1. Amid Disquiet, MM Joshi Omitted from BJP List of 43
Amid rumbling over ticket denials in some seats like Kanpur, where saffron veteran Murli Manohar Joshi has been benched, and Bengaluru South, where the wife of late party leader Ananth Kumar was overlooked for a young debutant, BJP on Tuesday, 26 March, issued a list of 43 nominees for the Lok Sabha polls.
Not budging in the face of Joshi’s stiff resistance to being asked to step aside, BJP announced Satyadev Pachauri, a minister in the UP cabinet, as the replacement for the octogenarian leader.
The list of 30 candidates for UP, however, accommodated women and child welfare minister Maneka Gandhi and her son Varun Gandhi, who were allowed to swap their Pilibhit and Sultanpur seats.
(Source: The Times of India)
2. ‘Double Standards’: Vijay Mallya Tweet Attacks Centre After Jet Airways Loan
Fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya has tweeted again offering to return the money he owns several banks as he hit out at the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government for its “double standards” for not helping him out.
Vijay Mallya pointed out in a series of tweets that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led (BJP) National Democratic Alliance government did nothing for him even though he invested crores of rupees into his now defunct Kingfisher Airlines, a day after a consortium of lenders led by the State Bank of India (SBI) took control of Jet Airways to save the airline from bankruptcy.
“I invested over Rs 4,000 crores into Kingfisher Airlines to save the Company and its employees. Not recognised and instead slammed in every possible way. The same PSU (public sector undertaking) banks let India’s finest airline with the best employees and connectivity fail ruthlessly. Double standards under NDA,” Vijay Mallya tweeted on Tuesday, 27 March.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
3. ‘My Self-Respect Hurt by Party State Unit’: Giriraj Singh Sulks
One of the first leaders who in 2013 publicly called for Narendra Modi as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, he went on to become one of the most vocal ministers in his government, remembered best for attacking critics with his ‘send them to Pakistan’ remarks.
But three days after the party named him as its candidate for the Begusarai Lok Sabha seat, Giriraj Singh is still in New Delhi, miffed and still to make up his mind on contesting the seat. Follow more election news here.
He points to his “honour”, disappointed and annoyed that the party did not consult him before taking away his Nawada seat and packing him off to Begusarai.
“ My self-respect has been hurt. I have nothing against the (BJP) central leadership. The jolt to my honour and hurt to my self-respect has been inflicted by the state leadership,” Singh told The Indian Express.
(Source: The Indian Express)
4. ‘Danger Not Over Yet, Pak’s Relations With India Will Be Tense Till LS Polls’: Imran Khan
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has said he believes Pakistan’s relations with India will continue to be tense till the general elections in the neighbouring country, and Islamabad is prepared to counter “any aggression” because “the danger is not over”.
Khan made the remarks during a wide-ranging interaction with the media in Islamabad on Monday, 25 March.
Tensions between the two countries had spiked following a suicide attack by the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) at Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir that killed 40 paramilitary troops last month.
India retaliated for the Pulwama attack by conducting an air strike on a JeM base at Balakot in Pakistan, and this was followed by an aerial engagement along the Line of Control that resulted in the shooting down of an Indian jet fighter.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
5. Rajan Now Doubts 7% Growth, Seeks ‘Impartial’ Study of Data
Former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan on Tuesday, 26 March, stoked a fresh controversy, raising doubts about the country’s economy clocking 7 percent growth amid reports that enough jobs are not being created, and called for an impartial body to look into the numbers to restore confidence.
“I know one minister (in the Modi government) has said (that) how can we be growing at 7 percent and not have jobs. Well, one possibility is that we are not growing at 7 percent,” he was quoted as saying in an interview to a business news channel. Recently, finance minister Arun Jaitley had said that an economy cannot grow at over 7 percent and still not create employment.
As RBI governor, Rajan had praised the Central Statistics Office on the GDP data changes. “CSO is to be commended on the changes it has made to the methodology of estimating GDP, bringing India up to international best practice,” he had said in his monetary policy statement on 4 March 2015.
(Source: The Times of India)
6. China Destroys Nearly 30,000 Maps for Showing Arunachal as Part of India
China has destroyed nearly 30,000 world maps printed in the country for not showing Arunachal Pradesh and Taiwan as part of Chinese territory, according to a report in the state-run Global Times on Tuesday, 26 March.
According to the report, the maps, printed by a company in Anhui province in eastern China for export, “failed to show the correct territory of China” and “omitted South Tibet and the island of Taiwan”.
In other words, the maps showed Arunachal Pradesh as part of India. Beijing claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of South Tibet, and the northeastern state is depicted as part of South Tibet Autonomous Region in China’s official maps.
(Source: The Indian Express)
7. Nirav Modi in London Prison, His Art Under Mumbai Hammer: I-T Recovers Rs 54.8 Crore
The applause that surged across the auction hall on Tuesday, 26 March, was not much of a surprise – after all, the hammer had just gone down on a V S Gaitonde painting, an untitled work from 1973, for Rs 25.24 crore. What was more remarkable, though, was the auction itself.
The bidding was for 68 artworks owned by Nirav Modi, the 48-year-old fugitive jeweller who is lodged in a London jail after extradition proceedings were initiated against him in connection with the Rs 13,500-crore Punjab National Bank fraud case.
The auction was conducted by SaffronArt on behalf of the recovery officer of the Income Tax Department in Mumbai, which had recently sealed some of the properties owned by Nirav Modi.
(Source: The Indian Express)
8. Delhi Swine Flu Toll This Year Highest Since 2010
At 21, the death toll from swine flu in Delhi this year (till 24 March) is already the highest since 2010 when the H1N1 virus infection killed 77 in the entire year, according to data from the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
The city has recorded 3,512 cases of swine flu this year, the second highest since 2010. In 2010, swine flu infected 2,725 people. The highest number of infections, 4307, was in 2015.
“Six of the dead were Delhi residents. The other 15 deaths were of people from neighbouring states being treated in Delhi. The numbers are high because Delhi shares borders with Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, where the number of cases is high,” said an official from the health ministry, on condition of anonymity.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
9. Share List of Tainted Officers Since 2010, CIC Tells Govt
In an order which, if implemented, could promote transparency but also be held as too sweeping, the Central Information Commission (CIC) has ordered that the government reveal names of all IAS officers against whom prosecution sanction has been granted as well as denied since 2010.
The CIC order comes on an RTI petition filed by activist Nutan Thakur in May 2017, where she sought copies of department of personnel and training’s files and letters and notes exchanged between DoPT and various officers regarding criminal cases against them from 2010 to 2017.
The government is bound to implement the CIC order unless it chooses to appeal in a high court, an option it can exercise. But within the CIC, the process of appeals is complete.
(Source: The Times of India)
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