’ at the University to the inclusion of DUSU office bearers in the University’s Committee against sexual harassment. Ajay Chikkara, a final-year student at the Law faculty is NSUI’s presidential candidate.

Students Federation of India (SFI) and the All India Student Federation are fighting the elections together with Soumya Guliyan, a student of BA Sociology at Miranda House College as their presidential candidate. Amit Srivastava, an MA Political Science student is All India Student Association’s (AISA) presidential candidate.