Prohibition in Bihar, which was enacted from 1st April 2016, is turning out to be a completely different animal. According to reports, about 35,000 people were arrested in Bihar till 6th February this year after being suspected of possessing alcohol and the Bihar administration was planning on expanding prisons to accommodate the new occupants.
Under Bihar’s prohibition law, there are draconian provisions of jail sentences of as much as 5 to 10 years for someone who is caught possessing alcohol, whether or not he intends to sell it. There are even provisions for punishment being meted out to a group (such as a family or a locality) for one man’s crime. With the main opposition BJP also supporting it and the mainstream media generally being soft on Nitish, the laws have not attracted any substantial protest.
The alcohol ban in Bihar is now in the news again with reports claiming that a CRPF jawan named Soham Singh lost his life in judicial custody after he was caught possessing alcohol. What added a twist to the story was that the family members of the CRPF jawan reportedly came out with a doctor’s certificate, which had an alcohol prescription for the jawan as he had served in high altitude conditions.
The incident pertains to Vaishali in Bihar where the jawan was reportedly caught by the excise department on the evening of 17th May. The jawan then was reportedly in a drunken state and 2 liters of country liquor was also seized from him.
He was then produced before a court on Thursday where he reportedly started to bleed from his nose. Then he was admitted in a hospital where he lost his life at around 11:15 PM.
Family members, according to media reports, have filed a case of torture against the excise department officials. They are claiming that they had shown the alcohol prescription to the officials but they refused to accept it. They further alleged that the officials had also demanded money from him.
It has been reported that the jawan was posted in Ladakh but was back in Bihar for a holiday. But the acting SP of Vaishali has claimed that Soham was actually a deserter against whom a case regarding the same was registered at Chakradharpur police station in Jharkhand on November 26, 2016.
Now a medical board has been constituted to probe the matter and will carry out a postmortem of the body to ascertain the truth.
Television journalist Sagarika Ghose is known to write inane things that has often exposed her hollow understanding of various issues. But of late, she has picked up the distinction of spreading lies and propaganda on Twitter.
In the past three weeks, she has been involved in at least three incidents (first, second, third) where she played a part in spreading lies and propaganda. These are only those ones that OpIndia.com could compile reports about, else there are definitely more instances of her erring on this count in the same period and beyond.
Continuing her current form, last night, Sagarika Ghose tweeted claiming that Muslims were being killed all over India:
The controversial tweet, now deleted by Sagarika.
She didn’t give any reference to any incident or data to back her sensational claims, which incite communal passions. She was possibly referring to (and exaggerating beyond sensible limits) the incident in Jharkhand, which was twisted as anti-Muslim story by HuffPost.
The incendiary tweet by Sagarika Ghose shocked many people on social media who asked her to not make any baseless claims. When it elicited no response from Ghose, many users tagged the Home Ministry and the police departments asking them to take action against her:
It should be noted that the Indian laws have provisions for punishing speech that can create enmities between communities or disturb law and order, especially if the speech is not based on facts. Sagarika’s tweet was deemed as provocation that could have led people to take law into their own hands.
Not just ordinary social media users, even senior activist and author Madhu Kishwar announced that she would file a police complaint against Sagarika Ghose for her incendiary tweet:
If Government doesn’t take action, I will certainly file a police complaint against Sagarika Ghose https://t.co/dxjryvn5Ge
— MadhuPurnima Kishwar (@madhukishwar) May 20, 2017
Following such tweets warning her of police complaint, Sagarika deleted her tweet and issued an apology:
Have deleted my tweet on attacks on Muslims & apologise if sentiments were hurt. However I remain a vigilant observer of communal violence..
The fact that Sagarika never cared to apologize or clarify on earlier occasions but did so on this occasion makes one believe that it was the fear of a legal action against her that led her to delete the tweet and offer apology. Perhaps she realized that she had crossed a line and this time she may have to face consequences as people were willing to take legal resources
However, her sham apology took a moral high ground and hinted that she will continue to tweet irresponsibly. Perhaps she will continue to, unless people learn not to ignore and seek legal recourse even in the future.
Lt Ummer Fayaz, who was a newly commissioned officer in the Indian Army, was abducted by terrorists on 9th May while he was attending a cousin’s wedding in South Kashmir’s Shopian district and his bullet ridden body was found the next day.
He was unarmed at the time of the abduction. His cold blooded murder shocked the nation and it has now prompted BJP Delhi’s spokesperson Tajinder Bagga to put in a request so as to etch him (Lt Fayaz) into public memory.
As announced by him on Twitter, he has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, New Delhi’s MP Meenakshi Lekhi and Naresh Kumar the Chairman of New Delhi Municipal Corporation, requesting them to rename ”Babar Road” in New Delhi as ”Lt Ummer Fayaz road”.
One such letter sent by Tajinder Bagga
In the letters dated 19th May, Bagga pointed out how the entire nation was mourning the death of Lt Fayaz. The Delhi BJP spokesperson further stated how, as a true patriot Lt Fayaz took a firm decision to join the army in order to fight the menace of terrorism demonstrating extraordinary valor and courage.
Bagga justified his request by claiming that renaming the road would keep Lt Fayaz’s story alive and would serve as a reminder to all countrymen about how a young man selflessly sacrificed his life for the nation.
Renaming of roads is not new. NDMC had renamed Aurangzeb Road, Race Course Road and Dalhousie Road as APJ Abdul Kalam Azad Road, Lok Kalyan Marg and Dara Shikoh road respectively in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
According to reports, a senior official of the NDMC has placed it on record that a decision would be taken as per the given procedure once the letter is received.
On Friday, the India website of Huffington Post (now re-branded as HuffPost) came out with an article which was headlined “Three Muslim Cattle Traders Killed By Mob In Jharkhand On Suspicion Of Kidnapping Local Children”:
The headline clearly tried to insinuate as if the religious and professional identity of the lynched men had some connection with the unfortunate incident where a frenzied mob became bloodthirsty.
What drilled home home the point further is that Indian media recently has been focusing a lot on alleged incidents of cow vigilantism. The article mentioned incidents of cow vigilantism in the body, even though the incident had got nothing to do with it even by the article’s own account.
This headline was enough for the rogue elements in the mainstream media, who have been regularly found guilty of spreading lies, to indulge in further fear mongering:
Mobs are hunting and killing Muslims across India and THERE IS NO JUSTICE FOR THE KILLERS! WAKE UP, GOI!
Child trafficking rumours, cattle smuggling accusations are excuses. Let’s face it, they were lynched for being Muslims. #NewIndiahttps://t.co/7ThlbqXcSH
Now that the propagandists have spoken, let facts speak up.
According to reports, two such incidents of lynching were reported on Thursday. In the 1st incident on Thursday morning, the three Muslims plus another of their associate named Sheikh Halim whose body was found on Friday were killed by mobs in tribal dominated area of Rajnagar near Jamshedpur after rumours of child lifting gangs spread in the area.
The second incident was reported from a nearby area of Bagpeda where Gautam Verma, his brother Vikash Verma and friend Gangesh Gupta were beaten to death by a similar mob after reportedly being accused of being child lifters as they were returning back to Jamshedpur in their car. Reportedly there were five persons in the car including their elder brother Uttam Verma who suffered serious injuries and their 80 year old grandmother who had to watch the whole ordeal.
Uttam while speaking to media persons in a Jamshedpur hospital claimed that they were just in the area to identify spots to put up hoardings of the Swaccha Bharat Abhiyan as they had started a toilet installation business. Uttam also claimed that the police had reached the spot as the mob was getting aggressive but did nothing to stop the attack.
So going by the reports there was no such ‘communal’ flareup which had prompted the attack. Even the police denied any religious angle in the lynching. Both Hindus and Muslims had died in such incidents, but HuffPost decided to ignore the death of Hindus and focus only on the Muslims.
This fact later (this morning) acknowledged by HuffPost which proceeded to change the heading to:
6 People Killed By Mob In Jharkhand On Suspicion Of Kidnapping Local Children
They also issued a clarification that:
An earlier version of this story, which said three Muslim cattle traders were lynched by a mob, has been updated with the latest details.
But the damage was already done before the article was edited. It was already spread on the social media as another cow related attack on Muslims in a BJP ruled state.
There’s a concerted effort to build fear pyschosis by pushing a narrative of uncontrolled violence & hint of worse to come pic.twitter.com/DjerDEbXWq
What is extremely unfortunate is the fact that the very serious matter of a frenzied mob going on a murder spree based only on rumours was provided a communal colour by a section of the media without addressing the grave issues at hand.
This isn’t the first time such lynching incidents have come to light from that area. Reportedly two men were killed under similar circumstances on May 12th and 13th in the nearby Jadugora and Asanboni areas, again suspected of indulged in child trafficking.
Jharkhand has since long been reported to have been one of the biggest victims of human trafficking. According to this report from 2015, around 4000 children have gone missing from the state in the last 10 years and 1000 of them hadn’t been traced until then. It was also reported that a massive 42,000 girls have also been trafficked from Jharkhand to various metropolitan cities in India.
With two grave issues at hand – human trafficking and mob justice – all some journalists could focus was on religion. With such communal spins becoming more routine, one wonders if there is an organised attempt to incite communal riots in the country for petty political and ideological gains.
This morning, the following tweet by an assumed journalist of the New York Times, who is the newspaper’s South Asia bureau chief based out of New Delhi, caught my attention:
Update: The above tweet, originally posted in the morning of Saturday, was deleted a few hours after this article was published.
She terms a correction in the textbooks as “disturbing whitewashing”. And calls Gujarat riots of 2002 the worst communal riots since Independence.
Perhaps the foreign correspondent, who most certainly is fed information about India only by the ‘liberal’ Lutyens journalists of India, is not aware of the Godhra carnage of Feb 27, 2002. She could be reminded of this if she talked to the unwashed masses, but that will be so uncool. But let me remind her that Godhra is part of Gujarat and that Gujarat riots started on an anti-Hindu note, so that change in textbooks is correction not whitewashing.
If she really wishes to educate herself about what constitutes a “disturbing whitewashing”, she should read about victims of Godhra carnage. But as we will discover later, she does not need to, for she is part of this disturbing whitewashing.
In case you too have forgotten, 59 Hindus were burnt alive in a single incident of Gujarat 2002 riots. You know, those stepchildren of Indian history. Even if you are guilty of the crime of being aware of this gory anti-Hindu massacre, perhaps you are not aware of how the ‘disturbing whitewashing’ of this crime happened.
Do you remember how the left-liberal complex tried to implicate the victims of the Godhra carnage in their own murders?
click on the image for larger view
This was published in the Outlook. It’s supposed to be a “Report to the Nation” by an “independent fact finding mission”.
As many as 59 human beings perished in the fire on that fateful day in February 2002. The left-liberal complex did not hesitate to spread rumors about these unfortunate victims. Some said they didn’t pay for tea, some said they had pulled a Muslim man’s beard, some even spread rumors that they were assaulting women.
59 human beings are burned to death and the liberal “fact finding mission” reports that some of them may have unpaid debts of Rs 5. Just FIVE rupees.
In the eyes of a liberal, that’s how cheap human life, nay, a Hindu’s life can get. You must be familiar with the name of a JNU Professor called Kamal Mitra Chenoy; he was one of the members of this “independent fact finding mission”, who now appears in TV debates and newspaper columns giving lectures on equality and justice.
Some of the lies spread about the victims were even more fantastic in nature, appearing to defy even physical notions of time and space. Here is Arundhati Roy explaining that the kar sevaks in 2002 were on their way back from demolishing the Babri Masjid in 1992!
Sick.
Anything… absolutely anything to tarnish the unfortunate victims.
No liberal went to interview the family members of the Godhra victims. No liberal “fact finding mission” wanted to know who these people were and what were their hopes, dreams and aspirations that were burned inside the S-6 coach on Feb 27, 2002. Did anyone want to tell their stories and know them as fathers, daughters, mothers and husbands?
You know Bilkis Bano, you know Zakia Jafri, you know Zahira Shaikh, you know Qutubuddin Ansari, you know many more such names from Gujarat 2002. Do you know the name of a single person who was burnt alive in Godhra? They are forgotten. They are reduced to numbers. Heck, they are reduced to criminals who deserved this punishment.
The dignity and courtesy that is denied to the victims of Godhra is ‘liberally’ extended to Kashmiri stone pelters shot by security forces, Lashkar operatives like Ishrat Jahan, dreaded criminals like Sohrabuddin, and shockingly even Osama bin Laden!
The inconvenient victims of Godhra were supposed to be lumped into a corner and forgotten. Almost literally, because there was even a lot of liberal heartburn over an allegation that some of the dead bodies had been displayed in Ahmedabad. I don’t know if this actually happened, but so what if it did? Why is it so important to liberals that these victims be denied their one last chance to rock the conscience of the nation? Will the liberals who later took selfies outside Akhlaque’s house in Dadri let me know?
Then 2004 happened. Under UPA rule began one of the most shameful chapters of Indian history, where the government got actively involved in the effort to deny justice to the victims of Godhra. Then Railway minister Lalu Yadav created a special “U C Banerjee Committee” to “investigate” the Godhra incident, the result of which was a foregone conclusion.
click on the image for larger view
The last bits of humanity and decency were shredded when Lalu Yadav went ahead and waved copies of the Banerjee panel report at his election rallies in Bihar:
click on the image for larger view
There was no uproar in the liberal press at this attempt to deny justice to Godhra carnage victims. No intellectual returned any award. Perhaps they were waiting for BJP to come back to power to show their spirit of “dissent”. No eminent persons signed any open letters. Perhaps they were saving their energies to lobby for leniency to Yakub Memon years later.
And I can say with confidence that the U C Banerjee panel was malafide. I have the words of the Honorable Gujarat High Court to back me up. Yes, not only did the High Court find the Banerjee panel to be illegal, but it also said this:
Don’t forget to read the last sentence. The UPA did not withdraw in shame when their intentions were exposed by the High Court. The UPA was so determined to deny justice to Godhra victims that it actually went ahead and challenged the decision before a division bench. And so deeply compromised was our liberal intelligentsia that we did not hear a single voice of “dissent”.
In case you are wondering, this shameful appeal was finally withdrawn in Aug 2014 by the Central Government after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister of India.
But it never really mattered that the Banerjee panel was found to be illegal and malafide. The lie had been seeded and it was now left to the liberal establishment (both in India and abroad) to make sure that the lie lives on forever. Here’s the BBC:
Here is the New York Times in 2016, incidentally written by the same bigoted ‘journalist’ whose tweet I quoted in the beginning of the article, as many as 11 years after the UPA seeded the lie:
Of course, it will never matter that the courts actually convicted the accused in the Godhra carnage:
Didn’t you hear Arundhati Roy in the video above saying “the train caught fire; nobody knows who set fire to the train?”
That’s the way it is always going to be. This is what came out in the Hindustan Times on February 27, 2017.
Yes, they’ll go soft even on Osama bin Laden on his “death anniversary” and tell stories of him as a father and husband. But the Godhra carnage victims deserve nothing. They are to be forgotten at best and condemned at worst. Here is what they will get, as the HT article goes on:
Yes, the liberal complex has gotten more and more diabolical with its theories over the last 15 years.
Back in 2002, the theory was that the kar sevaks were responsible for their own deaths because they provoked Muslim vendors at the railway station. But this explanation left the liberal argument vulnerable. It is difficult to sustain the case that 59 people deserve to be burned to death because someone didn’t pay Rs 5.
So, somewhere between 2005 and 2010, this theory was discarded in favor of the accidental fire theory patronized by the UPA government. The advantage of this theory is that there is no moral responsibility to fight for justice to the Godhra victims.
But the liberal establishment didn’t stop there. As you can see, the new theory in town is that the carnage was a “a classic agent provocateur operation that went out of hand”. This time the liberals not only get to deny justice to the Godhra victims, they actually get to put the blame on a whole new bunch of innocents from the political parivar they despise.
It’s called having your cake and eating it too.
We know what happens next. Hopefully, at least some of the death sentences of the Godhra accused will be confirmed by the Supreme Court at some point in the future. The mercy petitions will then come up before the Union Cabinet. That’s when the liberal ecosystem will reactivate and tell us touching stories of the lives of these convicts as devoted sons of headmasters, fathers and husbands. Should any of these death sentences be carried out, some liberal newspaper will come up with a headline like “And they hanged…”.
As you can see, there is more humiliation in store for the Godhra victims. I am reconciled to this truth.
I have only one little appeal for our ecosystem of eminent liberals : now that you have decided that the fire was an accident or a conspiracy by the right wing, you no longer need to create a justification for the actions of any Muslim mob. That means you no longer need to smear the long dead victims with the accusation that they didn’t pay Rs 5, which made them responsible for their own deaths. So, why don’t you let this one rumor go? See if you can find it in your hearts…
But perhaps my appeal will have no effect. Because our “liberals” have graduated from “A good Hindu is a dead Hindu” to “Even a dead Hindu is not a good Hindu”.
The Hague based International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ordered Pakistan to stay the execution of former Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav until further notice. Jadhav was given death sentence by a Pakistani military court on concocted charges of espionage and sabotage activities in Karachi.
India is celebrating the ICJ order calling it a “big diplomatic victory”. Undoubtedly it is. But there is nothing much to celebrate about the order.
As things stand now, the ICJ has not set aside Kulbhushan Jadhav sentencing all together and he is still in Pakistan’s custody. But simply speaking, the ICJ order is an essential first step forward in the path of justice for Kulbhushan. India can only breathe a sigh of relief for now. But there is a long way to go and a long legal process to come through.
Obviously, the ICJ order is a firm vindication of India’s stand. At the same time it has come as a serious indictment of Pakistan’s judicial system.
India sought consular access for Jadhav 15 times, but Pakistan has turned down India’s request every time. It could be noted that Pakistan had kidnapped the 46-year-old former Indian Navy officer from Iran where he was involved in business activities after retiring from the service. But Pakistan is blatantly lying claiming that it had arrested Jadhav from Balochistan on March 3, 2016. India was not informed of Jadhav’s detention until long after his arrest.
Now Pakistan says that the ICJ order has not changed the status of Kulbhushan Jadhav case in any manner. Pakistan foreign office has made it clear that it can’t accept the ICJ’s jurisdiction in matters of “internal security matter”.
“If any country says I don’t accept the ruling… it is the country putting itself in a position that it is guilty of such a heinous crime violating all canons of international norms,” Defence Minister Arun Jaitley told reporters in Srinagar.
If Pakistan does not abide by the ICJ order, it would be in clear violation of Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. It is pertinent to mention that both India and Pakistan are signatories to the optional protocol of the Vienna convention on consular relations (VCCR). The protocol states that any dispute arising out of the interpretation or application of VCCR shall lie within the jurisdiction of the ICJ.
Even as legal experts suggest that the final order of the ICJ will ultimately go in favour of India, the ICJ has its own limitations and it does not have the statutory power to execute an order.
It could be noted that it was the US which ignored the ICJ orders in two precedents with Germany and Paraguay. But Pakistan is not the US. But as a rogue state, it may have the audacity to ignore the ICJ.
“The ICJ does not have any agency to enforce its order, It can’t compel,” said senior Supreme Court lawyer and noted legal luminary KTS Tulsi while speaking to Opindia.com.
If Pakistan defies the ICJ order, then what options India has. We can move to the United Nations Security Council to seek justice for Kulbhushan. The Article 94 of the Chapter XIV of the International Court of Justice reads, “Each Member of the United Nations undertakes to comply with the decision of the International Court of Justice in any case to which it is a party. If any party to a case fails to perform the obligations incumbent upon it under a judgment rendered by the Court, the other party may have recourse to the Security Council, which may, if it deems necessary, make recommendations or decide upon measures to be taken to give effect to the judgment.”
But Tulsi said, “The ICJ can refer the matter to the Security Council if the order is defied. Now, the question is how to enforce the order? There are only two means of enforcement by the ICJ to the Security Council. In Security Council, they can either impose economic sanctions or impose military sanctions. But that decision can also be vetoed by one of superpowers who have the veto power. If China chooses to veto, it would a fait accompli.”
So, in order to set free Kulbhushan, India has to handle the matter very diplomatically at every step.
Recently rebel AAP leader Kapil Mishra seems to have become the biggest threat for Kejriwal and his associates due to his continual allegations against the person and the party. The issue had begun on 7th May when Mishra, after he was removed as the Cabinet Minister, alleged that he had seen Kejriwal taking Rs 2 crore in cash from the Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain.
Mishra then raised question about the suspicious nature of the transaction and had claimed that the party was receiving money via various shell companies, which raised speculations of it being hawala money. This was related to AAP receiving donations to the tune of 2 crore rupees rather mysteriously – a controversy that has erupted in 2015 itself.
Yesterday, NDTV had aired an exclusive interview with a man called Mukesh Sharma, a Delhi based trader, who claimed that it was him who had donated those 2 crore rupees.
He further claimed that he had donated the money transparently to AAP via his four companies named Skyline Metal, Goldmine Buildcon, Infolance Software and Sun Vision. He had reportedly donated 50 lakh each from these 4 companies using a demand draft on 31st March 2014.
This snippet of the interview was re-tweeted by Kejriwal himself.
Here Sharma denied all the allegations of him donating via shell companies. He further claimed that he donated genuine money to AAP. The reporter then pointed out that when people had visited the addresses of his 4 companies they had found no existence of the same.
To that question, Sharma gave an extremely odd answer by claiming that he himself had asked the people present at the addresses to say that no such companies were present there, as he feared some action might be taken against them due to it being a political matter.
Incidentally the reporter didn’t immediately grill him for his odd claims as no legitimate company’s presence can so easily be denied. Sharma also claimed that he hadn’t met any top AAP leader except Pankaj Gupta who is the National Secretary of the party.
When finally asked about the reason why he chose to donate such a large amount, Sharma claimed that he did so because he wanted to help an ‘honest’ leader who would work for the nation.
After this NDTV video interview was shared widely, including by Kejriwal himself, Kapil Mishra claimed that the identity of the man has revealed more than what he wanted to. Today in a press conference, Mishra gave further details of Mukesh Sharma and his companies:
Mishra proceeded to show the letterheads of Mukesh Sharma’s companies via which he had donated the money. He further claimed that the letter-head of the company, which had supposedly donated Rs 50 lakh, was fake and created at home on a computer. He directed people’s attention to the letters of Sun Vision and Skyline Metal both of which incidentally didn’t have the signature of Mukesh Sharma. If the money indeed was sanctioned by him then why was his signature not present on the letter heads?
He then pulled out the director records of the 4 companies in question. According to the records, Mukesh Sharma had become the Additional Director of Skyline Metals only on 22nd April of this year while the donations were given in 2014. Hence Mukesh Sharma couldn’t have authorized the donations in the 1st place. He further claimed that Mukesh Sharma had quit Sun Vision on 2nd Nov 2012 hence him authorizing that donation too seemed false.
He also claimed that Mukesh Sharma was only being made a scapegoat so as to shield a person whose hawala network was directly connected to Kejriwal. He then took potshots at those media houses which aired Sharma’s interview and asked as to why they didn’t verify such basic information as company records, balance sheets which could have easily told the truth. He claimed that such false news only dented the credibility of media houses and made no difference to Kejriwal.
Mishra finally claimed that initially even he was not aware of all the facts regarding these companies and only started to check after Kejriwal retweeted the video of the interview.
It remains to be seen if Kejriwal responds to such serious questions or again tries to deflect attention by carrying out EVM Expose 2.0
The GST council is meeting on 18th and 19th May in Srinagar to provide the finishing touches to the proposed singular tax and to finalize the rates of all the products and services. On Thursday the council had finalized the tax slabs for about 1221 products, except for a few state-specific items, services and a few commodities which would be discussed on Friday.
The GST is all set to kick in from 1st July and will replace all the existing indirect taxes like the Value Added tax(VAT), Excise duty, various state taxes among others. Captioned as “One Nation One Tax”, the GST is expected to eliminate all the assorted taxation hassles plus ensure “free trade” within India.
To refresh things a bit, there would be four tax slabs of 5%, 12%, 18% and 28%. All the products would be placed in any of the 4 slabs apart from those which are all-together exempted from taxation like milk and food grains.
According to reports coming out which have analysed the rates, all of which are given here [PDF], the conclusion seems to be that consumers can hope for good days ahead as the GST is expected to reduce the prices of most products.
In the GST, about 81% of the products would be taxed at 18% or below while currently about 35% of the products are taxed at 27% (12.5% excise + 14.5% state VAT) but the actual amount is a bit lower at about 22-24% as the excise duty is levied on the factory price and not the retail price.
Also Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has been quoted as saying that they have consciously reduced the tax rate for many items.
Some products with a reduced tax rate are:
FMCG goods like soaps, tooth paste etc would be taxed at 18% as compared to the existing 22-24%
Tax on coal would reduce from 12% to 5% which has the potential for making power cheaper
Food grains, milk, sweets which are taxed at 5% would be exempted altogether.
According to the report apart from the lower tax rate in some cases, the retailers can sell the products for a lower price as they would have a higher input tax credit at their disposal.
Input tax credit means that whenever a retailer buys a product from the dealer he has to pay some amount as tax, say he paid Rs 100. Now when the customer buys the product he would pay a higher tax as the retailer sells the product at the higher rate, say the customer paid Rs 150. Now as the retailer has already paid Rs 100 as tax to the government, he only needs to pay Rs 50 in taxes by claiming input credit. So if the input tax credit increases for the retailer they can pass on the benefit to the customer by reducing the prices.
Plus even though about 19% of the products are pegged under the 28% slab, experts believe that currently one may be paying more than that rate for those products and the new slab may be a relief.
Even though the Finance ministry has tried to appease everyone via these new rates, some issues did crop up. As reported, the government has proposed a cess of 1% and 3% on small petrol and diesel cars and a cess of 15% on luxury cars. This cess would be added onto the 28% GST rate which has been finalized for cars. Now the luxury cars would attract a total tax of about 43% which in some cases would be lower than the existing rate which is anywhere between 25% and 55%.
But when it comes to small cars, the rate would rise to 29-31% as compared to the existing 25-27%. OpIndia columnist Ashutosh Muglikar acknowledged that people indeed were expecting to have lower rates for small cars but urged everyone aggravated to look at the big picture. He claimed that the existing cess has only been levied so as to slowly disincentive the use of conventional cars. He further claimed that this is in line with the government’s continued push for renewable energy.
He pointed out Nitin Gadkari’s statement around May 15th about the government planning to come up with its electric vehicle policy by December. According to a Niti Aayog joint report, accelerated adoption of electric vehicles would mean a total saving of $60 billion in Diesel and Petrol costs plus would reduce carbon emissions by about 1 Gigatonne come 2030.
Ashutosh also pointed out that the government’s decision in budget 2017 to invest about 4 lakh crore in one year to revamp the existing railway, waterway, aviation infrastructure would mean compensating in the areas like personal vehicles to further incentive public transport.
The council though hasn’t been able to finalize the rates for bidi, cigarette, textiles, agricultural implements, footwear, non-processed food, gold and various services. These rates would be discussed on Friday and if some rates still don’t get finalized today, another meeting would be called soon.
As the investigative agencies dig the details into the dubious business operations undertaken by former finance minister P Chidambaram’s son Karti-owned Advantage Strategic Consulting Pvt Ltd (ASCPL), more skeletons are tumbling out of the closet.
According to reports, the Enforcement Directorate investigation has found that a certain Padma Bhaskararaman – a school teacher – was made the promoter and director of the ASCPL in order to conceal the real identity of people controlling the business. This has been revealed in a report prepared by the ED.
Padma is the wife of Karti’s close aide S Bhaskararaman, another director of ASCPL. It has been further revealed that Padma’s brother Ravi was also projected as promoter of ASCPL to conceal Karti’s identity. The Enforcement Directorate probe suggests that all directors of ASCPL – CBN Reddy, Ravi Vishwanathan and S Bhakararaman – acted as per the instructions from Karti. And it was S Bhaskararaman who played an extensive role in the day to day affairs of ASCPL.
It could be noted that Meera Arun, wife of CMD of Vasan Health Care Pvt Ltd AM Arun –had earlier admitted that she was a dummy director in Vasan Health Care. Meera had admitted that her shares were transferred to her father V Dwarkanathan. Dwarkanathan’s 15,000 shares were reportedly sold to Karti Chidambaram’s ASCPL at a rate of Rs 100 per share.
AM Arun had admitted before the investigation agency that while he was looking to expand the eye care business and required foreign funding for the same and it was Karti Chidambaram who had recommended to him an investment consultancy company called M/s Spark Capital Advisors. There are allegations that Karti had used Vasan Healthcare to launder black money. The enforcement directorate (ED) has served notices on Vasan Health Care and Karti Chidambaram for breach of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).
Karti Chidambaram’s ASCPL is currently under scanner in connection to the violation of Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) approval given to INX Media – owned by Indrani and Peter Mukerjea – during the tenure of P Chidambaram as the finance minister. The CBI on 16 May had conducted raids at the residences of P Chidambaram and son Karti and multiple premises at Chennai, Gurgaon, Mumbai and Delhi linked to the father-son duo.
INX Media had sought the FIPB clearance on March 13, 2007, for permission to issue upto 14.98 equity shares to three non-resident entities – Dunearn, NSR PE and New Veron Pvt Equity Ltd – by way of preferential allotment. The FIPB unit, however, had clearly mentioned that Foreign Direct Investment of Rs 4.62 crore proposed issue at the face value could be allowed and for investment in INX News a separate FIPB approval would be required. The board had recommended the proposal of INX Media for consideration of the Finance Minister but not that of INX News.
It has been alleged that the company in violation of the recommendations made investment to the tune of 26 per cent in the capital of INX News and generated more than Rs 305 crore of FDI in INX Media. It is further alleged that Karti received money from INX Media for using his influence to manipulate a tax probe against it in a case of violation of Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) conditions to receive investment from Mauritius.
Now, the Enforcement Directorate is preparing to launch a money laundering probe against Karti Chidambaram. Meanwhile, Karti has left for London in a “scheduled trip”. Hope he won’t do a Vijay Mallya.
The Modi government recently seems to have declared a war on the VIP culture prevalent in our country. The central government in an order which came into enforcement from 1st May, had directed all VIPs to remove the red beacon from their cars.
Now in another blow to VIP’s who tend to misuse their power and authority, the government has now amended the Public Premises (Eviction of Unauthorized Occupants) Act, 1971 in order to ensure that Ministers, MPs and bureaucrats don’t overstay at their official residences.
Apparently according to the earlier law any former minister could stay at his residence for a month after he quit office. Then if the minister didn’t relocate after that, the Union Urban Development ministry took a further two months to initialize the eviction process. Violating persons reportedly took full advantage of this period and moved to various district or high courts to obtain a stay order against the eviction proceedings.
The Modi government seems to have figured out this loophole and now according to the amended laws, the Urban Development ministry would start the eviction process within three days after the allotted grace time is over. Plus in order to now get a stay, the occupants can only knock the doors of the High court or Supreme Court and not the district courts. This takes time and can’t be done in three days.
According to this amended law, the illegal occupants also need to pay steep fines thanks to their indiscretion. According to the report the fines would stand at about Rs 10 lakh for an overstay of 5 months.
Over the years there have been reports of various high profile politicians staying at their official residences beyond their allotted time. In February 2016 it was reported that 56 politicians had not paid the rent which they raked up after overstaying in their residences. Among the politicians, Md Azharuddin owed Rs 2.5 lakh, Jaya Prada owed Rs 1.68 lakh and Raj Babbar owed Rs 1.24 lakh.
In 2014 it was reported that three Congress Chief Ministers Prithviraj Chavan, Virbhadra Singh and Harish Rawat were occupying bungalows in the Lutyens zone even though they were not entitled for a Central Government bungalow in the first place. According to today’s report, even after being served various eviction notices for two years, Virbhadra Singh continues to occupy that bungalow till date.
The illegal occupation of official residences is not just an ethical problem but it also poses various logistical problems for the authorities and the new occupants who are allotted that bungalow. Many a times the new tenants need to stay in guest houses for months until the old occupants finally leaves.
The occupants especially of Lutyens Delhi are generally reluctant to leave as not just they live in the most prime area of they city, if they wish to live at a similar house they have to pay a market rate of as much as Rs 16 lakh per month.
And as they live in fine houses like this, you can see why are they so desperate to hang around:
