Archives for January 2019

Nasheman News : Leading private life insurer Bharti AXA Life Insurance has embarked upon a public awareness drive to fight against spurious calling and mis-selling with a view to making customers alert and aware about fake insurance offers and unscrupulous returns by fraudsters.

Bharti AXA Life Insurance, a joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and French insurance major AXA, is one of the few life insurers to have lodged complaints with the police in many parts of the country after receiving information about fraudulent cases.

“Mis-selling and spurious calling have become a significant problem in the domestic insurance industry. As a responsible insurance company, we have a zero-tolerance policy towards mis-selling or any illegitimate inducements. Our sales teams help customers take an informed decision on the back of full product and services disclosures,” Vikas Seth, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Bharti AXA Life Insurance, said here on Monday.

The company is organising customer care camps and programmes across all its branches in the country on regular intervals for sensitising insurance buyers against misleading offers and gains.

“We are making policyholders and customers alert and aware through our public awareness programmes and also informing them about the modus operandi and modus vivendi of perpetrators involved and spurious callers, who lure people through misleading information and bogus offers. We are also registering complaints with the police wherever it is required and seeking their assistance to act against these offenders,” Seth added.

Bharti AXA Life has set up a pre-issuance video verification call system to help customers understand the terms and benefits of the insurance policy and empower them to take an informed decision.

“It is our endeavour to ensure that customers are provided with adequate information required to take a well-informed decision. We have taken several steps, including policy on-boarding stage, post-issuance call for welcoming policyholders and formation of grievance redressal cell, during the policy life cycle to reduce mis-selling,” said Ishita Mukherjee, Chief Operating Officer, Bharti AXA Life Insurance.

After welcoming policyholders during post-issuance stage, the company provides policy contracts via instant messaging platform WhatsApp that helps them immediately review insurance policy terms and conditions.

Apart from setting up a robust pre and post verification and due-diligence process, the company also trains its workforce and advisers to act in the interests of insurance buyers.

“We always urge the customers to be alert on their part too and not fall prey to any individual or firm claiming superfluous gains. As part of our check and balance strategy in the interest of the customers, we help them choose and get the right policy, encourage them to fill in forms with complete and accurate details, understand policy terms and benefits and ask them to pay through cheques or digital money,” Mukherjee added.

Nasheman News :  Om Prakash Rajbhar, a BJP ally and an Uttar Pradesh Minister, on Monday said that he found Congress President Rahul Gandhi fit to be the Prime Minister.

The Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) chief, who is at daggers drawn with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on many issues, told reporters in Ballia, “I find Rahul Gandhi fit to be Prime Minister. The final word rests with the people and they will decide who will be India’s next Prime Minister.”

In an embarrassment to the BJP, the Minister also accused Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath of “misleading people” on the Ram temple issue in Ayodhya. 

Responding to a question by the media on Adityanath’s statement that given a chance he will solve the Ram temple issue in 24 hours, Rajbhar said if that was indeed the ability of the BJP, why had it not been done do so in the past five years of ruling India.

The Backward Welfare Minister said: “When the central government could not do anything in five years, what will the Chief Minister do in 24 hours?”

Asked to comment on the political debut of Priyanka Gandhi and its effect on voters, he said only time will tell if she was just a crowd puller or can also convert it into votes. 

Priyanka Gandhi was appointed the Congress General Secretary in-charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh by her brother and party chief Rahul Gandhi on January 23. 

Nasheman News :  Youths from across the country gathered here on Sunday to urge Prime Minister Narendra Modi to launch a Pradhan Mantri CHEAT Fund Yojna for job aspiring youths who cannot afford the high cost of buying a leaked paper.

The meet, in which over 60 youth representatives from across the country participated, was organised at Delhi’s Constitution Club by Yuva-Hallabol to highlight the frustration and disappointment among the educated unemployed youth.

Yuva-Hallabol is a nationwide movement against unemployment that includes aspirants to the SSC, UPSC, state agencies, railways, police and teachers.

Yuva-Hallabol, in its letter to Modi, mentioned: “Today, we write to you with a lot of pain and hope. We want to serve the nation too. We are educated and skilled. There are over 24 lakh vacancies in government sectors. Yet we are not able to secure a job.”

“One of the major reasons we are not getting a job is the wide-spread corruption and irregularity in recruitment exams. Just over the past year, more than two dozen exam papers have leaked,” the letter read.

“Please announce and launch a Pradhan Mantri CHEAT Fund Yojna, PMCFY for the job aspiring youth who cannot afford the high costs of buying a leaked paper. It would be very helpful if you implement this welfare scheme with immediate effect,” it said.

“We will apply for a loan to buy leaked papers and secure the jobs. Once we get a job, we give you 100 per cent guarantee that we repay all the money loaned by the government,” Yuva-Hallabol said in the letter.

Yuva-Hallabol leader Anupam told media: “…the educated unemployment rate has reached 16 per cent, the unemployed youth are ready to expose the failures and hollow claims of this government.”

The government has also been urged to implement a Model Exam Code to ensure all recruitment processes are completed within a time-frame of 9 months.

Yuva-Hallabol also requested Modi to respond to their situation, and the letter, by February 27.

A school bus carrying about 50 students turned turtle and fell into a culvert in Andhra Pradesh’s Guntur district critically injuring two children and leaving 15 others with minor wounds earlier on Monday.

The injured students have been shifted to a nearby hospital, according to an media report.

The students who are reportedly from the Krishnaveni Talent school have alleged that the driver was drunk at the time of the accident.

Visuals showed school bags and lunch boxes lying scattered on the ground.

The police is investigating the matter and the school bus driver is being interrogated, reports said.

Further details are awaited.

Nasheman News : An Indian Air Force (IAF) Jaguar crashed on Monday morning near Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh but the pilot safely ejected from the jet.

The IAF has ordered a court of inquiry to probe the accident, an official spokesperson said. The aircraft was on a routine mission from Gorakhpur.

Nasheman News : The Editors Guild of India on Monday condemned the way some journalists were stopped from entering the Sher-i-Kashmir stadium in Srinagar during the Republic Day function, calling it “shocking” and a “state-sponsored” attack on press freedom.

“The Editors Guild condemns the arbitrary manner in which several senior journalists of Jammu and Kashmir were denied entry into the stadium in Srinagar to cover the Republic Day function on January 26.

“It is shocking that many of them were stopped from entering the stadium to perform their professional duty in spite of their possessing entry passes issued by the state government’s Information Department,” it said in a statement.

The Guild demanded an inquiry into the incident and termed the lapse “an unprecedented state-sponsored attack on press freedom”. 

“It (Guild) also seeks an assurance from the government that such reprehensible acts would not be repeated. If necessary, a fool-proof and non-discriminatory system of issuing entry passes to journalists to help them perform their professional duty in high-security areas must be introduced at the earliest,” the statement read. 

The incident was decried by many journalists in Srinagar who took to the streets later carrying placards that read “Journalism is not a crime”.