Archives for March 2023

New Delhi: The Supreme Court is scheduled to pronounce on Thursday its order on a batch of PILs on the recent Adani Group shares crash triggered by the Hindenburg Research’s fraud allegations.

A bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices P S Narasimha and J B Pardiwala is likely to deliver its verdict over setting up of a panel of domain experts for strengthening existing regulatory measures for stock markets.

While reserving its order, the top court on February 17 had refused to accept in a sealed cover the Centre’s suggestion on a proposed panel of experts.

Observing that it wanted full transparency for protection of investors, the top court had also ruled out the possibility of any sitting judge overseeing the functioning of the proposed panel.

Stressing that statutory bodies like market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) are fully equipped and are on job, the central government had expressed apprehension that any unintentional message to the investors that regulatory bodies in India needed monitoring by a panel may have some adverse impact on the flow of money into the country.

The Centre had told the bench that it wanted to provide details such as names and the scope of the panel’s mandate in a sealed cover .

Stock market regulator SEBI, in its note filed in the top court, had indicated it is not in favour of banning short-selling or sale of borrowed shares, and said it is investigating allegations made by a tiny short-seller against the Adani Group as well as its share price movements.

Till now, four PILs have been filed in the top court on the issue by lawyers M L Sharma, Vishal Tiwari, Congress leader Jaya Thakur and Mukesh Kumar, who claims to be a social activist.

Tiwari, in his PIL, sought a direction to the Centre to constitute a committee monitored by a retired apex court judge to inquire into the Hindenburg Research report which has made a slew of allegations against the business conglomerate led by industrialist Gautam Adani.

Another PIL filed by advocate M L Sharma sought prosecution of short-seller Nathan Anderson of the US-based Hindenburg Research and his associates in India and the US for allegedly exploiting innocent investors and the “artificial crashing” of the Adani Group’s stock value in the market.

Congress leader Thakur, in his plea, has sought an investigation under the supervision of a sitting apex court judge against the Adani Group of companies in light of the allegations.

The fourth PIL seeks a probe by multiple central government agencies under the supervision of a panel or a former apex court judge against the Adani Group following allegations of fraud and share price manipulation.

“Direct appropriate audit (transactional and forensic audits), inquiry and investigation by appropriate agencies such as Serious Frauds Investigation Office (SFIO); Registrar of Companies (RoC); Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI); ED (Directorate of Enforcement) on money-laundering aspect; I-T (Income-Tax Department on aspects of offshore transactions and tax-havens involved and DRI( Department of Revenue Intelligence),” the fourth plea said.

Besides seeking a direction to the Centre and its agencies to render cooperation in the probe, the PIL has sought a direction to appoint a retired judge of the apex court or a committee to oversee and monitor the inquiry and investigation .

Adani Group stocks have taken a beating on the bourses after the Hindenburg Research made a litany of allegations, including fraudulent transactions and share-price manipulation, against the business conglomerate. The Adani Group has dismissed the charges as lies, saying it complies with all laws and disclosure requirements.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that appointment of the Chief Election Commissioner and elections commissioners will be done by the President on the advise of a committee comprising the prime minister, leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha and the Chief Justice of India.

A five-judge constitution bench headed by Justice KM Joseph, in a unanimous verdict, held that this norm will continue to hold good till a law on the issue is made by Parliament.

The apex court said if the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha is not there, then leader of the single largest opposition party will be in the committee to appoint the Chief Election Commissioner and elections commissioners.

The bench delivered its verdict on a batch of pleas seeking a collegium-like system for the appointment of election commissioners and the Chief Election Commissioner.

The bench, also comprising Justices Ajay Rastogi, Aniruddha Bose, Hrishikesh Roy and CT Ravikumar, stressed on purity in the election process and said democracy is intrinsically linked to the will of people.

Justice Rastogi, who concurred with the lead judgement authored by Justice Joseph, delivered a separate verdict with his reasoning.

The apex court said that election in a democracy should be undoubtedly be fair and the buck stops with the Election Commission to ensure that its purity is maintained.

It said in a democracy, the purity of election must be maintained or else it would lead to disastrous consequences.

The bench said the Election Commission must act within the constitutional framework and within the law and it cannot act in an unfair manner.

It said that an Election Commission, which does not ensure free and fair role in the process, guarantees breakdown of rule of law, which is the bedrock of the democracy.

The bench said that democracy is fragile and would collapse if “lip service” is paid to rule of law.

Mumbai: A relationship cannot be dubbed as a form of ‘love jihad’ just because the boy and the girl belong to different religions, the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court has said while granting pre-arrest bail to a Muslim woman and her family.

A division bench of Justices Vibha Kankanwadi and Abhay Waghwase in the order passed on February 26 granted anticipatory bail to the accused who were denied relief by a local court in Aurangabad.

The woman’s former lover had alleged she and her family forced him to convert to Islam and undergo circumcision.

The man’s lawyer, while opposing the pre-arrest bail applications of the woman and her family members, also argued that it was a case of `love jihad’.

‘Love jihad’ is a term used by Hindu right-wing organisations to claim, without evidence, that there is a widespread conspiracy to lure Hindu women and convert them to Islam through marriage.

Here, though, the accuser was a man.

The high court rejected the love jihad argument, pointing out that the man, in the First Information Report (FIR), had admitted he was in a relationship with the woman and did not end the relationship despite having several opportunities.

“Merely because the boy and girl are from different religions, it cannot have a religious angle. It can be a case of pure love for each other,” the court said.

“It appears that now the colour has been tried to be given of love jihad, but when love is accepted then there is less possibility of the person being trapped just for converting him into the other’s religion,” it added.

As per the prosecution case, the man and the woman were in a relationship since March 2018. The man belonged to a Scheduled Caste community, but did not disclose this to the woman.

Later, the woman began insisting he should convert to Islam and marry her, after which the man disclosed his caste identity to her parents. They did not object to his caste identity and convinced their daughter to accept it.

But the relations later turned sour, following which the man lodged a case against the woman and her family in December 2022.

The HC, while granting pre-arrest bail to the woman and her family, said the probe into the case was almost over and hence their custody would not be necessary.

New Delhi: Students can face a penalty of up to Rs 20,000 and even cancellation of admission for holding dharnas or a fine of up to Rs 30,000 for resorting to violence at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, its latest rules stipulate.

As per the new rules, a student may face a fine of Rs 50,000 fine for physical violence, abuse and manhandling towards another student, staff, or faculty members.

Students and teachers of the university have condemned the new rules and termed them “draconian”. Meanwhile, the JNU Students’ Union has called a meeting of all student organisations on Thursday to discuss the new rules.

The 10-page ‘Rules of Discipline and proper conduct of students of JNU’ has laid out punishments for different kinds of acts like protests and forgery, and procedures for proctorial enquiry and recording a statement. The punishment ranges from a fine of Rs 5,000 to Rs 50,000 or rustication and cancellation of admission.

According to the document, the rules came into effect on February 3. It came after the university witnessed a slew of protests over the screening of a BBC documentary.

The rules document states that it has been approved by the Executive Council, the highest decision-making body of the university.

However, Executive Council members told PTI that the issue was brought as an additional agenda item and it was mentioned that this document has been prepared for “court matters”. They added that no proper discussion was taken place over the matter.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad’s JNU secretary Vikas Patel termed the new rules “authoritarian (‘tughlaqi’)” while asserting that the old code of conduct was sufficiently effective. He demanded a rollback of this “draconian” code of conduct.

JNU Vice Chancellor Santishree D Pandit did not respond to texts and calls from PTI seeking her reaction.

The rules will apply to all students of the university, including part-time students whether admitted before the commencement of these rules or after, the document states.

Punishments have been listed for 17 “crimes”, including blockage, indulging in gambling, unauthorised occupation of hostel rooms, use of abusive and derogatory language and committing forgery. The rules also mention that a copy of the complaints will be sent to the parents.

Cases involving both teachers and students may be referred to the Grievance Redressal Committee of the university, school and centre level. Sexual abuse, eve-teasing, ragging, and arousing communal disharmony cases are of the purview of the chief proctor’s office.

“There were rules mentioned in the statute. However, the new rules have been formulated after a proctorial enquiry.”

He did not reveal when this proctorial enquiry started and when asked whether old rules have been modified, he replied in affirmation.

It has proposed punishments for all acts of violence and coercion such as gheraos, sit-ins or any variation which disrupt normal academic and administrative functioning and/or any act which incites or leads to violence.

The punishments include “cancellation of admission or withdrawal of degree or denial of registration for a specified period, rustication up to four semesters and/or declaring any part or the entire JNU campus out of bounds, expulsion, a fine of up to Rs 30,000 as per the old rules, One/two semesters of eviction from the hostel”.

If the matter is sub-judice, the chief proctor’s office will take action as per the order and direction of the honourable court, the rules state.

For hunger strikes, dharnas, group bargaining and any other form of protest by blocking the entrance or exit of any of the academic and/or administrative complexes or disrupting the movements of any member of the University community, a fine of up to Rs 20,000 will be levied.

According to the old rules, for gheraos, demonstrations and sexual harassment, the proposed punishments were cancellation of admission, rustication and expulsion.

This statute states the university has a proctorial system where the administration of student-related matters about all acts of indiscipline are delegated to the chief proctor. He and she are assisted by proctors. The size of the Proctorial Board is decided by the competent authority.

After receipt of a complaint, it will be scrutinized by the chief proctor who will set up a proctorial enquiry.

“Subsequently, either a one/two/three member(s) proctorial enquiry committee to conduct an in-depth investigation into the matter. Proctorial enquiry is an internal enquiry of JNU and hence, no other person except the Board members is allowed to be present during hearings.

“The accused or complainants is not allowed to be represented by a third party. Similarly, he/she cannot have an observer during the process of enquiry,” the document read.

An Executive Council member, who does not wish to be named, said the matter was not discussed at length in the EC meeting and “we were told that the rules have been created for court matters”.

Another Executive Council member Brahma Prakash Singh said: “The university might have planned to streamline the process and prepare a full document but it should have been discussed in the EC meeting properly. Some of the rules are absurd.”

The ABVP’s JNU secretary Patel said, “There is no need for this new authoritarian (‘tuglaki’) code of conduct. The old code of conduct was sufficiently effective.

“Instead of focusing on improvement of safety security and order, the JNU admin has imposed this draconian code of conduct, without any discussion with the stakeholders, especially the student community. We demand its rollback.”

NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Thursday for the G20 to bridge differences over Ukraine, telling the opening of a meeting in New Delhi that global governance has “failed”.

“The experience of the last few years -– financial crisis, climate change, pandemic, terrorism and wars — clearly shows that global governance has failed,” Modi said in a recorded statement opening the meeting of G20 foreign ministers.

“We are meeting at a time of deep global divisions… We all have our positions and our perspectives on how these tensions (can) be resolved. However, as the leading economies of the world, we also have a responsibility for those who are not in this room,” Modi said.

India had wanted its G20 presidency this year to focus on issues such as alleviating poverty and climate finance, but the Ukraine war has so far crowded out other agenda items.

The gathering will see US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the same room for the first time since July, but the two men are unlikely to hold talks.

Western delegates fear China is considering supplying arms to its Russian ally and they will use the foreign ministers’ summit to discourage Beijing from intervening in the conflict.

India’s longstanding security ties with Russia have put the host of Thursday’s meeting in an awkward diplomatic position after refusing to condemn the invasion over the past year

But EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said he was confident India would use the meeting to “make Russia understand that this war has to finish”.

“Certainly the success of the meeting today will be measured in respect to what we will be able to do on that,” he told reporters Wednesday.

Borrell will meet on the sidelines of the New Delhi summit with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, where he will seek assurances that Beijing will not lend support to Russia’s war effort.

“Until now, the answer has been clearly stated by China, ‘it hasn’t happened and it won’t happen,’ but we have to remain vigilant,” said a senior EU official with knowledge of the matter.

Chinese state news agency Xinhua last week quoted top diplomat Wang Yi as saying Beijing was willing to “strengthen strategic coordination” with Russia after meeting Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

‘Zero evidence’

Blinken said he had no plans to meet with either the Russian or Chinese foreign ministers at the G20 summit.

The last time Blinken and Lavrov were in the same room, at a G20 meeting in Bali last July, the latter stormed out according to Western officials.

“If Russia — President Putin — were genuinely prepared to engage in meaningful diplomacy necessary to end the aggression, of course we’d be the first to work to engage, but there’s zero evidence of that,” Blinken said.

Blinken had a fiery encounter with Wang last month in Germany after the United States shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon over its east coast on February 4.

Lavrov intends to use his G20 attendance to lambast Western countries over the conflict, according to a Russian foreign ministry statement.

Western nations want to “take revenge for the inevitable disappearance of the levers of dominance from its hands”, the ministry said Tuesday.

“The destructive policy of the US and its allies has already put the world on the brink of a disaster,” it added.

Hosting the G20 puts India in a tricky position, because while it shares Western concerns about China, it is also a major buyer of Russian arms and has ramped up Russian oil imports.

A meeting of G20 finance ministers in Bengaluru last week failed to agree on a common statement after Russia and China sought to water down language on the war.

While India has not condemned the Ukraine invasion, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Putin last year that this was “not a time for war” in comments seen as a rebuke to Moscow.

Modi said Thursday that he was confident the meeting would “rise above differences” between its attendees.