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Niti Aayog meet: At a key meeting of government thinktank Niti Aayog Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi invoked the spirit of “Team India” against the backdrop of four chief ministers extending support to Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. The four chief ministers met the PM on the sidelines of the meeting, urging his intervention in ending the “constitutional crisis” in Delhi, reports The Indian Express.
At the meeting, the PM vowed to accelerate India’s GDP growth to more than 10 per cent, said Livemint, and also brought up the issue of simultaneous Lok Sabha and assembly elections, according to NDTV. During discussions, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar reportedly expressed support for Andhra’s special category status demand, and sought the same for Bihar.
However, not everyone was happy with the meeting. West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said it was not fair for the Centre to set the agenda of the annual NITI Aayog meet.
Nirav Modi’s six passports and an international glitch: According to a report by The Times of India, Nirav Modi used his Indian passport as recently as 12 June, when he took a Eurostar high-speed train to Brussels.
Agencies have discovered that the diamantaire could be in the possession of at least six passports, two of them active until recently. Of the two active passports, one only had his first name with a 40-month UK visa issued against it, which is probably how he kept travelling to various countries. In the absence of a uniform international mechanism, the legal blocking of the documents in various countries could not be done, further aiding his travel.
The latest in AAP vs the L-G: Thousands of AAP supporters marching towards PM Narendra Modi’s residence were stopped midway by Delhi Police as the impasse between the Arvind Kejriwal-led government and lieutenant governor Anil Baijal showed no signs of abating Sunday, reports The Indian Express. Meanwhile, Satyendar Jain was rushed to hospital after his health deteriorated on account of his hunger strike.
IAS officers say they aren’t on strike: In an unprecedented press conference, Delhi’s IAS association Sunday rebutted claims that its officers were on an “undeclared” strike and instead alleged that they were being targeted and victimised, reports The Pioneer. “We are feeling frightened and victimised. We are being used for completely political reasons,” Manisha Saxena, secretary of the IAS association, stated.
Beginning of the end of good times?: The Indian Express reports that Vijay Mallya’s may become the first case taken up under India’s new Fugitive Economic Offenders Ordinance. The ED will move a special court this week for “immediate confiscation” of attached assets valued at over Rs 12,400 crore. If declared a fugitive under the new ordinance, his assets in India and abroad will be liable for confiscation and can also be sold before trial begins.
Further, it also reports that the UK high court has ordered Mallya to pay a minimum of £200,000 towards the costs incurred by 13 Indian banks in their legal battle to recover alleged dues.
Ramzan ceasefire will end and security operations resume in the Valley, said the J&K government Sunday, according to a report in Hindustan Times. Security arrangements for the 60-day annual Amarnath Yatra, spike in violence in the second half of Ramzan that included the of killing of prominent journalist Shujaat Bukhari, and a less-than-enthusiastic response to the initiative from the Valley’s separatist leadership kept the government from extending the truce period.
‘Give us a better life if you want a bullet train’: Ponds, ambulances, solar street lights and doctors are some of the demands villagers in Maharashtra’s Palghar district want met before they give their nod to the government’s ambitious bullet train project, reports The Economic Times. The project is facing stiff resistance from farmers as about 110 km of the 508 km train corridor passes through Palghar, affecting about 3,000 people in the stretch.
The Grand Alliance in Bihar has got a shot in the ‘Left’ arm: The CPI is likely to field fiery student leader Kanhaiya Kumar from Bihar’s Begusarai Lok Sabha constituency in 2019, reports the Deccan Herald. A former president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Student Union, Kanhaiya shot to fame after he was slapped with sedition charges.
Gauri Lankesh murder case: To ensure that the probe in journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh’s murder case reaches its logical end, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) has requested the court to not remand the accused in the custody of any other investigating agency, reports The New Indian Express.
Business Class
The government’s plan for issuing an Initial Public Offering (IPO) for Air India has suffered a setback after “the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) denied the state-owned carrier exemption from a rule which makes net profit for the past three years mandatory for this”, reports Business Standard.
The largest M&A (mergers and acquisitions) deal of the country (merger of Idea and Vodafone) has moved closer to its goal with telecom minister Manoj Sinha believed to have signed off on the merger, reports The Economic Times.
News it’s just kinda cool to know
Two wheels and one ticket to FIFA: A mathematics teacher from Kerala has cycled his way through Iran and Azerbaijan for the FIFA World Cup 2018, reports The Hindu. Clifin Francis commenced his cycling voyage from Iran on 13 March and crossed over to Russia on 5 June. He is currently on his way to Moscow to complete his nearly 4,000-km long biking expedition. Yet, at the end of it all, he will witness just one World Cup game, between France and Denmark, in Moscow on 26 June.
Point of View
Is US President Donald Trump a dictator? Will he turn America into an autocracy? The questions might seem exaggerated, but the time may have come to ask them. Journalist Chidanand Rajghatta writes in his column in The Times Of India, “For decades, for generations, the United States has served as a beacon for democracy and freedom… Any slide on part of the US into a totalitarian way of governance could endanger, if not extinguish, democracies across the world…”
Last week’s NITI Aayog report warning about an impending acute water crisis should be enough to bring the authorities out of their deep slumber. The Hindu writes in its editorial, “India’s water crisis is clear and present, with implications for the health of the entire population. According to the Composite Water Management Index developed by Niti Aayog, 70 per cent of the water resources are identified as polluted…If the water accessible to millions is contaminated, the problem is infinitely worse than that of availability.”
It will be a cliché to say data is the new asset. But India is far behind in utilising and securing it. The Times Of India, in its editorial, writes, “With rapid advances in information and communication technology, data is an asset whose value keeps increasing over time. India, unfortunately, has been lax in thinking about the strategic implications of this asset.”
Prime Time
Ironic discussion on fake news
On Republic TV, Arnab Goswami moderated a debate on the issue of fake news, in the wake of a recent lynching allegedly provoked by messages on WhatsApp. Arnab, rhetorically wondering who was responsible for spreading fake news, referred to Shujaat Bukhari’s death and claimed that the “tukde-tukde gang immediately blamed his death on Indian agencies”.
The panel consisted of nine people, excluding Goswami, and included representatives from Opindia, Postcard News, Swarajya magazine and Jan ki Baat. During the course of the debate, Goswami, more often than not, referred to the Right wing as “us”. Who knows why.
‘Neutral anchor’ praises his party
On India Today TV, guest anchor and AAP member Raghav Chadha discussed the current standoff between Delhi L-G Anil Baijal and CM Arvind Kejriwal. Though Chadha pledged to be neutral, he went on to say that the Delhi government had tried to rule for the benefit of the people but “the central government creates several obstacles”.
Congress’ Sharmishta Mukherjee remarked that the AAP stood nowhere and “it is the Congress party which is fighting BJP at the national level”.
With inputs from Prateek Gupta and Ratnadeep Choudhary