According to officials, the fire was triggered by a short circuit on the fourth floor of the building that was being used as a plastics factory.
The biggest defaulter is the Northern Railways, under the ministry of railways, which owes Rs 4,192.55 crore – 44 per cent of the total amount owed to the Delhi government.
A handful of employees at various pollution control agencies struggle to implement the Graded Response Action Plan, while crucial proposals to strengthen the system get implemented sluggishly.
As the capital chokes in a toxic haze that was described by the Supreme Court on Monday as “worse than the Emergency”, and politicians across parties blame each other, experts point out that the 2009 Punjab Preservation of Subsoil Water Act changed the “timing of the burning”.
From September 23 to October 27, a total of 12, 027 stubble burning incidents were recorded in Punjab, a whopping increase of 2,427 from last year.
The Central Pollution Control Board’s data on Wednesday, a day after Dussehra, recorded AQI at 173 on the index, a drastic decrease from last year’s 373.
Researchers say cases of joint pains have increased in the last 10 years, and infections and diseases not seen before in the mountains are also on the rise.
The locals urge that the Home Ministry’s order to open up Khangchendzonga and 23 other peaks in Sikkim 'to foreigners desirous of mountaineering and trekking' should be seen from the perspective of the special bond that they share with this peak.
A report by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy found that a queer person's rights were still deficient in the domains of identity, violence, family and employment.
The Sahibi river, which was once connected to the Yamuna, has now become the 51-km Najafgarh drain that flows through nearly the entire breadth of the capital.
In little over a century, the city’s population has increased from 2.3 lakh to an estimated 1.9 crore. Groundwater is disappearing at the rate of 10 centimetres and waterways and canals have been replaced with roads.
When the first drainage master plan was charted out in 1976 for the city with a population of 60 lakh, it had found 201 natural drains. By 2018-19 of these had disappeared while the rest had become sewers.
Prabhu Dandwani, a resident of Delhi’s ‘madrasi colony’, survived a dangerous journey to Australia with his family, only to be deported back a few months later. He thanks his stars he missed on round 2, but his relatives were not so lucky.
A study conducted earlier this year found that groundwater levels in New Delhi are depleting at an astonishing rate of 10 cm per year.
Unlike the Bay of Bengal, storms in the Arabian Sea would not reach such high intensities because of dry air blowing in from the Arabian Peninsula.