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Flipkart chief executive officer and co-founder Binny Bansal resigned from the company after an internal investigation revealed allegations of “serious personal misconduct”, reports Reuters.
According to the report, the allegation came to the knowledge of Flipkart’s parent company Walmart in July this year.
Quoting a source, the report added, “The accusation dated to a few years earlier and was made by a former Flipkart associate, who was not with Flipkart at the time, the person added.”
US-based Walmart, the world’s largest company, acquired a 77 per cent stake in Flipkart for about $16 billion earlier this year.
“As Flipkart’s largest individual shareholder with about 5.6 per cent he (Bansal) will continue to be on the board – but his exit from the day-to-day management of the group marks the end of the Era of the Bansals,” The Times of India reports.
Sachin Bansal, the other co-founder of Flipkart, had quit the company after the acquisition.
“Sachin had sold his entire… stake for about $1 billion and stepped away at the time Walmart signed the deal with Flipkart. Binny had sold a little over 1 per cent at that time,” The Telegraph reports.
Declining to stay its verdict allowing women of all ages inside the sanctum sanctorum of the Sabarimala temple, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the multiple pleas filed against the decision in open court on 22 January, reports The Indian Express.
“Since the SC verdict, the Lord Ayappa shrine has opened to the public for seven days on two separate occasions, but violent protests at the temple meant no woman between the age of 10 and 50 could enter,” the report adds.
Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan has called an all-party meeting Thursday to discuss the Sabarimala issue, reports The Telegraph.
The Supreme Court Tuesday also agreed to hear “a plea by Zakia Jafri, widow of slain Congress leader Ehsan Jafri, challenging the decision of a Gujarat court to accept the report of the special investigation team (SIT) that gave a clean chit to several people, including then chief minister Narendra Modi [in the 2002 Gujarat riots],” reports The Indian Express.
Most major English newspapers have put the news on the front page, the major exceptions being The Times of India and Hindustan Times.
The Telegraph reports the matter under the headline “SC to take up riot clean chit to Modi”. Quoting Zakia, The Indian Express reports, “The SIT… had come to the conclusion that no case was made out and it was accepted by the magistrate and this finding was erroneously reiterated by the high court, despite large amount of documentation and contemporaneous evidence that existed which meritoriously made out a triable case against all the accused.”
The other big news on the front page of The Indian Express is the interview of Dassault CEO Eric Trappier to news agency ANI. Dassault is the manufacturer of the Rafale jet India is purchasing from France.
The CEO refuted Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s allegations of irregularities in the Rafale deal, reports The Indian Express.
“Rejecting Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s allegation that he [Trappier] lied about details of his company’s joint venture with Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group for offset contracts in the Rafale fighter deal, Dassault Aviation CEO Eric Trappier has denied any wrongdoing, saying ‘I don’t lie’,” the report adds.
The Times of India adds, “Trappier said the firm dealt with governments and not parties, and added that Dassault had prior experience of dealing with Congress governments.”
On the eve of the birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru, former Congress president Sonia Gandhi “accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of ‘undermining the legacy’ of India’s first Prime Minister”, reports Hindustan Times.
She was speaking at the launch of a new edition of Congress leader Shashi Tharoor’s 2003 book Nehru: The Invention of India. The Indian Express reports, “Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday alleged that the Nehruvian legacy was being ‘undermined’ by those presently [sic] in power who have ‘contempt’ for the country’s first Prime Minister for all that he did to build an India which they want to change for the ‘worse’.”
Prime Time
The Rafale controversy
On India Today, journalist Rajdeep Sardesai discussed allegations that the BJP was trying to hide the prices of the Rafale jets.
Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera said, “When the Congress asks the government to reveal the price of the Rafale aircraft, they say the Congress is friends with Pakistan. This is entirely rubbish.”
BJP spokesperson Narendra Taneja replied, “The government has shared all the numbers with the Supreme Court of the country, we shared the information.”
Is RSS a terrorist organisation?
On Republic TV, anchor Arnab Goswami took up an allegation made by critics against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, that it is a terrorist organisation. The debate came a day after Congress leader Sundarlal Tiwari, an MLA in Madhya Pradesh, said the RSS “exhibited all the signs of a terror outfit”.
BJP leader Nupur Sharma said, “The RSS ideology is about national integration. Rahul Gandhi has taken a cue from AIMIM on RSS.”
All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Waris Pathan replied, “The RSS is an organisation that does not follow our Constitution. They have never hoisted our national flag.”
News it’s just kinda cool to know
India will be home to a fourth of the world’s air-conditioning units by 2022, a major detriment to efforts to curb climate change, according to research conducted by the Rocky Mountain Institute, US, DownToEarth reports.