1. Anticipatory Bail Denied, Chidambaram Gets Visits by CBI, ED
The Delhi high court on Tuesday denied interim protection from arrest to senior Congress politician P Chidambaram in a case of suspected irregularities related to foreign investment received by INX Media Private Limited when he was finance minister in 2007, potentially opening the doors for his arrest by investigating agencies.
The ruling prompted Chidambaram to immediately knock on the doors of the Supreme Court, which will hear the plea on Wednesday. Teams of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED), both of which are investigating the case, visited Chidambaram’s residence in the evening to arrest him but left after they couldn’t find him.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
2. Disquiet in State BJP After Karnataka Govt Finally Gets a Cabinet
Seventeen ministers were inducted into the Karnataka cabinet on Tuesday, about a month after BS Yediyurappa was sworn as chief minister following the collapse of a Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) coalition government that ruled the state for 14 months.
After hectic late-night consultations, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) finally revealed a Lingayat-heavy line-up of legislators who would join the council of ministers headed by Yediyurappa, who took the oath of office on July 26 as the only member of the cabinet.
The list of ministers, approved by party president Amit Shah, took time reaching Bengaluru and caused some nervous moments for the legislators, who found it hard to secondguess the central leadership.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
3. US Defence Secretary Speaks to Rajnath Singh: Appreciate J&K Is Internal Matter
A day after US President Donald Trump called up Prime Minister Narendra Modi,asking India and Pakistan to work towards reducing tensions in Kashmir, US Defence Secretary Mark T Esper spoke to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh Tuesday and “appreciated India’s position that the recent developments in Jammu & Kashmir are an internal matter of India”.
This is the first time that the US has described the current J&K situation as India’s “internal matter”. The remarks come days after Russia became the first UN Security Council permanent member to underline that the changes in J&K have been carried out “within the framework” of India’s Constitution.
Earlier, hours after Modi told Trump that “extreme rhetoric and incitement to anti-India violence” by certain leaders in the region was “not conducive to peace”, the US President asked Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan late Monday to “moderate” his rhetoric over J&K.
(Source: The Indian Express)
4. Jammu & Kashmir: Mobiles Down, Valley Queues up for Landlines
For years they were considered obsolete. But after a fortnight of communication restrictions across Jammu and Kashmir since the Centre scrapped the state’s special status and bifurcated it into two Union Territories, the Valley is queuing up outside telephone exchanges — for landline telephones, new and old.
Over the weekend, the J&K administration announced that the unprecedented security curbs across the state would be relaxed in phases, starting with landline phones, exchange-by-exchange.
“Our landline has not been working for the last two years. Today, I came here to restore it. There is no option for us other than the landline now. We are back to the old times,” said Abdul Majid, a resident of Khanyar, who was at Srinagar’s exchange at Lal chowk Tuesday.
He is not the only one. Almost all BSNL exchanges in Srinagar and other areas across the Valley are witnessing huge queues of people who want their landline phones restored.
(Source: Indian Express)
5. Aadhaar-Social Media Link: SC to Hear FB Plea to Transfer Cases
The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear Facebook’s plea seeking transfer to the apex court cases pertaining to linking profiles of social media users with Aadhaar and for such companies to provide information to investigation agencies. The plea also sought a mechanism enabling traceability of objectionable messages.
A bench of Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose issued notices to the Centre and other social networking sites—Google, Twitter and YouTube—on the Facebook petition seeking transfer of all five cases pending in the high courts of Madras, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Bombay to itself for final adjudication.
(Source: Times Of India)
6. Centre to Double Time Limit to Appeal NRC Ouster to 120 Days
In a relief to residents of Assam who find themselves excluded from the national register of citizens (NRC) to be published on August 31, the Union home ministry will amend citizenship rules to increase the time limit for filing appeals in foreigners tribunals to 120 days from the existing 60 days.
The decision was taken at a review meeting on NRC chaired by home minister Amit Shah on Monday and attended by Assam CM Sarbananda Sonowal and registrar general of India Vivek Joshi.
The move comes against the backdrop of the Centre’s concern over the NRC data showing relatively lower exclusions in areas near the border areas with Bangladesh and a higher number inland, a counter intuitive finding given that the presence of illegals should be higher near the international border.
The government had sought reverification of a certain percentage of the NRC data but the SC was cold to the proposal.
(Source: Times Of India)
7. ED Arrests Nephew of Kamal Nath in Bank Fraud Case
In a dramatic turn of events, the Enforcement Directorate arrested Delhi-based businessman Ratul Puri, nephew of Madhya Pradesh CM Kamal Nath, for an alleged bank fraud when he appeared before the antimoney laundering agency in connection with alleged complicity in the AgustaWestland bribery case.
Puri was replying to a long questionnaire regarding his alleged role in laundering “bribe money” in the UPA government’s purchase of AgustaWestland helicopters for the VVIP squadron when officials served summons on him in connection with what they described as a Rs 6,000-crore bank scam and detained him.
(Source: Times Of India)
8. ‘Heart-Stopping’ Move as Probe Enters Moon Orbit
Chandrayaan-2 successfully entered into an elliptical orbit around the moon on Tuesday as India officially “reached the moon” for the second time, 11 years after its first mission that discovered water on the lunar surface.
Tuesday’s “heart-stopping” move was described as a “major milestone” by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairperson K Sivan.
A successful soft landing, scheduled for 1.55 am on September 7, will make the Indian mission the first ever to land near the moon’s south pole at a latitude 70 degrees south of the equator.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
9. Private Sector Salaries Logged Slowest Growth in a Decade
Hit by decelerating sales growth, Indian companies are tightening spending on their wage bills. Private sector salaries recorded their worst growth in 10 years in fiscal year 2018-19. It was also the first time in seven years that the share of salaries in sales revenue came down.
These results are based on an HT analysis of the Prowess database compiled by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). Prowess has 4,953 companies which have sales and salary data for the 10 years ending 2018-19. Not all of these companies have data on number of employees. However, just 3,353 of these 4,953 companies employed 8.2 million people in 2018-19.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
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