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Prices of most goods expected to go down after GST is enacted from 1st July

Hemant Bijapurkar
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Prices of most goods expected to go down after GST is enacted from 1st July

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.

More skeletons tumble out of Chidambarams – school teacher made dummy director in company

OpIndia Staff
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More skeletons tumble out of Chidambarams – school teacher made dummy director in company

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.

Govt amends law to prevent politicians and babus from overstaying at official residences

Hemant Bijapurkar
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Govt amends law to prevent politicians and babus from overstaying at official residences

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:

Big win for India – ICJ orders Pakistan to stay execution of Kulbhushan

OpIndia Staff
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Big win for India – ICJ orders Pakistan to stay execution of Kulbhushan

In a major step forward for India in Kulbhushan Jadhav case, the Hague-based International Court of Justice on Thursday (18 May) stayed the death sentence of the former Indian Navy officer, given by a Pakistani military court, until further notice.

“It is appropriate to say that Pakistan shall take all measures at its disposal to ensure Kulbhushan Jadhav is not executed pending final decision,” said ICJ presiding judge Justice Ronny Abraham while reading out the much-awaited order. Justice Abraham said that the ICJ had prime facie jurisdiction in the case.


Making a forceful argument for India before the 11-judge ICJ Bench, senior advocate Harish Salve contended that Pakistan has clearly violated the Vienna Convention and conducting a “farcical trial” for convicting Jadhav without a “shred of evidence”.

Salve stressed that not granting consular access and not giving legal representation to Jadhav amounts to a “miscarriage of justice” and a “violation of his right” to defend himself from concocted charges in a “farcical trial”. India sought consular access for Jadhav 15 times, but Pakistan has turned down India’s request every time.

Justice Abraham said that under the Vienna Convention, India should have received consular access to seek justice for the former Indian Naval officer.

During its submission, India had demanded the immediate suspension of Jadhav’s death sentence, expressing fears that Pakistan could execute him even before the hearing at the ICJ was over.

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.

Reacting to the ICJ order in Kulbhushan Jadhav case External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted:


Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed satisfaction at the ICJ judgement in Jadhav case. PM Modi spoke to the External Affairs Minister and thanked her and appreciated the appreciate efforts of senior advocate Harish Salve who represented India in the case.

Reacting to the ICJ order, Attorney General for India Mukul Rohatgi said, “The entire thing was a charade. Pakistan is completely blown by this decision. India’s stand is victorious.”

“Hope that final decision also comes India’s way and we can see Jadhav come back home,” he added.

India and Pakistan last had a face-off at the ICJ 18 years ago when Islamabad sought its intervention over the shooting down of its naval aircraft in 1999, shortly after Kargil war. India had strongly contested the case on the issue of jurisdiction. The ICJ had upheld New Delhi’s position.

Social media reacts as Republic TV beats all English news channels in the latest TV ratings

Hemant Bijapurkar
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Social media reacts as Republic TV beats all English news channels in the latest TV ratings

The Arnab Goswami led team of Republic TV had a reason to rejoice today after according to BARC’s ratings from 6 May 2017 – 18 May 2017( for cities with population more than 10 lakh) the total viewership of Republic TV stood at about 51.9%, more than double of Times Now which stood at 24.5%.


//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsTo look at it via another angle, more people watched Republic TV than all the other News channels combined. This massive dominance of Arnab’s channel less than a fortnight after its launch explains as to why all the old players of the establishment were so nervous about Arnab’s rise.

We had reported how the journalists aligned with the Congress-left establishment had ganged up to attack Arnab in every way possible. The Times Group, Arnab’s former employers also appeared to be going the extra distance by accusing him of ‘theft’ possibly in-order to somehow stop his juggernaut.

The main fundamentals upon which the ratings seem to be based were the high profile exposes by the channel in a very short duration of time.

The Republic team ran exclusive reports on an alleged nexus between Lalu and gangster Shahabuddin, reopened the whole Sunanda Puskhar episode, infiltrated the online network of Lashkar-e-Taiba and also reported ISIS’s presence the Indian soil in just 12 days.

This domination of Republic TV in the English News media space spurred a lot of reactions ranging from the funny, the intelligent to the occasional outrageous one.

Here are a few:


One user decided to pacify Arnab’s detractors by providing ideas to his critics about how they could pontificate that these high ratings might come back to haunt Arnab:


Finally as it turned out at the same time NDTV had managed to notch about 6.9% viewership and people didn’t shy away from commenting:

How separatists shut down schools in Kashmir but send own kids abroad to study

OpIndia Staff
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How separatists shut down schools in Kashmir but send own kids abroad to study

Remember, hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani recently said that the schools run by Indian Army are weaning the generation next away from their religion and culture. It could be noted that a large number of children from civilian areas in the valley attend the army-run schools. While most schools remained closed for six months due to unrest, army schools functioned normally.

“We are losing our next generation. We should never send our youth to these institutions. We need to see what sort of education these institutions are imparting to our children,” Geelani had said.

Year in and year out, the separatist leaders have been instigating the youth of Kashmir to leave their studies, come out on the roads and join the stone pelting for a “bigger cause”.

But in a stark dichotomy, this ANI report shows that how kin of these separatist leaders have got the best education, settled abroad and leading a life of peace, safety and luxury far away from the counter currents of stone pelting. Here is the list:

  1. Nayeem Geelani, son of Syed Ali Shah Geelani, is a doctor in Rawalpandi, Pakistan. Nayeem’s son Zahoor is working as a crew member at private airline. Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s daughter is a teacher in Jeddah and her husband is an engineer.
  2. The son of Mohammed Ashraf Sehrai, general secretary of the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat (TeH), the Geelani faction of Hurriyat – is a computer engineer in Dubai.
  3. Rabia Farooq, sister of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq – chairman of the Awami Action Committee of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference – is a doctor who lives in London.
  4. Separatist leader Ghulam Muhmaad Sumzi’s son Jugnu completed his management degree in Delhi.
  5. Rooma Maqbool, the son of Farida Behanjee – the patron of Jammu and Kashmir Mass Movement – lives and works as a medical practitioner in South Africa.
  6. Head of the Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Liberation Party Hashim Qureshi’s sons Iqbal and Bilal live in London.
  7. Spokesman for the Geelani faction of Hurriyat Ayaz Akbar’s son Sarwar Yaqub is a management student in Pune.
  8. Two sons of Abdul Aziz Dar, another prominent leader of the Geelani faction – Umer Dar and Adil Dar – are studying in Pakistan.
  9. Mariyam Andrabi, sister of Asiya Andrabi – head of the women separatist organisation Dukhtran-e-Millat – lives in Malaysia along with her family. Asiya wanted to send her elder son to Malaysia for further studies, but he was reportedly denied a passport. Asiya’s elder son Mohammed Bin Qasim, who pursued Bachelors of Information Technology at Islamic University of Malaysia, is in Australia for his further studies.

India’s rank improves dramatically by 73 places in the World Bank’s Electricity rankings

Hemant Bijapurkar
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India’s rank improves dramatically by 73 places in the World Bank’s Electricity rankings

In a possible recognition for the work the Piyush Goyal led Power Ministry is doing, India has improved its rank by 73 places since 2014 in the World Bank’s electricity accessibility rankings.

India is currently ranked 26, a much improved standing as compared to 99 in 2014. This was reportedly achieved due to the efforts of the power ministry to try and ensure power for each and every citizen of the country. It was reported that 13,000 of the 18,452 villages which did not have power, now have an access to electricity.

According to Piyush Goyal, if a person asks for an electricity connection, he would be able to get one within 24 hrs if power infrastructure is available. In the event of its unavailability he would be able to get a connection within a week. Goyal also claimed that by 2019, every household would be provided with an electricity connection, three years ahead of schedule.

We had earlier reported how the Power Ministry and its auxiliaries have been making steady reforms to try and revive a once ailing sector. A few of the measures undertaken are:

  • The UDAY Discom scheme where the Center would restructure the debt of the state owned Discoms by assuming as much as 75% of the debt and issuing bonds in return at a lower rate of interest.
  • Selling or shutting down loss making, old units and increasing the efficiency of the remaining units
  • Promoting the renewable sector
  • Creating a Mobile APP to help users track the electrification progress in India for greater transparency
  • India becoming the net-exporter of electricity for the 1st time

What message GST Council meet at Srinagar sending across

Saswat Panigrahi
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What message GST Council meet at Srinagar sending across

The choice of the venue for the ongoing two-day meeting of Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council in Kashmir is highly symbolic and significant. Against the backdrop of the renewed protests in the valley, the 14th GST Council is meeting at Srinagar’s Sher-i-Kashmir International Conference Centre is sending out a strong political message.

Far from the cross currents of protests and violence, the narrative of J&K is different as Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and finance ministers of 32 states and union territories have converged in Srinagar to take a final call on the new taxation regime and finalise the rates of different commodities and services. This is the last and the final meet before the GST rollout on 1 July. This is for is the first time that such a major policy meeting is being taken place in Srinagar in the past six decades.

The GST Council meeting is sending a strong message to the separatists forces who want to disintegrate Kashmir from the rest of India.

“One nation, one tax” is the Union government’s slogan for the GST. In that slogan, there is slight tinge of Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s slogan of 1950s meant for Kashmir: Ek desh mein do Pradhan, do Vidhan, do Nishan nahi chalegi, nahi chalegi (The country will never accept a system which allows two Prime Ministers, two Constitutions and two National flags). Much changes have been made in Kashmir since the nationalist leader breathed his last in the valley in 1953.

Now, with this GST Council meeting, Jammu & Kashmir set to claim its place in India’s economic history. The meeting is an opportunity to showcase J&K’s increasing integration with India’s socio-economic mainstream.

Mehbooba Mufti-led PDP-BJP government has already signalled the state’s preparedness to be part of the national narrative on GST. The J&K government has already moved on initiatives like a January-December financial year and a universal benefits policy.

“We could look at agreements that the GST council is expected to reach during its consultations as a ‘Srinagar Declaration’,” J&K finance minister Haseeb Drabu was quoted as saying.

The GST council meeting comes a day after a massive cordon and search operation was launched by security forces in Shopian in South Kashmir’s district following information about presence of terrorists. This is the second search operation undertaken this month by the security forces in the troubled Kashmir valley to flush out the terrorists.

Times of India changes headline to ‘protect’ DU professor accused of helping Maoists

OpIndia Staff
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Times of India changes headline to ‘protect’ DU professor accused of helping Maoists

In an explosive expose of sorts, Podiyam Panda, a Maoist operative who has now surrendered to the authorities reportedly claimed in a press conference on Wednesday that he used to be the link between senior Maoist leaders and certain prominent activists and citizens of the country.

According to the report, Panda who is suspected to be involved in the recent Sukma attack has claimed that he used to drive activists from Delhi including Delhi University professor Nandini Sundar and prominent ‘activist’ Bela Bhatia deep into the forest of Sukma to meet top Maoist leaders.

These allegations have ruffled a lot of feathers as if indeed proven true, they would provide a boost to the ‘Urban Naxal’ theory which talks about various prominent intellectuals, influencers or activists in India being sympathetic to the Naxal cause and working towards spreading insurgency against the Indian state.

According to the report the Sukma SP has claimed that:

Maoist Podiyam Panda was serving as the main link between the Inner cadre of Maoists and the urban network system in Delhi, Raipur and other cities

Also according to the SP, apart from being a contact he was also involved in active warfare against India and had participated in the recent Sukma incident and the Tadmetla attack of 2010 which had claimed the lives of 25 and 75 CRPF Jawans respectively.

This isn’t the first time the DU professor Nandini Sundar has been involved in the Naxal controversy. According to reports, she was named in an FIR lodged in November 2016 for the murder of a tribal who had been getting threats from Maoists for having complained against her and others for inciting tribals against the government. The wife of the murdered tribal had filed complaint demanding action against Sundar for her husband’s murder.

Sundar’s suspected connection and active involvement in Moaist operations had recently prompted the activist group Legal Rights Observatory to file a legal complaint against television journalist Rajdeep Sardesai for inviting her on his show to discuss the Sukma attack.

Even Bela Bhatia, who also has been named by Panda, is a very prominent activist who according to reports currently lives in Bastar. Bela, a PhD from Cambridge University was also reportedly on the panel of the now defunct Planning Commission to ironically look at challenges posed by Maoists to governance.

Both Bela Bhatia and Nandini Sundar are also related to prominent members of the society. Nandini is the wife of Siddharth Varadarajan, the former editor of The Hindu and the founding editor of left-leaning propaganda website The Wire. Bela Bhatia’s partner Jean Dreze had formerly been a member of the National Advisory Council, which was chaired by Sonia Gandhi.

What makes this whole story more intriguing is the fact that hours after publishing the report, Times of India chose to considerably tone down the headline of their article.

Initially it was published under the headline that gave prominence to the expose by the surrendered Maoist:

which was later changed to give prominence to the rebuttal by the accused DU professor:

Even though the heading was changed to indicate that Nandini Sundar had reacted to the story, during the compilation of this OpIndia.com report the content of the TOI article did not contain a single direct or indirect quote from Sundar.

Did the ‘influential’ members of the ‘civil’ society call up top honchos at Times of India warning them not to digress from the accepted narrative? After all, we know what happens to someone in media when they try to break away from the left-dominated narrative. Establishment media’s ganging up against Arnab Goswami is one such recent example. And the same media then cries about ‘freedom of expression’.

Has Times Group scored a self-goal by accusing Arnab Goswami of ‘theft’

Ashutosh Muglikar
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Has Times Group scored a self-goal by accusing Arnab Goswami of ‘theft’

It is no longer a secret that Times Group is unhappy that Arnab Goswami left them to start his own channel Republic TV, which now competes with their own offering Times Now. Arnab had hinted many a times that it was an acrimonious exit with him not being allowed to access ‘his own’ news studio during his last days at Times Now. But now that war is out in open.

Arnab has been served a slew of legal notices by the Times Group in recent times accusing him of defamation and another notice asking him not to use the phrase ‘the nation wants to know’ – popularized by Arnab during his Times Now debates – as the phrase supposedly belonged to Times Group, not Arnab.

Now this war has taken an ugly turn with Times Group filing a ‘criminal case’ against Arnab Goswami, a Republic TV journalist named Prema Sridevi, and against Republic TV itself, accusing them of ‘theft’ and infringement of copyright & intellectual property rights.

Recently Arnab Goswami and Republic TV had aired certain ‘tapes’ in relation to the Sunanda Tharoor’s suspected murder. The recorded tapes were telephonic conversations between Prema Sridevi, when she was reporter with Times Now, and the late Sunanda Pushkar and her personal assistant Narayan.

Another recording of conversation between RJD chief Lalu Yadav and mafia don Shahabuddin was also aired on Republic TV on the day it launched. Times Group now is claiming that all these tapes are their intellectual properties.

The main argument of Times Group appears that since Arnab and Prema were their employees when they obtained these tapes or recordings of the telephonic conversations, these tapes are ‘intellectual property’ of Times Group i.e. they own a copyright over the tapes and Republic TV couldn’t have used it without proper authorization or license from Times Group.

The intellectual property rights (IPR) are bestowed so as to promote public interest. The basic principle for according “Protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights” is that it must:

  1. be conducive to social and economic welfare;
  2. safeguard an individual’s fundamental rights; and
  3. promote commerce, competition and innovation.

In Copyright “Laws exceptions and limitations” are provisions, which in public interest permit the use of copyrighted works without prior authorization or a license from its owner.

Further reading of the Section 52 of the Copyright Act, 1957 provides for certain acts, which would NOT constitute an infringement of copyright, namely, fair dealing with a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work not being a computer program for the purposes of:

  • criticism or review,
  • reporting current events in any print media or
  • reproduction for the purpose of a judicial proceeding or of a report of a judicial proceeding;

It should be noted that usually media employment contracts stipulate that any original or creative work produced during the employment period by an employee becomes the IPR of the employer, so Times Group could claim IPR (assuming that Arnab and Prema’s employment contracts had such clauses) over the tapes. However, use of the tapes on Republic TV clearly falls in the first two of the above categories, and thus it should qualify for fair use and not be seen as copyright or IPR infringement. Most probably a court of law is going to take the same position.

The only case, though debatable, Times Group could claim here is if they accuse Arnab and Prema of never sharing these tapes with them while they were employees, which could be argued as breach of contractual duties expected from an employee. However, that will be difficult to prove in a court of law. In fact, it makes no sense why Arnab or Prema would not share such a scoop that happened more than two years ago when there was no plan to launch Republic TV.

Further, if I am allowed some creative interpretation, Arnab had said something on air, which suggests that perhaps these tapes were in the knowledge of some high-profile people but were not aired as Shashi Tharoor called up someone who can pull the strings:


The possibility that these tapes were with Times Group but they didn’t air actually can result in huge self-goal. Republic TV has claimed that Delhi Police would be treating these tapes as evidence. In such a scenario, whoever stopped airing these tapes earlier could be accused of withholding an important piece of evidence.

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