QBullet: Cong Pitches Rs 72,000 Income Sop; Jet Chief Goyal Quits
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1. Rahul Gandhi’s Poll Pitch to Poor: Rs 72,000 Income Guarantee
Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Monday, 25 March, promised that his party would, if it comes to power, guarantee an income of at least Rs 12,000 a month for India’s poorest families by giving them Rs 6,000 a month.
The head of the party’s data analytics department Praveen Chakravarty explained the provenance of the Rs 12,000 number by pointing out that data shows that India’s poorest earn between Rs 5,000 and Rs 6,000 a month.
Gandhi said the minimum income guarantee scheme, named Nyay (justice) by the party, would cover 50 million families, or 250 million individuals, that constitute the poorest 20 percent of Indian households.
It will cost Rs 3.6 lakh crore, around 2 percent of India’s GDP, but Gandhi insisted that it was fiscally prudent.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
2. Jet Airways Debt Crisis: Naresh Goyal, Wife Quit Board, Lenders Step in to Keep It Flying
Ending months of uncertainty, Naresh Goyal on Monday, 25 March, quit as chairperson of the board of Jet Airways, which he founded 25 years ago, enabling lenders to extend another lifeline of Rs 1,500 crore in funding support and initiate a bidding process to get a new investor to run the troubled airline.
According to the lenders’ bailout plan, Goyal and his wife Anita Goyal, and one nominee of Etihad Airways, Kevin Knight, will step down from the board. The airline said it will ring-fence its assets to secure existing facilities extended by lenders and the immediate funding support.
The board also decided to constitute an interim management committee to manage and monitor the daily operations and cashflow of the company, which has been hit by the grounding of aircraft and cancellation of flights.
(Source: The Indian Express)
3. Stir Over E-Test Flares in JNU, VC Alleges Break-In
Vice Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Jagadesh Kumar on Monday, 25 March, alleged that students broke into his residence and confined his wife to the house for several hours.
“This evening, a few hundred students forcibly broke into my JNU residence and confined my wife inside home for several hours while I was away at a meeting. Is it the way to protest? Terrorising a lonely lady at home?” Kumar tweeted.
The JNU students’ union (JNUSU) has been protesting against what it termed the “exclusionary” online entrance examination system from the coming academic year. The students’ union had also objected to the varsity decision to de-link MPhil and PhD programmes and the scrapping of the BA second-year lateral entry, among other decisions
The JNU students’ union denied the V-C’s allegations and said the students were “protesting peacefully” and never entered the residence.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
4. UP Suspends 7 School Teachers for Social Media Posts Critical of Pulwama, Govt
From questioning the Pulwama terror attack to praising Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, from criticising the effectiveness of the Balakot strike to making “political” statements against the ruling establishment – at least seven state government school teachers have been suspended by the Uttar Pradesh government for such posts on their Facebook page or WhatsApp groups.
Also suspended is a Basic Shiksha Adhikari (BSA), a Group-A education service officer. While two suspensions were for allegedly violating the Model Code of Conduct after polls were announced on 10 March, the government has also ordered an FIR against a private school teacher.
Prabhat Kumar, UP Additional Chief Secretary (Basic Education), said a proper inquiry was conducted before the BSA was suspended. “I have no information about (the) teachers (suspended). BSAs of respective districts must have done this,” he said.
(Source: The Indian Express)
5. Can More VVPAT Slips Be Matched With EVMs, SC Asks EC
The Supreme Court on Monday, 25 March, favoured the idea of increasing the number of EVMs to be matched with VVPAT paper slips, and asked the Election Commission to inform by 28 March, if it could scale up its current plan to match one randomly selected EVM with VVPAT slips in each Assembly segment.
“Can you do it for more EVMs on your own? Only if you have difficulties, we will consider it. But we would like you (EC) to increase it (the number of EVMs to be matched with VVPAT paper slips),” a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Deepak Gupta said.
The bench was dealing with a petition, filed by leaders of 21 non-NDA political parties led by Andhra Pradesh CM N Chandrababu Naidu, which has sought matching of VVPAT paper slips with at least 50% of EVMs that would be deployed for the upcoming general elections.
(Source: The Times of India)
6. Nitin Gadkari’s Annual Income Jumped 140% in Five Years
Union Minister of Road, Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari, who is BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate for Nagpur, has shown in his election affidavit filed on Monday, 25 March, an income of Rs 6.4 lakh for 2017-18.
This represents an increase of 140 percent from about Rs 2.7 lakh shown in his last affidavit five years ago (in 2013-14).
The big jump took place in 2014-15 when his income rose to Rs 6 lakh, and it's been largely stagnant in the years since.
The income disclosed by his wife Kanchan, however, shows a nearly ten-fold increase from Rs 4.6 lakh in 2013-14 to nearly Rs 40 lakh in 2017-18. For the first time, candidates have to disclose details of income declared in their I-T returns for the last five years.
(Source: The Times of India)
7. Cong Sets Stage for Urmila’s Political Debut
Urmila Matondkar, who shot to fame with the film Rangeela, may be set to add a dash of colour to the hustings. The Congress is likely to field her against BJP’s Gopal Shetty from the Mumbai North constituency.
Besides being a movie star, Matondkar (45) is known for taking up humanitarian causes, especially for underprivileged women and children.
Outgoing Mumbai Congress president Sanjay Nirupam, accompanied by Milind Deora, the new city party chief, confirmed that talks are on with the actor. “We had a brief meeting with her. We have requested her to contest the Lok Sabha polls from North Mumbai,” Nirupam said.
(Source: The Times of India)
8. Bluff… Cong Has History of Swindling People in Name of Poverty Alleviation, Says Jaitley
Hours after Congress President Rahul Gandhi promised a minimum income scheme guaranteeing Rs 72,000 a year to the poor, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday, 25 March, criticised the announcement, saying the Congress has a “history of swindling people in name of poverty alleviation” while the Modi-led government has “already given the poor what Congress promises.”
“Today, the Congress president has announced that those whose income is below Rs 12,000 per month would be given a subsidy to ‘attain’ that income subject to Rs 6,000 per month. This announcement is an admission of the fact that neither Indira ji nor her son and certainly not the UPA government controlled by her descendants was able to remove poverty,” Jaitley wrote in a blog, posted on Monday afternoon.
(Source: The Indian Express)
9. 7 Held for Abduction of Hindu Girls in Pakistan
Pakistani police have arrested seven people allegedly involved in arranging the marriage of two minor Hindu girls who were abducted and forcibly converted to Islam, hours after a spat between Indian and Pakistani ministers over the treatment of minorities.
On 24 March, police conducted raids in Rahim Yar Khan district of Punjab province — where the girls were reportedly taken from Ghotki in Sindh province — and arrested the man who solemnised the marriages, a leader of Pakistan Sunni Tehreek and relatives of the men who married the teenage girls.
The suspects were handed over to Sindh police. The deputy commissioner and superintendent of police of Ghotki visited the families of the girls and informed them of the arrests. Police officials said action is being taken to recover the girls.
The Pakistan government acted on Saturday after two videos on the marriages did the rounds on social media.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
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