Warm day in Delhi, max temp touches 30°C

NEW DELHI: Delhiites experienced a warm day today with the city recording a maximum temperature of 30.1 degrees Celsius, six notches above the season’s average.

The minimum temperature settled at 14.4 degrees Celsius,three notches above normal, said a MeT Department official.

Visibility was recorded at 1,000 metres at 5.30 AM which reduced to 800 meters at 8.30 AM. It then improved to 1,800 meters at 11.30 AM, he said.

Humidity oscillated between 100 and 36 per cent.

The MeT has predicted partly cloudy skies for Sunday with the possibility of haze in the morning.

“The skies will be partly cloudy. Mist/haze is likely in some places in the morning. Maximum and minimum temperatures are expected to settle at around 30 degrees and 15 degrees Celsius respectively,” the official said. PTI

The usually predictable Yadav pocketboroughs of Etawah and Mainpuri and the rest of the Yadav land — comprising Kannauj, Farukkhabad and Auriya — might see close contests this time.

Sunday’s polling will decide the fates Shivpal Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s younger daughter-in-law Aparna Yadav, his nephew Anurag Yadav and Akhilesh’s aide Anurag Singh. Also in the fray are BJP leader Rita Bahuguna Joshi facing off against Aparna Yadav, SP ministers Nitin Agarwal and Abhishek Mishra, BSP heavyweight Nakul Dubey, and many more.

SP minister and MP Naresh Agrawal’s son Nitin is contesting from Hardoi while minister Farid Mahmood Kidwail is contesting from his current seat Kursi (in Barabanki). Another minister, Arvind Singh ‘Gope’, is fighting to retain his Ramnagar seat in Barabanki.

This phase is also a test for the Union minister Rajnath Singh’s influence on the five Lucknow seats in his Lucknow Lok Sabha constituency. But at the same time, it will tell if the big-ticket Lucknow projects of Akhilesh Yadav government --the Metro, Janeshwar Mishra Park, Gomti River Front, will convert into votes.

Election machinery too would be under observation for voters’ turnout. Last time this phase constituency polled 59.75%, while the first and second phases this time have polled 64.22% and 65.16% votes.

But Dhanapal – whose shirt was torn in the melee and who had to be rescued by marshals – hit back, saying DMK members misbehaved with him as he is from the Adi Dravid (Dalit) community.

By afternoon when results of the trust vote were declared, news poured in of protests in various districts against the chief minister and Sasikala, indicating that Palaniswami had a long way to go before gaining political stability.

Palaniswami, 62, was propped up as chief minister by Sasikala after the Supreme Court sent her to jail on Tuesday in a 20-year-old corruption case. Panneerselvam, with barely a handful of legislators in his camp, however, found support from the DMK, the Congress and the All India Muslim League.

The day had begun on a hopeful note for Panneerselvam as hours before the vote, a legislator said he “escaped” from a resort 120-odd AIADMK lawmakers were corralled for 10 days to join the former CM.

Buoyed by the defection, the Panneerselvam camp and DMK pushed for a secret ballot in the hope that fencesitters in the Palaniswami camp would switch sides. But Dhanapa, rejected the demand outright and when the MLAs tried to lecture him, he said “I know the rules and regulations. Don’t teach me how to run the house.”

As if on cue, the entire DMK contingent trooped into the well of the House and cre- ated a ruckus, seemingly with an intention to force adjournments and delay the floor test.

The opposition party’s aggression appeared a lastminute change of strategy as legislators broke tables, threw sheaves of paper at the speaker’s podium, pulled out his mike and sat on his chair. Dhanapal himself being was pulled by an MLA in a scuffle that left his shirt torn.

Two MLAs Kuka Selvam and Ranganathan sat on the speaker’s chair. Another MLA held a chair and was threatening to hurl it across. “Vendum, vendum, rahasyamaga vakku allikka vendum (wanted, wanted, secret voting wanted)” slogans rent the air as DMK members thronged the well and surrounded the speaker Dhanpal, forcing him to adjourn the session the first time.

When the house reconvened at 1pm, DMK members ringed the speaker with vociferous slogans to press for secret balloting. But this time around, the speaker was surrounded by white-uniformed marshals and ordered the eviction of all DMK lawmakers after a warning. Stalin and his party leader Durai Murugan were among first of the MLAs to be evicted.

When the house met again at 3pm, it was clear that the numbers were heavily stacked in favour of Palaniswami and Panneerselvam’s hopes of inducing cross-voting and defections would fail. And the CM sailed through, with the score line reading: For : 122 and Against: 11.

Deposits nosedived from about `400,000 a day before November 8, when the demonetisation was announced, to about `70,000-100,000 now.

“The thought behind opening such a bank for sex workers was to offer them an easy way to save money and take loans,” said Smarajit Jana, the brain behind the bank and an advisor to Durbar Mahilla Samanwaya Committee, a community-based organisation of sex workers in West Bengal.

The situation is no different in Mumbai’s Kamathipura, one of India’s oldest red light areas that is home to about 1,500 sex workers.

“The sex workers are virtually facing starvation and there is no way they can save any money (after demonetisation),” said Amin Patel, the local legislator. The sex workers are dependent on local money lenders who charge exorbitant interest rates, landing them permanently in debt.

In Sonagachi, about 48% of loans taken from the cooperative bank by sex workers was for the education of their children and another 25% for health care. Building houses and children’s marriage were the other reasons for taking loans.

The bank has two branches in Kalighat, also in Kolkata, and in Dinhata in Cooch Behar district. There are more than 26 collection centres across Bengal where sex workers deposit their money.

“We can now only give out Rs 4,000 to an account holder in a week. Sex workers vent their ire on us,” said Satabdi Saha, deputy manager in the bank.

Established in 1995 with Rs 30,000 as working capital, the bank now does business worth Rs 30 crores annually. In 201516, it disbursed loans worth Rs 7 crores to sex workers.

Shefali Das, 50, a former sex worker and president of the bank, said the cost of living in Sonagachi is higher than other neighbourhoods and almost everything runs on cash transactions.

Sex workers said some of them are cutting their rates to lure customers but even the discounts are not good enough to revive business.

“Here everything works on cash. For an A-grade sex worker, the rent for a decent room comes to around Rs 70,000 -80,000 a month. For B and C grade the rent for a small, dingy room is Rs 350 daily,” said Das.

“They also have to pay separately for electrical points. Moreover, girls have to pay touts, local toughs and cops. Since there is a sharp drop in clients, girls do not have cash in hand and they cannot save any.”

WITH INPUTS FROM NARESH R KAMATH IN MUMBAI