Water woes: Bombay HC cracks down on slums

The Bombay High Court has directed the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to take action against all slums that have come up near water pipelines in the city.

''We are carrying out an inventory. Those before 1995 will get alternative accommodation. Those post 2000 will be evicted,'' said R R Harinane, hydraulic engineer, Mumbai.

The move comes after advocate Machindra Patil filed a public interest litigation in the HC against such slums. Patil says that every year Mumbai is losing millions of litres of water because of these slums.

''The pipeline is a prohibited area under the Municipal Corporation Act. I went to court and filed a PIL to get these slums removed,'' he added.

The highlights of the PIL are - Mumbai needs 4300 million litres of water every day but gets only 3050 million litres. Also, water worth Rs 100 crore is stolen every year and another Rs 100 crore worth water is wasted.

According to the PIL, while people in housing complexes and chawls pay crores of rupees for their water, slums don't pay anything.

So when pipelines burst and flood these slums, the people living here are themselves responsible for the damage.

Hi-tech terrorists baffle Indian Army

Terrorists sneaking into India from across the border are increasingly using global positioning system devices in their ventures, posing problems to the army, which has no equipment to track them.

According to the soldiers manning the Line of Control in north Kashmir's Kupwara sector, terrorists now depend on the satellite-based GPS instead of human guides to infiltrate into the Valley.

"Terrorists have gone hi-tech as they are using sophisticated devices to find their way into our side of the Valley," said a top army official, adding, "The incidents, where militants rely on GPS to sneak into the Valley, have increased in the recent past."

A GPS device can be as small as a mobile phone and is available as little as Rs 3,000-5,000. It can be used by anyone with a little technical knowledge.

Earlier infiltrators relied mostly on 'not always trustworthy' human guides who used to take hefty sums in crossing the border but now the hi-tech equipment has taken over as it can easily remain untraced.

"Earlier we used to track mobile conversations between infiltrators and their guides but now we do not have any resources to track GPS signals," said another official.

"A person sitting kilometers away can easily guide the infiltrators and we cannot trace the signals," he added.

Sources in the army told PTI that training in GPS equipment have been made mandatory for terrorists operating on the other side of the LoC.

"We have apprehended some militants with these devices and subsequent interrogation revealed that it was mandatory for them to train in the use of these equipments. Every group that prepares to cross the LoC has an expert to handle these devices," they said.

PRO of the Srinagar-based 15 Corps Lt Col A K Mathur, however, said counter-measures are already in place.

"We have installed some counter measures to neutralize the militants using GPS. These equipment can only help them cross the LoC but cannot aware them of the places where we have put mines," he said.

SRK - The biggest song ever!!!

Farah Khan's Om Shanti Om has been mostly under wraps for a while now, and we finally get to see some stills from a song sequence, a multistarrer to beat all multistarrers.

Evidently inspired by Manmohan Desai's star-studded John Johnny Janardhan in 1981's Naseeb, Farah decided to create her own mega song -- featuring over 30 top Bollywood stars!

While the stills here show off Sanjay Dutt, Saif Ali, Salman and Shah Rukh Khan grooving in the same frame, other stars showcased in the song are Kajol, Shilpa Shetty, Preity Zinta, Govinda, Priyanka Chopra, Rani Mukerji, Vidya Balan, Mithun Chakraborty, Rekha, Karisma Kapoor, Tabu, Priyanka Chopra, Lara Dutta, Malaika Arora, Urmila Matondkar, Shabana Azmi and Amrita Arora, among many others.

"Well, it's 20 years since that song in Naseeb, and we had to step up the star power," Farah described the song to a Mumbai daily.

The biggest song ever? With Sanju Baba and the three Khans proving to be just one scene in a mega event gaana, it sure looks like it.