New Delhi, July 1 (IANS) Colourful and fragrant flowers will make Delhi bloom during the Commonwealth Games next year. Scientists at the Forest Research Institute (FRI), Dehradun are busy developing new species of over 300,000 flowering plants for the games.

The FRI has been entrusted with the job by the Delhi government to make the city look beautiful during the games. India has already declared it will host the first ever green Commonwealth Games (CWG) in 2010.

“We are in the process of developing special species of flowers for the games. We have been given the task of providing over 300,000 potted flowering plants. The work of developing new species of flowers has already started,” S.S. Negi, director of FRI, told IANS over phone.

The institute has selected the species of flowering plants keeping in mind the climatic conditions in the national capital in the month of October, when the games next year are scheduled.

“Our prime focus is to develop species that can flower in a month’s time and stay fresh for long. The work is on at our central nursery in the FRI and we will test the samples in Delhi this year,” Negi said.

The FRI is also developing a bamboo park called ‘bamboo-setum’ near the games village.

“The bamboo park will have more than 75 varieties of bamboo found across the globe. The plantation work has already started in 60 hectares of land just behind the Rajghat in Delhi,” said Negi.

The FRI has also been assigned the task of giving clearance to the green games village being developed by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA).

“The Ministry of Environment and Forests has entrusted the FRI with the job to check the DDA’s green games village project. We have received a detailed layout from the DDA and have suggested some modifications like plantation in open spaces, lawn area and in some more areas,” explained Negi.

The Commonwealth Games Organising Committee has a strategic understanding with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to fulfil the Green Games mandate.

The committee has already started work on various aspects for making the sports extravaganza carbon free.

“Each one of us has a role to play to ensure that India hosts the first green Commonwealth Games. There have been green Olympics but this has not been the case with the Commonwealth Games. We have begun with the Thyagaraj stadium and Games Village and will make sure that every stadium in the country is environment friendly,” Organising Committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi said.

Some of the measures being instituted include energy conservation through energy efficiency means, bio-diverse afforestation, an anti-litter campaign, waste management and spreading general awareness about environmental issues.

The Indian cricket board Wednesday finalised the seven venues for the one-day series against Australia in October-November.
The Tour Programme and Fixtures Committee of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) that met here to decide the fixture of the 2009-10 season at the Cricket Centre decided that Guwahati, Mumbai, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Delhi, Mohali and Nagpur will be hosting the series from Oct 25 to Nov 11.

The BCCI in a statement said that the schedule will be finalised after working out the logistics.

The fixture for the tri-series in Sri Lanka involving India and New Zealand will be finalised at the BCCI working committee meeting in August.

The committee also decided that the Duleep Trophy will be played on a knock-out basis while the inter-state Twenty20 tournament will be named the Mushtaq Ali T20 Trophy.

There was some disappointment for women cricketers as they will not get to play any Tests in the 2009-10 season and would be concentrating on ODIs and Twenty20s.

In the junior group, both the C.K. Nayudu (under-22) and the Cooch Behar Trophy (under-19) will be played in elite and plate format on home and away basis.

New Delhi, July 2 (IANS) Want to be a rock star, and looking for a break? Well, you might just get lucky, as music channel MTV has launched a new reality show that will hunt for and select a music band.
The channel will conduct the auditioning in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore. The show “Kurkure Desi Beats Rock On With MTV”, will be judged by singer Kailash Kher, composer Ram Sampath and VJ Nikhil Chinappa.

“MTV’s combining two of it’s biggest strengths – the ability to predict the next big thing and reality programming for a show. The new band will redefine music and show you that rock is not niche. Rock is the new ‘gharaana’,” said Ashish Patil, general manager of MTV India.

The winner of the show, which will last 13 episodes, will be entitled to an album deal with T-Series, a music video produced by MTV, a mega concert and a state of the art instrument set.

Auditions will begin in Kolkata July 9, followed by Bangalore July 12, Delhi July 15 and Mumbai July 19.

New Delhi / Jaisalmer (Rajasthan), May 7 (ANI): As hundreds of thousands of people voted in the national capital on Thursday despite scorching heat, several visually impaired voters also exercised their franchise and voted joyfully.

Polling booths with electronic voting machines (EVMs) in Braille were specially set up for the visually handicapped voters, the fact which fascinated these special voters turning out to vote in big number.

Every one of the visually challenged was full of appreciation for the Election Commission for facilitating voting exercise through EVMs having Braille version.

Some of them had a suggestion or two for the Election Commission for the next time.

“There should be improvement in the voting machine for the visually impaired people. Now we have to ask from others which candidate is on number 1, 2 or 3, the candidates name should also be written next to the numbers in Braille script (method used by blind people to read and write),” said Vashist Prasad, a visually impaired.

Meanwhile, in Rajasthan, authorities deployed a couple of vans as mobile booths to reach out to the isolated voters, particularly in villages with sparse population.

According a Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) in Jaisalmer district, such mobile vans were deployed since the administration did not want the people to travel long distances in the desert state in sweltering temperature.

“The polling booth has been kept mobile because there is no dense population here and the Dhanis (the small villages) are located very far.

Therefore we have used the mobile vans. We have kept these mobile vans as booths, as we do not want the people to travel long distances,” said Ramesh Chandra Agarwal, Sub-Divisional Magistrate, Jaisalmer district,Rajasthan.

The country witnessed the fourth round of the five phased polling on Thursday (May 7) while polling for the fifth phase is scheduled to be held on May 13.

The first, second and third phases of polling were held on April 16, 23 and 30 respectively.

Counting for the elections held will be held on May 16. (ANI)

NEW DELHI: India Premier League Season II kicked off in Cape Town on Saturday with the promise of a Rs 800-crore booty for the advertising,
entertainment and tourism sectors. But in the bylanes of Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Agra, each of its 59 games has over Rs 80 crore riding on them. The amount riding on IPL2 is said to be around Rs 4,000-4,500 crore.

India’s unofficial betting industry, the satta market, is taking bets on virtually every aspects of the game  the winner, runners-up, the maximum sixes, even the best southpaw  and the money doing the rounds makes a mockery of the tales of liquidity crunch abound in the economy.

IPL Season I, according to at least two different estimates, was worth between Rs 5,000 cr and Rs 7,000 cr for the satta players, and going by present betting trends, that figure will be breached during the course of the tournament.

As for favourites, at this stage of the tournament, the odds are heavily loaded in favour of Shilpa Shetty’s Rajasthan Royals lifting the IPL Cup with stakes at Rs 100:120. So how does the odds work on the betting table? Simply put, if the odds are 1:2, it means for every 100 you bet, you get back 200.

The second spot is shared among the three teams MS Dhoni’s Chennai Super king, Preity Zinta owned Mohali Kings XI Punjab and Delhi Daredevils all three are getting stakes at Rs 100:135. On the rest four teams the rates are expected to be out once the tournament gathers momentum.

“With general elections too happening at the same time we expect more money to pour in after the election are over. Although there are no clear estimates as of now, betting will surely be much higher this time around,” says a punter. The bookies in Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Agra – the major centres for betting —- are taking bets on even who will win the toss, a first for IPL II.

Among individual players from India, Yuvraj Singh, Sachin Tendulkar, M S Dhoni, Gautam Gambhir, Zaheer Khan, Kevin Pietersen and Virender Sehwag are the clear favorites of the bookies. There is lot of betting on how much Yuvraj will score and how many sixes he will hit.Says a leading bookie in Delhi: “The initial round of performances will play a crucial role in determining the spends in the Indian betting market.”