More than a dozen legislators of the ruling Janata Dal (S)-Congress alliance in Karnataka have submitted their resignation to Speaker K. R. Ramesh Kumar, plunging the 13-month-old government into a severe crisis, even as Congress blamed BJP of horse-trading to unsettle their democratic right.
The crisis began as 13 Congress and JD(S) MLAs reached the Speaker’s office on Saturday to put in their papers and later met Governor Vajubhai Vala at the Raj Bhavan. It is reported that all these legislators have not taken a chartered flight to Mumbai and are staying there.
While the Congress is confident to blow away the crisis after it manages to speak to their legislators, ff the resignations remain in place, the ruling coalition will lose majority in the 224-member Assembly as its strength will come down to 104. The BJP has 106 members in the Assembly.
After meeting the Governor, JD(S) MLA A H Vishwanath said, “Fourteen MLAs from Congress and JD(S), including Anand Singh, have submitted resignation from the Assembly to the Speaker…we also brought to matter to the notice of governor.”
Singh submitted his resignation to the Speaker earlier this week.
Vishwanath accused the coalition government led by Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy of failing in its duty and denied that the BJP was behind the revolt.
“The government failed to coordinate with the MLAs…and take them along. It has also failed to live up to the expectations of the people,” he said.
On the charge that the BJP was trying to destabilise the government through “Operation Lotus (BJP’s poll symbol)”, he said it is “a figment of your imagination”.
“There is no BJP angle to it. We are all seniors. No operation can happen…we are resigning voluntarily against the apathy of the government,” he said.
Assembly Speaker Ramesh Kumar, who was not in his office when the legislators went there Saturday, confirmed the resignations and said “whether the government will fall or survive” would be decided “in the Assembly”.
As a last-ditch bid, Congress’s “trouble shooter” and Minister D K Shivakumar met the legislators and tried to convince them.
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Month: July 2019
Capt Bats For A Young Congress President
Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Saturday urged the Congress Working Committee (CWC) to choose a “young leader”, who has a connect with the masses in place of Rahul Gandhi.
“After the unfortunate decision of Rahul Gandhi to quit, hope to see another dynamic youth leader as INC president to galvanise party. Urge CWC to take note of young India’s need for a young leader, aligned to aspirations of its large youth population and with grassroots connect,” he said in a tweet.
Earlier on June 3, the Punjab CM had expressed the hope that Gandhi will return to take charge of the party in future.
His statements came after Gandhi has said he has quit as the party chief stressing that “accountability is critical for the future growth” of the organisation.
The CWC is likely to meet next week to decide on the new President to end the deepening leadership crisis in the party after Gandhi resigned from the post, owning responsibility for the Lok Sabha poll debacle.
Sources in the party said that Congress leaders are deliberating to find out a suitable replacement of Gandhi. They, however, are yet to reach any conclusion.
Congress has also made it clear that Gandhi will continue to discharge his duties as party chief until the CWC accepts his resignation.
Six senior party leaders will soon sit together to decide the date of the next meeting of the CWC, the party’s top decision-making body, to decide on the new party chief, sources said.
“The process of selection of a new president will start soon. Congress cannot be without its President for long,” a CWC member said.
The leader also ruled out any possibility of Rahul Gandhi taking back his decision to step down from the post.
An interim president with rich experience of Congress as well as of Indian politics could be appointed until a new president is elected, sources added.
(ANI)
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Viral Picture Shows Dawood In Pakistan
As Pakistan is making all-out efforts to prevent the extradition of Jabir Motiwala, a high-ranking member of the D-Company from the United Kingdom, it has been revealed that Dawood Ibrahim is hiding in Pakistan.
A photograph of Dawood Ibrahim with Motiwala is going viral which clearly indicates that the underworld don is in good health.
The US is trying to extradite Motiwala, Dawood’s close aide, over charges of money laundering.
While reacting on the recent developments, Lawrence Sellin, a US Army veteran and security expert tweeted, “Fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim is believed to be a key facilitator in Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence’s narco-terrorist-jihadi operations and linked to the Dehiwala Sri Lankan drug distribution centre and possible funder of the Easter bombings.”
An underworld criminal and terrorist, Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar is accused of the 1993 Mumbai bombings in which 257 people were killed and hundreds were injured. India has asked Pakistan several times to hand over Dawood Ibrahim.
Recently, the official spokesperson of the Minister of External Affairs (MEA) Raveesh Kumar said that the presence of Dawood in Pakistan is not a secret.
“The location of Dawood Ibrahim is not a secret. Time and again, for the last several years, we have presented to Pakistan a list of people who are there in their country. We have asked repeatedly that he should be handed over,” Kumar said while addressing the media.
“He is a UN-proscribed terrorist. His imprint on the Mumbai blast is clean for all of us and frankly many people from the media fraternity have managed to speak to him and I think it is very clean that linkages are in Pakistan,” he added.
The United States also confirms that Dawood is hiding in Pakistan. On the extradition trial of Jabir Motiwala at Westminster magistrates’ court in London, John Hardy QC, representing the US government said, “The FBI in New York is investigating the D-Company which is based in Pakistan, India and the UAE.”
“The head is Dawood Ibrahim, an Indian Muslim living in exile in Pakistan. He and his brother have been fugitives from India since 1993 and in the past 10 years, D-Company operatives have conducted operations in the US, especially money laundering and extortion. The FBI investigation has revealed Motiwala reports directly to Dawood and extortion, debt collection and money laundering are his main jobs,” Hardy said.
(ANI)
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Union Budget – ‘Nothing For Middle Class’
In this video, Team LokMarg speaks to young experts, mainly CA and CS aspirants, about the Union Budget 2019-20 and what it entails for various sections of society. Clearly, it is a big disappointment for the middle class.
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Apocalypse Now In India’s Cities?
The current water crisis in Chennai could be a foretaste of things to come across India as an estimated 600 million citizens face acute shortage and the groundwater reserves are fast depleting
It’s official. And it is also shocking. By 2020, which is next year, as many as 21 major Indian cities are likely to run out of their groundwater reserves. This, incidentally, is a finding from a report by the Indian government’s think tank, NITI Aayog, which was established to replace the erstwhile Planning Commission. The 21 cities include India’s capital city of New Delhi, its satellite growth centre, Gurugram, and several others smaller cities in northern India. But it also includes important southern cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and the seaside city of Chennai, which has been in the news now because of the severe water crisis it is facing currently.
Chennai’s four reservoirs that supply water have gone dry leading to an unprecedented crisis in India’s sixth largest metropolis, home to more than 10 million people. Images, videos and news items of the scale of suffering on account of water scarcity in Chennai have rung alarm bells not only across India but also around the world. Coupled with the fact that the monsoons this year are running at a 43% shortfall, Chennai’s water crisis has been unprecedented in a city that chronically suffers on account of lack of that vital resource. It has resulted in long lines for tanker supply of water—which are not only inadequate but also expensive and can be afforded only by the very rich—and violent protests that could quickly turn into water riots.
The situation in Chennai could be a foretaste of things to come across India as an estimated 600 million Indians face water shortage. More than 40% of India’s water requirements come from groundwater reserves and these are fast depleting in its cities but also in rural India. In Gurugram and Delhi, part of the heavily populated National Capital Region, daily dependence on water shipped by tankers to condominiums, buildings and well-off neighbourhoods has become a routine affair. However, the prices for water delivered via tankers is soaring and only the affluent can afford to pay for it. In Chennai, for instance, A government water tanker costs Rs 700-Rs 800 for 9,000 litres, but supplies are scanty and private operators are making merry. Private tanker water prices have soared to Rs 4,000-Rs 5,000 for 900 litres, prices that are way beyond what an average Indian household could afford to pay.
At the root of India’s water crisis are several key factors. First, the increase in population and, hence, the soaring demand for water. India’s population runs at over 1.3 billion and is likely to soon overtake China’s. This has created tremendous pressures on cities and smaller towns where people migrate in search of earning a livelihood. Cities have been growing because of relentless building of legal as well as illegal settlements. This leads to unabated pumping out of groundwater and the water tables across the country are being depleted. Second, there is a combination of factors such as drying up of tanks and lakes because of increased demand and successive years of rainfall shortages. Desalination efforts by which seawater in coastal areas can be converted to potable water have been hopelessly inadequate and ineffective. Third, the governments and local administration, particularly in highly populated areas, have been short-sighted and their plans to mitigate or be prepared for water crises of the kind that is afflicting India now do not match the growth in demand.
What could this mean? Besides widespread suffering (in some cases, life threatening ones) it could be just a matter of time before water riots break out on the streets of Indian cities and towns. Last Friday, the United Nations’ Human Rights Council cited reports and estimates to describe what it termed as a “climate apartheid” where only the wealthy would be able to afford to counter and survive the effects of drought, overheating, and hunger. And a World Bank estimate suggests that climate change could push at least 120 million more people into poverty globally by 2030. In India, the situation is already hurtling towards that.
India’s Prime Minister, Mr Narendra Modi, recently called for greater measures for rainwater harvesting and more efficient ways of limiting water wastage. However, even if adopted, such measures could already be too late. A scenario where water becomes exorbitantly costly and leads to protests and violence is neither difficult to imagine nor unrealistic. And that could lead to civil strife of proportions that the authorities may not be equipped to handle.
A major cause of the crisis that Indians face with regard to basic infrastructure and resources such as water, electricity, and proper housing stems from the runaway surge in population. But it also has to do with the government’s lack of long-horizon planning. In most growing urban agglomerates in India, growth has been lop-sided and haphazard. Take the case of Gurugram. Touted as the “Millennium City”, it is the base for several Fortune 500 companies and has emerged as a go-to destination for wealthy Indians who can afford the sky-rocketing property prices and rents. However, in terms of basic infrastructure such as electricity, water, policing, and roads, it lags far behind what is required. When builders and real estate developers zeroed in on Gurugram, it was not matched by urban planning that would have to be commensurate with the growth that would come.
Today, Gurugram and several other Indian cities are in the throes of a crisis, teetering on the brink of a manmade disaster. The problem is so acute that solutions at this stage could be difficult to envisage. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that 65% of India’s population is below the age of 35, and 50% below the age of 25. Millions of them are workforce eligible people with aspirations, longevity, and demands that need to be met. For any government, it is a Herculean challenge to face.
One solution could be to involve the private sector in collaborative strategies to fight the crisis. In areas such as water supply where the government’s wherewithal is limited and often inadequate, partnering with private enterprises and local communities could be one route towards solving the problem. If companies are provided incentives to partner the government in areas such as large-scale rainwater harvesting; distribution network for tanker water supplies; and limiting the surge in migration to cities (by making available livelihood opportunities in rural areas), things could take a turn for the better, or, at least, it could stem the spiralling fall towards disaster.
But even if such initiatives are adopted, they would be slow-burn processes that could take years, if not decades, before their effects are perceived. Meanwhile, in the short run, India’s cities—the situation in Chennai is a rude awakening—could be facing a doomsday-like situation.
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Key Highlights Of Union Budget 2019-20
Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday made her maiden Budget Speech and presented the Union Budget 2019-20 in the Lok Sabha. The key highlights of the Budget are as follows:
10-POINT VISION FOR THE DECADE
* Building Team India with Jan Bhagidari: Minimum Government Maximum Governance
* Achieving green Mother Earth and Blue Skies through a pollution-free India
* Making Digital India reach every sector of the economy
* Launching Gaganyan, Chandrayaan, other Space and Satellite programmes
* Building physical and social infrastructure
* Water, water management, clean rivers
* Blue economy
* Self-sufficiency and export of food-grains, pulses, oilseeds, fruits and vegetables
* Achieving a healthy society via Ayushman Bharat, well-nourished women and children, the safety of citizens
* Emphasis on MSMEs, Start-ups, defence manufacturing, automobiles, electronics, fabs and batteries, and medical devices under Make in India.
MASSIVE PUSH TO ALL FORMS OF PHYSICAL CONNECTIVITY
* Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana
* Industrial Corridors, Dedicated Freight Corridors
* Bhartamala and Sagarmala projects, Jal Marg Vikas and UDAN Schemes
* State road networks to be developed in the second phase of Bhartamala project
* Rs 50 lakh crore investments needed in Railway Infrastructure during 2018-2030.
* 657 kilometers of Metro Rail network has become operational across the country.
* Outlay of Rs 10,000 crore for three years approved for Phase-II of FAME Scheme.
MEASURES TO DEEPEN BOND MARKETS
* Stock exchanges to be enabled to allow AA rated bonds as collaterals
* User-friendliness of trading platforms for corporate bonds to be reviewed
* Electronic fundraising platform under the regulatory ambit of SEBI
* Listing social enterprises and voluntary organizations.
* To raise capital as equity, debt or as units like a mutual fund.
* KYC norms for Foreign Portfolio Investors to be made more investor-friendly
* Insurance intermediaries to get 100 pc FDI
* FPIs to be permitted to subscribe to listed debt securities issued by ReITs and InvITs.
DIRECT TAXES
* Tax rate reduced to 25 per cent for companies with annual turnover up to Rs 400 crore
* Surcharge increased on individuals having taxable income from Rs 2 crore to Rs 5 crore and Rs 5 crore and above.
* Direct tax revenue increased by over 78 pc in past five years to Rs 11.37 lakh crore
* Those who don’t have PAN can file tax returns using Aadhaar
* Pre-filling of Income-tax Returns for faster, more accurate tax returns
AFFORDABLE HOUSING
* Additional deduction up to Rs 1.5 lakhs for interest paid on loans borrowed up to March 31, 2020 for purchase of house valued up to Rs 45 lakh
* Overall benefit of around Rs 7 lakh over loan period of 15 years.
OTHER DIRECT TAX MEASURES
* Simplification of tax laws to reduce genuine hardships of taxpayers
* Higher tax threshold for launching prosecution for non-filing of returns
* Appropriate class of persons exempted from the anti-abuse provisions of Section 50CA and Section 56 of the Income Tax Act.
RELIEF FOR START-UPS
* Capital gains exemptions from sale of residential house for investment in start-ups extended till FY21.
* ‘Angel tax’ issue resolved- start-ups and investors filing requisite declarations and providing information in their returns not to be subjected to any kind of scrutiny in respect of valuations of share premiums.
* Funds raised by start-ups to not require scrutiny from Income Tax Department
* E-verification mechanism for establishing the identity of the investor and source of funds
* Special administrative arrangements for pending assessments and grievance redressal
* No inquiry in such cases by the Assessing Officer without obtaining approval of the supervisory officer.
* No scrutiny of valuation of shares issued to Category-II Alternative Investment Funds.
INDIRECT TAXES
* Basic customs duty increased on cashew kernels, PVC, tiles, auto parts, marble slabs, optical fibre cable, CCTV camera, etc.
* Exemptions from custom duty on certain electronic items now manufactured in India withdrawn
* End use based exemptions on palm stearin, fatty oils withdrawn
* Exemptions to various kinds of papers withdrawn
* 5 per cent basic custom duty imposed on imported books
* Customs duty reduced on certain raw materials such as inputs for artificial kidney and disposable sterilised dialyser and fuels for nuclear power plants, etc.
* Capital goods required for manufacture of specified electronic goods
EXPORT DUTY RATIONALISED
* Increase in special additional excise duty and road and infrastructure cess each by rupee one per litre on petrol and diesel
* Custom duty on gold and other precious metals increased
EASE OF LIVING
* About 30 lakh workers joined the Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maandhan Scheme that provides Rs 3,000 per month as pension on attaining the age of 60 to workers in unorganized and informal sectors.
* Approximately 35 crore LED bulbs distributed under UJALA Yojana leading to cost saving of Rs 18,341 crore annually.
BANKING AND FINANCIAL SECTOR
* NPAs of commercial banks reduced by over Rs 1 lakh crore over the last year
* Record recovery of over Rs 4 lakh crore effected over the last four years.
* Domestic credit growth increased to 13.8 per cent
* Rs 70,000 crore proposed to be provided to PSBs to boost credit
* Reforms to be undertaken to strengthen governance in PSBs
MEASURES RELATED TO CPSES
* Target of Rs 1, 05,000 crore of disinvestment receipts set for the FY 2019-20
* Government to reinitiate the process of strategic disinvestment of Air India
* Government to consider going to an appropriate level below 51 pc in PSUs where the government control is still to be retained, on case to case basis
* Present policy of retaining 51 pc government stake to be modified to retaining 51 pc stake inclusive of the stake of government controlled institutions
DIGITAL PAYMENTS
* TDS of 2 per cent on cash withdrawal exceeding Rs 1 crore in a year from a bank account
* Business establishments with annual turnover more than Rs 50 crore shall offer low cost digital modes of payment to their customers and no charges or Merchant Discount Rate shall be imposed on customers as well as merchants
(ANI)
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Nirmala Drops Briefcase For 'Bahi Khata'
On the day of the Union Budget presentation, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman decided to go with the swadeshi ‘bahi khata’ instead of the traditional budget briefcase.
Sitharaman flashed the bahi khata, which is a kind of a ledger, wrapped in a red coloured cloth, containing a copy of the budget speech and other related relevant papers outside the North Block. Present alongside her were MoS Finance Anurag Thakur, Finance Secretary S C Garg, and Chief Economic Advisor Krishnamurthy Subramanian, among other officials.
Speaking to ANI, CEA Subramanian, when asked about the replacement of the briefcase, said, “Sitharaman believes that leather made products are not auspicious for the big occasion, so she avoided the leather bag and took the bahi khata wrapped in the red cloth. This is considered to be auspicious. Also, ditching the briefcase symbolises our departure from the slavery of western thought.”
“The Finance Minister has worked in the United Kingdom and she knows the tradition of our country. We must appreciate her decision,” he added.
The tradition of posing with the briefcase before the budget speech started with Independent India’s first ever budget presented by then Finance Minister RK Shanmukham Chetty on November 26, 1947.
Earlier, during the customary halwa ceremony, which takes place before the commencement of Budget Session, Sitharaman started the trend of unfolding the red ribbon rather than cutting it.
As per the Union Minister, cutting a ribbon on an important occasion is not considered auspicious.
Owing to this belief, Sitharaman unfolded the traditional red ribbon and was followed by Thakur and Garg, who also did the same.
The budget, which will be presented today in the Lok Sabha, is expected to boost spending at the cost of short-term slippage in fiscal deficit targets.
It is believed that Sitharaman might give relief to the farmers and the common man by raising personal income tax threshold for certain categories and upping spending on agriculture, healthcare and social sectors.
Whenever a new government is elected, the Parliament convenes for the Budget Session and the newly-sworn in Finance Minister presents the Budget outlook for the first year till February 1.
The 17th Lok Sabha’s first session started on June 17. (ANI)
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Monsoon Magic And High Tide In Mumbai
People enjoy high tide at Marine Drive in Mumbai on Thursday. Even though the residents are facing severe waterlogging problems all over the city, the monsoon magic in the Maximum City retains its charm.
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Mamata & Nusrat Jahan At Lord Jagannath Rath Fest
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and TMC Lok Sabha MP Nusrat Jahan pull the chariot during the Rath Yatra of Lord Jagannath in Kolkata on Thursday. ISCON had invited Nusrat Jahan as a special invitee to the religous festival.
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Maldives Defence Chief Visits India
Chief of Defence Force of Maldives National Defence Force Major General Abdulla Shamaal inspecting the Guard of Honour in New Delhi on Thursday. Shamaal later met with Air Marshal BS Dhanoa and India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.
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