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Union Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave passes away
In Rajasthan, Congress has an alternative model, says Sachin Pilot
Hassan Rouhani looks to beat hard-liner as Iran prepares to vote
Mumbai Indians to meet Kolkata Knight Riders in Qualiier-2
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Printe d at . Che n n ai . Co i mb ator e . B en galuru . Hyde ra bad . Madu rai . Noida . Visa khapat nam . T hiru vanant hapu ram . Koc hi . Vi j ayawada . Ma ngalu ru . Tiruch ira palli . Kolkata . H ubb a lli . Moh ali . A lla ha ba d . Ma la ppura m . M umba i . Ti ru pati
World court stays Jadhav execution
NEARBY
Pakistan ordered to “take all measures at its disposal” to comply with interim ruling Vidya Ram The Hague
SIT to probe IAS oicer Anurag Tewari’s death LUCKNOW
A Special Investigation Team will probe the death of Karnataka-cadre IAS oicer Anurag Tewari whose body was found on the road near a State guesthouse here under mysterious conditions. The SIT has been asked to submit its report within 72 hours. NATION 쑺 PAGE 6 DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
Mehbooba, Jaitley discuss Kashmir
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Thursday stayed the execution of former Indian naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, in a move swiftly welcomed by the government but dismissed by Pakistan as a “basic ruling” that said nothing about the merits or maintainability of the case. “We will leave no stone unturned to save #Kulbhushan Jadhav,” tweeted Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj, who hailed the MEA’s “tireless efforts,” on the case.
SRINAGAR
Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley met Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti in Srinagar on Thursday and discussed the security situation even as fresh protests and a grenade attack left 18 persons, including students, injured. An oicial spokesman said the Chief Minister apprised Mr. Jaitley of the huge losses sufered by local business units. NEWS
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Legal milestone The ICJ, popularly known as the ‘world court’, ordered Pakistan to “take all measures at its disposal” to prevent the execution of Mr. Jadhav, pending its final judgment, ICJ president Ronny Abraham said in a brief pub-
Friends and well-wishers celebrate
lic sitting at the Peace Palace in The Hague on Thursday, marking a legal milestone in the Indian government’s efforts to save Mr. Jadhav from execution. The decision was adopted unanimously.
Argument accepted The court accepted India’s argument that the failure by Pakistan to provide required consular notification and access fell under the scope of Article 1 of the Optional Protocol of the Vienna Convention of Human Rights. “This is sufficient to establish that it has prima facie jurisdiction under Article 1 of the Optional Protocol,” Mr. Abraham said, adding that the 2008 bilateral agreement on consular relations did not impact its jurisdiction, as Pakistan had argued. CONTINUED ON 쑺 PAGE 10 UPHELD AT THE HAGUE 쑺 EDITORIAL
MUMBAI
Jubilant mood: Friends and neighbours of Kulbhushan Jadhav ofering prayers in Mumbai on Thursday. VIVEK BENDRE *
Verdict is binding, says India Kallol Bhattacherjee NEW DELHI
India on Thursday claimed a major victory after the International Court of Justice in The Hague asked Pakistan not to execute former Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan
Jadhav, before it delivered the final decision. The Ministry of External Affairs said the verdict was binding and Islamabad should respect it. It said the verdict was unanimous, clear and unambiguous. 쑺 Page 10
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Road chronicles
Adityanath to face of with Lalu NEW DELHI
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Moment in the sun: A hand-rickshaw puller spends a quiet moment with a loved one in Kolkata after sleeping out the night on a footpath with his rickshaw. K.R. DEEPAK *
NSCN-IM recruitment drive worries Centre
Two killed in Goa bridge collapse At least 30 people still missing; Navy divers join search Special correspondent
Naga outit promising jobs to cadres
PANAJI
Vijaita Singh New Delhi
River tragedy: Rescue work in progress after the Sanvardem Bridge collapsed in Curchorem, South Goa, on Thursday. PTI *
missing,” authorities said. The youth who had jumped into the river was being rescued by the fire and emergency service personnel, a police official said.
The Navy rushed its divers to the spot. Meanwhile, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh spoke to Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar. (With PTI inputs)
In the two years that the Centre signed a framework agreement with the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah) to find a solution to the decades-old Naga sovereignty issue, the outfit has recruited around 5,000 new cadres, a senior government official said. He said NSCN-IM, one of the largest groups representing Nagas, has been recruiting locals on the ground that they would be recruited in the central armed police forces, once
the final agreement was signed. The details of the framework agreement are yet to be made public. On May 9, NSCN-IM issued a statement saying as of now the Nagas have agreed to co-exist with India under “shared sovereignty.” Asked about the statement, a top government official involved in talks with the NSCN-IM told The Hindu that it is “not necessary to react to every statement they make. We are in the right direction.” CONTINUED ON 쑺 PAGE 10
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Leading women of Malayalam ilms show the way ‘Women in Cinema Collective’ meets CM and demands end to gender discrimination in ilm industry Staff Reporter THIRUVANANTHAPURAM
In most films, they are just pretty faces and pretty bodies seen besides heroes as they sing, dance, fight and kill in superabundant displays of machismo, or as archetypal mothers whose lot it is to pine for their men and children. Their pain and sorrow in real life have largely gone unnoticed and unheeded. But a group of powerful women in Malayalam cinema have now come together to break that familiar mould. They have formed a collective to claim their space in the industry and assert their rights. The ‘Women in Cinema Collective’, which includes CM YK
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Zomato hacked, user data stolen Bengaluru
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At least two persons died and 30 were missing after a Portuguese-era bridge over a river in south Goa collapsed on Thursday. They were watching the rescue of a youth from the river. Over 50 people were standing on the dilapidated bridge when it caved in near Curchorem village. The people had gathered to watch the rescue operation of a youth, who had jumped into the river to commit suicide, the police said. “While the rescue teams have recovered two bodies from the river so far, at least 30 people are still
The mood in the Mumbai locality from which Kulbhushan Jadhav hails went from hopeful in the morning to jubilant in the afternoon as friends and well-wishers of the retired naval officer welcomed the ruling of the International Court of Justice with celebrations. Mr. Jadhav was arrested from Balochistan on March 3 last and charged with espionage. On April 19, he was sentenced to death by a Pakistan court.
Special Correspondent
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will soon face of Lalu Prasad in Patna, the RJD leader’s home turf. BJP president Amit Shah has deputed him to visit Bihar’s capital and address meetings to mark the third anniversary of the Narendra Modi government.
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Claiming their rights: Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan with members of the Women in Cinema Collective on Thursday.
actors, directors, editors, cinematographers, make-up artistes and costume directors, met Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan with a slew of demands to ensure gender justice and find
recognition in an industry where discrimination is not just rampant, it allows little room for any dialogue on women’s service and pay conditions. The collective wants
Six categories to be taken up today
Gautam S. Mengle Rupanwita Bhattacharjee
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GST Council sets rates for most commodities
internal committees to be set up in each film unit and other workplaces under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, to redress complaints related to sexual harassment, provision of benefits such as maternity leave, a welfare fund for those who cannot work owing to health problems, insurance and Employees’ Provident Fund, and facilities as basic as toilets for women on film sets. The collective also sought reservation for women in government-run film production establishments. “It is happening not only in
Kerala, it is happening the world over — women are finding their voice,” said editor Beena Paul Venugopal, among the founders of the collective along with actors Manju Warrier, Rima Kallingal, Parvathy, Sajitha Madhathil and Remya Nambeesan, filmmakers Vidhu Vincent, Anjali Menon and Asha Achi Joseph, writer Deedi Damodaran and cinematographer Fauzia Fathima. Shortly after their meeting with the CM, Mr. Vijayan put up a Facebook post saying a committee would be constituted to look into the problems faced by women in the film industry.
Restaurant search and food delivery firm Zomato revealed a security breach in which information relating to millions of users was stolen from its database. “About 17 million user records were stolen. These include user email addresses and hashed passwords,” Zomato’s chief technology officer Gunjan Patidar said. But the company said payment-related information is stored separately in a highly secure vault. “No payment information or credit card data has been stolen or leaked,” claimed Mr. Patidar. Zomato said over 120 million users visit its platform every month. As a precaution, Zomato said it has reset the passwords for all affected users and logged them out of the app and the website. CONTINUED ON 쑺 PAGE 10
Yuthika Bhargava Srinagar
The Goods and Services (GST) Council on Thursday agreed on the fitment of almost all commodities in the various tax slabs under the new indirect regime to be rolled out on July 1. Milk, cereals (unpackaged and unbranded), and jaggery will be exempt from any GST, while sugar, tea, coffee (except instant), and edible oil will be taxed at 5%. Common use items such as soap, toothpaste, and hair oil, which currently attract a tax rate of 22-24%, will be taxed at 18%. Coal, which is currently taxed at 11.7%, will attract a GST rate of 5%. Consumer durables will come under the 28% tax bracket, down from the current 30-32% rate. Capital goods and industrial intermediaries will be taxed at 18%. According to sources, small petrol and diesel cars will be taxed at 28% with small petrol cars attracting a cess of 1% and small diesel cars 3%. Luxury cars will attract a 15% cess in addition to 28% GST. 350 cc bikes will attract a cess of 3%. However, the official said there would be no additional tax incidence on these goods from their current rate of taxation. “There are 1,211 items in the four digit code that ex-
ists now… fitment needs to be done for all,” Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said at a press conference following the first day of the meeting. “We discussed and approved these items today. There are six categories [of items] that need more discussion. These will be taken up tomorrow [Friday].”
‘Important measure’ Stressing that no commodity would witness an increase in taxation, Mr. Jaitley said this was an important step towards rollout of GST from July 1. The six categories to be discussed include bidis/cigarettes, footwear, gold, and agriculture implements. Tax rates on services will also be part of the agenda on Friday. Mr. Jaitley said that in case the Council is unable to complete discussions, it might decide to meet again in the “near future.” Mr. Jaitley said that despite the reduction in tax of some commodities, efficiency in administration will help curb evasion and increase tax buoyancy, leading to improved revenue collection. Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said that of the over 1,200 items to be considered under GST, 7% have been put under the exempt list. CONTINUED ON 쑺 PAGE 10
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Timings
Friday, May 19
RISE 05:29 SET 19:07 RISE 00:54 SET 12:22 Saturday, May 20
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SAD to highlight unfulilled promises of the Congress Move follows CM Amarinder Singh’s remark accusing it of ‘10 years’ misrule’ paucity of funds,” he said. On Wednesday, Capt. Amarinder had lashed out at the SAD and BJP for their criticism of his government’s two-month rule. He had said that the SAD-BJP combine was resorting to blatant falsehoods in a bid to fool the people.
Vikas Vasudeva Chandigarh
The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) hit back at the Congress on Thursday, saying it would prepare a “report card” to highlight the promises the party had not fulfilled, ahead of the municipal corporation elections in Punjab. The reaction comes a day after Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said that 10 years of Akali misrule had led the State into “despair on all fronts”. “We will prepare a report card of the Congress government with regard to the deteriorating law and order and non-fulfilment of prom-
Senior party leader Daljit Singh Cheema PTI
Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh
ises; it would be our key poll issue in the upcoming municipal corporations elections,” said senior party leader Dr. Daljit Singh Cheema during a meeting of councillors from Jalandhar at the SAD’s head office here. Criticising the ruling gov-
ernment, Dr. Cheema accused the Congress of taking anti-people decisions and stopping development work in the State. “New projects in the pipeline have been stopped. Work on ongoing projects has been stalled due to
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‘Criticism impertinent’ “Their criticism is impertinent in view of the fact that it was their misrule of 10 years that plunged the State to such abysmal depths of despair on all fronts, with a mega debt burden compounding the problems of the Congress government,” the Chief Minister has said.
Engineer murdered in suspected honour killing Amith, a native of Pathanamthitta in Kerala, had married Mamta who belonged to the Jat community Special Correspondent Jaipur
In a suspected case of honour killing, a 28-year-old civil engineer from Kerala was shot dead allegedly by his wife's parents, who brought a sharpshooter with them to his house in the Jagdamba Vihar area here on the pretext of meeting the couple. The victim, Amith Nair, sustained bullet injuries on his neck, windpipe and chest and died of excessive bleeding. The parents tried to drag his pregnant wife, Mamta Chaudhary, out of the house, but they fled when she refused to leave. After the incident on Wed-
nesday morning, Mamta’s parents have been absconding and the police have launched a manhunt to nab them. Amith’s body was cremated at Purani Chungi crematorium in the Sodala area here on Thursday in the presence of his relatives, friends and colleagues. Mamta, 30, belonging to the Jat community, had married Amith, a native of the Pathanamthitta town in Kerala’s Central Travancore region, two years ago, even though her parents were opposed to the match because of the caste difference. The couple settled down in Jaipur, where Amith was
working as a civil engineer with a private firm. According to Mamta’s statement to the police, her parents had been insisting since her marriage that she leave Amith and return to them.
Heated arguments On Wednesday, Mamta’s parents came to her house and after some heated arguments, called in a young man, who allegedly drew out a pistol and shot at Amith. As Amith collapsed on a sofa where he was sitting, the parents tried to drag Mamta out of the house. When the family raised an
alarm and called the neighbours for help, they fled. Mamta is reportedly six months’ pregnant. Police said Mamta’s brother has been detained and a search launched to trace the absconding parents as well as the shooter. Barricades and check-posts were put up at several locations here on Thursday and on roads connecting the city with the national highways. People's Union for Civil Liberties activists, who met police officers in connection with the case, demanded immediate arrest of the accused and action against two private hospitals which had
‘Water quality of UP rivers not as per norms’ PCB failed to take action, says CAG Press Trust of India Lucknow
The water quality of major rivers and water bodies in Uttar Pradesh is not as per the norms and the main reason for this is inadequate sewage and industrial effluent treatment facilities in the State, a CAG report said. The audit report on the economic sector for 2015-16 laid out in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly said the malfunctioning of existing treatment facilities was also responsible for poor quality of water. The UP Pollution Control Board failed to take appropriate action against the de-
faulters like municipal authorities and industries, the report said. UPPCB monitors the pollution level in rivers and water bodies of the State by collecting samples once every month and the audit analysed the reports of 12 major rivers and six water bodies. The BOD (bio-chemical oxygen demand) level and total coliform (which included bacteria that are found in the soil that has been influenced by surface water and in human or animal waste) are above the prescribed standard in 12 major rivers and six water bodies, the report said.
refused to admit a heavily bleeding Amith. They also demanded that the State government pay a compensation of ₹1 crore to Amith’s family. PUCL State president Kavita Srivastava said Mamta, who studied in Mody University in Laxmangarh, was an intern with the organisation in 2014. She said it was high time the outstanding legislation on killings and crimes committed in the name of honour was enacted. “The couple shelter homes should also be established in all districts of Rajasthan on the pattern of Haryana,” she said.
Kicking up a storm over Kangra tea Staff Correspondent SHIMLA
The Congress government in Himachal Pradesh has decided to amend the Ceiling on Land Holding Act 1972 to enable outsiders to purchase tea gardens from locals in order to re-establish the prestige of the traditional Kangra tea. In its election manifesto, the Congress had promised to bring a scheme to promote and rejuvenate the tea industry in the State with help from the Centre. Calling it an unfortunate decision, Leader of the Opposition Prem Kumar Dhumal said such a move would only benefit big builders and land mafias and sale of land to them would finish off the age-old identity and existence of Kangra tea. Instead of keeping the heritage status of Kangra tea alive, the Virbhadra government is mulling selling off the tea gardens, he added. The Opposition has warned that if outsiders are allowed to purchase tea gardens, the poor cultivators in the State would be rendered workless. The BJP has decided to oppose the decision and not let land mafias enter the State with the connivance of the incumbent government, Mr. Dhumal said.
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IN BRIEF
Provide healthcare with a human touch: President
Four siblings set on ire in Kalahandi Staff Reporter
Odisha Assembly to debate GST Bill today Two Bills introduced in the House
BERHAMPUR
Ganga can never be clean without de-silting: Nitish NEW DELHI
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said on Thursday the Ganga can never be clean until its water flows unhindered and that can be done only if the Centre comes out with an effective de-silting policy.
Doctor denied bail in child trafficking case KOLKATA
The Calcutta High Court on Thursday turned down the bail plea of a doctor, arrested by the State CID in November 2016 for his alleged complicity in a child trafficking and adoption racket. PTI
Twin blasts rock Manipur, no casualty reported IMPHAL
Twin blasts were reported from two districts, Chandel and Imphal West, in Manipur, the police said on Thursday. However, no casualty was reported, they said. Investigations were on, they added. PTI
Attacks on doctors by relatives of patients unacceptable, says Pranab Special Correspondent Kolkata
President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday expressed concern over certain institutions treating healthcare as a business rather than as a service. Inaugurating the Indian Institute of Liver and Digestive Sciences at Sonarpur here, he said: “One thing which is missing in those providing healthcare is the attitude of providing service -- to serve the sick and to serve the needy with a human touch.” He suggested that services to a patient should be provided with a smiling face as “a smiling face can cure half of the disease”. While the President underlined the need for a human touch, he also asked the relatives of patients to desist from hooliganism, disruption and violence when patients are not cured in spite of the doctors’ best efforts. “Patients too have some responsibilities. Relatives of patients too have some responsibilities. Vandalising
In conversation: President Pranab Mukherjee with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee during a ceremony to dedicate the Indian Institute of Liver and Digestive Sciences to the nation at Sonarpur in South 24 Pargana district on Thursday. PTI *
hospitals, beating up doctors complaining of negligence when a patient dies are not acceptable and should not be done,” he said.
Praises Mamata The President praised Chief
Maoist sentenced to 10 years RI He was the key man behind abduction of Laxmipur MLA Staff Reporter BERHAMPUR
A hardcore Maoist, Gameli Chinnarao alias Santu, was convicted and sentenced to ten years of rigorous imprisonment by the Rayagada district sessions court in Odisha on Thursday. Hailing from Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, he was the key man behind the abduction of Laxmipur MLA Jhina Hikaka in 2012. He has several cases pending against him in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.
Public Prosecutor of Rayagada Ajit Kumar Patnaik said: “Chinnarao was convicted under Section 20 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and punished with ten years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of ₹50,000. Under Section 5(a) of the Explosives Substances Act, he was again convicted and sentenced to seven years of rigorous imprisonment and a ₹50,000 fine”. Both jail sentences are to run concurrently, he added. He was arrested from
Phulakana forest in Rayagada district on May 7, 2013.
Arms seized A Belgium-made revolver, live ammunition, nine detonators, five gelatine sticks, ammonium nitrate and splinters used in improvised explosive devices were among the articles seized from his possession. He was an area committee member of the AndhraOdisha Border Special Zonal Committee of the outlawed CPI(Maoist) organisation.
Minister Mamata Banerjee for taking action when there were complaints about commercialisation of healthcare in the State. Recently the West Bengal government passed a legislation bringing in checks on
private healthcare institutions. The Chief Minister, who was present at the event, expressed hope that it will provide healthcare to people at an affordable cost. (With PTI inputs)
Four siblings, including three sisters, were injured when their brother-in-law allegedly tried to set them on fire at Duarsuni in Kalahandi district on Wednesday. Two of the victims are minors. According to police sources, all the four have been admitted to the Kalahandi district hospita. A hunt has been launched for the accused. Gangadhar Nayak, father of the injured children, alleged that his sonin-law had committed the gruesome crime because of a long-standing family feud. According to the injured, they were sleeping in their room around midnight on Wednesday when their brother-in-law poured petrol on them through the skylight and set them ablaze. SDPO of Bhawanipatna Biranchi Dehury said though initial investigations hint at a family dispute, the exact reason can be ascertained only through proper investigation after the arrest of the culprit.
Special Correspondent BHUBANESWAR
The discussion on the Odisha Goods and Services Tax Bill, 2017, and the Odisha Value Added Tax (Amendment) Bill, 2017, will be held in the Odisha Assembly on Friday. The two Bills were introduced by Finance Minister Sashi Bhusan Behera when the two-day special session of the House began on Thursday morning. The proceedings, however, were adjourned till 3 p.m. after the Opposition sought more time to study the contents of the Bills before discussion on the issues involved. The issue was then discussed in the Business Advisory Committee of the Assembly. When the House reassembled at 3 p.m., Speaker Pradip Kumar Amat announced that the Advisory Committee had decided both Bills will be taken up for discussion on Friday and
adjourned the House for the day. While introducing the Bills, Mr. Behera said that one tax structure would prevail across the country as for the new Goods and Services Tax that has been passed in Parliament. He said that the Odisha Goods and Services Tax Bill provides provisions to levy tax on all inter-State supply of goods or services except supply of liquor for human consumption at a rate to be notified as recommended by the Goods and Services Tax Council.
More time sought Leader of Opposition Narasingha Mishra of Congress then raised objections stating that the Bills were being pushed through in a hurry without giving adequate time for the members to go through their contents, and sought more time for the legislators.
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Rebellion in Nagpur Cong.: 17 corporators pick their leader
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Academic shame
Expect letter of recognition soon; breakaway group illegal: leader of opposition Pavan Dahat
sidered close to district Congress chief Vikas Thakre, who had suffered a humiliating defeat in the NMC elections. Earlier this week, a group handed over a letter of support of 17 corporators to the Nagpur divisional commissioner and asked him to appoint Tananji Wanve as the LoP. The development came two days before when Mr. Mahakalkar was planning to send Mr. Thakre as the nominated member to the NMC. On Wednesday, the 17 corporators paraded in front of the divisional commissioner’s representative claiming a majority in the Congress unit. “Mr. Mahakalkar was ap-
Nagpur
The factionalism in the Nagpur city unit of the Congress has come to the fore once again as 17 of the 29 corporators in Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) refusing to accept Sanjay Mahakalkar as their leader. After the NMC elections in which the Congress’s tally was reduced to 29 seats from 41 in 2012, the party decided to appoint Mr. Mahakalkar as the leader of the opposition (LoP). However, his appointment did not go down well with the majority of workers and corporators as they wanted to see Prafulla Gudadhe Patil as the LoP. Mr. Mahakalkar is con-
pointed unfairly by those who did not even have the people’s support and had lost their elections whereas popular leader like Mr. Patil was sidelined despite defeating the BJP panel in the Chief Minister’s backyard. We raised this issue with the state Congress leadership and also with vice-president Rahul Gandhi during a recent meeting in New Delhi. We are not opposed to anyone, but every decision in the party should be taken after consulting everyone, which was not done at the time of the appointment of Mr. Mahakalkar as the LoP,” Mr. Wanve told The Hindu. “The State leadership had assured us that they would declare the group
with the majority as the Congress unit. Now the majority is with us and we expect that the divisional commissioner give us a letter of recognition in a couple of days. We are keeping the State and the Central leadership in the loop about every single development,” he said. Mr. Thakre, however, claimed that the breakaway group is illegal. “They do not have the party’s support. The party had sent an observer who had appointed Mr. Mahakalkar as the LoP. This group is backed by Satish Chaturvedi (former cabinet minister). I have already told the State leadership about this group’s antiparty activities.”
Luxurious Mumbai-Goa Tejas from May 22 Five-day-a-week train will have gangways, automatic doors and 22 new features
Ready to roll: The 20-coach Tejas Express will run at a speed of 130 kmph and cover the distance in nearly eight and a half hours FILE PHOTO *
Vedika Chaubey Mumbai
The luxurious train, Tejas Express, will start running between Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and Karmali in North Goa on May 22. All preparations have been done for
the launch of the 20-coach train, which will have secured gangways, automatic doors, and 22 new features. According to Central Railway officials, the coaches have been manufactured in the Indian Coach Factory,
Perambur, Chennai. The train will run at a speed of 130kmph and will cover the distance in nearly eight and a half hours. “The coaches will have bio-vaccum toilets, water level indicators, tap sensors, and hand dryers.
Such facilities and features are the first of its kind in the Indian Railways,” said the officials. The five-day-a-week train will depart from CST at 5 a.m. and reach Karmali at 1.30 p.m. Similarly, it will leave Karmali at 2.30 p.m. and reach CST at 11 p.m. The train will have executive class and chair class. “The coaches will have tea and coffee vending machines, magazines, snacks tables, LCD screens, and Wi-Fi,” said the officials. The fare has not been disclosed, but the officials point out that it will be nearly 30% more than that of Shatabdi and other premium trains. General manager Devendra Kumar Sharma confirmed the launch. “Tejas Express will be in the city on May 20 from New Delhi and will be launched by Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu on May 22.”
Cheating racket: Thirty-three people, including 27 students of Sai Institute of Engineering and Technology, Aurangabad, and teachers, who were arrested from corporator Sitaram Sure’s house on Wednesday, being taken to court on Thursday. Mr. Sure and his son Kiran, a civil engineering student of the institute, have also been arrested. YOGESH LONDHE *
CM hands over police job letters to 18,217 Special Correspondent Ahmedabad
Chief Minister Vijay Rupani on Thursday handed over appointment letters to 18,217 candidates, including 4527 women, for various ranks in the police at a ceremony held at the Sabarmati riverfront. “This is for the first time in the history of Gujarat that over 18,000 policemen are given appointment letters. To strengthen the police force, we have recruited over 26,000 candidates in the last oneand-a-half years,” said Mr. Rupani. To fill up vacancies in various departments and agencies, the State government is in the process of hiring over 60,000 people. According to Geetha Johri, DGP (in-charge),
Duty is god: Gujarat police women recruits take oath in Ahmedabad on Thursday.
these newly-recruited police personnel include 13,000 lok rakshaks (con-
stables), 3,904 SRP jawans, 220 sub inspectors, 200 assistant sub inspectors, 752
*
VIJAY SONEJI
jail sipoys, 59 intelligence officers, and 82 assistant intelligence officers.
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IN BRIEF
Cadet dies after falling from INA building A.P. govt. objects Sooraj had won a legal battle with Naval authorities following his dismissal over alleged malpractice authorities following his dismissal alleging malpractice in examination. “Sooraj was under pressure from the INA authorities and was not being allowed to study,” his brother Sunoj Gudeppa said. Talking to The Hindu over the phone, Sunoj said his brother was harassed with the motive of ensuring that he failed in the examination. His statement was recorded by the Payyannur police.
Special Correspondent KANNUR
Parvathamma Rajkumar’s condition stable BENGALURU
The condition of Parvathamma Rajkumar, wife of the late Kannada actor Rajkumar, who was admitted to M.S. Ramaiah Hospital on May 14 for weakness, is stable. Hospital president Naresh Shetty said she had difficulty in breathing on Wednesday night and was shifted to the ICU.
Kumaraswamy’s statement recorded in mining case BENGALURU
The Lokayukta SIT on Thursday recorded the statement of the former Karnataka Chief Minister, H.D. Kumaraswamy, in the Janthakal Enterprises mining case as a witness and not as an accused. SIT chief C.S.R. Charan Reddy said there was no evidence of his culpability yet.
A 26-year-old cadet of the Indian Naval Academy (INA) at Ezhimala died on Thursday after he allegedly sustained serious injuries following a fall from a campus building. His family has alleged foul play in the circumstances that led to his death. The deceased has been identified as Gudeppa Sooraj, son of Gudeppa Ramana, from Tirur in Malappuram district. The cadet of the first term of the fouryear Indian Naval Academy Course (INAC) died at Pariyaram Medical College Hospital at 2.30 a.m. The INA, in a press release, said the cadet had been found in an unconscious and unresponsive condition on the floor of the academic wing by a duty sailor instructor at 5.30 p.m. on Wednesday. He was immediately rushed to the INA Navjivani Hospital on the academy campus. From
Gudeppa Sooraj there, he was shifted to the PMCH. The cadet suffered two episodes of cardiac arrest at the PMCH. The Southern Naval Command has ordered an inquiry into the incident. Sooraj’s family alleged that he had been facing harassment ever since he was readmitted to the INAC in January after a two-year legal battle with the Naval
‘He was harassed’ According to the family, Sooraj joined the Navy as a sailor in 2010. In 2014, he began pursuing INAC to become a commissioned officer after clearing selection board eligibility tests. He was dismissed from the INA in 2015 alleging malpractice in mathematics examination. Sooraj then approached the Armed Services Tribunal, Chennai Bench, to get the dismissal withdrawn.
Transplant is the backbone of their ties Naval Chaudhary, irst unrelated bone marrow donor, meets recipient Fateh Singh Special Correspondent Bengaluru
It was an emotional moment on Thursday for 28-year-old Naval Chaudhary, an IT professional from Bengaluru when he met six-year-old Fateh Singh of Amritsar. Mr. Chaudhary, who is the first unrelated bone marrow donor in the country, was able to give a new lease of life to Fateh Singh a year ago.
Happy moment “Till today, I did not know to whom I had donated my bone marrow. I felt connected with the cute and adorable boy. It is very rare for
12 die in Telangana heat wave
Naval Chaudary with Fateh Singh at a press conference in Bengaluru. AFSHAN YASMEEN *
the bone marrow of unrelated persons to match. I am happy that I could be of help
to the little boy,” an emotional Mr. Chaudhary told The Hindu. Fateh was diagnosed with Thalassemia Major at the age of one-and-a-half. During the first blood transfusion, it was discovered that his body was unable to produce antibodies. He required an urgent blood stem cell transplant, said Sunil Bhat, Paediatric Haemato-Oncologist at Mazumdar Shaw Cancer Centre, who conducted the bone marrow transplant in May 2016. Mr. Chaudhary had registered with the DATRI Blood Stem Cell Donors Registry in 2015 at a camp held
in his workplace. Within a year of registering, he received a call from DATRI informing him that he was a perfect match for a six-yearold suffering from an acute form of Thalassemia who required an urgent blood stem cell transplant. As per the registry protocol, the identity of donors and recipients is kept anonymous for one year and DATRI facilitates the meeting after one year. The parents of Fateh Singh were full of gratitude for Mr. Chaudhary. “You are our saviour and a part of our family now,” said a visibly moved Neeta Singh, the boy’s mother.
‘Sooraj was caught cheating’
87 treated for sunstroke The situation was similar in erstwhile combined Medak district with cases of sunstroke being reported. On Wednesday alone, 87 people were treated at primary health centres in the newly-formed Sangareddy district. They include 78 from Sangareddy division, five from Narayankhed and four from Zaheerabad. Over 25 persons were said to have died due to heatwave in Siddipet district so far this summer. Since Tuesday, four deaths have been reported. CM YK
Staff Reporter
‘Unnatural death’ Reacting to the allegation of Sooraj’s family, the official said it was expected since it was an unnatural death. The INA was cooperating with the investigation to find out the truth, he added. The spokesperson said
IT search on premises of BJP MP
Mecca Masjid blast anniversary passes of peacefully
Staff Reporter
Tight security arrangements in place at Hyderabad
KANNUR
An INA spokesperson has said Gudeppa Sooraj was found with fatal injuries after he was caught cheating during the terminal examination on Wednesday. “During the terminal examination, he was caught by the invigilator for cheating. The matter was reported to an internal committee. But in the evening, we heard about the incident,” said an INA spokesperson.
Bengaluru
Sleuths from the Income Tax Department searched several premises linked to Davangere BJP MP and former Union Minister G.M. Siddeshwar in Davangere and Chitradurga. Mr. Siddeshwar is a leading businessman in arecanut, with interests across various sectors like sugar, co-operatives and education. Searches were conducted on Thursday at his house in Davangere, sugar factory, and G.M. Souharda Pattina Sahakari Niyamita, a co-operative society run by his family.
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Heavenly drops
VIJAYAWADA
The Andhra Pradesh government has reacted bitterly to the comments by former Supreme Court judge Markandeya Katju, who sought the imposition of President’s Rule in the State. The government took strong objection to his remarks and hoped he would withdraw them upon learning the facts. Addressing a press conference at the Secretariat on Thursday, Government Adviser (Communications) Parakala Prabhakar said it was the government’s duty to implement the law. Social media activists were posting objectionable comments and semi-nude photos, which were prohibited under the law. “Mr. Katju has a habit of making controversial comments and apologising
Markandeya Katju later,” he said adding: “After knowing the facts (in Ravi Kiran's case), we hope he will withdraw his remarks (against the government).” At another press conference, TDP State general secretary and A.P. State Housing Corporation Chairman Varla Ramaiah said Article 356 of the Constitution could be invoked only if the government failed. An elected government could not be dismissed for arresting a person who “insulted a Dalit woman,” he asserted.
Special Correspondent HYDERABAD
The 10th anniversary of bomb attack in the Mecca Masjid near historic Charminar in Old City passed off peacefully on Thursday amid tight security arrangements made by the police. No untoward incident was reported from any part of Old City. It was business as usual in the vicinity of Charminar and the Mecca Masjid. Nearly 200 namajis offered noon prayers in the mosque. Vikaruddin, a terror sus-
Taking no chances: Security personnel frisking people entering the Mecca Masjid on Thursday. K.V.S. GIRI *
pect, shot dead a policeman four days ahead of the third anniversary of Mecca Masjid
blast on May 14, 2010. The police have since been on a high alert.
Rail fencing project at Walayar yet to come up ₹8-crore project was to save elephants crossing rail tracks
HYDERABAD
Karimnagar sizzles On Thursday, Karimnagar district sizzled at 45 degree Celsius, while temperatures in the Ramagundam coal belt area were slightly over 46 degree Celsius.
Hopes former judge will withdraw them
that the cadet, who had been a Navy sailor, had been selected to be trained as an officer. At the end of the second year of the training, he had been caught for malpractice. As per the standard operation of the Navy, he had been withdrawn from the INA. The Armed Forces Tribunal, Regional Branch, in its verdict had accepted that the cadet was guilty of malpractices, the official said. But it had ordered his readmission considering his age and clean record during his service as a sailor. “When he joined the INA in January, the cadet was given a new academy number, a new identity and a new squadron to give him a chance to start afresh,” the INA official said.
Special Correspondent
Special Correspondent
A young tribal Agriculture Extension Officer (AEO), working in Suryapet district, was among a dozen people who died due to sun stroke in the last 24 hours in Telangana. Ramavath Nagaraju (29), an AEO at Damarcharla mandal, had recently undertaken household survey. He used to reside at Miryalaguda and commute to Damaracharla for work. On Wednesday, he fell sick and was rushed to a hospital where he died while undergoing treatment for sun stroke. The death of this resident of Shunyapad in Palakidu mandal of Suryapet district, shocked officials. Reports reaching the State headquarters said that the total number of deaths could be well over 50. With hot air blazing across the State and day temperatures ranging between 42 and 45 degrees Celsius and more, about 1,327 cases of hospitalisation were reported in the past fortnight in the erstwhile Medak district. Cases were said to be on the rise.
to Katju’s remarks
K. A. Shaji PALAKKAD
With the acute summer forcing elephant herds to cross the railway track that passes through a six-km forest area between Kanjikode and Walayar in search of water, there is concern that a rail fencing project in the area is yet to be implemented. The ₹8 crore project was mooted during last summer when half-a-dozen elephants were killed in separate incidents after being knocked down by speeding trains operated between Palakkad and Coimbatore.
Cool relief: Rain lashed many parts of Vellore district in Tamil Nadu on Thursday, ofering people much needed respite from the oppressive heat. C. VENKATACHALAPATHY *
Time for ish medicine again Annual ritual will be held in Hyderabad on June 8
Blame game While Southern Railway and the Kerala Forest Department are blaming each other for the delay in project execution, patrolling staff confirm a rise in track crossing by thirsty elephants in re-
Danger zone: The Kanjkiode-Walayar stretch is the main section where many elephant crossings take place. K. K. MUSTAFAH *
cent days. In the absence of the fences, elephants are also engaging in largescale crop raids in the nearby fields leading to resentment by farmers. Rail fences have become a major hope of both elephant lovers and farmers after the solar fencing project initi-
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When INS Vikrant made him famous Former Navy man replaces cine actor in ad for bike made of steel from aircraft carrier
Special Correspondent HYDERABAD
G.V.R. Subba Rao
As the clock strikes 9 a.m. on June 8 and Mrigasira Karthi arrives, the burgeoning queues at the Exhibition Grounds at Nampally will start moving towards a dozen counters set up inside. The crowd will continue to arrive till 9 a.m. the next day. That’s the annual ritual followed by the Bathini Goud brothers of Doodh Bowli in Old City since 1845. That’s when the fish medicine will be administered to hordes of people suffering from respiratory disorders.
VIJAYAWADA
For vegetarians “While most of them swallow fishling filled with medicine, there are also counters where vegetarians will get the same medicine but shrouded in jaggery,” said Bathini Harinath Goud at a press conference here on
Healing dose: A ile photo of a Bathini Goud family member giving 'ish medicine' to a patient in Hyderabad. K. RAMESH BABU *
Thursday. He is one of the two brothers who are carrying on the tradition handed to them by their forefathers. The fish/jaggery filled with medicine apart, people arriving here from all parts of the country will also get a medicine that they have to take in the form of two tablets each fortnight thrice. And during these 45 days, the Bathini Goud has a list of
ated in recent years proved to be a failure. While farmers’ organisations are threatening protests seeking early implementation, forest officials says they are in constant touch with railway higherups to implement the project.
27 edible items that those who take the medicine can eat and 24 items that they should avoid. On Wednesday, Fisheries Minister T. Srinivas Yadav held a review meeting in this regard with the representatives of Bathini Goud family and officials from different departments associated with the 24-hour exercise.
It was a pleasant surprise on Women’s Day (March 8) this year for Simhadri Srinivas, the proud owner of Bajaj V bike and former Navy man. He did not know that the commercial in which he acted was telecast in satellite channels until a customer told him. “The Bajaj company did not disclose the dates of telecast though I acted in it. I was awestruck when a customer told me the news,” says Mr. Srinivas, who joined Andhra Bank after retiring from the Navy. It all started when Bajaj decided to manufacture bikes using metal recovered from INS Vikrant, that was decommissioned in 1997. He was emotionally attached to INS Vikrant, which symbolised strength and maritime glory, having
Maritime glory: Simhadri Srinivas with his Bajaj V bike, which is made of steel recovered from INS Vikrant. V. RAJU *
worked on the warship for three years from 1994-96. He dashed a letter to Rahul Bajaj, Chairman of the Bajaj group, urging him to take utmost care in manufacturing bikes and see that no bike failed. Another mail went from him to Mr. Bajaj appreciating
the design and a request that the first bike be delivered to him. “Mr. Bajaj was kind enough. He granted my request. Actually, they wanted to organise an event in Vijayawada but for my request, the bike was delivered to me at Nuzvid on
March 23, 2016,” he recalls. And, it did not end there. His speech at the Nuzvid event caught the attention of Mr. Bajaj, which eventually made him the hero of the commercial on Bajaj V bike. He was one of the six exNavy men who underwent a rigmarole of screen and audition tests. Finally, Mr. Srinivas was selected for clarity in his voice and also for meeting other requirements. Ask him what was paid to him for acting in the commercial. “It’s not about the payment, but honour and recognition.” “I replaced a cine actor in the commercial. Now, the advertisement is being telecast in Hindi also,” he says. He was working at the Hansa base and was honoured with Parakram award for bravery. A ND-ND
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IN BRIEF
Max temp close to normal in Haryana, Punjab
SIT to probe IAS oicer’s death in UP Five-member team asked to submit report within 72 hours
CHANDIGARH
Omar Rashid
The maximum temperature across Punjab and Haryana on Thursday hovered close to normal limits, a MeT report said. In Haryana, Hisar and Narnaul recorded 42.2 degrees Celsius and 41.5 degrees Celsius respectively, which were within the normal limits, the report said. Karnal recorded a high of 39 degrees Celsius and Ambala 38.3 degrees Celsius. Chandigarh, the common capital, recorded a high of 38.6 degrees Celsius. PTI
Lucknow
Punjab launches campaign on hypertension CHANDIGARH
The Punjab Health Department has launched a State-wide programme to sensitise people about hypertension and to educate them on healthy lifestyle practices. The department now plans to ask people to go for health check-ups and have their blood pressure checked at government hospitals in the State, Health and Family Welfare Minister Brahm Mohinder said today. The programme was launched on Wednesday to mark World Hypertension Day. PTI
3 held, over 55 kg poppy seized in Udhampur
A Special Investigation Team (SIT) will probe the death of the 2007 batch Karnataka cadre IAS officer Anurag Tewari, whose body was found on the road near a State guesthouse here under mysterious conditions. A five-member SIT headed by the Circle Officer of Hazratganj was constituted on Thursday. The SIT has been asked to submit its report within 72 hours, said Lucknow Senior Superintendent of Police Deepak Kumar. The order for a probe came amid claims by the 36year-old officer’s family that he did not die of natural causes, but was murdered due to his honesty.
‘Wasn’t granted leave’ “Corrupt officers did not like him. They must have somehow got him murdered,” the IAS officer’s father B.N Tewari told reporters at their native village in Bahraich district of U.P. The officer’s family members also told the police that he was not being sanctioned leave by his seniors despite requests and applications. The police, however, said they had not received an ap-
oicers < > Corrupt did not like him. They must have somehow got him murdered B.N. Tewari Father of the deceased oicer
body have been sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory for examination.
Anurag Tewari was found dead on a road near a State guesthouse in Lucknow. *
FILE PHOTO
plication from the family for registration of a case.
Cops probing all angles Mr. Kumar said the police were probing the case from “all angles.” The police had on Wednesday said that prima facie it did not appear like murder but death due to “traumatic injury.” The post-mortem report has pointed to “asphyxia” as being the likely cause of death. A panel of four doctors, including a forensic medical expert, conducted the post-mortem. The panel, however, did not state the exact cause of asphyxia and samples of the
Last rites performed Meanwhile, the officer’s body was cremated at his native in Bahraich. Many bureaucrats were present. The issue was raised in the UP Assembly for the second consecutive day, with Opposition parties crying foul and alleging that the officer was murdered. While SP leader and the leader of the Opposition, Ram Govind Chowdhury, described the “murder” of the IAS officer in a high-profile area as a “serious matter,” Congress leaders demanded a CBI probe. Mr. Tewari was posted as the commissioner, Food and Civil Supplies & Consumer Affairs Department in Bengaluru. He was in Lucknow as part of the third phase of training of IAS officers.
JAMMU
Three persons have been arrested and over 55 kg of poppy seized from two trucks in different parts of Udhampur district in Jammu and Kashmir, the police said on Wednesday. In the first case, a Punjab-bound truck was intercepted at Jakheni on Wednesday night, while in the second case a truck was intercepted on the highway at Chenani in the same district. Separate cases been registered, the police said. PTI
BJD leader elected to Rajya Sabha Special Correspondent BHUBANESWAR
Former Minister and Biju Janata Dal (BJD) leader Pratap Keshari Deb was elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from Odisha on Thursday. Odisha Assembly Secretary A. K. Sarangi, who was the Returning Officer for the by-election to the lone Rajya
Sabha seat, announced Mr. Deb’s election to the Rajya Sabha. Mr. Deb had filed nomination papers on Monday, and Thursday was the last date for withdrawal.
Seat fell vacant The by-poll was necessitated after senior BJD leader Bishnu Charan Das vacated his seat in March. Mr. Das,
whose term in the upper house of Parliament was to end on July 1, 2022, was appointed as the Deputy Chairman of the State Planning Board. Mr. Deb, who was elected to the State Assembly in 2000, 2004 and 2009 from the Aali seat in Kendrapara district, had lost in the 2014 Assembly elections.
Punjab’s health sector needs care, says study ‘Government should also focus on agriculture, horticulture and livestock rearing’ Special Correspondent Chandigarh
The Punjab government should form a comprehensive health policy in the light of the alarming level of cancer and drug addiction cases in the State, a new study notes. The study, “Agenda for Punjab Government 2017”, was released by industry body ASSOCHAM and Thought Arbitrage Research Institute (TARI) on Thursday.
Health expenditure Addressing a press conference here, ASSOCHAM national secretary general D.S. Rawat and TARI
Director Kshama.V. Kaushik said, “The State’s health expenditure needs to go up to ₹5,000 per capita by 2030 from the current level of ₹1,015 [2014-15]. Public health infrastructure needs drastic restructuring to ensure adequate healthcare coverage, including treatment for cancer and drug addiction.” According to the study, IT solutions should be developed to check absenteeism of medical personnel and to record and report health transactions. Tourism is another area which has huge potential but remains neglected, the report further notes.
The government should also focus on agriculture, horticulture and livestock rearing, which have strong backward and forward linkages in the State’s economy. For this, the study suggests, the government needs to promote less water-guzzling crops such as pulses, oilseeds, cotton, maize, millet by providing improved seeds and ensuring that farmers get a fair price. To reduce farmers' indebtedness, private moneylenders should be regulated and instead of debt waiver schemes, the State should find ways to expand institutional credit fa-
cilities, it said.
Power policy Further, the power policy should be reviewed. Octroi and cow cess should be withdrawn and cheaper power available to new industries should be extended to the existing ones, the study notes. A petrochemical hub around Bhatinda’s refinery, and bio-technology parks and incubators in and outside Mohali should be developed as new growth drivers. Single-window and IT-enabled mechanism should be set up for administrative clearances, the study adds.
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IN BRIEF
Nitish backing goons: BJP Workers protest against attack on party office in Patna by RJD men
ISRO gets CPI(M) for ex-Governor as presidential candidate Indira Gandhi ‘Gopalkrishna ready if there is consensus’
Amarnath Tewary
Rain, thunderstorms disrupt life in Shimla SHIMLA
Heavy rain accompanied by thunderstorms and squalls on Thursday disrupted normal life in Shimla and nearby areas. The Manali Valley was the coldest in the region at 6.2 degrees Celsius. PTI
Former RJD MP convicted of murder PATNA
Former Rashtriya Janata Dal MP and strongman of Bihar’s Saran Prabhunath Singh and two others were convicted of the murder of MLA Ashok Singh in 1995. The court will pronounce the quantum of punishment on May 23.
Four IAS officers transferred in Haryana CHANDIGARH
The Haryana government transferred four IAS and 30 Haryana Civil Services officers with immediate effect. Vinay Singh has been posted as Secretary, Haryana Public Service Commission. PTI
Special Correspondent
PATNA
Staff Reporter
A day after a clash between workers of the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Bharatiya Janata Party outside the BJP office in Patna, BJP leaders on Thursday burnt effigies of RJD chief Lalu Prasad and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. The BJP leaders met Governor Ram Nath Kovind and drew his attention to the “growing lawlessness” in the State. On Wednesday, several workers from the RJD and the BJP were injured in the clash. After lodging FIRs against each other, leaders of both parties met the State police chief seeking action.
HYDERABAD
Hundreds take to streets Leader of the Opposition and senior BJP leader Prem Kumar led hundreds of workers on a march from the party office at the Beer Chand Patel Path to the busy Dak Bungalow square in Patna and burnt effigies of Mr. Prasad and Mr. Nitish Kumar. At other district headquarters too BJP lead-
Upset cadre: BJP workers protest in Patna on Thursday against the attack on their party office by RJD members. RANJEET KUMAR *
ers and workers staged protests. Mr. Prem Kumar said: “We have burnt effigies of Lalu and Nitish to protest the attack on BJP office by the goons of the RJD … this government of Nitish Kumar has failed on all fronts as
none has been arrested yet… Nitish Kumar is also patronising RJD goons.” State BJP leader Sushi Kumar Modi had alleged that when the RJD workers attacked the BJP office, vehicle of Tej Pratap Yadav, Lalu’s son, was seen moving in that
area. “It was a peaceful march by our youth wing workers [against I-T raids on Lalu] but while crossing the BJP office someone threw stones and beer bottles at them and RJD workers were injured,” RJD spokesperson Manoj Jha said.
India’s first uterine transplant performed Pune doctors retrieve woman’s uterus and fit it into daughter’s body to enable her to conceive was successful. While the donor’s health is fine, the recipient has been placed under a 24-hour observation, said Dr. Sanjeev Jadhav, one of the team members. Dr. Shailesh Puntambekar, Medical Director, GCLI, who headed the surgery, was not available for comment.
Shoumojit Banerjee Pune
A team of 12 doctors at the city’s Galaxy Care Laparoscopy Institute (GCLI) successfully completed the highly complex procedure of India’s first uterine transplant on a woman from Solapur district on Thursday. The woman suffers from congenital absence of uterus. She was to be fitted with her mother’s womb to enable her to conceive normally.
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
12-hour procedure The operation, in which the uterus was retrieved from the donor and transplanted
into the recipient around 9 a.m., stretched well beyond its projected eight-hour duration, exceeding 12 hours.
The uterine transplant at GCLI in Pune took over 12 hours.
*
The surgeons retrieved the uterus using a laparoscopic technique. According to team members, the surgery
Under observation Earlier, Dr. Puntambekar said the recipient would remain in the ICU for a week and for another fortnight in the general care following the surgery. “During this period, the transplanted uterus will be
Ambedkar statue goes missing
Three exhibitions go live on International Museum Day
Press Trust of India
Shiv Sahay Singh
Special Correspondent CHENNAI
A set of landmark interviews with personalities such as Mahatma Gandhi, Annie Besant, Aurobindo Ghose, Rabindranath Tagore and George Bernard Shaw among others is the latest e-book co-published by The Hindu Group and Juggernaut Books on Thursday. Most of the interviews were published in The Hindu in the first half of the last century. As many as 15 volumes have been brought out so far under an arrangement between the two on subjects as diverse as Tamil Nadu politics, the Goods and Services Tax, and practical science. Other important interviews published in The Hindu over the years will be featured in e-books to come. The books have mainly drawn on material from the digitalised archives of the 138-year-old newspaper. “There is an astounding variety of riches and we want to make this available, and inexpensively, to our readers,” said P. Jacob, Senior Managing Editor, who is coordinating the project with a team of The Hindu’s archivists and journalists. The books, which may be purchased for mobile devices through the Juggernaut app, or for the desktop at www.juggernaut.in , are priced at ₹30. CM YK
Masterpieces: Abanindranath Tagore’s 'Bharatmata' and ‘Passing of Shahjahan’
play only 10% of them for paucity of space, a problem common to most museums. Google Arts & Culture provides an online platform via which the public can access high-resolution images of artworks housed in the world’s leading museums. The paintings of landscapes and monuments by Thomas Daniells and his nephew William Daniells in the second half of the 18th century are among the most outstanding works of Western art in VMH’s collections,
NALSA offers instant legal aid to the poor Offices in States to become hubs Legal Correspondent NEW DELHI
With a view to facilitating easier access to information, the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) under the chairmanship of Supreme Court judge, Justice Dipak Misra, will set up State Legal Services Authorities’ offices all over the country with facilities that enable litigants to access court documents, case status and connect to their
Palwal
Tension prevailed in Haryana’s Taraka village on Thursday after a statue of B.R. Ambedkar was removed by some unidentified persons, police said. The administration deployed security personnel in large numbers to thwart any untoward incident, SP Sulochana Gajraj said. Locals said the statue, installed on April 8, was removed by some people on Wednesday night.
KOLKATA
The Hindu’s e-book project with Juggernaut
studied,” he said. The immediate success of the surgery could be assessed after sonography studies which would determine whether the uterus was getting regular blood flow and functioning normally. The hospital, which has been granted a licence by the State Directorate of Health Services to carry out the uterus transplant, is scheduled to conduct another womb transplant on Friday on a 24-year-old woman who suffers from Asherman’s Syndrome (scar tissue in the uterus). She will receive her mother’s womb.
Victoria Memorial exhibits on Google Arts & Culture Art lovers from around the world can now browse through three well-curated exhibitions of the iconic Victoria Memorial, which went live on the Google Art & Culture Project on Thursday, also the International Museum Day The three separate exhibitions thus featured are ‘Magnificent Heritage of India as seen by the Daniells’, ‘The Art of Abanindranath Tagore’ and ‘Gaganendranath Tagore: Painter and Personality’, which contain 241 paintings with related details. “What we are putting up virtually are curated exhibitions that will appear like a catalogue to a viewer, not only paintings but also lot of text. It is not possible for us to hold these exhibitions at one time virtually for lack of space. We are overcoming that lack of space by going virtual,” secretary and curator of Victoria Memorial Hall (VMH) Jayanta Sengupta told The Hindu. While the VMH collections include about 30,000 artifacts, its galleries can dis-
Prize for 2014
advocates online and through dedicated phone numbers. The facility called ‘Legal Assistance Establishments’ or Nyaya Sanyog will cater to poor litigants and the families of undertrials languishing in jails to get quick access to justice. In such establishments, the legal aid beneficiaries would be able to get quick information about the status of their pending cases.
whereas Abanindranath Tagore and Gaganendranath Tagore represent the finest from the Bengal School. While the Daniells exhibition has been curated inhouse, those on Abanindranath Tagore and Gaganendranath Tagore have been curated by noted art historian Ratan Parimoo. Abanindranath’s ‘Bharatmata’ (1905), the first purely Indian idea of the spirit of motherland, is one of the most famous paintings featured by the project.
CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury has confirmed that he had spoken to former West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi and sought his consent for being the presidential candidate on behalf of the unified opposition. Addressing a press conference here on Thursday after the party’s State committee meeting, Mr. Yechury said the opposition parties are yet to arrive at a consensus on the presidential candidate, and are waiting for the ruling party to take the first step. Mr. Gandhi, however, expressed his willingness to be the candidate provided there is consensus. “Presidential elections are very crucial, as the President’s role is paramount for secular supervision of the Constitution. Our intention is for the candidate to be jointly sponsored by all the opposition parties,” Mr.Yechury said. However, there is no dis-
cussion in the ruling party over their candidate as yet, he noted. “Ruling party usually announces the candidate first and tries to build consensus for unanimous election. There is no such effort from the BJP. We have a doubt that it could result in communal supervision of the Constitution,” Mr. Yechury said, and expressed fears that early announcement of Opposition’s candidate could result in his/her harassment with false cases.
West Bengal civic polls Talking of West Bengal municipal polls where the party was routed recently, he said it was a “mockery and murder” of democracy, and charged the Trinamool of resorting to bullying of voters. The process of communalisation is on in the State which has not had communal conflicts for the last four decades, he said, and cited as proof, the Ram Navami celebrations organised by the Sangh Parivar and its affiliates.
New Delhi
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) was on Thursday presented with the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development for the year 2014. The prize was presented to ISRO Chairman A.S. Kiran Kumar by former Prime Minister and Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust (IGMT) trustee Dr. Manmohan Singh. The ISRO was selected for the prize in 2014 by a jury headed by Vice-President Hamid Ansari. It consists of a trophy made of banded Haematite Jasper, with a portrait of the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in Jaipur miniature paintings, a cash award of ₹1 crore and a citation, the IGMT said in a statement. The citation read: “The International Jury… awarded the prize in recognition of its path-breaking achievements, culminating in the Mars Orbiter Mission and its contributions in strengthening international cooperation...”
Karnan approaches President
Reema Lagoo passes away
Press Trust of India
Brilliant actress with a big heart: Aamir
New Delhi
Lawyers representing Calcutta High Court judge C.S. Karnan on Thursday claimed that a representation has been made to the President seeking suspension of the Supreme Court order sentencing him to six months imprisonment for contempt of court. However, the President’s office said it was not aware of “any such representation”. The lawyers said a memorandum/ representation under Article 72 was sent through e-mail on behalf of Justice Karnan seeking “suspension/stay of his sentence of six months imposed on him” by a sevenjudge Bench headed by Chief Justice J.S. Khehar. Article 72 states that the President shall have the power to grant pardons, reprieves, respites or remissions of punishment or to suspend, remit or commute the sentence of any person convicted of any offence. The representation prepared by Justice Karnan’s counsel Mathews J. Nedumpara and A.C. Philip referred to the developments since the May 9 judgment.
Staff Reporter Mumbai
Veteran actor and theatre artist Reema Lagoo, known for essaying the role of a mother to popular stars like Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan breathed her last in the early hours of Thursday at the Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital. She will be remembered for her roles in films like Maine Pyaar Kiya, Hum Aapke Hain Koun, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai; and TV serials like Tu Tu Main Main. In a statement to PTI, Lagoo’s son-in-law Vinay Waikul said, “She was complaining of chest pain, so we took her to hospital around 1 a.m. She died of heart attack around 3.15 a.m. She had no health issues...so it is really shocking for all us.” Her mortal remains were taken from the hospital to
Reema Lagoo her Andheri West apartment at 10.45 a.m. Many film personalities like actor Aamir Khan, his wife Kiran Rao, directors Mahesh Manjrekar and Mahesh Bhatt came in to pay their last respects. Khan said, “We are still in shock. I did my first film with Reemaji, which was Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak. She was a brilliant actress with a big heart.”
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8 EDITORIAL
NOIDA/DELHI
THE HINDU
FRIDAY, MAY 19, 2017
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Ending nuclear dependency Upheld at The Hague
B
y winning a preliminary order from the International Court of Justice that prevents Pakistan from carrying out the execution of Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav, India has won the battle of perceptions among members of the international community. It has achieved its immediate objective in approaching the ICJ, which has outlined provisional measures that enjoin Pakistan to take all steps needed to ensure that Mr. Jadhav, a former naval oicer under death sentence in Pakistan, is not executed pending adjudication of the matter. Pakistan should now inform the court about the steps it takes to implement the order. The ICJ judges are clear that these provisional measures are binding and create international legal obligations for the country to which they are addressed. The ICJ has rejected Pakistan’s objections regarding the urgency of the matter. It rejected Pakistan’s own jurisdiction to take up the case and its claim that a 2008 bilateral agreement between the two countries precluded the matter from being raised before the ICJ. At this early stage, the court was unwilling to let doubts over jurisdiction trump the larger, humanitarian issue of Mr. Jadhav’s execution. It noted that irreparable prejudice would be caused if the court did not indicate provisional measures, especially in the absence of any assurance from Pakistan that he would not be executed before the inal decision. It may appear to be a complete victory for India on the questions of jurisdiction, urgency and the core charge that Pakistan violated the Vienna Convention. However, this is a preliminary ruling and all issues are open for adjudication at the inal stage. For now, the court has taken into account the allegation of denial of consular access, and ruled that prima facie, this brought the issue within the purview of Article I of the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention, which says disputes regarding the interpretation or application of the Convention would be subject to the ‘compulsory jurisdiction’ of the ICJ. Further, it has noted that there is no exception to the consular access rule for those allegedly involved in ‘espionage’. As an immediate consequence, Pakistan is now under an obligation to grant consular access to Mr. Jadhav. Though it is theoretically possible for Pakistan to ignore the ICJ’s order and go ahead with its internal processes for the disposal of appeals and clemency petitions, it is unlikely to do so. Such a course of action would undermine its international credibility. India will have to leverage the moral and diplomatic advantage it has obtained through this ruling to help Mr. Jadhav prove his innocence before a civilian court and win his freedom. Pakistan must act responsibly and abide by the fundamental norms of international law.
Where the jobs are Public spending and economic policy need to be more attuned to employment creation
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ews reports over the last few weeks suggest that the Central government may inally be starting to think seriously about jobs. Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramaniam recently pointed to the need to achieve higher economic growth, in the range of 8% to 10%, to solve the problem of jobless growth. In particular, he lagged the underperformance of the information technology, construction and agricultural sectors, which earlier served as huge job-creators for the economy. It is worth noting that India added just 1.35 lakh jobs in eight labour-intensive sectors in 2015, compared to the 9.3 lakh jobs that were created in 2011, according to Labour Bureau igures. The rate of unemployment grew steadily from 3.8% in 2011-12 to 5% in 2015-16. Union Labour and Employment Minister Bandaru Dattatreya has downplayed the gloomy job situation as being a temporary one. His focus instead is on the new National Employment Policy which, he says, would be released later this year and focus on shifting jobs from the informal to the formal sector. NITI Aayog too has dismissed concerns over jobless growth, saying the real problem is underemployment rather than unemployment. Nevertheless, this month the government set up a high-level task force headed by NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya to obtain reliable data on employment trends to aid policymaking. The focus on jobs is obviously vital. However, higher economic growth alone will not solve the jobs problem. Jobs can be created when growth comes from the transition of labour from informal sectors like agriculture to the more formal manufacturing and service sectors. Such extensive growth, however, runs the risk of stagnation once the available stock of informal labour is exhausted — as some Southeast Asian countries found out the hard way in the late 1990s. On the other hand, growth can come about without any substantial jobcreation in the formal sectors of the economy, but through improvements in productivity. The growth record of several developed economies even after the modernisation of their labour force explains such intensive growth. India should aim at growth that is driven both by improvements in productivity and modernisation of its labour force — especially since better jobs are crucial to improving the lives of millions who are employed, indeed underemployed, in low-paying jobs in the farm sector. Ironically, achieving both those objectives will irst require labour reforms — ones that can both boost labour mobility within the formal sector and bring down the barriers businesses face in hiring labour. But incremental labour reforms alone won’t work unless these are combined with a step-up in government spending on asset and job-creating areas such as infrastructure, which in turn inspires private investment. Job-creation needs to be an essential axis along which economic and social policies are formulated.
CM YK
M.R. Srinivasan ndia now has 22 nuclear power units. The irst pair, located in Tarapur, Maharashtra, uses enriched uranium and incorporates U.S. nuclear technology. These two reactors have operated safely and reliably for the past 47 years and supply the lowest cost non-hydro power. The second pair, located in Rajasthan, uses natural uranium and is based on Canadian technology. The irst unit of this pair has been out of service for some years due to deiciencies in some key equipment; the second unit has been operating satisfactorily. Commencing from 1983 and over a span of two and a half decades, India built 16 nuclear power units using its own technology, materials and equipment. These reactors use natural uranium as fuel. Fourteen of them have a size of 220 MW and two are of 540 MW.
I
Nuclear push in the 2000s During the period 2000-2010, India designed a nuclear power unit of 700 MW capacity, using natural uranium. Construction work on two such units in Kakrapar (in Gujarat) and two in Rajasthan was taken up. These four units will go into operation in the next three years. Work on two similar units has been taken up at a site in Haryana. All equipment and materials for these larger units will come from Indian suppliers. In recent years, two 1000 MW VVER power units have come up in Kudankulam, Tamil Nadu, using Russian technology. They use enriched uranium supplied by Russia. In 2016, work on two more such units was com-
sufered great delays and huge cost overruns. Toshiba of Japan, a major owner of Westinghouse, incurred $7-8 billion in losses due to the nuclear business in the U.S. and is considering selling its successful chip business to accommodate this loss. Westinghouse has iled for bankruptcy and the future of the four nuclear power units under construction in the U.S. is highly uncertain.
Project delays aplenty Westinghouse representatives discussing their proposal with Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) for setting up six AP1000 reactors in Kovvada, Andhra Pradesh, have said that the new ownership would get sorted out, perhaps within a year or so, and they would continue to be seriously interested in the India project. The U.S. government might facilitate a new owner acceptable to it, and the nuclear business may resume in some modiied manner. From an Indian perspective, delays in this project are inevitable and the outcome would be uncertain. India has been in discussions with Areva of France on building six EPR reactors of 1600 MW at Jaitapur, Maharashtra. The irst such reactor in Finland has been greatly delayed and may go into operation in 2018. There is a pending
arbitration case between Finland and France regarding who is to bear the resulting cost increases. A second EPR is under construction in Flammanville, France and that has also sufered delays due to questions regarding the quality of important forgings. Two EPRs in China were making good progress earlier but they also have to address the question of quality of some forgings made in France. Quite independently of these problems, Areva sufered heavy losses post-Fukushima when the uranium market bottomed. Japan, a big buyer of uranium, went out of the market as most of their reactors were shut down in 2011. Only a few have been allowed to restart. The French government has restructured the nuclear business and asked the Electricite de France to take over the nuclear power plant business and let only the fuel and associated activities to be with Areva.
Make in India Anticipating some of these diiculties, the nuclear community in India has been looking at other options to expand the nuclear capacity. The leet of pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWR), of our own design and construction, have performed well. During the last ive years, the cumulative capacity
factor has been 78%. The reactors have operated continuously for periods exceeding 300 days quite regularly and one of our reactors was on line for 765 days, the second-longest run in the world. The cost of power has been less than from coal in the same region. Given the context, the Union Cabinet’s nod on Wednesday for 10 700 MW PHWRs is timely. Indian industry is well placed to supply all the components and materials required for these reactors. Russia is willing to supply two more 1000 MW VVER units for Kudankulam and continue the cooperation to build six 1200 MW VVERs at a second site, to be identiied by India. Our reactor designers at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and NPCIL have completed the design of a 900 MW reactor using enriched uranium as fuel, designated as the Indian Pressurised Water Reactor (IPWR). Our industry is keen to mobilise and build up the capacity to make components for this design. Enriched uranium fuel can be sourced from international suppliers, as such reactors can be placed under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. By about 2025 or so, India may itself supply enriched uranium from its own enrichment facilities. The government’s push for 10 IPWRs will secure India a position of nuclear power plant supplier not only for application in India, but also as a potential exporter. While our earlier plans on expanding nuclear power have not materialised, the alternative plan suggested now, which envisages building 28 units with a total capacity of about 25,000 MW in 15 years from now, can still ensure that nuclear power remains an important part of our strategy to minimise carbon emissions in the long run. M.R. Srinivasan is former Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission
The courts and matters of faith We need to make a distinction between matters of conscience and matters of faith
Peter Ronald deSouza
T
here is an uncanny similarity of argument between the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) on controversies that have to do with belief. This is illustrated best in their respective positions on the Ram Setu and the triple talaq debates. In 2005, on the Ram Setu issue, the RSS stated that their opposition to the UPA government’s plan to dredge a canal between Rameswaram, of the coast of Tamil Nadu, and the islands of Mannar, near Sri Lanka, was a “matter of faith and hence required no substantiation”. Twelve years later the counsel for the AIMPLB has ofered a similar argument in the Supreme Court when making his client’s case on the practice of triple talaq. A Constitution Bench of ive justices is to decide on whether the practice of divorce by triple talaq is consistent with the protections guaranteed to individuals by the Indian Constitution. In opposition
to pleas that the practice be considered unconstitutional, the AIMPLB counsel stated that triple talaq “is a matter of faith. Hence there is no question of constitutional morality and equity”. This argument that matters of faith be given special status needs to be assessed. Why should matters of faith be given immunity from scrutiny? Three responses can be ofered to this question. Let me, on grounds of brevity, refer to them as (i) the special status of faith, (ii) the issue of validity, and (iii) ethical codes in modern democracies.
Special status of faith At the outset we must acknowledge that faith, as religious belief, must have special status in any constitutional order. It constitutes the core of an individual’s sense of self and is the basis of a believer’s conscience. Belief is a matter of personal choice and no external authority, whether state, cultural community, or religious congregation, can tell an individual what her beliefs should be. To do so is to violate the individual’s freedom of conscience guaranteed by most constitutional systems and human rights covenants. But on matters of faith, an important distinction has to be made. All ‘matters of conscience’ are
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Make in n-India The government’s proposal to set up 10 nuclear reactors indigenously looks very grand and ambitious in its scope but is nevertheless achievable (“Cabinet gives nod for 10 indigenous nuclear reactors.” May 18). Achieving self-suiciency in the production of nuclear power has been the Holy Grail of India’s nuclear establishment. Our scientists had to work against heavy odds like international sanctions and denial of technology by the West. Since India has been admitted to the nuclear high table thanks to the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, it makes sense to nudge the domestic industry to realise its potential. There is no reason why the nuclear community cannot rise to the occasion and emulate the successes of the space industry which also has had to face protracted spells of
PIXABAY
With the ICJ upholding India’s plea on Jadhav, Pakistan must grant consular access
menced. When all these units go into operation, India will have 30 reactors with a capacity of 13,000 MW. By then some of the earlier units will be reaching their retirement age. In the period 2005-2008, the Indian nuclear establishment was focussed on concluding the civil nuclear cooperation agreement with the U.S. India then agreed to build about 10,000 MW of nuclear capacity using U.S. technology. A similar assurance was given to France. Russia and India agreed to install additional units at Kudankulam. The expectation in 2008 was that a rapid increase in Indian nuclear capacity would take place. During 2010-2011, India passed the civil nuclear liability legislation which made a supplier liable for claims under certain circumstances. The U.S. nuclear industry was not prepared to consider any cooperation with India under this condition. In 2016, India came up with the mechanism of an Indian insurance pool that could extend protection to the supplier. The Fukushima accident of 2011 jolted the nuclear industry globally and the irst priority was assessment of safety of nuclear plants in operation all over the world under what was termed as ‘Beyond Design Basis’ natural events. An unconnected development in the U.S. impacted a nuclear revival there: the availability of shale gas at low prices, in the range of $2.50 to $3 per million BTU. In consequence, General Electric de-emphasised the prospects of nuclear energy. Westinghouse designed a 1400 MW enriched uranium reactor (AP1000) complying with the current safety requirements. It managed to get Chinese utilities to build four such units at two sites and they are in an advanced stage of execution. Westinghouse also secured orders to build four AP1000 reactors in the southern U.S., at two utilities. Unfortunately, these projects
A. SHAIKMOHIDEEN
The government’s go-ahead to 10 indigenous reactors is a timely step towards nuclear energy self-suiciency
‘matters of faith’, but not all ‘matters of faith’ are ‘matters of conscience’. It is only matters of conscience that are protected by the freedom-granting provisions of the Constitution. Matters of conscience are individual-centric. They have an ethical core that guides the choices that an individual makes. They endow the world with meaning and give the individual purpose. In contrast, the ‘matters of faith’ which the RSS and the AIMPLB are referring to — while they may look similar to ‘matters of conscience’ — are not so for they are group, not individual, centric. They have a component that is based on evidence, whether this is textual, historical, or empirical. In other words, the belief is contingent on the evidence. For example
it would take the following form: ‘we believe X because it is said so in our holy book’. It is the ‘because of ’ component that demands analytical and scientiic scrutiny of the matters of faith. Does the holy book actually say so? Did Lord Ram really build the Setu? Further, when matters of faith have harmful social consequences, they must be subject to scrutiny since the Constitution guarantees the individual protection from harm. This is the basis of all social reform in our history. When the AIMPLB says that triple talaq has evolved in the last 1400 years, it has inadvertently conceded that the practice is not cast in stone. Let the court’s intervention be part of that evolution.
The issue of validity The many advances in linguistics, cultural anthropology, gender studies and, of course, the natural sciences can make the probing of the ‘because of’ component of the belief very exciting. For example, a textual analysis of a holy book using a study of old and new grammar, or the etymology of the word, or its placement in a sentence are all ways of arriving at the meaning of the statement. Textual analysis has advanced considerably and hence is avail-
able to determine the validity of the interpretation being ofered by scriptural authority. The many schools of Islamic jurisprudence are testimony to this plurality of interpretations. To that can be added the modern tools of linguistic analysis, gender studies, human rights jurisprudence, and cultural anthropology. The validity of triple talaq must be subject to textual interpretation. Similarly with the Ram Setu claim. It too must be scrutinised by modern science.
Ethical codes in democracies The most diicult issue in this debate is how to respond to the situation where, after scrutiny, the matter of faith is found to be valid but considered by many in need of change such that it conforms to the contemporary ethics of human rights. When the counsel for the AIMPLB says that there is “no question of constitutional morality and equity” in matters of faith, he is building a wall, a fashion these days, behind which the orthodox will police their community. Such a wall must not be built. It has no place in a constitutional democracy. Peter Ronald deSouza is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi. Views are personal
Letters emailed to
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international noncooperation. India’s nuclear quest runs contrary to the global pushback against nuclear power. Safety concerns about nuclear power plants persist and the government has to ensure the adherence to strict safety standards. The conlict of interest in having the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, a government body, overseeing the public sector nuclear power plants will have to be resolved. V.N. Mukundarajan, Thiruvananthapuram
Triple talaq debate The present triple talaq debate has divided Muslims into two groups: those against triple talaq and the religious establishment justifying the practice. Deinitely, the latter do not enjoy a majority (“Triple talaq not fundamental to Islam,” May 16).
Both the Koran and the Hadith spell out the rights of Muslim women. They also clearly lay down the procedure for talaq, a lengthy one which carries enough scope for reconciliation before a complete termination of marriage. Measures like arbitration and counselling during this process are also advised to save the marital relations. There are some grounds on which talaq can be pronounced but there is a strict procedure laid for it. The process is to take several months and, in the meantime, every possible efort has to be made the save the marriage. Many Indian Muslim men do not follow this. Neither have clerics or the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) bothered to educate them. Under the circumstances, the only remedy left is scrapping it in
its present form so that those who violate it are punished. Mokarram Khan, Bhopal
Elections in Iran An elected President in Iran commands lesser power than his or her counterparts in other countries (“Highstakes battle,” editorial, May 18). The real authority rests with the Supreme Leader. Ever since the Islamic Revolution, Tehran’s outlook has been antiAmerican and it has pursued a foreign policy largely independent of its neighbours. Its support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has helped in the success of a joint antiIslamic State (IS) front. President Hassan Rouhani, with his reformist policies, may not have been a complete success but he was able to get the nuclear deal signed and economic
sanctions eased. At home there was less repression and some increase in GDP growth. The present election may turn out to be against Mr. Rouhani, more so of because of U.S. President Donald Trump’s antipathy towards Iran. Whatever be the outcome, India-Iran relations are based on civilisational links, India has consistently stood by Iran and Iran too has
reciprocated. The Chabahar port will enable India to make inroads into Afghanistan and the broader Central Asia. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has to learn that a soft approach towards America may not give us dividends, especially under the stewardship of Mr. Trump. Parthasarathy Sen, New Delhi
more letters online: www.hindu.com/opinion/letters/
corrections & clarifications: >>The opening sentence of “₹225-crore Ram museum in Ayodhya” (May 18, 2017) read: “Plans to build a temple dedicated to Lord Ram on the banks of the Sarayu river in Ayodhya continue afoot, with the ... daily feature.” It is not a temple that is going to be dedicated to Lord Ram. It is a museum. >>The OPED page article, “Déjà vu at G7 meet” (Single File, May 16, 2017) erroneously expanded NAFTA as North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement. It should have been North American Free Trade Agreement. It is the policy of The Hindu to correct signiicant errors as soon as possible. Please specify the edition (place of publication), date and page. The Readers’ Editor’s office can be contacted by Telephone: +91-44-28418297/28576300 (11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday); Fax: +91-44-28552963; E-mail:
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THE HINDU
OPED 9
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FRIDAY, MAY 19, 2017
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LEFT, RIGHT, CENTRE
Should Hindi be the sole oicial language? Hindi zealots, while ostensibly acting for the greater good of the nation, actually end up alienating others
A.R. Venkatachalapathy is a historian and Tamil writer
Subramania Bharati, the great Tamil nationalist poet, is presumably LEFT known to every educated Indian, even Hindi zealots. Not so his childhood friend Somasundara Bharati, who was V.O. Chidambaram Pillai’s associate in his great anti-British Swadeshi shipping venture. In 1937, to protest against the C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji)-led Madras government’s attempt to make Hindi compulsory in schools, Somasundara Bharati left the Congress to join the anti-Hindi agitation led by Periyar E.V. Ramasamy. This is how Hindi zealots, ostens-
ibly for the greater good of the nation, actually end up driving them away.
Overenthusiasm that harms In time, Rajaji himself warned, in 1965, “Let us not make the sixty million people in the south seditious, by one stroke.” But it seems Hindi enthusiasts have simply not learnt the lesson. The Congress got a drubbing in the 1967 elections in the State, and it has been on a never-ending leather hunt. Surely, for the Bharatiya Janata Party, ramming Hindi into unwilling Tamil throats will take it no nearer to Fort St. George.
Spoken by more than 50% of Indians and understood by another 20%, Hindi is the natural lingua franca
Nand Kishore Pandey is professor and director at the Kendriya Hindi Sansthan, Agra
On January 26, 1950 our Constitution came into effect. Article 343 Hindi the honour RIGHT gave of ‘official language’ (Rajbhasha). There are 22 Indian languages in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. The point to be noticed, in a country like India with a population of 125 crore, is that Hindi is spoken by more than 50% of the population and understood by 20% of the non-Hindi-speaking population. Hence, Hindi is naturally the lingua franca of India. The aam aadmi (common man)
converses in Hindi or in various dialects of Hindi. Non-Hindi-speaking States are wrong to assume that if Hindi flourishes, their languages will get suppressed. Seventeen per cent of the world’s population resides in India, whose languages also constitute 25% of the languages in the world. And each and every language is enjoying its own space. Is this possible in countries like Canada, France, England, Britain, etc.? It’s not. I don’t support the idea of not speaking in one’s own mother tongue and enforcing Hindi. But I definitely do feel that when two
While Hindi is the linguistic vehicle of many, India’s unity will be guarded by diversity, not cultural fencing
G.N. Devy is Chairman, People’s Linguistic Survey of India
When one starts looking at the question of Hindi’s claim to be reas the naCENTRE cognised tional language of India, the following four obvious factors need to be taken into consideration.
Not everyone’s language One, Hindi is not the natural language of a majority of States in India. These include Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka in the south; Goa, Maharastra and Gujarat in the west; Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir in
the north-west; Odisha and West Bengal in the east; Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Tripura, Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya and Assam in the Northeast. These make 20 States of the existing 29 States. Two, of the remaining States, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh are seen as predominantly Hindi-speaking States; but a closer look at their linguistic composition shows that they all have their own native regional languages within each of them and Hindi functions there as a shared pan-State lan-
Sadly, even Lohiaite socialists are cut from the same cloth. It is over half a century since the anti-Hindi agitation of 1965 and Delhi’s assurance that English would continue to be associate official language until non-Hindi-speaking States so desire. Since the days of Hindi scraping in through a single vote in the Constituent Assembly, no intellectual argument has been made for why the south should accept Hindi. Their case is usually made in Hindi, resulting in a dialogue of the deaf. From Subramania Bharati to Periyar to Rajaji Tamil leaders promoted, in good faith, Hindi language teaching in Tamil Nadu to
foster better integration. Only to give it up as counterproductive, the arrogance and insensitivity of Hindi advocates contributing in no small measure to their disillusionment. What has changed in the fifty years since the 1965 anti-Hindi agitation? If anything, the case for Hindi has weakened. Over the last many decades, south India has made rapid strides in the social, political and economic spheres.
people, say, one from West Bengal and another from Kerala, meet and do not understand each other’s language, then instead of talking in English they should communicate in Hindi, if they know Hindi. In Nagaland, English is the State language. Yet, there is a growing demand for Hindi. There are 2,400 Hindi teachers teaching at various levels from primary schools to higher secondary. It is highly appreciable that the State government has given 2.8 acres of land to set up a Hindi institute. The Northeast is considered to be the most disinterested in Hindi.
But in fact, the lingua franca of its farthest part, Arunachal Pradesh, is Hindi. Arunachal Pradesh alone has 26 languages spoken by various tribes. Jammu & Kashmir has 11 languages, Meghalaya three, Nagaland about six languages with ‘Nagamese’ as their lingua franca.
guage. Three, in terms of heritage value, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, Sindhi, Kashmiri, Odia, Bangla, Nepali and Assamese have a historically longer legacy than the Hindi language. Four, the Constitution has imagined India, both through commission and omission, as a multilingual country and not as a monolingual nation. The fact that it originally decided to list 14 languages in the Eighth Schedule clearly indicates the unwillingness of the makers of the Constitution to tether India to any single language. Yet, the claims are not entirely misplaced considering the chan-
fashioned in Tamil Nadu. The rapid strides in education in the south have underpinned the software revolution and the leap in the service sector. Any reasonably informed survey of trends in modern India will tell you that most of the major intellectual currents have bypassed the Hindi language. Hindi newspapers are not a patch on their Malayalam counterparts. The vitality of the little and middle magazine tradition in Tamil outstrips anything remotely similar in Hindi. Despite the billions of rupees spent on official language commissions, government largesse, and the appointment of Hindi officers in every Central government office, only sarkari Hindi, which is about as fecund as a mule, has thrived. On the contrary, with
little or no government patronage, Tamil and Malayalam constitute a far more vibrant presence in the virtual world. Such inadequacies apart, Hindi’s trajectory in modern India has been inflected — or rather, infected — by Hindu communalism. Hindi zealots have, on the one hand, been intent on Sanskritising their language, and on the other, erasing its rich dialectal variety, leading to separate movements such as for the protection of Maithili. In the hands of a majoritarian government, with utter contempt for the cultural plurality and diversity of our great nation, the pipe dream of making Hindi the sole official language takes on nightmarish proportions. Hindi simply doesn’t make the cut.
Respect for diversity We Indians were compelled to accept English as an official language and not as our mother tongue or our common language. And that is why, even after so many years of independence, English cannot become our communicative language or lingua franca.
Those who supported Hindi in the Constituent Assembly were not confined to Hindi-speaking people. As for people in Hindi-speaking States not learning other languages, I do not think it is the result of some mala fide intention. It is merely that the need for learning south Indian languages is limited. I may not speak Tamil, but that does not mean I am ignorant about Tamil literature. It is a classical language just as Sanskrit. Hindi-speaking people have due respect for south Indian languages in their hearts and they readily want to know and study them. Hundreds of books are translated from each south Indian language to Hindi. Comparative research is a continuous process in universities
in north India. Hindi is the language of a vast nation. It is spoken by the second-largest populated country of the world and also outside India. In official terms, the whole nation has been divided into three parts — A, B, C — and the letters exchanged between them are sent with translations in Hindi and English. I feel a board or a milestone in Hindi will not weaken other Indian languages. Nor will the identity of other Indian languages be belittled by Hindi. No foreign language can ever take the place of our Indian languages. Our languages are our culture and tradition. As told to Anuradha Raman
ging demography within the country and the global situation. When the Indian States were created as primarily linguistic States, the levels of interstate migration were relatively negligible. During the last seven decades, the changing livelihood patterns have induced largescale interstate migrations. This process has created the need for linguistic vehicles for delivery of education, processes of governance and simply internal communication in urban habitats. In the given situation, if one had to choose one of the 22 Schedule languages protected and promoted by the Constitution, Hindi clearly is
the top-ranker. It is globally the fastest-growing language in terms of the number of speakers. Over the last 50 years, the numbers of those who claim English as their mother tongue (not just as a functional language) has increased globally by 16 crore, against the base of 32 crore. Hindi shows a growth of 16 crore against the base of 28 crore. If India had to put up only one of its languages as an ‘international Indian language’, Hindi would be a natural choice since it has a small or big presence in nearly 65 countries. However, languages issues are not to be sorted out only in terms of their numerical strength. Had that been the case, the Chinese Mandarin would have long back been
accepted as the most viable international language. Hindi appears to be threatening more than 60 smaller languages in the States surrounding the Hindi heartland. Besides, it is made, unfortunately, part of a political argument that seeks to promote India as a Hindu Rashtra, an anathema to any liberal-minded citizen. Were a referendum of the language question held in India, Hindi, which is not the first language of more than three-fifths, would lose hands down. Hindi should wait for another century or so before staking the claim if we want to keep India united. And the unity of India is guarded by its diversity, not by its cultural fencing.
The south’s surge The social transformation triggered by the Mandal Commission recommendations was modelled on a caste-based reservation system
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Inroads in Darjeeling
FIFTY YEARS AGO MAY 19, 1967
How the TMC has held its ground, and more, in the West Bengal civic polls
India has again offered to Pakistan to discuss all outstanding issues between the two countries including the Kashmir dispute. The corresponding ending with the Indian Foreign Minister’s reply to the Pakistan Foreign Minister dated May 6 released to the Press in New Delhi to-day [May 18], clearly establishes that President Ayub Khan’s anguish at the increasing defence expenditure between India and Pakistan was just a propaganda stunt and that Pakistan was not interested in coming to any agreement on the question of reduction of arms expenditure. Mr. Chagla took advantage of President Ayub Khan’s sorrow at the diversion of the available resources by India and Pakistan for defence when the economic needs cried for immediate action and promptly wrote to his opposite number in Pakistan that the representatives of the two countries should meet immediately to discuss the question of reduction of defence expenditure by the two countries.
India ready for talks with Pakistan
Shiv Sahay Singh
A HUNDRED YEARS AGO MAY 19, 1917
PTI
Elections to seven civic bodies in West Bengal may have ushered in a new era in the hills, as claimed by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, with the Trinamool Congress (TMC) for the irst time making inroads in the Darjeeling hills. However, elsewhere it was still the same old story of political violence, intimidation, and the Opposition calling the elections a farce. Four civic bodies in the Darjeeling hills (Darjeeling, Kurseong, Kalimpong, Mirik) and three in the plains (Domkal, Raiganj and Pujali) went to polls on May 14. While there were hardly any reports of irregularities in the hills, the elections in the plains saw largescale violence. Bombs were hurled, EVMs were destroyed, and in certain places not only voters but even police personnel deployed at polling booths had to lee the scene to escape violence. Results declared on May 17 showed the TMC sweeping the three civic bodies in the plains; it also won the Mirik Notiied Area in the hills. The remaining three municipalities in the hills went to the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM). Neither the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nor the Left Front-Congress combine was able to put up any resistance to the TMC. In the three municipalities of Domkal, Raiganj and Pujali, the Opposition parties won either one or two wards. The TMC’s win at Mirik is the irst instance in the past three decades of a political party that is not from the hills winning a civic body in the Darjeeling hills, where local parties have dominated the political scene.
Switching sides Much to the surprise of the electorate of Domkal municipality in Murshidabad district, two councillors who won the polls with the support of the Congress and the Left Front joined the TMC soon after the results were announced. An independent candidate from the Pujali municipality in South 24 Parganas also joined TMC within hours of the announcement of results. Elected representatives from the Opposition switching sides, an alien phenomenon in West Bengal politics till a few years ago, has now become common. After the 2016 Assembly polls, in which the TMC returned to power with a massive mandate, at least ive Congress MLAs and one Communist Party of India (Marxist) MLA have joined the ruling party. Though the elections were held in only seven municipalities, the outcome makes it clear that the TMC remains the most dominant political force in the State. The Opposition parties — both the BJP which claims to have emerged as the main Opposition force, and the Left Front-Congress combine which is struggling to keep itself politically relevant — have a long way to go before they can pose a challenge. Meanwhile, after what was seen at Pujali, Domkal and Raiganj on polling day, the West Bengal State Election Commission will have to give serious thought to whether it can rely on West Bengal police alone for smooth conduct of the panchayat polls scheduled next year. CM YK
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The Italian ofensive: Further progress CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
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CONCEPTUAL
ACT ONE
Fosbury flop
In the Lok Sabha’s ambit?
Sport Fosbury flop is the technique one sees all high jumpers use in competitions nowadays, but it wasn’t always so. Till American athlete Dick Fosbury hauled himself over the bar to a gold medal with this technique at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, high jumpers mostly had a frontal/sideways take-off, variations including the straddle jump, Western roll, Eastern cutoff and scissors jump. In the Fosbury flop, the jumper takes off sideways but rotates further mid-air to gain elevation and land on the back. The technique was, of course, aided substantially by the switch from sandpits or soft matting to deep-foam mats.
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Looking for answers to the triple talaq conundrum in the debates of the Constituent Assembly Krishnadas Rajagopal
The Supreme Court, the government and Muslim bodies all agree that the practice of triple talaq needs reform. While Muslim bodies have asked the court and the state to stand back and wait till the community reforms itself from within, the Supreme Court and the government are engaged in a slanging match on who should bell the cat. The government wants the court to strike down all three forms of triple talaq and pave the way for the state to introduce a new Muslim divorce law. The court, however, wants the state to first legislate. The answers to the present conundrum can be found in the records of Constituent Assembly debates from two days — December 1 and 6, 1948. They suggest that our founding fathers did not contemplate a role for the courts in introducing reform to a community’s
personal laws. According to them, it is Parliament which is to codify social reform in a statutory law. The courts, subsequently, have to interpret it in case any dispute arises from the statute. The debates focussed on the proposed inclusion of a new clause ‘h’ into Article 19 (1) to make personal law a fundamental right and thereby restrict Parliament’s power to regulate and interfere with personal laws. A Constituent Assembly member from Madras, Mohammed Ismail Sahib, argued that personal law is a part of religion. He said that anything that affects personal law was interference with religion itself. Replying to this, B.R. Ambedkar made it clear that Parliament could strike down any personal law which was in conflict with the fundamental rights of the people. He said religion should be confined to only certain
“essential” ceremonials and rituals. He also said it is the state which has the power to legislate and remove inequities, inequalities and discrimination prevalent in personal laws of communities. “[The] state is claiming only the power to legislate. No one needs to be apprehensive of the fact that if the state has the power, the state will immediately proceed to execute or enforce in a manner that may be found objectionable by Muslims or Christians or any other community in India,” Dr. Ambedkar said. On December 6, 1948, another CA member, Dr. K. Santhanam, said Article 25 of the Constitution is “really not so much an article on religious freedom, but an article on, what I may call religious toleration”. Parliament can encroach into personal law practices and legislate if they are found to be violative of “public order, morality and health”, he said.
An Italian Communique says: There was bitter and prolonged fighting between Cucco and Vodice. The enemy repeatedly launched considerable masses against our new positions, but all were repulsed and the rocky bastion of Mont Cucco from height 611 to height 524 remained firmly ours. We made appreciable progress towards the important summit of height 652 on Vodice. Enemy counter-attacks eastward of Gorizia broke down. We occupied an important height southward of Grazigna and threw back with serious losses, a powerful enemy attack in the northern sector of the Corso. The enemy shelled a field hospital at Carvignano. There were six victims. CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
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10 NEWS
NOIDA/DELHI
THE HINDU
FRIDAY, MAY 19, 2017
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FROM PAGE ONE
ICJ stays execution of Kulbhushan Jadhav The court also accepted that the rights to consular notification and access claimed by India were “plausible,” as well as the link between these rights and the provisional measures sought by India. It also accepted India’s claim that there was a risk of “irreparable prejudice” to the rights of Mr. Jadhav and that there was an urgency that the execution could be carried out before the court had given its final decision. While Pakistan had indicated an execution was unlikely to take place before August this year, the court noted “that Pakistan has given no assurance that Mr. Jadhav will not be executed before the court has rendered its final decision.” The order requires Pakistan to stay Mr. Jadhav’s execution and keep the
court informed of measures it was taking to implement the order, but does not cover issues such as consular access to Mr. Jadhav. Dr. Deepak Mittal, Jt. Secretary (Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran), MEA, India’s Agent in the case, led the delegation on Thursday. Counsel Harish Salve who appeared for India on Monday did not attend the session. Unlike on Monday, members of the delegations did not shake hands in court ahead of the order. Speaking on the court steps following the order, Mr. Moazzam Ahmad Khan, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UAE, said “it’s a very basic thing the court has done...the court has said nothing on the merits or the maintainability of the case.”
Friends, well-wishers celebrate in Mumbai On Thursday morning, Mr. Jadhav’s childhood friends from the Prithvi Nandan building in Lower Parel gathered in the building compound and held a pooja to pray for a positive verdict. Mr. Jadhav used to stay in the Mumbai Police officers’ quarters across the lane from the building till he shifted to Powai with his family. A picture of Mr. Jadhav was put up in the compound and several of his friends and their family members wrote messages praying for his early return to India next to it. The crowd grew excited as the timing for the ICJ’s verdict — 3.30 p.m. IST — neared and everyone was glued to their cell phones, checking the internet for updates. As the first obser-
vation, that of the ICJ declaring that the issue was under its jurisdiction as per the Vienna Convention was flashed on news portals, a wave of relief went through the crowd. Subsequent rulings by the ICJ, including the observations that Pakistan should have granted consular access to India and that the circumstances of Mr. Jadhav’s arrest were suspect, were met with similar reactions. “Get firecrackers!” someone called out. Another friend rushed to a nearby shop to get sweets. Around five minutes later, when the ICJ ruled that Mr. Jadhav could not be hanged till the final verdict, the building compound erupted with celebrations.
‘NSCN-IM goes on recruitment spree’
Clear and unambiguous verdict, says India External Afairs Ministry says ICJ order to stay Jadhav’s execution is binding, and Islamabad needs to respect it Kallol Bhattacherjee
Big win for nation, human rights: AG
NEW DELHI
India on Thursday claimed a major victory after the International Court of Justice in The Hague asked Pakistan not to execute former Indian Navy official Kulbhushan Jadhav, before the final decision of the court. The External Affairs Ministry asserted that the verdict was binding and Islamabad needs to respect it. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj took to the social media to welcome the observations of the ICJ and praised the legal team led by eminent lawyer Harish Salve. “The ICJ order has come as a great relief to the family of Kulbhushan Jadhav and people of India,” Ms. Swaraj said on her official Twitter handle which was retweeted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The External Affairs Ministry also noted that the ICJ’s verdict has been “unanimous”, “clear” and “unambiguous”.
Essential first step “It is a matter of great relief that the ICJ has asked Pakistan not to execute Mr. Jadhav. The provisional relief is an essential first step in this case. The External Affairs Minister has assured Parliament that the government will do everything possible to ensure justice to Mr. Jadhav,” Ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay. Responding to comments by the Attorney General of Pakistan, Mr. Baglay said the ICJ’s verdict remains binding. “Hope the concerned authorities of Pakistan have heard that the order is legally binding,” he said. The MEA received support from the Opposition with Anand Sharma of the Congress accusing Pakistan of
Special Correspondent NEW DELHI
Attorney-General of India Mukul Rohatgi on Thursday described the International Court of Justice’s stay on execution of retired naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav as a “big win for India and human rights”. Mr. Rohatgi, speaking to the media, said Mr. Jadhav does not risk death penalty as the World Court would hear the case decisively on merits and reach a final decision.
Tense courtroom: Deepak Mittal, Joint Secretary, External Afairs Ministry, at the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Thursday. AP *
Our case stays: Pak. Pakistan on Thursday said the ICJ ruling on Kulbhushan Jadhav doesn’t change the status of the case even as Opposition party leaders attacked the government’s handling of the matter at The Hague. Islamabad said it attended the hearing out of its respect for the court and driven by the conviction that it could meet the legal challenge. “Pakistan attended because of its conviction that the only way to re-
solve all outstanding issues is through peaceful means,” stated an statement by the Attorney General’s office. Sartaj Aziz, adviser to PM Nawaz Sharif, said the government would constitute a new legal team to fight the case. Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf slammed Mr. Sharif for the adverse ruling. “Pakistan sent a junior lawyer, totally unprepared to defend our case. This spineless government is incapable of standing up to India’s aggression,” PTI leader Asad Umar tweeted.
breaking the Vienna Convention. “The order of the ICJ must be respected by the state of
Pakistan. Pakistan’s arguments before the ICJ and its refusal to accept the jurisdiction of the ICJ betrays a
Mubashir Zaidi Karachi
India’s case fortiied by ICJ order, says Salve He represented country at The Hague
cials with Home Minister Rajnath Singh at a high-level meet on Monday to discuss various issues pertaining to the North East. “In 2015, when NSCN-IM signed an agreement, it had 2,000 cadres in its fold, after that they recruited 5,000 more. The current strength is 5,000 as 2,000 deserted the ranks. It’s a worrying trend, as they are promising them jobs in central forces,” said the official. Security forces have also been raising the issue of extortion by the NSCN-IM in different parts of Nagaland and Manipur and asked it to stop such activity.
GST Council sets rates for most items Mr. Adhia said 14% items will attract a tax rate of 5%, 17% of the items will be taxed at 12%, and 43% will be taxed at 18%. “Only 19% items will be in the 28% tax slab, while 81% of items will be taxed at 18% or lower,” he said. “On rates, the categorisation of several consumer products such as soap, tooth paste and hair oil under 18% is good news and should see price drop for consumers,” Pratik Jain, Partner and Leader – Indirect Tax, PwC said. “Similarly, several food
items such as edible oil, tea, coffee and sugar have been kept at 5%, with exemption for milk and food grains, which would also bring cheers for industry.” “The only concern is that 19% items (over 200) would be kept at 28%, which was initially meant for only a few commodities such as luxury cars, and aerated beverages,” Mr. Jain added. “One would hope that the government would continue to make efforts to bring the rates down on most of these products as we go along.”
Zomato hacked, data of 17 mn users stolen It will enhance security measures for all user information stored in its database. The company said a layer of authorisation would also be added for internal teams having access to these data to avoid any human breach. However, according to cybersecurity company Lucideus Tech, when someone hacks and copies the data of a website, the hacker copies CM YK
much more than just the email and the password. Lucideus said Zomato is following a good practice of hashing the passwords before storing it in its database. “But saying ‘the hashed password cannot be converted or decrypted back to plain text’ is misleading,” said Saket Modi, chief executive and co-founder of Lucideus.
‘India vindicated’ The verdict was described as a “significant achievement” by former RAW official Rana Banerjee who said the ICJ’s position vindicates the arguments of the Ministry. “The final arguments are yet to be heard but nevertheless it is a vindication that the MEA’s initial assessment of the case was right,” said Mr. Banerjee.
New Delhi
India’s case on Kulbhushan Jadhav has been “emboldened” and “invigorated” with the first round of victory at the International Court of Justice, senior advocate Harish Salve, who represented the country, said on Thursday. Mr. Salve, who took up the case ‘pro bono’ (free of charge), said India had “a lot at stake” in it and that he felt a “positive energy and connect with judges” while arguing the matter in which Pakistan did not seem to have the same. “As a lawyer for 40 years, you get a feel of how judges are reacting. I felt a positive energy. I felt the judges were connecting. I felt gratified. I did not feel that connection when the other side was arguing,” he told TV news channels. Mr. Salve said, “It was a complicated subject. We worked hard and prima
Harish Salve facie got acceptance on all our points. We are now a lot more emboldened and a lot more invigorated.”
‘Big decision’ He said it was a big decision by the government to approach the ICJ as India had a lot at stake. “The government had complete faith in my advice,” he said. He said the ICJ had rightly held that India should have been granted consular access as per the Vienna Convention to which both the countries have been signatories since 1977.
Jadhav does < > Mr. not risk death penalty as the ICJ will hear the case on merits Mukul Rohatgi Attorney-General
as a move towards the “humanisation of international law”.
Lives at risk In his concurring opinion, Judge Trindade points to how though only states approach the World Court, these states move the ICJ because individual rights and probably lives are at stake. The Attorney-General said the whole world knew there was no proper trial before the military court pronounced the death sentence for Mr. Jadhav. The order comes as a big relief not only for Mr. Jadhav’s family but also the whole nation. Mr. Rohatgi said the order was binding on both India and Pakistan.
The men behind the verdict Ronny Abraham has been President of the world court since 2015 The Somalia-born judge has also served as a Legal Adviser and Director of the Office of International Standards and Legal Affairs (March 2001-January 2009).
Press Trust of India The Hague
Press Trust of India
“Only part of Nagalim was conquered by [the] British. There are no merger agreement[s] between the Nagas and India. India invaded Nagalim and set up arbitrary boundaries and divided the Nagas without their consent. Nagas are racially and culturally different from India. As of now the Nagas have agreed to co-exist together under Shared Sovereignty. The ongoing IndoNaga Political talks are at a fast pace and progressing smoothly,” the statement said. The concerns around NSCN-IM recruiting fresh cadres were shared by offi-
mindset of disrespect to the Vienna Convention which Pakistan has brazenly violated. Kulbhushan Yadav was unfairly denied access to consular officials or to legal assistance. The international community must bring pressure on the Pakistan government and its Army. The United Nations must take serious note,” said Mr. Sharma.
No consular access The government’s topmost law officer said the International Court of Justice assumed jurisdiction after being prima facie satisfied that India’s case about the lack of proper notification of Mr. Jadhav’s arrest and denial of consular access to the detainee proved that the issue came under Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The ICJ unanimously and clearly overcame the obstacle of the 2008 bilateral agreement raised by Pakistan to challenge India’s case in the ICJ and the World Court’s jurisdiction by invoking Article 36 of the Convention and how a human life was put at stake by denial of consular access. One of the judges on the Bench, Judge Caccado Trindade called the order
Mukul Rohatgi
The ICJ verdict on Thursday staying former Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav’s execution was pronounced by its head Ronny Abraham, an international human rights law expert who has served in the Court of Justice of the European Communities. Mr. Abraham is a member of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) since February 15, 2005 and the president of the court since February 6, 2015. Mr. Abraham also served as the “Director of Legal Affairs at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (19982005)”, according to the ICJ website. Before his appointment to the ICJ, he served, from 1998 to 2005, as the head of the Legal Affairs Directorate at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in charge of advising the government on legal matters in the fields of general international public law, European Union law, in-
By order: Presiding judge Ronny Abraham, right, reads the world court's verdict in the case in The Hague. AP *
ternational human rights law, the law of the sea and the Antarctic. The ICJ president was a member of the French delegation to the General Assembly of the United Nations (1998-2004) and the head of the French delegation to the Sixth Committee of the General Assembly (1998-2004). He also spent time in academia, being a professor of
Adityanath to face of with Lalu
international law, at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (until 1998). Mr. Abraham also was an Associate Professor at the University of Paris X-Nanterre (1997-2003). ICJ’s vice-president Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf has been a member of the court since February 6, 2009 and its vice- president since February 6, 2015.
Other judges Other judges of the ICJ include Dalveer Bhandari (India), Hisashi Owada ( Japan), Christopher Greenwood (the UK), Joan E Donoghue (the U.S.), Xue Hanqin (China), James Richard Crawford (Australia) and Kirill Gevorgian (Russian Federation). Mr. Bhandari is a member of the ICJ since April 27, 2012 and his term is to expire on February 5, next year. Justice Bhandari had a distinguished and successful career as an attorney at law for 23 years before he became a judge in the Indian higher judiciary in 1991. The ICJ on Thursday also said, “The court also decides that, until it has given its final decision, it shall remain seized of the matters which form the subject matter of this order.”
Hazare bats for right to recall legislators
Shah deputes him to address meets in Patna to mark anniversary of govt. Special Correspondent Nistula Hebbar NEW DELHI
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will soon face off Lalu Prasad in Patna, the RJD leader’s home turf. BJP president Amit Shah has deputed him to visit Bihar’s capital and address meetings to mark the third anniversary of the Narendra Modi government. “All BJP Chief Ministers and Deputy Chief Ministers have been deputed to travel to the States — especially those not ruled by the BJP — between May 27 and June 15, but preferably between May 27 and 30, to speak at public meetings to highlight the work of their own and of the Centre. Yogi Adityanathji will travel to Patna and one of his deputies Keshav Prasad Maurya will go to Nalanda, considered the pocket borough of Bihar
Lalu Prasad, left, and Yogi Adityanath.
Chief Minister and JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar,” a source in the BJP said.
Special attention Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das will go to Durgapur, and Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh will visit Asansol, both in West Bengal. This underscores the fact that the BJP is paying special
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RANJEET KUMAR, PTI
attention to West Bengal. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan will go to Cuttack, Odisha, and his Maharashtra counterpart Devendra Fadnavis will visit Kochi, Kerala. Dinesh Sharma, the other Deputy Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, will be in Tamil Nadu, visiting either Coimbatore or Madurai. “The most important in
terms of political temperature is the trip by Yogi Adityanath to Patna. He is a fiery speaker and the RJD and the BJP have had several run-ins in the city over corruption allegations against Mr. Lalu Prasad, and the recent I-T raids...,” said an office-bearer of the party. Mr. Lalu Prasad’s role is considered crucial to the Opposition unity in the run-up to the presidential elections and the 2019 general election. The RJD will hold a big rally in Patna in August and has invited various leaders for it. Yogi Aditynath’s provocative style is expected to keep the political tempers simmering. While the general election is two years away, and the State elections are three years away, the BJP’s preparatory work continues apace.
NEW DELHI
Anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare has supported BJP MP Varun Gandhi’s private member’s Bill on the right to recall legislators. In a two-page letter, Mr. Hazare said he had been demanding a similar legislation since 2008 and that it would “revolutionise elections.” He further demanded that there
should be a provision that voters could reject unsuitable candidates “before they stood for elections.”
On NOTA Mr. Hazare said that the NOTA or none of the above option on the ballot machines was an “incomplete option” that would not make much of the difference to democratic processes.
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IN BRIEF
Anil Dave passes away
ED iles case against Karti, others To investigate if he received money in lieu of ‘services’ rendered to INX Media Devesh K. Pandey NEW DELHI
Subrata Roy seeks discharge from court
Minister was ailing for some time Special Correspondent
MUMBAI
NEW DELHI
Sahara group chief Subrata Roy on Thursday moved a city court here seeking his discharge from a case filed by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). “Hearing is likely on June 7,” his lawyer Ashok Sarogi said. Mr. Sarogi said the discharge plea filed by SIREC and SHI, both promoted by Mr. Roy, contended that they have already faced prosecution in Lucknow and there can’t be a second prosecution for the same offence. PTI
Union Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave died of a cardiac arrest in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here on Thursday morning. For many, the news was broken by a series of heartfelt tweets by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “I was with Anil Madhav Daveji till late last evening [Wednesday], discussing key policy issues. This demise is a personal loss,” Mr. Modi said. Mr. Dave’s last day in office was spent meeting not just the Prime Minister but also activists who opposed the possible environmental release of transgenic mustard, and those were not the only loose ends that he tied up. Known to be ailing for some time, Mr. Dave had left explicit instructions for a simple cremation with Vedic rites on the banks of the Narmada at Bandrabhan in Madhya Pradesh, where he, through a non-governmental organisation of his, Narmada Samagra, held an annual river festival. He has asked for no memorials, except perhaps the planting of saplings. Mr. Dave, 60, was born at Barnagar village in Ujjain and went to school in Gujarat, before taking a Master’s degree in Commerce and Rural Development in Indore. A trained pilot, he once flew a Cessna along the banks of the Narmada for 18 hours. He rafted 1,312 km on the river in 19 days.
Court refuses to order FIR against Gujarat MP NEW DELHI
A Delhi court on Thursday refused to direct the city police to file an FIR against Gujarat MP K.C. Patel on allegations of rape by a woman lawyer here, saying she had not come before it with clean hands. Metropolitan Magistrate Harvinder Singh also said she failed to answer queries. The woman is currently arrested in a separate case filed by Mr. Patel, alleging that he was honeytrapped and blackmailed by her. PTI
Railway Ministry moots safety cess on tickets NEW DELHI
Plagued by repeated derailments, the Railways is considering imposing safety cess on train tickets to be utilised for strengthening accident prevention measures. The Railways will have to generate additional revenue of ₹5,000 crore in the current fiscal as its contribution to the safety fund created in the budget. Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said “We have to raise safety funds. People will also have to lend support.” PTI
Organisation man From social work to joining the RSS and the BJP was a short step for Mr. Dave, who was one of the main architects of the party’s victory in
ANIL DAVE (1956-2017) the Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls in 2003. After the elections, he was appointed adviser to the then Chief Minister, Uma Bharti. For the BJP, which sent him to the Rajya Sabha in 2009, he was the quintessential organisation and details man. The party’s nominee for tough parliamentary committees such as the Select Committee on the Prevention of Corruption Bill and the Coal Mines Bill, he was again nominated to the Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh in 2015 and made Environment Minister in July 2016. Though frequently unwell and skipping meetings over the past two months, he was actively at work for over a fortnight. He was admitted to hospital early on Thursday after complaining of uneasiness and died within an hour, an AIIMS press release said. Mr. Dave was unmarried, and he leaves behind several books such as Shivaji & Suraaj; Creation to Cremation; Rafting through a civilisation: a travelogue; Beyond Copenhagen and Yes I Can, So Can We. Union Minister for Science and Technology Harshvardhan has been given additional charge of the Ministry of Environment and Forests.
The Enforcement Directorate on Thursday registered a money-laundering case on the basis of a first information report filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation against Karti Chidambaram and others for allegedly scuttling a probe against INX Media with respect to foreign investments from three Mauritius-based entities in 2007. The case was filed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act after the ED received a copy of the FIR. The directorate will investigate the allegation that Mr. Karti Chidambaram received money in lieu of the “services” rendered to INX Media by his company Chess Management Services,
through another company, Advantage Strategic Consulting Pvt. Ltd. (ASCPL), indirectly “controlled” by him. The agency will soon issue summons for recording statements of all those involved.
Downstreaming funds Mr. Karti Chidambaram, son of the then Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, allegedly exercised his influence over Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) officials to help INX Media wriggle out of the situation. The Department of Revenue had been asking for an investigation into alleged unapproved downstreaming of investment in the INX News capital. The company, which initially got an FIPB approval
Karti leaves for U.K. Press Trust of India New Delhi
Karti Chidambaram left for London on Thursday on what his father, P. Chidambaram, described as a scheduled trip. “Karti is travelling as Karti Chidambaram
for ₹4.62 crore influx, had received ₹305 crore by selling its shares at a premium of ₹800 a unit. For downstreaming of funds, the company reapplied and got a separate approval from the Finance Ministry later, allegedly concealing that it had already been done. Even as the CBI is probing
Mehbooba urges Jaitley to release funds for J&K Fresh protests erupt, with 15 persons injured in clashes
the role of Mr. Karti Chidambaram and his associates in the case, an official said the agency was examining certain purported financial dealings between the companies said to be associated with him and Diageo Scotland Ltd., Katra Group, VST Tillers Tractors and Sequoia Capital. The ED has shared the rel-
The guns will undergo ield trials Special correspondent NEW DELHI
Srinagar
The Army on Thursday took delivery of two M777 ultralight howitzers from the U.S. under a contract signed in 2016. The guns will be put through trials before induction into the Indian arsenal. These are the first modern 155-mm artillery guns to be inducted after the Swedish Bofors guns in the 1980s, the deal for which kicked up a major controversy and left the Army’s artillery modernisation programme stalled for years. The Bofors guns, found effective during the Kargil war, continue to be the mainstay. “Two M777 A-2 (Indian) ULHs arrived today for preparation of firing tables.
On vigil: Security personnel inspect the spot where militants hurled a grenade in Srinagar on Thursday. PTI *
measures to contain the situation. Ms. Mufti also sought “timely and periodic release of funds under the Prime Minister’s Developmental Plan [PMDP].” At least 15 persons, including students, sustained injuries as fresh clashes
erupted in south Kashmir. A police official said students of the Government Degree College, Kulgam, held a demonstration on the campus to protest against the detention of some students. A grenade attack left three policemen and a civilian injured in Srinagar’s old city.
evant documents with the CBI, under legal provisions mandating that commission of an alleged cognisable offence should be reported to the competent agency. The agency has been pursuing a probe against Mr. Karti Chidambaram, Vasan Healthcare, ASCPL and others under the Foreign Exchange Management Act.
Two M777 howitzers arrive from U.S.
Peerzada Ashiq
Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley met Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti here on Thursday and discussed the security situation even as fresh protests and a grenade attack left 18 persons, including students, injured. An official spokesman said the Chief Minister apprised Mr. Jaitley of the huge losses suffered by local business units, especially young entrepreneurs, during last year’s unrest. “She also sought restructuring of credit facility to them,” the spokesman said. Sources said the ongoing unrest also came under discussion and the two leaders deliberated on the possible
per earlier travel plans. He will return after a few days. There is no ban on his travel,” he said. Mr. Karti Chidambaram has denied all the charges made against him.
During this event, the guns will fire 155-mm indigenous ammunition. Firing tables are being prepared by the contracted agency — U.S. government and BAE Systems with support of the Army,” the Army said. Last November, India entered into a contract with the U.S. government for buying 145 BAE Systemsbuilt M777 A-2 artillery guns in a $737-million deal. Twenty-five of them will be imported and 120 assembled in India in partnership with the Mahindra group. They can be transported slung under helicopters. Induction will start in March 2019, with five guns arriving each month till mid-2021.
‘In Rajasthan, Cong. has an alternative model’
AIMPLB against triple talaq, says counsel
Pradesh Congress Committee president says party will present this rather than bank on the anti-incumbency factor
Wants to set condition in nikahnama
INTERVIEW | SACHIN PILOT
Smita Gupta
The 39-year-old Rajasthan Pradesh Congress Committee president, Sachin Pilot, talks to The Hindu about his party’s prospects in the Assembly elections in 2018 and the state of the minorities. Excerpts: On the Congress’s prospects in Rajasthan
In 2013, we came down to 21 MLAs, the lowest ever score for the Congress since Independence. Post that debacle, Sonia Gandhiji and Rahulji asked me to become State president in end-2014. ... the Congress has very strong roots in Rajasthan. The organisational structure is vibrant and ready to take on a political challenge. In the last three-and-a-half years, we have won three of four Assembly byelections, setting the trend for the Congress’s revival. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress polled 30% votes, the BJP 56%. A year-and-a-half later in the panchayat elections, we polled 45.5%, the BJP 47%. The Chief Minister belongs to Jhalawar, but after
the nagarpalika elections, the Jhalawar Corporation has a Congress chairman, Dholpur municipality has a Congress chairman, Barah — from where the Chief Minister’s son is MP — has a Congress chairman. We captured areas people thought we won’t be able to win ... The Congress is rejuvenated because we went to the people not just to criticise the BJP but to present an alternative model of governance. On former Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s public criticism of the failure to win the Dholpur byelection
Not at all. He spent six days in Dholpur, campaigning. The BJP candidate was from the same community as Mr. Gehlot, the community of
Voice sample: police to take Dhinakaran’s nod Special Correspondent NEW DELHI
A special court here on Thursday allowed the Delhi police to obtain the consent of AIADMK (Amma) deputy general secretary T.T.V. Dhinakaran for taking his voice sample in the Election Commission bribery case. “As the consent of accused [Dhinakaran] is required for voice matching with the alleged voice of accused contained in the CD, I deem it expedient in the interest of justice to allow the investigating officer [IO] to take requisite steps to obtain consent of accused for giving his voice sample for comparison from CFSL, CBI Lodhi Road, here with alleged voice of accused contained in the CD,” Special Judge Poonam Chaudhry said in the order. CM YK
The police had sought permission of the court to take the consent of Dhinakaran and his co-accused Sukesh Chandrashekar to match their voices with those contained in the CD recovered during the investigation. Dhinakaran had challenged the maintainability of the plea, while Chandrashekar had refused to give his consent. Counsel for Dhinakaran argued that there was no provision in Cr.PC which permitted the investigating officer to move an application in the court during the pendency of the investigation to obtain voice sample of an accused. The court could not entertain the police’s plea as it could not interfere in the course of investigation, Dhinakaran’s counsel further submitted.
Malis; so he tried hard to make sure that part of that vote should come to the Congress. We fought a really good election, our votes increased from last time but ... One Dholpur byelection fought with the State machinery’s brute force is not indicative of the public mood. Incidentally, just after this bypoll, the Congress won two byelections in the panchayat and nagarpalika, both in Dholpur, as soon as the government machinery was withdrawn. On the Congress’s strategy for Rajasthan
Rajasthan ranks number one for atrocities against Scheduled Tribes, number two against Scheduled Castes, and number three for rapes. The BJP government [talks of ] Resurgent Rajasthan, investment, etc., [but it’s] all propaganda. The farming community, rural-urban, young, old, women all know the government has spectac-
present one, two or four faces but what the Congress stands for. None of us is bothered about who will be chief minister, but about Congress getting a clear majority. Whether the Congress is wary of talking about minorities, now that the BJP is in power
is an invisible < > There reign of terror unleashed by the invisible hand of the government ularly failed. We won’t bank upon antiincumbency but present a better governance model, which includes everything from labour laws to education to investment to healthcare to poverty alleviation to increasing industrial output... we’ll enshrine a stakeholdership connecting with
the youth, farmers, members of all religions. On the Congress’s face for Rajasthan, especially after Ashok Gehlot has been made general secretary for Gujarat
We’ll fight this election collectively. [as State president] it would be foolish not to take advantage of people who have 30 or 40 years of experience; I need their assets, talent and experience to steer the party to victory. I don’t think we need to
Whether churches are being attacked, Pehlu Khan is killed in Rajasthan, Dalits are attacked in Saharanpur or there is a mob lynching in Dadri, it is there for the world to see. All are equal in our eyes. I will defend anyone who is weak, who is being attacked, male, female, Dalit, Muslim, Christian. There is an invisible reign of terror unleashed by the invisible hand of the government through so-called gaurakshaks. This medieval justice mentality has seeped in because they know that the powers high up will protect them.
New Bill to deter ofenders’ escape Govt. has invited views from public on Fugitive Economic Ofenders Bill, 2017 Special Correspondent
Farmhouse attached
NEW DELHI
The government has invited comments on a Bill that seeks to deter economic offenders from fleeing the country by attaching and confiscating properties owned by them in India. The proposed ‘Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill, 2017’ comes against the backdrop of India seeking the extradition of liquor baron Vijay Mallya from the U.K. for defaulted loans to banks. The issue of loan defaults has been stressed as a critical issue burdening the Indian economy by senior government officials like the Finance Minister and Chief Economic Advisor, and private sector economists alike. “There have been several
Special Correspondent Mumbai
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday took possession of a 17-acre farmhouse at Mandwa in Raigad, belonging to Mandwa Farms Pvt Ltd
controlled by Vijay Mallya. The action comes after a notice challenging the attachment of the farmhouse was dismissed by the Appellate Tribunal in New Delhi earlier this week.
Vijay Mallya instances of economic offenders fleeing the jurisdiction of Indian courts, anticipating the commencement, or during the pendency, of criminal proceedings,” the explanatory note accompanying the Bill said. “The absence of such offenders from Indian courts has several deleteri-
ous consequences— first, it hampers investigation in criminal cases; second, it wastes precious time of courts of law; third, it undermines the rule of law in India.” The Bill makes provisions for a special court under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act to declare a per-
son a ‘Fugitive Economic Offender’. A Fugitive Economic Offender is a person who has an arrest warrant issued in respect of a scheduled offence and who leaves or has left India so as to avoid criminal prosecution, or refuses to return to India to face criminal prosecution.
Krishnadas Rajagopal NEW DELHI
Even as the Supreme Court reserved its judgment in the triple talaq case, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) on Thursday informed the court that it intended to arm Muslim brides with an option to lay down a condition in their nikahnama forbidding their prospective husbands from pronouncing instant talaq on them. In its rejoinder before a Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice of India J.S. Khehar, AIMPLB counsel Kapil Sibal said the board was against the practice of instant talaq. “We do not want the practice to go on. We held a meeting yesterday [Wednesday] and will send a circular to all the Qazis to mention it in nikahnama that it would not be permitted,” Mr. Sibal submitted.
Slippery slope But Mr. Sibal reiterated his warning to the court not to go down the “dangerous and slippery slope” of declaring what was “essential” and what was “sinful” in Islam. Mr. Sibal said reform
should start within the community and lead to legislation by Parliament. Once the legislature had passed a law, the court could test it on the principle of constitutional morality and equity. But not now when triple talaq is practised as a pristine personal law based on social and family norms. Justice Kurian Joseph asked Mr. Sibal if the AIMPLB would put it on record that it would send an advisory to the Qazis giving women a say against instant talaq in their nikahnama. On Wednesday, Justice Kurian had asked Mr. Sibal to enquire with religious and community leaders if such an option could be included in the nikahnama.
A contract Justice Kurian said that if nikahnama was a contract, the Qazis could add this clause to protect the women of the community. Appearing for Ishrat Jahan, one of the petitioners, counsel V.K. Biju argued on the varied and often “casual” manner instant talaq was pronounced, thanks to the advent in technology.
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ELSEWHERE
Trump assails probe ‘witch hunt’
Car plows into Times Square pedestrians
Tweet comes after Justice Department appointed a special counsel to lead Russia investigation
Kills one, leaves 22 people injured
Varghese K. George Washington
Roger Ailes, former Fox News chief, dies at 77 NEW YORK
Roger Ailes, former chief executive of Fox News, has died at age 77, the channel said on Thursday. Ailes resigned from Fox News last July following allegations of sexual harassment, marking an abrupt end to his 20-year reign. REUTERS
Musharraf’s conditions for treason trial rejected ISLAMABAD
Pakistan has rejected former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf’s demands of military security and safe passage to Dubai to face his high treason trial, saying an “absconder” cannot “dictate his prerequisites” to the court. Gen. Musharraf filed an application before the special court on May 5. PTI
Brazil President resists calls to resign BRASILIA
Brazilian President Michel Temer resisted calls to resign on Thursday after allegations surfaced that he condoned the bribery of a potential witness in a graft investigation, raising doubts about the future of austerity measures in Congress. Mr. Temer strongly denied the accusations. REUTERS
MIT student sues CIA for info on Twitter jokes CAMBRIDGE
A Massachusetts doctoral student is trying to force the CIA to open up about how it uses jokes on social media. The CIA has been on Twitter since June 2014 when it tweeted, “We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet.” It was a humorous nod to the agency’s secrecy. AP
The U.S. Justice Department has appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the agency’s investigation into alleged meddling by Russia in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion between the Kremlin and President Donald Trump’s campaign. The announcement by Deputy Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein pleased the Democrats and other critics of Mr. Trump, who have been clamouring for a special counsel to lead the probe. “Mueller is exactly the right kind of individual for this job,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (Democrat). “I now have significantly greater confidence that the investigation will follow the facts wherever they lead.” Mr. Rosenstein, who has been overseeing the Russia investigation after AttorneyGeneral Jeff Sessions recused himself from the role, is an appointee of Mr. Trump, but the White House was unaware of his decision to appoint the special counsel until minutes before the announcement was made. Mr. Rosenstein, who wrote a memo making the case for the dismissal of James Comey as FIB Director on May 9, said: “I determined that a special counsel is necessary in order for the American people to have full confidence in the outcome.” Mr. Trump, who initially appeared to take it on the chin, returned with full force on Thursday morning on Twitter, calling the move a “witch hunt”. “This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!” he said. “With all of the illegal acts that took place in the Clinton campaign & Obama Administration, there was never a spe-
Pence: loyalist or successor-in-waiting? Varghese K. George Washington
In an unusual move, VicePresident Mike Pence has set up a Political Action Committee (PAC) to support the Republican campaign for the 2018 mid-term Congressional election and the 2020 general election. While Presidents usually support PACs to raise funds, VPs associate with the party national committee to raise funds for candidates. With Donald Trump’s presidency tumbling from one crisis to another, American conservatives and the GOP establishment are revisiting an idea that has tantalised them for months — President Mike Pence. Mr. Pence has strongly resented such reports, insisting on playing the role of a loyalist to Mr. Trump. Mr. Pence has generously expended his political capital in the Washington establishment to defend his boss. Mr. Pence will reportedly use the money raised by the PAC to fund his travel on Air Force Two to campaign for Republican candidates in 2018. An unnamed associate of Mr. Pence told NBC News that the PAC will “provide resources for the VicePresident to actually support candidates who are supportive of the President’s agenda,” ruling
cial counsel appointed!” In statement released by the White House on Wednesday evening, the President was measured in his response. “As I have stated many times, a thorough investigation will confirm what we already know — there was no collusion between my campaign and any foreign
China invokes Panchsheel Says following the principles will address India’s concerns Atul Aneja Beijing
China on Thursday re-invoked the doctrine of Panchsheel — or the five principles of peaceful co-existence — as the template for addressing India’s concerns over the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the Belt and Road Initiative. In response to a question, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying, citing remarks by President Xi Jinping at the recently concluded Belt and Road Forum, said the five principles of peaceful cooperation along the Belt and Road should be the basis for addressing India’s concerns. India had decided to skip the summit hosted by China on grounds that the economic corridor infringed New Delhi’s sovereignty as it passed through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Ms. Hua stressed that “we would like to follow the five principles of coexistence in developing friendly relations with other countries, includ-
Indian man detained in U.S. dies
ing our efforts in promoting regional connectivity”. She added: “I am sure you would have noticed that during the Belt and Road Forum, President Xi also said that we would follow the principle of peaceful coexistence to promote friendly cooperation along the Belt and Road. So I think in this way the concerns from the Indian side must be addressed.”
Mutual respect The five principles include “mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty”. Ms. Hua reiterated that the CPEC did not contradict the “five principles” as China has not changed its original position on the territorial status of Kashmir. Regarding the status of Kashmir, she reiterated that “as we said before, it is an issue between India and Pakistan and the Belt and Road Initiative will not change China’s position on the Kashmir issue”.
Earlier this month, in an address to a New Delhi think tank, Chinese Ambassador to India, Luo Zhaohui had said China “supported a settlement through bilateral negotiation in line with the Shimla Agreement”.
Enhanced friendship In his keynote address at the summit, President Xi highlighted that China “will enhance friendship and cooperation with all countries in the world on the Belt and Road Initiative. Panchsheel lists mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit and peaceful co-existence, as the touchstones for international conduct. Mr. Xi had stressed that China had “no intention to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, export our own social system or model of development, or impose our own will on others”.
What’s the agenda? With the Trump presidency tumbling from one crisis to another, conservatives and the GOP establishment are revisiting the idea of 'President Pence’.
NEWS ANALYSIS out a presidential run for the vice-president himself in 2020. The new PAC will assemble Mr. Pence’s campaign donors and new ones on a single platform, and will be run by two of his aides — Nick Ayers and Marty Obst. Ever since his selection as the vice-presidential candidate, Mr. Pence has played second fiddle to Mr. Trump, describing his role in the following words at last year’s Republican
entity. I look forward to this matter concluding quickly. In the meantime, I will never stop fighting for the people and the issues that matter most to the future of our country,” he had said. The Deputy Attorney-General cited “unique circumstances” as the reason for his decision. Mr. Mueller, who is
Saudis strive to impress Trump Associated Press DUBAI
Saudi Arabia is making every effort to dazzle and impress U.S. President Donald Trump on his first overseas trip, seizing on the visit to cement itself as a major player on the world stage and shove aside rival Iran. The kingdom has arranged a dizzying schedule of events for the two days Mr. Trump will be in town, inviting figures as varied as Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who has been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, Bret Baier, a host on Fox News popular with Mr. Trump and his supporters, and American country singer Toby Keith, who is to perform for a male-only crowd in Riyadh. Mr. Trump’s decision to make Saudi Arabia his first overseas stop sends the message that the strained U.S.-Saudi relations under President Barack Obama are over.
Tories vow to tighten immigration rules
Associated Press ATLANTA
Authorities said an Indian man detained after arriving at Atlanta’s airport without required immigration documents has died at a hospital. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said 58-year-old Atulkumar Babubhai Patel arrived on May 10 on a flight from Ecuador. He was denied entry and detained by the ICE. An initial medical screening identified high blood pressure and diabetes. A nurse checking his blood sugar on Saturday noticed Patel had shortness of breath and transferred him to a hospital. ICE said he died of complications from congestive heart failure. CM YK
To double amount irms must pay to employ migrants Vidya Ram The Hague
Britain’s ruling Conservative Party has pledged to double the amount that companies must pay to employ migrant workers should it be re-elected, and said it would “continue to bear down on immigration from outside the European Union”. In its manifesto published on Thursday, in which much attention was given to Britain’s immigration regime and the party’s pledge to substantially reduce net migration, the Tories said the immigration skills charge levied on companies employing migrant workers would rise to £2,000 a year
Theresa May
by the end of the next Parliament, with the revenues raised going towards a programme to help skilled workers in the U.K.
Meeting obligations “Skilled immigration should not be a way for government or business to avoid their
obligations to improve the skills of the British workforce,” said the manifesto, which pledged to reduce annual net immigration to “sustainable levels”. It will continue to toughen the visa requirements for students. “We will expect students to leave the country at the end of their course unless they meet new, higher requirements that allow them to work in Britain after their studies have concluded.” International students will remain in the immigration numbers. Migrants will also be subject to a higher Immigration Health Surcharges for using the NHS.
National Convention: “You know, he’s a man known for a larger personality, a colourful style and lots of charisma. And so, I guess he was just looking for some balance on the ticket.” A pious Christian and soft spoken, he has validated that characterisation over the last four months. As VP, it was Mr. Pence who soothed the frayed nerves of allies in Europe and Asia, assuring them that the administration is committed to them, despite Mr. Trump’s rhetoric against “free riding” partners. He has also been the bridge
considered fair and impartial by Republicans and Democrats, will have wide powers, and the scope of the investigation could expand, making it a lengthy one. While the appointment of a special counsel is seen as a setback for the White House, which had opposed the idea even hours before it was an-
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REUTERS
between the President and the Republican Congressional leadership that had put up a stiff resistance to candidate Trump. Mr. Pence has stood by the President on all controversial decisions, including the firing of FBI chief James Comey, but he still enjoys the confidence of party colleagues and the policy establishment. He is the one who is frequently called by the President to the Oval Office for counsel and in the unlikely event of an impeachment, will occupy it.
nounced, this gives the much needed breathing space for a presidency that is caught in a political fire-storm over alleged Russia links. The White House press briefings have in recent weeks revolved around this topic for most of the time and Mr. Trump has said he might stop the briefings altogether.
Reuters NEW YORK
A speeding car plowed into pedestrians on a sidewalk in New York City’s busy Times Square on Thursday, killing one person and injuring 22, and authorities said there was no indication it was an act of terrorism. Witnesses said the motorist was driving against traffic before his burgundy Honda sedan mounted the footpath and struck pedestrians. The car hit a pole and came to rest at 45th Street and Broadway before police took the driver away. One woman was covered with a bloodstained blanket following the collision, which occurred close to 1600 GMT at the Midtown Manhattan tourist venue, a Reuters witness said. Shoes were scattered at the scene.
‘Not terrorism’ New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters there was no indication it was an act of terrorism and that the driver had two previous arrests for drunk driving. Police identified the motorist as Richard Rojas, 26,
A police oicer inspects the car crash in Times Square, New York, on Thursday. AP *
of New York. City officials said the dead woman was 18 years old. Hundreds of thousands of people, many of them tourists from around the world, pass daily through the bustling commercial area, the heart of the Broadway theatre district. Police heavily patrol the area. Many footpaths are lined with barricades and planters for fear of vehicle attacks on pedestrians of a sort seen in recent months in Britain, France, Germany and Sweden.Television footage showed police officers restraining a man in a dark T-shirt and placing him under arrest.
Iran prepares to vote in crucial election Associated Press Tehran
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani staked his political future on opening Iran ever so slightly to the outside world and overcoming hardliners’ opposition to secure a historic nuclear deal in exchange for relief from crippling sanctions. The 68-year-old cleric, a moderate within Iran’s political system, has history on his side as Iranians vote for President on Friday. No in-
cumbent President has failed to win re-election since 1981, when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader and most powerful man in Iran, became President himself. Polling data that’s available suggests Mr. Rouhani will come out on top among the four candidates left running, though an outright win is not assured. Failure to secure a majority would send the two top candidates into a run-off a week later.
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THE HINDU
BUSINESS 13
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Sensex dddddddddddddddddddddd 30,435 ddddddddddddd -0.73 US Dollar dddddddddddddddddddd 64.84 ddddddddddddd -1.08 Gold ddddddddddddddddddddddddddd 28,985 ddddddddddddddd0.78 Brent oil ddddddddddddddddddddd 52.52 ddddddddddddddd0.42
IDBI Bank’s Q4 loss widens
‘Employee activism will risk IT jobs’
NIFTY 50
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
New Delhi
MUMBAI
R.Chandrashekhar, president of the industry lobby NASSCOM, on Thursday, rejected reports of massive layoffs in the information technology sector and warned that employee activism or stopping workforce realignment by resorting to regulation would lead to a decline in competitiveness and potential loss of existing jobs. Hiring was continuing across the IT/Business Process Management (BPM) sector and FY 2017 saw 1.7 lakh jobs being added, he told reporters here. India’s $154 billion IT/BPM sector employs 3.9 million people. Gross hiring by the top five companies in the fourthquarter of FY17 alone had exceeded 50,000, Mr. Chandrashekhar said. Per-
market watch 18-05-2017
% CHANGE
Nasscom terms reports of layofs as ‘rumours’, says 1.7 lakh jobs added in FY17 Special Correspondent
PRICE CHANGE
ACC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1670.40. . . . . . -23.65 Adani Ports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347.90. . . . . . . . -0.65 Ambuja Cements. . . .. . . . . . 252.20. . . . . . . . -5.80 Asian Paints. . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . 1151.35. . . . . . . . -3.60 Aurobindo Pharma . . . . . . 601.05. . . . . . . . -6.30 Axis Bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492.00. . . . . . -10.80 Bajaj Auto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2973.10. . . . . . -66.60 Bank of Baroda . . . . . .. . . . . . 187.45. . . . . . . . -4.30 Bharti Airtel . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . 370.75. . . . . . . . -5.20 Bosch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23264.25. . . -926.65 BPCL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 714.90. . . . . . -12.55 Cipla . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 560.10. . . . . . . . -2.25 Coal India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276.45. . . . . . . . . 0.10 Dr Reddys Lab . . . . . . . .. . . . 2678.95. . . . . . -57.95 Eicher Motors. . . . . . . . .. 28357.30. . . -736.25 GAIL (India). . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . 404.75. . . . . . . . -3.55 Grasim Ind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1130.30. . . . . . -40.55 HCL Tech. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 848.40. . . . . . . . -5.15 HDFC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1537.05. . . . . . -15.45 HDFC Bank. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1557.10. . . . . . . . -0.05 Hero MotoCorp . . . . . .. . . . 3592.05. . . . . . -53.90 Hindalco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194.00. . . . . . . . -4.85 Hind Unilever . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . 990.25. . . . . . -19.15 Indiabulls HFL . . . . . . . .. . . . 1053.80. . . . . . -28.20 ICICI Bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307.95. . . . . . . . -1.80 IndusInd Bank . . . . . . . .. . . . 1406.60. . . . . . -18.85 Bharti Infratel . . . . . . . .. . . . . . 378.90. . . . . . -11.00 Infosys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 961.75. . . . . . . . . 8.95 Indian OilCorp . . . . . . . .. . . . . . 439.90. . . . . . . . -4.35 ITC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277.90. . . . . . . . -3.75 Kotak Bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 942.85. . . . . . . . -8.35 L&T . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1722.60. . . . . . -32.85 Lupin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1305.85. . . . . . . . . 6.60 M&M . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1352.85. . . . . . -25.95 Maurti Suzuki . . . . . . . . .. . . . 6831.05. . . -127.15 NTPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157.80. . . . . . . . -1.10 ONGC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180.90. . . . . . . . -3.60 PowerGrid Corp . . . . .. . . . . . 208.25. . . . . . . . -0.55 Reliance Ind . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . 1327.35. . . . . . -25.75 State Bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302.95. . . . . . . . -4.70 Sun Pharma . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . 653.95. . . . . . . . . 3.05 Tata Motors . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . 437.95. . . . . . -11.15 Tata Motors DVR. . . .. . . . . . 264.50. . . . . . . . -6.45 Tata Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83.75. . . . . . . . -1.60 Tata Steel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486.25. . . . . . . . -7.65 TCS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2536.20. . . . . . . 80.85 Tech Mahindra . . . . . . .. . . . . . 422.30. . . . . . . . -8.55 UltraTech Cement . .. . . . 4341.05. . . -129.95 Wipro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525.40. . . . . . . 14.85 YES Bank. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1401.15. . . . . . -53.50 Zee Entertainment . . . . . . 515.55. . . . . . . . -8.50
EXCHANGE RATES Indicative direct rates in rupees a unit except yen at 4 p.m. on May 18 CURRENCY
TT BUY
TT SELL
US Dollar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . 64.63. . . . . . . 64.95 Euro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . 71.95. . . . . . . 72.32 British Pound . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . 84.19. . . . . . . 84.63 Japanese Yen (100) . .. . 58.45. . . . . . . 58.75 Chinese Yuan . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . 9.38. . . . . . . . . 9.43 Swiss Franc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . 66.15. . . . . . . 66.51 Singapore Dollar . . . . . . .. . 46.43. . . . . . . 46.66 Canadian Dollar . . . . . . . . .. . 47.37. . . . . . . 47.62 Malaysian Ringitt . . . . . .. . 14.93. . . . . . . 15.01 Source:Indian Bank
BULLION RATES
CHENNAI
May 18 rates in rupees with previous rates in parentheses Retail Silver (1g) . . . . . . . . . . . 42.10. . . . . (41.70) 22 ct gold (1 g) . .. . . . . . . . . . . 2,767. . . . . (2,721)
Bigger dreams: It is one of the largest funding rounds from a single investor in the country. REUTERS *
SoftBank joins Paytm board Firm invests $1.4 bn. in Paytm parent Special Correspondent BENGALURU
Paytm, the mobile payments platform run by One97 Communications Limited said that it has raised $1.4 billion from Japan’s SoftBank Group, making it one of the largest funding rounds from a single investor in the country. The payments firm said that SoftBank will join its long-time partner Alibaba Group, China’s biggest ecommerce company, as a major shareholder and will take a seat on the board of Paytm’s parent. The Noida-based company said that it will use the funding to grow its leadership in the country’s payment ecosystem. It would also expand its user base and build a suite of financial services products for its users. “This investment by SoftBank and support of the incredible entrepreneur Masayoshi Son (SoftBank founder) is a great endorsement of our team's execution and vision,” Paytm founder and chief executive Vijay Shekhar Sharma, said in a statement. Paytm said that it plans to
invest ₹10,000 crore (about $1.6 billion) over the next three to five years toward its commitment to enabling half a billion Indians to join the mainstream economy.
Mobile-first product The company said that it would introduce the Paytm Payments Bank, a mobilefirst product that will reach every corner of the nation, and focus on the millions of unserved and under-served Indians. “We believe we have a great opportunity to bring financial inclusion to half a billion Indians,” said Mr.Sharma. SoftBank chairman Masayoshi Son said that in line with the Indian government's vision to promote digital inclusion, SoftBank is committed to transforming the lives of hundreds of millions of Indian consumers and merchants by providing them digital access to a broad array of financial services, including mobile payments. “We are excited to partner with Paytm in this journey and will provide them with all our support,” Mr. Son, who is Japan’s second-richest man, said in a statement.
IRB trust’s tepid debut may dim others’ appeal HONG KONG/MUMBAI
India’s first infrastructure investment trust posted a lacklustre trading debut on Thursday, potentially acting as a dampener for similar upcoming listings of highyield securities that aim to tap investors’ appetite for stronger returns. IRB InvIT Fund traded flat in the afternoon compared to its IPO price of ₹102 ($1.58) per share, reversing gains of as much as 2.9% shortly after the opening. Volume was heavy at more than 51 million shares on India’s National Stock Exchange, making it the top traded stock.
Newness of product Investment bankers attributed the tepid price performance to the newness of the product. Infrastructure investment trusts (InvITs), like real estate investment trusts (REITs), invest in rentyielding assets and distrib-
InvITs aim to tap into investors’ appetite for stronger returns. REUTERS *
ute most of their income to shareholders as dividends. “I would have expected a stronger opening,” said Aditya Mongia, analyst at Kotak Institutional Equities. The fund, which owns, operates and maintains a portfolio of six toll-road assets, raised $782 million in an IPO that was about eight times oversubscribed and priced at the top of expectations.
RBI’s curbs The banking regulator had imposed restrictions on the lender earlier this month after it breached the second risk threshold. Restrictions on dividend distribution, domestic and overseas branch expansion, higher provision, are some of the restrictions that the bank is facing. IDBI Bank’s stock declined by almost 8% on the BSE to close trading on Thursday at ₹70.
DoCoMo stake: Tatas seek nod PRESS TRUST OF INDIA NEW DELHI
Performance will be closely watched by other issuers Reuters
IDBI Bank’s fourth-quarter losses widened to ₹3,200 crore as bad loans surged. The lender reported a loss of ₹1,736 crore during the comparable period of the previous fiscal. The Reserve Bank of India earlier this month had imposed restrictions on the bank. In the third quarter, the state-owned lender reported a loss of ₹2,255 crore. The loss widened as provision for bad loans zoomed to ₹5,333 crore during the fourth quarter from ₹186 crore in the yearago period. Its gross nonperforming assets (NPA) has gone up to ₹4,4753 crore as on March-end from ₹2,4875 crore a year ago. The gross NPA ratio is now at 21.25% while net NPA at 13.21% of net advances. For the full financial year, the bank posted a loss of ₹5,158 crore as compared to a loss of ₹3,665 crore in the previous fiscal. The net interest income for the lender has gone up by 14.43% to ₹1,633 crore for the quarter ended March 2017 while net interest margin increased by eight basis points from 1.67% as on March 2016 to 1.75% as on March 2017, IDBI said in a statement.
Still, for global asset managers looking for liquidity in investments, concerns about a lack of depth in the market for such a new product may have weighed on demand. “They will need global infrastructure and real estate investors to make it work,” said an investment banker who has worked on several Asia-Pacific IPOs and was not authorized to speak publicly about the IRB InvIT deal. “The market may be able to gain critical mass after the first few deals price there.” The performance of the fund will be closely watched by other issuers looking to raise at least $1.3 billion in similar deals this year and the weak debut could impact future listings. The IPO was subscribed 8.6 times. Investors including Singapore government entities bought shares of IRB InvIT in the so-called anchor portion of the sale.
The Tata Group companies have sought fair trade regulator CCI’s approval to buy out NTT DoCoMo’s stake in Tata Teleservices. In its application, Tata Group told CCI that the proposed transaction will change the competitive landscape of the telecom market in India. Tata Sons and four other group firms jointly made a filing with the Competition Commission of India (CCI) for the acquisition of 21.63% stake in TTSL. “Tata Sons, Tata Steel, Tata Industries, Tata Communications and Tata Power propose to undertake a transaction which will result in acquisition of equity shares of TTSL comprising 21.63% of the paidup equity share capital, by the acquirers from DoCoMo pursuant to certain consent terms entered into between Tata Sons and DoCoMo,” as per the agreement filed with the Competition Commission of India.
IKEA to invest ₹200 bn. to open 25 stores Swedish furniture seller aims to capitalise on its irst-mover advantage driven by our local needs then governing mandating 30%,” Mr. Antoni said. “With ₹10,500 crore FIPB approval, we can open up to 15 stores. That's the first wave as we see it. It all depends upon the land prices. After that, there will be more investments.”
Piyush Pandey MUMBAI
The world’s largest furniture retailer, IKEA, plans to invest ₹200 billion in setting up 25 stores in India. The Swedish firm aims to capitalise on its first-mover advantage as the first major foreign retailer to receive Government approval to set up stores in India. “IKEA is investing in buying land in India as we are planning to be here for longterm,” Patrik Antoni, deputy country manager for IKEA India told The Hindu. “The store in Mumbai including land prices will cost ₹1,000 crore and will be ready by early 2019. We plan to open 25 stores by 2025, meaning one store every six months after the opening of our first store in Hyderabad early next year.” CM YK
Polishing ideas: IKEA plans plans to double its sourcing from India to €600 million from about €300 million now. REUTERS *
According to the company, the Mumbai store spread across 430,000 sq. ft., expects about four million shoppers annually and will alone employ around 700 direct co-workers and another 1,500 ancillary workers. “So, if one store creates, 2,000 jobs, 25 stores would create 50,000 direct
and indirect jobs.” “We are planning to double our sourcing from India to 600 million euros from about 300 million euros now. Today, the newly amended law is 5 years of the store opening. Sourcing in India is very important for affordability. Our local sourcing efforts is more
Fresh approval IKEA will have to get a fresh FIPB approval to double its investment. IKEA has been sourcing from India for 30 years for its global stores. In India, it currently has 50 suppliers with 45,000 direct employees and 400,000 people in the extended supply chain. After Hyderabad and Mumbai, IKEA targets to open stores in Delhi and Bangalore, Ahmadabad, Surat, Chennai and Kolkata.
R.Chandrashekhar
formance linked workforce realignment had impacted 0.5-3% of the talent pool, he said, adding that there was no change in this key competitive strategy in the current year. The Forum of IT Employees, a trade union that claims to have members from about 50 IT/IT enabled services companies, has said, “the
profit motive of the IT companies to replace the highly paid experienced employees with lesser experience/low paid new recruits is leading to illegal terminations.” Terming “mass layoffs” in IT/BPM sector as “rumours,” Mr. Chandrashekhar cautioned that efforts to “stop workforce realignment by resort(ing) to regulation, employee activism” would result in the “wrong lessons” and would lead to a decline in competitiveness and potential loss of existing jobs in the sector. The focus now ought to be “on new age skills that are in demand globally (by) continuously refreshing skills and filling the growing global skill gap” so as to spur growth,” he said. The IT/BPM sector saw 3.5 million new jobs added since
2001, with six lakh of them just in the last three years, he said, adding that it would add 2.5-3 million new jobs by 2025 as it targeted $350 billion in revenue by 2025.
Automation impact While admitting that automation was cannibalising some jobs, Mr. Chandrasekhar said it was also creating new jobs leading to a net positive impact. Significantly, he said, “there is a continuing gentle deceleration in net hiring growth rate (but with a growing base) as industry focuses on innovation, enhanced efficiency and lower attrition.” The IT/BPM industry, which would remain a major net hirer in FY18, was, however, likely to see the decoupling of revenue and headcount accelerating over the next few years, he said.
India aims to boost trade ties with African nations
Aditya Birla Nuvo Q4 net falls 52.34%
African Development Bank meet to be held in Gujarat
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA
Special Correspondent NEW DELHI
India has extended credit totalling $7.6 billion to African nations and aims to use the upcoming annual meeting of the African Development Bank in Gujarat this month to strengthen its trade ties with the continent. As on March 31, 2017, India has extended 152 lines of credit to 44 African nations amounting to $7.6 billion, Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das said. The meeting will take place on May 22-26 in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will inaugurate the meeting, had in the In-
African interest: The meeting will take place between May 22-26 in Gandhinagar, Mr. Shaktikanta Das said.
dia-Africa Summit committed a $10 billion line of credit to African nations. The African Development Bank (AfDB) has 81 member countries, 57 of which are from Africa. India is among the other 24 non-regional
members. Indian companies have invested $72 billion in African nations as of 2014-15, Mr. Das added, saying that this made up 20% of the total investment in those countries.
NEW DELHI
Aditya Birla Nuvo on Thursday reported 52.34% decline in consolidated net profit to ₹130.33 crore for the March quarter, hit by higher input cost and loss by associate as well as joint venture companies. Total expenses during the fourth quarter of 201617 grew 16.93% to ₹4,129.30 crore compared to ₹3,531.31 crore in the year ago period. The decline in profit was attributed to the cost of materials which increased by 6.27% to ₹736.42 crore compared to ₹693.19 crore. It also faced losses to the tune of Rs 56.72 crore from its associate and joint venture companies during the quarter under review.
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IN BRIEF
GM to stop India sales by Dec. Automaker to focus on using its Talegaon plant in Maharashtra as an export hub
Curtain call: GM shut its plant at Halol, in Gujarat, last month and transferred some workers to Talegaon. REUTERS
ident of GM International, said, “We explored many options, but determined the increased investment originally planned for India would not deliver the returns of other significant global opportunities.” “It would also not help us achieve a leadership position or compelling, long-term profitability in the domestic market,” he said. The company had committed to invest $1 billion in India to grow its presence. This decision has been reversed.
ance of its operations worldwide,” the company said in a statement. “Through the review, which began in June 2016, the company determined its greatest opportunity in India to drive shareholder return rests on focusing on exports from India,” it said. The carmaker had closed its plant in Gujarat’s Halol on
Mexico, Latin America Kaher Kazem, president and MD, GM India said, “GM India’s export business has tripled over the past year. Exports will remain our focus going forward as we continue to leverage India’s strong supply base.” GM will ship the Chevrolet Beat to Mexico and Central and South American markets.
Special Correspondent MUMBAI
KVB reports higher fourth-quarter net proit CHENNAI
Karur Vysya Bank (KVB) reported a net proit of ₹217.56 crore for the quarter ended March, 2017 as against ₹138 crore in the year-earlier period. Operating proit increased to ₹507.06 crore (₹326.51 crore). Net interest income rose by 22.71% from ₹472.65 crore to ₹579.99 crore. The ratio of net nonperforming assets (NPAs) to net advances rose to 2.53% during the quarter from 1.68% in December quarter of inancial year 2016-17.
Panasonic, TCS set up centre of excellence BENGALURU
Consumer electronics and home appliances major Panasonic on Thursday said it had set up a Centre of Excellence (CoE) in association with IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). The centre will drive innovation and create new business opportunities in the space of Internet of Things (IoT), mobility, artiicial intelligence (AI). The centre would be the irst innovation centre of Panasonic in India.
Following lukewarm demand for its cars, GM has decided to cease vehicle sales operations in India by the end of 2017. GM will stop sales of its Chevrolet brand of vehicles in India including the Beat, Cruze, Tavera, Spark, Enjoy and Trailblazer on December 31, 2017. The U.S. company said it would, however, continue to provide support to its affected customers, employees, dealers and suppliers. GM, which started operations in India in 1995, said the company’s manufacturing facility at Talegaon, near Pune, would hereafter serve as an export hub. “The decision [to focus on exports and to cease domestic sales], which follows a comprehensive review of future product plans for GM India, is part of a series of actions taken by General Motors to address the perform-
*
Geely’s Volvo Cars to start India assembly by year-end
CHENNAI
Integrated Healthcare Holdings Ltd. (IHHL), an arm of Malaysian sovereign fund Khazanah, has sold its remaining 4.78% stake in Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd. for about ₹829.2 crore on Thursday. According to NSE data, IHHL sold about 66.54 lakh shares at ₹1,246 a share. Mutual Funds of SBI and DB International Asia Ltd. were among the buyers of the stake.
Anjana George
Bajaj Auto Q4 proit falls 15% on input costs Firm to pay dividend of ₹55 per share
CHENNAI
K7 Computing Pvt. Ltd., a local IT security company, has unveiled a free scanner tool to detect and remove WannaCry and other ransomware files. “We have introduced a free scanner for all such ransomware,” J. Kesavardhanan, founder and chief executive officer of K7 Computing said in an interview. The tool would also detect and provide protection against botnets — a collection of Internet-connected devices, which may include PCs, servers, mobile devices and Internet of Things devices that are infected and controlled by a common type of malware, he added. The free scanner tool could be downloaded from the company's website and utilised by individual users, Mr. Kesavardhanan added.
Special Correspondent MUMBAI
Bajaj Auto reported a 15.48% drop in fourth-quarter net profit to ₹802 crore, from ₹949 crore in the same period last year, after input costs increased and the company had to step up investment on migrating from BS-III to BS-IV platform. Total income declined in the quarter to ₹5,506 crore, from ₹5,967 crore in the year-earlier period. For the financial year ended March 31, 2017, the company reported net profit fell 2.6% to ₹3,828 crore, as compared with ₹3,930 crore in the previous year. Total income also shrank to ₹24,310 crore, from ₹24,957 crore in the previous year. Bajaj Auto also sold a lesser number of vehicles in 2016-17, at 36,65,950 units compared to 38,93,581 in the previous year.
Hosakote facility is the brand’s second such after Malaysia Staff Reporter
Swedish luxury carmaker Volvo Cars on Thursday said it would roll out its first India-assembled car by the end of the year. Volvo Auto India, which sells and markets the Volvo car in India, said the establishment of the unit was part of its long-term commitment towards the India market. Volvo Cars has been owned by China's Zhejiang Geely Holding (Geely Holding) since 2010. The new unit will be in Hosakote, near Bengaluru,
Tom von Bonsdorf
and would be the company’s second assembly unit after Malaysia, which was set up in 1960. Volvo Cars will set up the assembly operations
together with Volvo Group India and Penta engines manufacturer, and will make use of Volvo Group India’s existing infrastructure and production licenses. Volvo Group India currently manufactures Volvo trucks, buses and construction equipment at its Hosakote unit. The first Volvo car model to be assembled at the new centre would be the XC90 premium SUV. Additional models would be announced later, said Tom von Bonsdorff, Managing Director, Volvo Auto India.
A worker prepares a Bajaj motorcycle REUTERS *
However, Bajaj Auto said despite the difficult business environment it continued to earn EBITDA margin of 21.7%, which is among the best in the industry.
Surplus cash The firm said cash and cash equivalents grew by 36% in 2016-17 to ₹12,368 crore. The board of directors recommended a dividend of ₹55 per share, which will cost the company ₹1,916 crore including dividend tax.
CESC to split into 4, acquires FMCG irm Firms to focus on generation, distribution, retail and other ventures Special Correspondent KOLKATA
BENGALURU
Khazanah arm sells stake in Apollo Hospitals
April 28 and some workers had been transferred to Talegaon. Despite an early start, the company’s products were not in demand in India and in 2016, its market share was less than 1%. In the 2016-17 financial year it sold a total of 25,823 vehicles in India. Stefan Jacoby, GM executive vice president and pres-
K7 ofers tool to combat ransomware
The RP-Sanjiv Goenka group on Thursday announced it was restructuring operations of its flagship company CESC. According to the plan, cleared by the CESC board, there will be four companies — focussing on generation, distribution, organised retail and other ventures. This would be subject to regulatory approvals “This is as per a report by KPMG and Grant Thornton,” said group chairman Sanjiv Goenka. “All the four entities would be listed on the bourses. It is a mirror-image demerger,” he said. Distribution was now “the
Powering growth: The RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group will list all the four entities on the bourses. growing end of the business and the group would focus on this and business expansion, through franchise arrangements in two more states, was on the cards,” he said. An acquisition in the FMCG segment had also
been finalised. Under the recast arrangement, for every 10 shares held by a CESC Ltd shareholder, he or she would get five shares each of the generation and the distribution companies, six of the retail
company at a face value of ₹5 and two of the ‘other ventures’ entity. These share issuance would be done without any cash consideration but through a reduction in the face value of CESC’s equity share and subsequent consolidation of the shares. CESC presently runs a diverse set of businesses ranging from power generation and distribution to business process management. The utility has been in the power generation and distribution business since 1899. CESC’s turnover during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017 rose to ₹1,631 crore against ₹1,504 crore a year ago while profits increased marginally to ₹295 crore from ₹293 crore.
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Bengaluru’s weather will once again hold centrestage Kolkata will bank on its recent experience in these conditions in Qualiier-2 against Mumbai Ashwin Achal Bengaluru
The oscillating Bengaluru weather takes centrestage, as Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) goes up against Mumbai Indians (MI) in the IPL Qualifier-2 at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium here on Friday. The prospect of rain ruining play will concern fans and players alike. Persistent showers reduced the KKR chase in the Eliminator tie — held at the same venue on Wednesday night — to a sixover affair. This wet interruption came only a few hours after a particularly sunny afternoon. The stadium — armed with the impressive SubAir drainage system and efficient groundstaff — is best equipped to minimise any damage. Even the best of technology or manpower, however, cannot get play started if there is no respite from the rain. Going by form in the league stage, it comes as a surprise that MI is in this door-die position. The tabletopper was widely tipped to cruise into the final, but fell to Rising Pune Supergiant (RPS) in Qualifier-1. Four of the top five MI batsmen fell to single-digit
Key personnel: Mumbai Indians will look to the likes of Hardik Pandya and Kieron Pollard to deliver against Kolkata Knight Riders in Qualiier-2. K. BHAGYA PRAKASH *
scores — not a cause for alarm, but a statistic that must be reversed. On this slow, low Bengaluru pitch, the batters must be at their very best to prise out runs. If the franchise gets into top gear, it will be the favourite to book a spot in the final. KKR, on the other hand, is
IPL-10 now fairly familiar with the conditions on offer. A brilliant bowling and fielding performance restricted Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) to 128 for seven on Wednesday, and despite a shaky start to the chase, the team cruised
Gambhir steers KKR home Coulter-Nile denies there was anxiety after quick wickets Couldn’t get out of bed. We flew to Bengaluru and we were here for three-four days and I didn’t get out of bed even once. “It was something I hadn’t experienced, hadn’t expected. So I went to a few doctors. I was told to wait it out and rest it out. I was still pretty bad a couple of days ago. Woke up this morning (Wednesday) and I was fine. So thought might as well give it a crack.” The Australian took three for 20 and Umesh Yadav two for 21 as KKR limited SRH to 128 in 20 overs. The pitch had not been conducive to shot-making, Coulter-Nile admitted. “It was a difficult wicket, definitely. The cross-seamers were holding up and slower balls were getting a little bit of grip. Umesh and Boulty told me before I even started bowling that crossseamers into the wicket were really hard to hit. “But once the rain came in, it got a lot easier to bat. Once the ball was wet, the ball actually skidded through. We thought maybe 140 [was par]. So 10 runs makes a big difference.”
Shreedutta Chidananda Bengaluru
It eventually required the steady hands of Gautam Gambhir to steer Kolkata Knight Riders to victory over Sunrisers Hyderabad and into Qualifier 2 of the IPL. A target of 48 in six overs ought to have been a doodle, but KKR made hard work of it, slipping to 12 for three before Gambhir steadied the ship. The captain scored a 19ball 32 as KKR won with four balls to spare at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium here in the early hours of Thursday. But Nathan Coulter-Nile, who played a lead role with the ball in the evening, denied there had been any anxiety in the ranks as Chris Lynn, Yusuf Pathan and Robin Uthappa fell early in the chase. “It wasn’t a big target. On that wicket you’ll never really know. We thought, 10 wickets in hand, six overs. There’s no point trying to work yourself in,” he said. “Might as well go hard. If the top-six batsmen all go hard and one of them comes off, then you win the game. So, I thought, we batted
SCOREBOARD
Gambhir.
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K. BHAGYA PRAKASH
well. Obviously, the run out (of Yusuf Pathan) was a bit silly. But everything else was fine,” added Coulter-Nile. He was returning from a two-week absence forced by concussion, after being struck on the helmet by a Dan Christian delivery. “I really didn’t know what to expect,” he said of the aftermath. “The next day I was fine. But then two days later, I had bad headaches.
past the finish line. MI holds a 2-0 win record over this opponent this season, but KKR player Nathan Coulter-Nile is not unduly worried. “We have to rest and recover as much as possible, and get our plans sorted out for the match. We’ve played them twice already, so we
know what they’re going to bring and what we need to do,” he said, after the victory over SRH. The Australian cited his side’s familiarity with the conditions as an advantage. “We know what the wicket is like, which is an advantage to us. I think they haven’t played here in a while,” he said.
You can’t play cricket at 2 a.m., says Nathan Coulter-Nile Shreedutta Chidananda Bengaluru
The rain first came down just as the Sunrisers Hyderabad innings drew to a close on Wednesday. The skies briefly cleared up around 11 p.m., kindling hope of a restart, but a second spell of rain was just around the corner. Notwithstanding the generous time extension afforded to playoff games — a full 20-over innings could have begun even as late as 11:50 p.m., a five-over chase as late as 12:58 a.m., and a Super Over as late as 1:20 a.m. — Kolkata Knight Riders would have been worried. For, in the event that even a Super Over was not possible, Sunrisers would have advanced by virtue of their superior performance in the league stages. Fortunately for Gautam Gambhir’s side, there were no showers after midnight, and a six-over run-chase could begin at 12:55 a.m. A quick resumption was possible due, in no small
part, to the new vacuumpowered Sub-Air drainage system at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, something Gambhir thanked the KSCA for, later.
Good mood Addressing the press at 2 a.m., something he is unlikely to have done many times before, Nathan Coulter-Nile denied that the KKR dressing room was tense. “The mood was really good, actually. They were all playing French cricket or something. “I was actually trying to get some sleep in the chair and telling them to shut up. No one really got nervous till they went for that last look (inspection) at 12:30 a.m. It sort of looked like that they didn’t want to play. But yeah, there was so much time.” Coulter-Nile agreed that the situation was not ideal. “It’s 2 o’clock,” he said. “The rules probably need to be looked at. You can’t play cricket at 2 a.m.”
SUNRISERS HYDERABAD VS KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS
Sunrisers Hyderabad: David Warner b Chawla 37 (35b, 2x4, 2x6), Shikhar Dhawan c Uthappa b Umesh 11 (13b, 1x4), Kane Williamson c Suryakumar b Coulter-Nile 24 (26b, 2x4, 1x6), Yuvraj Singh c Chawla b Umesh 9 (9b, 2x4), Vijay Shankar c Suryakumar b Coulter-Nile 22 (17b, 2x4, 1x6), Naman Ojha c Lynn b Boult 16 (16b, 1x6), Chris Jordan c & b Coulter-Nile 0 (1b), Bipul Sharma (not out) 2 (3b); Extras (lb-3, w-4): 7; Total (for seven wkts. in 20 overs): 128. Fall of wickets: 1-25 (Dhawan, 4.2 overs), 2-75 (Williamson,
2x6), Ishank Jaggi (not out) 5 (8b); Extras (lb-1, w-3): 4; Total (for three wkts. in 5.2 overs): 48. Fall of wickets: 1-7 (Lynn, 0.3 overs), 2-7 (Yusuf, 0.4), 3-12 (Uthappa, 1.1). Sunrisers Hyderabad bowling: Bhuvneshwar Kumar 1-0-11-1, Chris Jordan 1-0-9-1, Rashid Khan 2-0-11-0, Siddarth Kaul 10-14-0, Bipul Sharma 0.2-0-2-0. Toss: KKR. Man-of-the-match: Coulter-Nile. Kolkata Knight Riders won by seven wickets with four balls remaining (D-L method).
11.6), 3-75 (Warner, 12.2), 4-99 (Yuvraj, 15.3), 5-118 (Vijay Shankar, 18.1), 6-119 (Jordan, 18.3), 7-128 (Ojha, 19.6). Kolkata Knight Riders bowling: Umesh Yadav 4-0-21-2, Trent Boult 4-0-30-1, Sunil Narine 4-0-20-0, Yusuf Pathan 1-0-7-0, Nathan Coulter-Nile 4-0-20-3, Piyush Chawla 3-0-27-1. Kolkata Knight Riders (target 48 from six overs): Robin Uthappa c Dhawan b Jordan 1 (2b), Chris Lynn c Ojha b Bhuvneshwar 6 (2b, 1x6), Yusuf Pathan run out 0 (1b), Gautam Gambhir (not out) 32 (19b, 2x4,
Unwelcome guest! The fate of the Eliminator hung in the balance when rain interrupted play. K. BHAGYA PRAKASH *
Karthik replaces the injured Pandey M.S.K. Prasad says the TN player’s experience will come in handy in England
Ravi to stand in irst game Special Correspondent Chennai
Shayan Acharya Chennai
An injury ruled Manish Pandey out of the Champions Trophy, the National selectors replacing the Karnataka batsman with Dinesh Karthik. Kolkata Knight Riders’ Pandey suffered a rib injury in the nets. “He (Karthik) was already there as a standby, and with Manish suffering an injury, we chose to include him,” said M.S.K. Prasad. The chairman also revealed that after a successful domestic season, Karthik deserved the opportunity. “He has had a great domestic season and his experience will help the team in England,” CM YK
DK’s back: Dinesh Karthik has earned a recall, thanks to a successful domestic season. FILE PHOTO *
he added. Chennai boy Karthik returns to the India team after a gap of three years. The wicketkeeper-batsman, who last played an ODI in 2014, has been in terrific form for Tamil Nadu. Playing a key role for the
State team throughout the season, Karthik slammed a century in the final of the Vijay Hazare Trophy to help Tamil Nadu clinch the title. Even in the IPL, he made his presence felt, donning the Gujarat Lions colours. While the Lions flattered to
deceive, Karthik had a decent tournament. He also added another feather to his cap, becoming the only wicketkeeper to pull off 100 dismissals in the IPL. Even Tamil Nadu Ranji coach Hrishikesh Kanitkar feels that hard work has paid off for Karthik. “It is a matter of great pride as two of our senior players have been included in the Indian team,” said Kanitkar, referring to Abhinav Mukund’s inclusion in the Test team against Australia recently. “It is a great thing. DK has had a great season, and he deserves every bit of it. He has been rewarded at the right time,” Kanitkar said.
India’s S. Ravi will be one of the on-field umpires for the opening match of the ICC Champions Trophy. The Chennai-based umpire will stand with Rod Tucker in the tournament opener featuring host England and Bangladesh at the Oval on June 1. This will also be his maiden appearance in this competition. The other umpires are Kumar Dharmasena, Marais Erasmus, Chris Gaffaney, Ian Gould, Richard Illingworth, Richard Kettleborough, Nigel Llong, Bruce Oxenford, and Paul Reiffel. Chris Broad, David Boon, and Andy Pycroft are the match referees.
Coulter-Nile is right in his assessment — MI last played at this venue a little over a month ago. Meanwhile, the Kolkata Knight Riders team management confirmed that Manish Pandey has been ruled of the IPL after injuring his rib in the nets. “It is unfortunate that he (Pandey) has suffered
an injury and will be out of the IPL. We wish him a speedy recovery,” a KKR team spokesperson said. Spectator interest, meanwhile, took a big hit at the SRH-KKR clash. Empty seats robbed the occasion of a grand feel, with the city folk perhaps losing their zeal after RCB exited the scene.
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Chandrasekhar — a curator par excellence In the reckoning to bag ‘best curator’ award again V.V. Subrahmanyam HYDERABAD
The Indian Premier League is not all about high-profile stars who showcase their skills on the pitch, but also about some gentlemen who play a significant role in the successful conduct of the event like the 59-year-old Y.L. Chandrasekhar, HCA curator, now in the reckoning to bag the ‘best curator’ award having won it in the last three editions. Chandu, as he is known in cricketing circles, also happens to be the only certified BCCI curator from Telangana State and one who is widely acclaimed for producing the best wickets for ODIs and the IPL over the years. His communication skills make him a big hit with stars such as Sachin Tendulkar, M.S. Dhoni and David Warner. And, come May 21 when the final of the 10th edition will be played at the Rajiv Gandhi Stadium here under lights, the focus will be on the pitch. “I consider it one of the biggest challenges. The specific objective is to produce quality wickets. I must say that I am lucky to have a wonderful team of groundstaff who always chip in when the situation demands,” Chandu told The Hindu. Interestingly, the pitch for the final will be the same one on which the inaugural match between defending champion Sunrisers Hyderabad and Royal Challengers Bangalore was played last month. “Pitch preparation is
Extra lavour: HCA curator Y.L. Chandrasekhar’s communication skills have made him a big hit with stars such as M.S. Dhoni. V.V. SUBRAHMANYAM *
never easy given the kind of expectations. And, if you remember, there were a few cracks in the pitch, large brown patches in the outfield because of the strike by the Uppal Stadium employees (which even led to serious doubts whether the show would be on),” he said.
Efficient groundstaff “But, the kind of efforts the groundstaff put in to ensure that we have one of the best outfields and beautiful wickets is a tribute to their efficiency,” the curator said. He brings in the rich experience of a research association with ICRISAT for two decades before joining HCA in 2008. For all those regulars to Uppal Stadium, it was a familiar sight of big names of the game, including Dhoni, walking across to share a
few thoughts with Chandu. “I must tell you he (Dhoni) is such a gentleman, speaks with so much warmth and affection that you feel in the comfort zone. Like all great players, including Sachin, he too doesn’t have any airs,” he said. And, Chandu is grateful to BCCI chairman of pitches and grounds committee Daljit Singh and South Zone curator P.R. Viswanathan for their support.
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Cavaliers go one up
IN BRIEF
Clinical display by defending champion against Celtics
Hockey Odisha in last four
DUBAI
India retained its top position in the ICC Test rankings with 123 points, six points ahead of second-placed South Africa. Australia has retained third place, but has plummeted from 108 to 100 points, England has stayed in fourth position but slipped two points to 99, whereas Pakistan has dropped behind New Zealand in sixth place after losing four points to sit on 93. PTI
McGregor signs deal for Mayweather ight LOS ANGELES
The long-rumoured bout between Floyd Mayweather and mixed martial arts champion Conor McGregor is halfway to becoming a reality after the Irishman signed a deal for the fight, it was announced on Wednesday. The McGregor side of the deal is done, while the Mayweather side is yet to be sorted out. REUTERS
Inspirational: LeBron James, left, led Cleveland Cavaliers with 38 points, his seventh consecutive 30-point game, against Boston Celtics. AP *
Reuters
Defending champion Cleveland Cavaliers, playing its first game since May 7, put on a clinical display, leading wire to wire and cruising to a 117-104 blow-out of the Boston Celtics in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference NBA finals on Wednesday. Game 2 is on Friday at TD Garden before the series shifts to Cleveland for Games 3 and 4. Cavs toyed with Celtics from the start, building a 26-
Abhay, Akanksha advance MAKATI CITY (PHILIPPINES)
Abhay Singh and Akanksha Salunkhe, both qualifiers, entered the quarterfinals of the Nissan Makati Open squash tournament on Thursday. The results: First round: Men: Abhay Singh bt Ravi Dixit 11-5, 11-8, 11-8; Women: Akanksha Salunkhe bt Nazihah Hanis (Mas) 3-11, 11-9, 13-11, 7-11, 11-9; Sunayna Kuruvilla lost to Rachel Arnold (Mas) 9-11, 5-11, 11-9, 10-12.
He added nine rebounds and seven assists.
NBA
Boston
point lead in the first half and expanding it to 28 in the third quarter before Celtics cut it down to 17 at the end of the quarter. Celtics rallied some and actually cut the deficit to 11 with the benches cleared in the final minutes. LeBron James, looking to advance to his seventh straight NBA finals, led Cavs with 38 points (15 in the fourth quarter), his seventh consecutive 30-point game.
The win was Cavs’ 12th in a row in the playoffs (one shy of matching the NBA record, set by the 1988-89 Los Angeles Lakers), dating back to last year's finals, while Celtics’ five-game home playoff winning streak was stopped. The result: Cleveland Cavaliers 117 (LeBron James 38, Love 32, Thompson 20, Irving 11) bt Boston Celtics 104 (Crowder 21, Horford 11, Bradley 21, Thomas 17, Brown 10, Green 11).
Mathur & Co. to conduct DDCA audit SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT NEW DELHI
Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) administrator Justice (Retd) Vikramajit Sen on Thursday announced that GS Mathur and Company will conduct the audit of the association. “Fifteen proposals were received from reputed organisations/firms and these were opened on May 16. In consultation with I.P. Singh, the audit of the accounts of DDCA from 2012-2015 has
NADA’s Athlete Passport Management Unit NEW DELHI
In a major step in its fight against doping, the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) on Thursday said that the country would have its first Athlete Passport Management Unit (APMU) to handle the administrative management of Biological Passports. There are only 11 APMUs recognised by the WADA all over the world while India does not have one till now. PTI
been awarded to GS Mathur and Company,” Sen said in a statement. Mathur and Company has been requested to start the audit immediately and submit a report within three months. Sen also called for an Extraordinary General Meeting of the members of the DDCA on June 3 to adopt the Restated Articles of Association of the Company. As per the orders of the High Court, Sen is author-
ised “to take all such steps and actions and give such directions as he may in his absolute discretion deem necessary and to settle any question that may arise in this regard, without being required to seek any further consent or approval of the members of the Company and to do all such acts, matters, deeds and things necessary or desirable in connection with or incidental to give effect to the above resolution.”
India will hope to begin well
TVS Racing’s training academy for women
MUNICH
Sports Bureau
BENGALURU
India will attempt to open its campaign on a strong note in the second World Cup of the season for rifle and pistol here on Friday. The opening day’s competition will feature air rifle for men and women. The women’s team includes Pooja Ghatkar, who won the bronze in the first World Cup in Delhi. It will also have Apurvi Chandela and Meghana Sajjanar. World University champion Vinita Bhardwaj will be competing in the Minimum Qualifying Score (MQS) section in women’s air rifle.
TVS Racing has launched a training academy for women for riders across India. As many as 25 of them will undergo a one-day training and selection camp here on May 24. Of those, the top 15 will be shortlisted to compete in the first edition of the TVS Ladies One-Make Series 2017. For registrations, visit www.facebook.com/ TVSRacingOfficial
TV PICKS NBA: Sony Six & Six HD, 5.30 a.m. (Saturday)
Pooja Ghatkar.
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In fact, there will be eight shooters competing only in the MQS section, which means they will not be eligible for the final. It includes
Gagan Narang, who could not gain selection. Thus, he will be shooting MQS in the men’s 50-metre rifle prone event. Gagan has not entered even in MQS for the 10-metre air rifle and the 50metre rifle 3-position events. Deepak Kumar, Ravi Kumar and Satyendra Singh will shoot the men’s air rifle. The Indian challenge is expected to a be a lot crisp in the men’s 50-metre free pistol event which will have the elimination round on Friday. Jitu Rai will be the spearhead. Prakash Nanjappa will shoot both air pistol and free pistol.
Nepal stuns India Sports Bureau Kathmandu
Principal Correspondent
Ashwin Achal
BENGALURU
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has registered the land it has bought in the city at a sub-registrar’s office here on Thursday. The BCCI intends to move the National Cricket Academy (NCA) from the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium to the new property, located at Aerospace Park in Devanahalli. Acting BCCI jointsecretary Amitabh Choudhary stated that while 25 acres of land has been registered, the BCCI has requested for 25 acres more. “We have requested the officials concerned to grant us an extra 25 acres. “We are happy that they
Hockey Odisha entered the semifinals of the Hockey India sub-junior National championship with penalty shootout-win over Uttar Pradesh Hockey at the KSHA Stadium here on Thursday. After being tied 2-2 at full-time, Odisha triumphed 3-1 in the shootout. Elsewhere there were narrow victories for SAI and Madhya Pradesh Hockey, 3-2 and 4-3 over Hockey Haryana and Hockey Punjab, respectively. Hockey Chandigarh, though, had no trouble as it thrashed Hockey Karnataka 7-0.
India remains Test No. 1
BCCI move to shift NCA to new property
Semifinal line-up: SAI vs. MPHA; Hockey Chandigarh vs Hockey Odisha. The results (quarterfinals): Hockey Chandigarh 7 (Jaspreet Singh 1, 13, Sanjay 6, Arshdeep Singh 34, Maninder Singh 59, Amandeep 60, Sahibjeet Singh 70) bt Hockey Karnataka 0. Sports Authority of India 3 (Ankush 5, 30, Rimanshu 59) bt Hockey Haryana 2 (Aryan Kadian 29, Sunny Malik 33). Madhya Pradesh Hockey Academy 4 (Sourabh Pashine 30, 59, 60, 65) bt Hockey Punjab 3 (Parteek Sharma 3, Navpreet Singh 33, Surdarshan Singh 48). Hockey Odisha 2 (Ajay Kumar Ekka 10, Sushil Dhanwar 31) bt Uttar Pradesh Hockey 2 (Akhtar Ali 48, Saurabh Anand 58) [3-1 after shootout].
Aravindh, Vaishali in second spot Sports Bureau Chengdu
India’s Aravindh Chithamabaram held overnight leader and sixth seed Wang Ho of host China in the sixth round of the Asian chess championship here. The draw helped Aravindh (4.5 points) retain his second position behind the Chinese (5). Also on 4.5 points was B. Adhiban, seeded seventh. S.P. Sethuraman, Vidit Gujrathi, Sandipan Chanda and Surya Shekhar Ganguly had four points each with three rounds remaining. In the women’s event, R. Vaishali shocked fifth seed Pham Le Thao Nguyen of Vietnam on the top board and moved into the second position, which she shared with Kazakhstan’s Gulishkan Nakhbayeva.
Phung in sole lead Vietnam’s Vo Thi Kim Phung was in the sole lead with six points. Mary Ann Gomes and fourth seed Padmini Rout were among four players on five points while P.V. Nandhidhaa had 4.5 points.
Bengaluru
have not allocated it to anybody else. Our request is being processed,” Choudhary told The Hindu here on Thursday. There was speculation that the NCA might be moved out of the city, as the BCCI had faced difficulties in acquiring the land. A relieved Choudhary said that things were looking up now. “There is no better venue than Bengaluru. The summer months of April to June is when most players train at NCA. In most other cities, it would be too hot to play cricket in these months. Secondly, Bengaluru is easily accessible for everyone concerned — players, coaches and officials,” he said.
Top-seeded India suffered a shock defeat at the hands of Nepal in the semifinals of the ITF under-12 South Asian qualifying tennis tournament here on Thursday. In the girls’ section, India beat Bangladesh 3-0 and meets Sri Lanka in the final. The results Boys: Nepal bt India 2-1 (Aarav Samrat Hada bt N Baalaji Nallusamy 6-2, 6-3; Aryan Giri lost to Ayushman Arjeria 6-1, 6-0; Aryan Giri & Aarav Samrat Hada bt Ayushman Arjeria & Krishang Raghuvanshi 7-5, 6-4). Girls: India bt Bangladesh 3-0 (Sweta Samanta bt Sadia Afrin 6-1, 6-1; Anjali Rathi bt Mashfia Afrin 6-1, 6-1; Shruti Ahlawat & Sweta Samanta bt Sadia Afrin & Dipanita Mitra 6-0, 6-0).
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\ DELHI ROUND-UP \
Indian squad for HWL semiinals Manpreet Singh to lead Special Correspondent NEW DELHI
The Indian men’s hockey squad for the Hockey World League semifinals was announced on Thursday and, in the absence of talismanic goalkeeper and captain P.R. Sreejesh, the squad will be looking to step up to the occasion. The tournament, starting June 15 in London, is also a qualifying event for the World Cup next year and the HWL finals in December 2017. With both events being hosted in India, the team has the luxury of trying for its best finish. India finished fourth in its previous outing in 2015. India has been grouped with Canada, the Netherlands, Scotland and Pakistan in Pool B. The team will be led by midfielder Manpreet Singh with Akash Chikte and Vikas Dahiya manning the goalpost. Pardeep Mor, Kothajit Singh, Surender Kumar and Harmanpreet Singh will be responsible along with Rupinder Pal Singh for the team’s defence, while S.K. Uthappa, Satbir Singh and Ramandeep Singh return to the squad after being rested for the recent Sultan Azlan Shah Cup. “The idea was to bring in a couple of changes in positions after the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup. There are three tours this year where we would like to give opportunities to younger players. “Though we are taking a few players who are not that experienced, we still want to do well and the aim is to finish in the top two at the HWL semifinals. I look forward to seeing how the boys will perform against big teams,” chief coach Roelant
Faizal hits half-century
Faizal Malik’s unbeaten 51 and three-wicket hauls by Tanishk Singh and Ashish Vohra helped Dinesh Verma Cricket Foundation beat SSB Academy by five wicket in the Nabab under-16 cricket tournament. The scores: SSBA 113 in 28.2 overs (Yash Kumar 55, Tanishk Singh three for 21, Ashish Vohra three for 24) lost to DVCF 116 for five in 21.1 overs (Faizal 51 n.o.).
Aniket bats well
Manpreet Singh.
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Oltmans said. Crediting the players for the team’s improved play and ball possession in Malaysia, Oltmans said the focus now would be on improving the scoring part. “Our style of play was good, we were fast and also when we compared statistics, we had better ball possession (62 per cent). But I would like to see our conversion rate in field goals and PC to improve from a 20 per cent and 24 per cent respectively,” the coach added. The 18-member Indian team will also be taking part in a three-nation invitational tournament in Dusseldorf, ahead of the HWL semifinals, that will also feature Belgium with all teams playing each other twice. The squad, currently training in Bengaluru, will leave for Germany on May 29. The squad: Goalkeepers: Akash Chikte, Vikas Dahiya; Defenders: Pardeep Mor, Kothajit Singh, Surender Kumar, Rupinder Pal Singh, Harmanpreet Singh; Midfielders: Chinglensana Singh Kangujam, S.K. Uthappa, Satbir Singh, Sardar Singh, Manpreet Singh, Harjeet Singh; Forwards: Ramandeep Singh, S.V. Sunil, Talwinder Singh, Mandeep Singh, Akashdeep Singh.
Aniket Seth scored 78 and Piyush Chikara picked up three wickets as RP Academy beat Sehwag Academy by eight wickets in the Manav Chopra memorial u-19 tourney. The scores: Sehwag Academy 181 for nine in 40 overs (Gautam Sethi 53 not out, Hariom Kumar 35, Piyush Chhikara three for 15) lost to RP Academy 185 for two in 27.5 overs (Aniket Seth 78).
Kunal, Ankit shine Kunal Dabas picked up four wickets and Ankit Chillar made 55 not out as Rohtak Road Gymkhana beat PMG by eight wickets in the Admiral League. The scores: PMG 148 in 36.5 overs (Dhruv Thakur 34; Kunal Dabas four for 15, Neeraj Yadav two for 35) lost to RRG 152 for two in 26.3 overs (Ankit Chillar 55 not out, Jagmeet Singh 36).
Narrow win for Sonnet Sonnet Club beat Bal Bharti Public SchoolPitampura by eight runs in the ACE u-12 tournament. The scores: Sonnet 113 for eight in 25 overs (Arnav Rastogi three for 24) bt BBPS 105 in 23.3 overs (Krish Aggarwal 45, Tubhyam Jain 37, Shantanu three for 11).
BBFS selection trials The Bhaichung Bhutia Football Schools will hold try-outs for its under-13 team, at the Ambedkar Stadium on May 20. Those interested can report at the venue at 3.45 p.m. with originals and copies of their d-o-b certificates and two passport-sized photographs.
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THE HINDU CROSSWORD 12011 1
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■ ACROSS 1 Knight overcomes revolutionary from the east with cavalrymen (6) 4 Hesitant defender tackled, but "Foul!" (8) 10 Prominent leader of Bengaluru is back amidst unpleasant atmosphere (7) 11 Not in favour of a good man's growth (7)
CM YK
(set by Spinner)
12 Tackle programme having bug (8) 13 Schooling basically destroys talents (6) 15 First lady's right always! (4) 16 Saving oneself from heat by removing article that's defamatory (9) 20 France supports cutting Union into smaller parts (9) 21 One rupee per square foot, say? (4) 24 Take up and edit copy, going over every other clue (6) 26 Graduate designed motor to retain heat in sauna (8) 28 Stomachs consequences inally, at the end of relationship interrupted by crazy mum (7) 29 Pant right after route running, taking a little sip (7) 30 Losing passport, eventually turning into local of a country, with no freedom! (8) 31 Put off by yeast sprayed on top of dough (6) ■ DOWN 1 Showed meat on the inside of butchered deer (8) 2 Retreat into paradise designed to overcome pressure (9) 3 Robin striving to protect Batman's top military honour (6)
FAITH
SUDOKU
The end and the means
5 Orators robustly articulate, leveraging extremes of the mouth (4) 6 Depend on cryptic set to get money covers (8) 7 With rain ultimately intervening, fail to play decider (5) 8 Just in: Returning gangster put on trial (6) 9 Sunk as last month's stocks inally ran out (9) 14 Takes away plots after returning vehicle (9) 17 Rely on us to run about very restlessly (9) 18 Pity agent endlessly going around African (8) 19 Pounded meat that's uncooked, adding some mustard extract (8) 22 Graceful engineer caught in controversial topic (6) 23 Voice of wife forgotten in ling with a model (6) 25 Animal is calm, walking around deserts, essentially (5) 27 Like Spinner, one from the East (4)
Solution to puzzle 12010 S A L H Y D R A I Y V M E T H A L U A RMA D A D U S T M E P A C O O R G A I E G U L MA O A B N I G E L S E E
R T E T N E L I L L
S M S H H E I G H H O I S O M L E T T U C E L A L S O K O D A I N E N C A N G A N G T O K O L MA L A Y A L AM O E O U R G E MO T I O N R R O T N L A E X T R E MA M D Y R R
Solution to yesterday’s Sudoku
Bhakti in its highest form is itself a Purushartha, a fifth one added on to the four usually accepted values of Dharma, righteousness, Artha, wealth, Kama, pleasure and Moksha, liberation. This is the crux of the teaching in the Bhagavata Purana and it is shown how a devotee’s entire being is filled with intense love for God and with a desire to serve Him at all times. This in itself becomes the highest delight for him, and is extolled as Prema Bhakti, pointed out Sri B. Damodhara Dikshitar in a discourse. Prema bhakti is often compared to a mother’s selfless love for a child when her entire concentration governs the way she takes care of the child at all times. Great devotees such as Narada and Uddhava see the Gopis’ love for Krishna as an expression of the highest form of devotion. It is a state of mind that even yogis and sages steeped in meditation find it hard to attain. Each one has to work his way in this effort. Devotional practices such as offering worship in temples, or engaging in prayer in one’s home, or singing the names of the Lord, individually or in a group, are means towards cultivating intense and selfless love for God. There is no room for ostentation or outward show in this path where bhakti is an end in itself and is also the means. The only criterion is sincerity and genuine love to the Lord. None can know the mind of a devotee better than the Lord for He is the in-dweller in each and every aspect of creation. Unique are the ways in which He responds to each one of them. Is not Vidhura overwhelmed when Krishna chooses to have food in his humble abode in preference to the hospitality of Duryodhana and others? What a divine vision is granted to the devout Akrura? A ND-ND
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THE HINDU
SPORT 17
NOIDA/DELHI
FRIDAY, MAY 19, 2017
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IN BRIEF
Isner outslugs Wawrinka Real Madrid one point away from title
Djokovic advances; Zverev brings Fognini crashing back to earth Agencies
Rome
Nadal expects Murray challenge
Needs to avoid defeat away to Malaga on Sunday
ROME
World No. 1 Andy Murray will be ready for Roland Garros despite his poor recent form, nine-time French Open champion Rafael Nadal said. Since the start of the year, Murray has won just one of seven tournaments, but Nadal is confident the Briton will be prepared for the French Open, which starts at the end of the month. REUTERS
Talisman: Once again Ronaldo made the diference as he scored two goals in Real Madrid’s emphatic win over Celta Vigo in La Liga on Wednesday. REUTERS *
Agence France-Presse
Kane backs Spurs to shake of choker tag LONDON
Harry Kane has backed Tottenham Hotspur to shake off its reputation as title choker and finally win the Premier League next season. Mauricio Pochettino’s side came up short in the title race for the second successive year after Chelsea repelled its determined challenge in the same way Leicester City frustrated it 12 months ago. AFP
Sharapova gets Birmingham wildcard LONDON
Maria Sharapova has been granted a wildcard for next month’s Aegon Classic in Birmingham, a key Wimbledon warm-up event. This will the 2004 Wimbledon champion’s first appearance at Birmingham in seven years. The organisers said the wild-card was in return for a two-year appearance commitment from Sharapova, who remains a top draw for spectators and TV audiences despite her recent troubles and the polarising reactions she draws in the locker-room. AFP
EUROPEAN LEAGUES
Madrid
Real Madrid moved to within one point of winning La Liga as Cristiano Ronaldo struck twice to down Celta Vigo 4-1 on Wednesday. The European champion leads Barcelona by three points at the top of the table and now needs to just avoid defeat at Malaga on Sunday to secure its first league title in five years. Once again Ronaldo made the difference as he blasted into the top corner after just 10 minutes and then added a second with a composed finish early in the second half. Iago Aspas was then controversially sent-off when he saw a second yellow card for diving, but Celta halved the arrears through John Guidetti’s deflected effort. However, Karim Benzema and Toni Kroos rounded off another four-goal showing from Madrid.
Goalless draw Meanwhile, Sergio Romero displayed some eye-catching pre-Europa League final form by saving a penalty as Manchester United drew 0-0 at Southampton in its penultimate Premier League
game. United manager Jose Mourinho has confirmed Romero will start against Ajax in Stockholm next Wednesday and his early save from Manolo Gabbiadini helped the visitors stop the rot after successive losses to
Arsenal and Hotspur.
Tottenham
The results: La Liga: Real Madrid 4 (Ronaldo 10, 48, Benzema 70, Kroos 88) bt Celta Vigo 1 (Guidetti 69). EPL: Manchester United 0 drew with Southampton 0.
Monaco crowned king of France Agence France-Presse
John Isner shot down Stan Wawrinka in the third round of the Rome Masters on Thursday, beating the Roland Garros champion 7-6(1), 6-4 while No. 2 seed Novak Djokovic advanced with a 6-4, 6-4 win over Roberto Bautista Agut. Alexander Zverev advanced to his third ATP 1000 quarterfinal of the season beating crowd favourite Fabio Fognini 6-3, 6-3, two days after the Italian had scalped Andy Murray. The 20-yearold next faces fifth seed Milos Raonic who dismissed the 12th seeded Tomas Berdych 6-3, 6-2. The 16th seeded Zverev who won the first set on a single break of serve, carried the momentum into the second set, running up a 4-0 lead before Fognini could put up some token resistance.“It was a great match for me,” Zverev said. “I think I played very well, was very aggressive from the baseline. Fabio is someone who plays well here. And he beat the World No. 1 a few days ago, so I just felt like I was feeling the ball very well and was very aggressive. It worked out well for me.”
Quiet progress: Well away from the limelight, Venus Williams defeated Johanna Konta in three sets to make the last eight. AP *
ITALIAN OPEN On the women’s side qualifier Anett Kontaveit, who had beaten No. 1 Angelique Kerber on Tuesday, made the last eight beating Mirjana Lucic-Baroni. The results: Men: Third round: Juan Martin del Potro bt Kei Nishikori 7-6(4), 6-3; Novak Djokovic bt Roberto BautistaAgut 6-4, 6-4; John Isner bt
Stan Wawrinka 7-6(1), 6-4; Alexander Zverev by Fabio Fognini 6-3, 6-3; Milos Raonic bt Tomas Berdych 6-3, 6-2; Marin Cilic bt David Goffin 6-3, 6-4. Second round: Wawrinka bt Benoit Paire 6-3, 1-6, 6-3. Doubles second round: Rohan Bopanna & Pablo Cuevas bt Feliciano Lopez & Marc Lopez 4-6, 7-6(7), [10-8]. Women: Third round: Garbine Muguruza bt Julia Goerges 7-5, 6-4; Anett Kontaveit bt Mirjana
Lucic-Baroni 6-1, 6-1; Simone Halep bt Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 6-1, 4-6, 6-0; Daria Gavrilova bt Svetlana Kuznetsova 2-6, 7-5, 6-4; Venus Williams bt Johanna Konta 6-1, 3-6, 6-1. Second round: Venus bt Lesia Tsurenko 6-4, 6-3; Ekatarina Makarova bt Dominika Cibulkova 1-6, 6-1, 6-3. Doubles: Second round: Sania Mirza & Yaroslava Shvedova w/o Olga Savchuk & Elina Svitolina.
Purav & Divij to meet Paes & Lipsky
Monaco
Teenage star Kylian Mbappe helped Monaco secure its first Ligue 1 title in 17 years with his 15th goal of the season in Wednesday’s 2-0 victory at home to Saint-Etienne. The 18-year-old raced clear of the visiting defence to nervelessly roll in the opening goal after 19 minutes at the Stade Louis II as Paris Saint-Germain’s four-year reign as French champion came to an end. Valere Germain added a second with the final kick of the match. “We can finally say we are champions. I’m very proud of
Sports Bureau Bordeaux
Monaco’s Kylian Mbappe. *
REUTERS
this team, of these players. It’s a dream for me, I’m very happy,” Monaco captain Radamel Falcao told Canal.
Third seeds Purav Raja and Divij Sharan fought their way past Alex Bolt and Thanasi Kokkinakis 6-2, 6-7(4), [10-6] in the quarterfinals of the €106,000 Challenger tennis tournament here. The victory means Purav and Divij will now challenge second seeds, Leander Paes and Scott Lipsky in the semifinals. In the $75,000 Challenger in Samarkand, Prajnesh Gunneswaran and Vishnu Vardhan beat the top seeds Hans Podlipnik-Castillo and
Andrei Vasilevski 7-6(5), 3-6, [10-2] to make the final. In the other semifinal, Ramkumar Ramanathan and Toshihide Matsui fell in straight sets to Laurynas Griegelis and Zdenek Kolar. In the Heilbronn Challenger, Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan and Christopher Rungkat lost to top seeds Roman Jebavy and Antonio Sancic in the quarterfinals. The results: €106,000 Challenger, Bordeaux: Quarterfinals: Purav Raja & Divij Sharan bt Alex Bolt & Thanasi Kokkinakis (Aus) 6-2, 6-7(4), [10-6].
$75,000 Challenger, Samarkand, Uzbekistan: Semifinals: Prajnesh Gunneswaran & Vishnu Vardhan bt Hans Podlipnik-Castillo (Chi) & Andrei Vasilevski (Blr) 7-6(5), 3-6, [10-2]; Laurynas Griegelis (Ltu) & Zdenek Kolar (Cze) bt Toshihide Matsui (Jpn) & Ramkumar Ramanathan 6-3, 6-4. €64,000 Challenger, Heilbronn, Germany: Quarterfinals: Roman Jebavy (Cze) & Antonio Sancic (Cro) bt Christopher Rungkat (Ina) & Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan 6-3, 6-3. $25,000 Futures, Wuhan: Semifinals: Shintaro Imai & Kaichi Uchida (Jpn) bt Marcos
Giron (US) & Vijay Sundar Prashanth 6-4, 6-7(5), [12-10]; Quarterfinals: Marcos Giron & Vijay Sundar bt Yecong He & Yuanfeng Li (Chn) 6-3, 6-4. $25,000 Futures, Abuja: Quarterfinals: Calvin Hemery (Fra) bt Haadin Bava 6-3, 6-2. Doubles: Semifinals: Fabiano de Paula & Fernando Romboli (Bra) bt Kunal Anand & Anvit Bendre 6-2, 6-3. Quarterfinals: Kunal Anand & Anvit Bendre bt Adrian Andrzejczuk & Mateusz Smolicki (Pol) 5-7, 7-6(2), [10-6]; Moez Echargui (Tun) & Mark Fynn (Zim) bt Haadin Bava & Sasi Kumar Mukund 6-3, 2-6, [10-6].
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18 LIFE
NOIDA/DELHI
THE HINDU
FRIDAY, MAY 19, 2017
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IN BRIEF
Cannes outing: a tale of two ilms Ismael’s Ghosts and Loveless turn the spotlight on the complex nature of human relationships
World’s most famous movie house turns 90 TCL Chinese Theatre shines on
Namrata Joshi Cannes
1,730 plant species identiied in 2016 LONDON
Over 1,700 new species of plants have been discovered in the past year, with many having potential as food crops, medicine or timber, says a new report. Scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in the U.K . say some of the newly identified plants are already at risk of extinction. PTI
Man-made ‘bubble’ around the earth
Agence France-Presse
Sometimes, applause (or the lack of it) says it all. The first day at Cannes proved to be a case of encountering diametrically opposite media reactions to the two much-anticipated films. If Arnaud Desplechin’s French film Les Fantomes D’Ismael (Ismael’s Ghosts) met with a deafening silence at the end of the screening, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Nelyubov (Loveless) got a thunderous round of applause as the end credits began to roll. The Russian movie, by the Leviathan filmmaker, is a stark and severe human document — in the barren landscape it paints, the desolate weather it evokes and the bleak story it tells largely through uneasy silences or plaintive, brooding music.
WASHINGTON
NASA probes have spotted a man-made barrier around the Earth that prevents highenergy space radiation from reaching the planet, scientists say. Very low frequency (VLF) radio communications have been found to interact with particles in space and the interactions create a bubble around the earth. PTI
Michael Moore making ilm on Trump NEW YORK
Filmmaker Michael Moore is making a documentary on Donald Trump entitled Fahrenheit 11/9, a nod to his most famous work set in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks as well as the date the U.S. president was elected. “Yes, I’m making a movie to get us out of this mess,” he said on Twitter. AFP
Universal themes About a marriage on the verge of breakdown, the film has a 12-year-old child facing abandonment and neglect even as the parents seem to have moved on in their relationships. It’s not the ugliness before the final closure, more the boundless loneliness of the child that is devastating. A child who has no hobbies, who doesn’t play but sits at home at the table by the window to stare at the winter outside. It’s utterly cold outside and within as well. Zvyagintsev puts the relationship in the larger context of the times, with the radio often bringing home the social picture into focus — news of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Ukrainian crisis. It’s about times that are all about ambition and mobility, where relationships are but a step to further yourself in the social ladder. Zvyagintsev also weaves in humour as he brings in the anti-divorce policies in an office where the boss happens
Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell dies at 52 Police investigating possible suicide ASSociated Press
Rocker Chris Cornell, who gained fame as the lead singer of the bands Soundgarden and Audioslave, has died at age 52, and police said on Thursday that his death is being investigated as a possible suicide. Cornell, who had been on tour, died Wednesday night in Detroit, Cornell’s representative Brian Bumbery said in a statement. Cornell had performed a Detroit concert with Soundgarden that night. Bumbery called the death “sudden and unexpected” and said his wife and family are in shock. The statement said the family would be working closely with the medical examiner to determine the cause and have asked for privacy. Detroit police spokesman Michael Woody told AP on Thursday morning that he couldn’t release details about why police are investigating the death as a possible suicide, but noted there were “basic things observed at the scene.” Cornell died at the MGM Grand Detroit hotel, Mr. Woody said. He said Cornell’s wife had called a family friend and asked him to check on Cornell; the friend forced open a hotel room door and found Cornell on the bathroom floor. The Wayne County Medical Examiner’s office will make an official determination about the cause of death. News of Cornell’s death prompted scores of tweets expressing sadness. Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry tweeted: “Very sad news about Chris Cornell today. A sad loss of a great talent to the world, his friends and family. Rest In Peace.”
Powerful vocal range With his powerful, nearly four-octave vocal range, Cornell was one of the leading voices of the 1990s grunge movement with Soundgarden, which emerged as one of the biggest bands out of Seattle’s emerging muCMCM YKYK
Los Angeles
Glitz and glamour: Film director Andrey Zvyagintsev and actors Maryana Spikav and Alexei Rozin during a photo call for Loveless at the 70th international ilm festival in Cannes, France, on Thursday. (Right) Bollywood actor Deepika Padukone, dressed in a Marchesa gown, makes her debut at the event. AP/ANDREAS RENTZ/GETTY IMAGES *
to be a devout Catholic. It’s a world that is simultaneously iconoclastic but conservative at heart. Things take a chilling, eerie turn when the boy disappears one fine day. The film moves ahead with a thriller’s tension — the search for the boy in forests and an abandoned building, the hunt in the hospitals and in elevator, the possible identification in the morgue. What tingles and scares most is how things are left openended and hazy. ★★★ While Nelyubov is pointed and intense emotionally, even in its ambiguity, Desplechin’s Les Fantomes D’Ismael loses its way and meanders. What happens when a love you thought you had lost returns after 21 years? A familiar theme on which a few Bollywood films have also been made. And, curiously, Desplechin’s film also has a Delhi connect, and flute and tabla playing conveniently in the background when the association is brought out. It’s about people and rela-
tionships lost, it’s about regaining them and yet not quite being able to salvage life. It’s also about the weight of relationships and the urgency to escape them. The need to shove in layers is evident in how dialogue and exchanges are made deliberately profound but things feel a trifle too manipulated. “It’s five films compressed into one, like [painter Jackson] Pollock’s female nudes,” the director had said. But the threads are too scattered to come together to make a whole. Desplechin’s film is also about filmmaking and myth-building, about film within a film, about parallel disappearances in the real and the reel world. About referencing other films, Vertigo (1958) and Laura (1944), for instance, all in a most obvious yet pointless way. It’s the effortless presence of the actors — specially the togetherness of Marion Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg — that gives heft to it. ★★★ Louis Garrel, who plays the mysterious diplomat Ivan
Dedalus in the film within the film, the one who fell off the map, also plays Jean Luc Godard in Michel Hazanavicius’s new film Redoubtable. At the post-screening press conference, one of the journalists wondered if the film, on the most iconic French auteurs, wouldn’t have been a more worthy opener for Cannes in its 70th year. The query went uneasily unanswered. What we were told is that there are two versions of Les Fantomes D’Ismael. We were shown what the director calls the ‘romantic version’, a seemingly simple, sentimental love triangle. According to Desplechin, the other is a more intellectual exercise. If the version we saw was a highway, then the original has many more lanes and bylanes, he said. We certainly wouldn’t be able to find our way in that if we got lost in this one. Both Les Fantomes D’Ismael and Nelyubov also brought in the mandatory nudity and sex quotient, quite early on in the festival. That too in a most rapturous
and seductive way. Beautifully choreographed lovemaking scenes captured in close-ups is as French (and Russian) as it could get.
Indian connection Move over Bollywood, it’s the South cinema, specifically the Baahubali franchise, which is being pitched as the new face of Indian cinema at the French Reviera. The latest endorsement came from Indian ambassador to France Dr. Mohan Kumar while inaugurating the India Pavilion at Marche du Cinema. Without undermining Bollywood, and, while accepting its ubiquitousness, Dr. Kumar stressed how South Indian cinema was proving to be a game-changer, even more so with the latest technological strides it had been taking. He felt that India needed to make a bigger impact at Cannes this year, specially as the 70th anniversary of the festival was coinciding with the 70th year of Indian independence. “We should have had a big bash,” he said.
Shirley Temple did it barefoot. Mel Brooks wore an extra finger. Whoopi Goldberg buried her dreadlocks. An old aphorism says that to visit Los Angeles and not see the iconic hand and foot prints of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the imposing courtyard of the TCL Chinese Theatre is like going to the Middle Kingdom and not walking The Great Wall. On Thursday, the world’s most famous picture house celebrated 90 years at the centre of the movie business, the venue of many of Tinseltown’s most glamorous showbiz moments through 16 presidents, a world war and three huge earthquakes. The night before, veteran filmmaker Ridley Scott became the 304th star to sink his hands and feet into the cement squares in the theatre’s forecourt — maintaining a tradition celebrated by Hollywood’s finest, from Mary Pickford through John Wayne and Sophia Loren to Jack Nicholson and Brad Pitt. “It’s a real honor to get placed out in the forecourt and when you look at the people we have out there, going back now nine decades, it’s incredible,” Levi Tinker, resident historian at the Chinese, said. It all started when movie theatre impresario Sid Grauman, one of Hollywood’s best known showmen, leased the former home of matinee idol Francis X. Bushman and opened the Chinese on May 18 in 1927 after raising $2 million. Silent screen star Norma Talmadge clumsily stepped into wet cement on the construction site, witnessed by Grauman who — spying an opportunity — shrugged off her embarrassed apologies
The forecourt of the TCL Chinese theatre. AP *
and said he would use the footprint to promote the opening. Stars have since seen the ceremonies as a career highlight, often going to a great lengths to ensure their square stands out from the crowd.
Stars make their mark Marilyn Monroe wanted to dot her ‘i’ with a diamond before being persuaded that the precious stone would probably be stolen. She sunk an earring into her square instead and the exposed half was stolen anyway. More recently, Mel Brooks concealed until the last minute that one of his hands had a fake sixth finger. “You think after all this time there would be hardly any room. But there’s enough space out there to go on for a number of years still,” said Mr. Tinker, although he added that some big names were missing. Audrey Hepburn was among the few to decline, while James Dean was readying to lay his prints in the presence of Giant costars Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor when he was killed in a car crash at the age of 24.
Scientists bring ‘limitless’ blood supply closer to reality Press Trust of India Boston
For the first time, scientists have generated blood-forming stem cells in the lab, an advance that brings them “tantalisingly close” to create a limitless supply of human blood. Researchers, who used
pluripotent (immature) stem cells that can make virtually every cell type in the body, said that the study may help create immune-matched blood cells, derived from patients’ cells, for treatment purposes. “We’re tantalisingly close to generating bona fide hu-
man blood stem cells in a dish,” said George Daley from the Boston Children’s Hospital in the U.S. Although the cells made from the pluripotent stem cells are a mix of true blood stem cells and other cells known as blood progenitor cells, they are capable of
generating multiple types of human blood cells when put into mice, researchers said.
Genetic disorders “This step opens up an opportunity to take cells from patients with genetic blood disorders, use gene editing to correct their genetic de-
fect, and make functional blood cells,” said Ryohichi Sugimura, a postdoctoral fellow at the Daley Lab. “This also gives us the potential to have a limitless supply of blood stem cells and blood by taking cells from universal donors. This could potentially augment
the blood supply for patients who need transfusions,” Mr. Sugimura said. “We’re now able to model human blood function in socalled humanised mice. This is a major step forward for our ability to investigate genetic blood disease,” said Mr. Daley.
Chris Cornell
sad loss of a great < > Atalent to the world, his friends and family. Rest In Peace. Joe Perry Aerosmith guitarist
sic scene, joining the likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains. Formed in 1984 by Cornell, guitarist Kim Thayil and bassist Hiro Yamamoto, Soundgarden’s third studio album, Badmotorfinger, in 1991 spawned popular singles Jesus Christ Pose, Rusty Cage and Outshined that received regular play on alternative rock radio stations. Cornell also collaborated with members of what would become Pearl Jam to form Temple of the Dog, which produced a self-titled album in 1991 in tribute to friend Andrew Wood, former frontman of Mother Love Bone. Three years later, Soundgarden broke through on mainstream radio with the album Superunknown, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rock Record in 1995. It included hit singles Spoonman, Fell on Black Days, Black Hole Sun, My Wave and The Day I Tried to Live. Soundgarden disbanded in 1997 due to tensions in the band, and Cornell pursued a solo career. Cornell and Soundgarden reunited in 2010 and released the band’s sixth studio album, King Animal in 2012. A ND-ND
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