Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s blistering attack on opposition parties in Parliament is the lead on front pages Friday. So is the news of Jammu and Kashmir leaders Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah being booked under the Public Safety Act and thus, continuing in detention.
As you would expect, the financial papers note how the central bank has come out with unconventional ways to keep interest rates low.
TOI chooses Kashmir over the PM for its lead, and notes the step came “in a clear demonstration” of the government’s tough intent. It claims the decision was taken by the Kashmir authorities — “the police brass and the chief secretary…’’
A curious, almost ominous report is that of a cab driver taking his passenger to the police station for “anti-national” statements because he may be a “danger to the country”. The report adds, “Police questioned both the driver and Sarkar, but did not initiate any further proceedings after finding no substance in the complaint.”
Some good news: “Loans for housing, auto and small businesses are likely to get cheaper even without the Reserve Bank of India’s monetary policy committee reducing interest rates,” says TOI in its RBI story.
Express leads with PM Modi’s attack on the Opposition in his Lok Sabha speech Thursday. The report says Modi alleged, “The Opposition is building narratives keeping only the vote bank in mind.” The accompanying piece on Opposition disarray in the Rajya Sabha explains how it failed to vote on amendments to the President’s address.
The most readable story is the visit by Express to the village where land for a mosque, as compensation in the Ayodhya case, has been identified. The report says, “It is in Dhannipur that the Sunni Central Waqf Board is being provided five acres for a mosque, 200 meters from the Lucknow-Gorakhpur highway.”
The anchor is a wholesome story of the birth of Molly, the daughter of same-sex Danish couple, Christinna and Kamilla, who play in the Indian Premier Badminton League.
HT features a half-page BJP ad, so limited news options. Modi’s speeches in Parliament, it observes, was “a scathing attack on the Opposition…for hiding behind the Constitution…’’
HT points out that RBI’s policy rates came after a unanimous decision “to maintain the repurchase or repo rate at 5.15%, while striking a note of caution on the state of the economy.”
Ignored by TOI and Express, the daily highlights a story on Trump’s impeacment acquittal after “the Senate voted 52-48 to clear him of abuse of power and 53-47 to acquit him of obstruction of Congress, the two charges he was facing.”
And there’s an exclusive story, based on “intelligence and counter terror operatives’’, that 27 terrorists are now being trained at Balakot by the Jaish-e-Mohammed. India had bombed the venue last February after the Pulwama terrorist attack in Kashmir.
Hindu also leads with PM Modi’s speeches saying that he put “up a strong defence of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) in both Houses of Parliament.” The Omar Abdullah-Mehbooba Mufti story quotes Mufti’s daughter, Iltija: “As a child, I have memories of my mother going from pillar to post to free boys wrongfully detained by security forces. Today, as I fight for her freedom, life has come full circle…”
The paper also features Trump’s acquittal, and identifies the Uber passenger who was taken to the police station, because he could be a “danger to the nation.” He’s a Jaipur-based poet Bappadittya Sarkar.
The Telegraph’s lead is `BIG’ on Nehru, as you can see. The Kolkata daily calls out PM Modi for mentioning Nehru a whopping 23 times in his speech Thursday. Using Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, the story opens with, “Mark Antony mentioned Julius Caesar only a miserly eight times in the ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen’ speech before he paused for his heart to return from the coffin.”
Freedom fighter H.S. Doreswamy’s ‘steel will’ is interesting too. Born before Gandhi, he “could not sit quiet even after police in Karnataka rejected his application seeking permission for a five-day protest against a host of issues, including the new citizenship matrix.”
The New Indian Express downgrades PM Modi in favour of applauding RBI for its monetary policy — like all the pink papers, its notes ‘out-of-the-box’ ideas which would keep interest rates low while leaving the repo rate unchanged. “The job of the lower interest will now be done through long-term repos, which offer cheaper capital to banks, can boost liquidity and lending, tame bond yields and can also enable quicker monetary policy transmission”, says report highlights. Note the Income Tax raids on bigwigs of the Tamil Nadu film industry actor Vijay and financier and producer Anbu Chezhiyan and a brief item about exam fraud.
Unlike the Delhi papers, NIE’s report on Modi’s speech emphasises how the PM “dug deep” into history when slamming the opposition parties over the anti-CAA protests.
After four pages of advertisement, Mumbai Mirror’s front page becomes visible. Lovely headline on the cabbie who took his passenger to the Santa Cruz police station. This happened after the driver “had heard him talking over the phone to a friend back home about the anti-CAA/ NRC protests around the country.” A smaller report on a builder facing a hit for flattening a hill in Powai reads, “The state environment department has issued a notice to Kanakia Spaces Realty for cutting down a hill and causing ‘substantial’ environmental damage to the tune of Rs 400 crore for its Kanakia Future City project.”
Another crowded Page 1 here, with 13 stories. But find your way through and there are a few highly readable reports. For instance, the item on NASA’s Christina Koch breaking the spaceflight record for female astronauts, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad’s surprising statement about how the Right to the Internet is not a fundamental one. Another important story is about India suspending all types of visas issued to Chinese in the wake of the coronavirus “but has left the question of continuing with flights on the airlines”.
ET’s lead is a no brainer: RBI’s monetary policy announcement (although the bottom half ladder ad is a distraction), and highlighted how the central bank has “showed the range of liquidity tools at its disposal to fuel the flagging economy “.The coronavirus outbreak piece reveals the shutting down of a Tata Motors plant in China. However, it’s not all grim news for the auto industry: in another report on “car industry” ET reports that Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai Motor and Mahindra & Mahindra “expect the automobile market to grow in low single digits in fiscal 2021, after a slow start to the year”. Also, read the anchor on the realty sector getting a “breather” after the RBI announced that “loans for projects delayed for reasons beyond the control of promoters will be treated as standard loans”.
Following suit, Mint emphasises on how RBI “stepped in to do the heavy lifting to revive the economy” through its monetary policy announcement. There’s also an interesting report on “one of the biggest transactions in India’s clean energy industry”. Amid “a tough phase for India’s clean energy sector” French energy giant Total agrees to “acquire 50% in Adani Group’s solar assets for $510 million”; note the headline — ‘Sun shines for Adani…’. Worth a read is the anchor and the worrying news on how drugmakers are still a long way from coming up with a vaccine for the new coronavirus.
Business Standard takes a similar line on RBI. It has “adopted unconventional measures to lower banks’ cost of funds so that they could reduce the lending rates further…’’ it writes.
Also, there’s the deal struck between Emami Cement and Nivoco Vistas Corp, part of the Nirma group, for 100 per cent equity in Emami Group for Rs 5,500 crore. “The move is a part of Emami’s efforts to reduce debt at the group level”. The paper takes an unusual route on PM Modi’s Parliament speech: he explained the “current architecture” of GST “was his brainchild, which he had suggested as chief minister of Gujarat to then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee”.