| The crime, the Covid, the politics and the potholes: Capital Letters — Keeping track of Delhi's week, one beat at a time, through the eyes and words of HT's reporters, with all the perspective, context and analysis you need. Good morning! Last Monday was truly a landmark day for Delhi, and we’re not being flippant when we say that. There was a zero beside the Positive Cases section of Delhi’s Covid-19 health bulletin. You’d be forgiven for not having thought about Covid-19 for a while, let alone bothering with the minutiae of case numbers, positivity rates, death rates and so on. In India, the pandemic hasn’t — thankfully, touch all kinds of wood — been on the boil (or simmer) for a while, essentially making its way out of general public discussion and behaviour. The masks have slipped off and been confined to the bottom of bags and purses, crushed under the weight of the months of relative freedom people have enjoyed from the virus. And rightfully so, the infection has ensnared Delhi (and India) for the best part of three years, infecting millions, killing thousands and leaving many with lasting, adverse health conditions. And yet, even then, Delhi’s state government health bulletin added at least one case of Covid-19 to the city’s records every day since March 24, 2020. That 1,027-day unhindered run was hindered on January 16, 2023. To be sure, Delhi has registered very few cases all month (so much so that the health department hasn’t issued bulletins at all on a few days), with new infections in the single-digits for much of the year so far, but that elusive clean sheet barrier was breached after a long wait, signalling clear headway in the Capital’s ongoing war against the infection. The battle has been bolstered significantly by the wide spread of infections - Delhi has officially logged more than 2 million Covid-19 infections, a number that is likely to be a severe underestimation (because many Covid-positive patients may not get tests), especially due to the advent of home tests, the results from which need not be reported to state authorities. Further, more than 15.7 million people in Delhi have taken two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, giving much of the city’s residents strong, induced immunity. It is worth noting that the pandemic is still alive and continues to rankle populations across the world, most notably in China, where 80% people may have already been infected. And since Delhi’s first case on March 7, 2020, the city has lost more than 26,500 people to the infection. So, the coronavirus, the spindly shape of which we are all familiar with by now, has scalded Delhi (as indeed the world) irreversibly. But January 16 was an important date and one can hope that a corner has been turned. Let’s just hope it wasn’t a U-turn. Delhi women’s panel chief molested Swati Maliwal, the chief of Delhi’s women’s panel (the Delhi Commission for Women), was molested by a man outside the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), another incident that has somehow become a hot potato between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Maliwal was waiting at the AIIMS crossing around 2am on Thursday to assess the Capital’s safety mechanisms for women, she said, when a drunk man drove up in his car and offered her a lift. She declined and he left, only to return and make lewd gestures at her. As she tried to fend him off, he rolled up the car’s window and tried to make a getaway, catching her arm in the process and dragging her for 10-15m. “I wanted to see what a woman standing alone at a bus stop has to face at night,” she said. The man was arrested later that night and taken into police custody — and granted bail on Saturday. After a video — shot by a media team that accompanied Maliwal during the inspection — of the Thursday evening incident did the rounds online, the BJP alleged that the matter was staged, even as the party’s spokespersons claimed that the suspect was an AAP supporter. The police also backed the latter claim up, but added that it was unclear if he had any connections with the party itself. Maliwal, and the AAP, lambasted the BJP and accused the party of “victim-shaming” and trying to deflect airwaves from the incident, which came less than three weeks after a 20-year-old woman was killed in northwest Delhi’s Sultanpuri after being dragged around by a car for 14km. However, the incident soon became less an exemplar of crime in Delhi and more emblematic of the fraught political situation in the Capital, where all action is viewed with mistrust, disdain and mala fide. Since then, senior BJP leaders have claimed that the AAP was trying to demotivate the Delhi Police and asked that Maliwal step down as DCW chief till the probe wraps up. This unsavoury, but not unpredictable, turn of discourse is in step with the general wont in the city’s administration, which has seen pitched battles between the AAP/Delhi government on one side and the BJP, Centre and LG on the other. The battles are more than just skirmishes, and seek to outline the very foundations of Delhi’s governance systems. A proper turf war, as it were. More on this in the next section. The Delhi-Centre services tussle takes a twist The Centre on Wednesday sought that a larger bench of nine or more Supreme Court judges adjudicate the power tussle between the Union and the Delhi government over the control of bureaucracy in the city-state, arguing that the matter deals with the national capital and the Union government should not go down in history as one that handed over the city to “complete anarchy”. It’s the latest chapter of a battle in court that has match steps with the battle outside court. The hearings, which began two weeks ago, were nearly at an end, and the Centre’s request took even the Supreme Court by surprise. “We would have looked at the matter differently if there was an argument of reference. There was no argument made by you (Centre). Such an argument had to be made at the outset,” said the bench, which is headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, and also comprises justices MR Shah, Krishna Murari, Hima Kohli and PS Narasimha. The submission, made by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, “was required to decide the broad contours of federalism between the Union and Union territories,” said the Centre. The outcome of the hearings will shape (or may even put a stop to) the power battles between the LG and the AAP. The former, Vinai Kumar Saxena in this case, argues that he is a constitutionally appointed functionary, while the latter alleges vast overreach. Raj Niwas or Sachivalaya — the address that comes out on top will make all the difference. In graphic detail | 
