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A court has found the two former executives involved in the torture of workers during the dictatorship in the 1970s.
A court in Argentina has sentenced two former executives of Ford Motor company for colluding with the country’s military dictatorship in the 1970s and early 80s.
They were found guilty of helping the regime detain union members, who were then tortured in detention centres.
Aljazeera
Opposition Congress party’s impressive gains in regional polls put it back in the race for the 2019 general elections.
India’s ruling party lost power in three key states on Tuesday, dealing Prime Minister Narendra Modi his biggest defeat since he took office in 2014 and boosting the opposition ahead of general elections next year.
The results in the northern states of Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh could force the federal government run by Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to raise spending in the countryside, where more than two-thirds of India’s 1.3 billion people live.
Political analysts said the BJP’s defeat underscores rural dismay with the government and could help unite the opposition led by the Congress party.
Sanjay Jha, a spokesman of the Congress party, said that farmers’ distress, joblessness of the youth and rising inequalities in the society were the main agenda during the elections.
He told Al Jazeera that the attacks on the Dalits and the minorities under the BJP governments also made electorate turn away from the right-wing party.
Activists and opposition parties have accused the BJP of running a divisive campaign and allowing Hindu far-right groups to run amok on the issue of cow slaughter, which is a crime in most Indian states.
The Hindu nationalist party deployed Yogi Adityanath, known for his vitriolic anti-Muslims rhetoric, as the chief campaigner in the state elections. Adityanath, a monk-turned politician, was appointed the chief minister of India’s most populous and politically significant state of Uttar Pradesh in 2017.
There is a feeling among people that the promises made by the prime minister … have not been fulfilled : Rahul Gandhi
A legislator for the BJP said it had erred in focusing its campaign on partisan themes, such as the building of a Hindu temple in Ayodhya at a site disputed by Muslims, instead of offering jobs and growth.
“We forgot the issue of development that Modi took up in 2014,” said Sanjay Kakade.
Jha, the Congress spokesman, said: “The BJP has collapsed on the [issue of] governance… and just tried to polarise elections by playing communal politics.”OM
Prime Minister Modi late on Tuesday congratulated the Congress and other regional parties for their victories.
“Victory and defeat are an integral part of life. Today’s results will further our resolve to serve people and work even harder for the development of India.”
The Congress party is all set to form governments in the states of Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan after getting majority while it emerged as the single largest party in Madhya Pradesh.
In Chhattisgarh, Congress won 68 of the 90 seats at stake, with the BJP managing to get only 15, according to data from the Election Commission of India. In Rajasthan, the Congress won 101 of the 199 seats contested, against 73 for the incumbent BJP.
In Madhya Pradesh, the most important of the five states that have held assembly elections in recent weeks, Congress emerged victorious on 114 seats, while the BJP managed to hold on to 108 out of 230 seats. Two regional parties have already extended support to the Congress party boosting its chances of forming a government after 15 years of the BJP rule.
The results came as a shot in the arm for Rahul Gandhi, president of the Congress party, who is trying to forge a broad alliance with regional groups and present Modi with his most serious challenge yet in a general election due by May.
Congress has ruled India for most of its post-independence era after 1947 but was decimated by Modi’s BJP in national polls in 2014. Since then, it had struggled to make inroads into even state polls.
Gandhi, the fourth generation scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, has sought to build a coalition of regional groups.
On Tuesday, celebrations erupted outside the Congress party headquarters in New Delhi, with supporters dancing, setting off firecrackers and brandishing posters praising Gandhi.
“We are going to provide the states with a vision and a government they can be proud of,” Gandhi told reporters at a press conference in New Delhi.
“There is a feeling among people that the promises made by the prime minister … have not been fulfilled.”READ MORE
Analysts believe that the verdict is indicative that people are no more buying the Hindutva (Hindu nationalism) ideology.
“In the past five years, a vast section of people across caste, region and religion realised that they have got nothing. There are no jobs and development,” political analyst Sajjan Singh said.
Modi government’s decision to ban high denomination currency notes and botched implementation of a federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) last year, Singh said, was “a suicidal move”, which brought “unimagined difficulties upon rural and weaker sections”.
“The cash-based rural and informal sector economy which sustains a large part of the Indian society has been destroyed,” he told Al Jazeera.
Regional parties won in two smaller states that also voted – Telangana in the south and Mizoram in the northeast.
The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) registered a thumping victory in Telangana state, while in Mizoram state, the Mizo National Front trounced the Congress party.
Congress won by a landslide in the central state of Chhattisgarh, which has been ruled by the BJP for three consecutive terms.
In the past five years, a vast section of people across caste, region and religion realised that they have got nothing. There are no jobs and development
POLITICAL ANALYST SAJJAN SINGH
Maoist rebels have been running decades-long armed rebellion in the state against what they say is the exploitation of the mineral resources by the corporates.
Modi has been criticised for failing to deliver jobs for young people and better conditions for farmers – issues that opposition is likely to raise during the general elections less than six months away.
The BJP, however, said the state results would not affect its prospects in the general elections.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told media news agency that BJP leadership and cadres would “pause and analyse the results and take corrective steps” that may be required before the polls.
But Apoorvanand, who writes on human rights and politics, said “the election results will have a psychological impact on the voters” during the upcoming elections.
“It is a signal to many who believed that the BJP could not be defeated,” Apoorvanand, a professor at Delhi University, said.
“Modi’s image has been weakened. He looks frustrated and fallen. The message of these election results is that he is not infallible.”
Aljazeera
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RThe newly elected Congress MLAs in Chhattisgarh will meet here on Wednesday to decide on a the new Chief Minister, with informed sources indicating that state party chief Bhupesh Baghel was the front runner.
All India Congress Committee observer Mallikarjun Kharge will preside over the meeting with all newly elected MLAs, set for the evening, Baghel told IANS. “A decision regarding the Chief Minister will be taken there.”
Among others to attend the meeting will be Congress in-charge for the state, P.L. Punia.
The race for the Chief Minister’s post is primarily between Patan MLA Baghel, party veteran T.S. Singh Deo, who was the Leader of Opposition in the former Assembly, and the party’s lone Lok Sabha MP from the state, Tamradhwaj Sahu.
Besides the three, former Union Minister Charan Das Mahant is also said to be in the reckoning.
A former state Minister, Baghel is widely seen as the frontrunner for the top post.
“Baghel led from the front working at the grassroots as well as coordinating with the central and state leaders. As state party president, he has worked very hard and is most likely to be chosen as the Chief Minister,” said a party source.
Decimating the Raman Singh-led BJP, the Congress returned to power in the state after 15 years bagging 68 seats in the 90-member Assembly.
B
Disagreements between the government and the central bank are a common occurrence in any economy. It is an expected outcome, given their contrasting roles where one has to maintain the growth of the economy at a healthy pace while the other has to ensure price stability, which sometimes dampens growth prospects. However, this time it was different as weeks of animosity between North Block and Mint Street has culminated in the resignation of the RBI Governor, Urjit Patel.
To underscore the gravity of the situation, it should be pointed out that it is only the second instance in the history of independent India that an RBI governor had to resign. The previous case goes back to 1957 when the RBI Governor, Sir Benegal Rama Rau, resigned due to differences with the then Finance Minister, T.T. Krishnamachari (TTK). Rau had disliked the fact that TTK believed and publicly claimed that the RBI was a subordinate office of the Finance Ministry and treated it as such. He even openly hijacked the RBI’s monetary policy by announcing a stamp duty on bills. To Rau’s dismay, even Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru sided with his Finance Minister.
The case of Urjit Patel somewhat closely resembles that of Rau in the sense that his disagreements with the government also seemingly arose from its intrusion into the RBI’s working. Over the last few weeks, it had become evident that there were at least three things that the government wants the RBI to do differently.
The first issue arose after the collapse of IL&FS, which sparked fears that banks might become wary of lending to non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) leading to a liquidity squeeze within the sector that might put India’s credit market at risk. Most significantly, the MSME sector was feared to take the worst hit, which would have brought the economy to a standstill. In order to avoid such an outcome, the government wanted the RBI to open a special liquidity window for the NBFC sector and avoid the risk of a credit freeze. In turn, the RBI was of the view that a liquidity window should be the measure of last resort. The situation was not as exigent in its view.
The second contentious issue was the RBI’s handling of the bad loan issue. In response to the NPA crisis, the RBI put 12 banks – 11 in the public sector and one in the private sector – under its Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) framework under which these institutions face lending restrictions until their proportion of bad loans are substantially reduced. Since this regulation has dampened lending activity in the economy, the government has been pushing the RBI to ease its implementation, which the central bank has firmly resisted.
The third point of contention was the central bank’s reserves. The government breached its full-year fiscal deficit target at the end of October, which was meant to happen by the end of March 2019. Nevertheless, the government has still maintained its commitment to not breach the fiscal deficit target of 3.3 per cent this year. So, it is looking for avenues to gain additional revenues. The RBI, which has way more than the required reserves at over 26 per cent of the total assets compared with a global mean of 16 per cent, seems like a viable source to tap into. But the RBI has maintained that it needs a strong balance sheet to function effectively.
The long-simmering tussle over these issues was even punctuated by finance ministry signalling the invocation of the never-used Section 7 of the RBI Act, which allows the government to give directions to the RBI that it may “consider necessary in the public interest.” As far as public knowledge goes, the Section has not yet been invoked.
It is not yet clear what specifically led to Patel’s resignation, but a combination of these factors surely has had a role to play. A former RBI governor painted the move as “a statement of protest”.
When the BJP government had come into power, it had established a lot of goodwill by infusing independence in the RBI’s functioning. The establishment of the monetary policy committee that was tasked with inflation targeting was the perfect model that ensured the operational independence of the central bank to attain its objectives. The mechanism gave India a state-of-the-art monetary policy framework that was sorely missing in the economy. It was one of the most important economic reforms of the BJP government that is now at risk of being dismantled.
Patel’s resignation, irrespective of the reasons that caused it, puts a significant dent on the public trust in the autonomy of the functioning of the central bank; something which this government itself has tried hard to build.
Trust is a currency that holds the entire modern economic system together and significantly reduces transaction costs. It will be extremely costly for the economy in the long-run if that trust is weakened in any sense. So, the government should be wary of taking any actions that affect the public trust in the country’s institutions as short-terms gains of kickstarting lending activities or meeting the fiscal deficit targets cannot compensate for the repercussions that will emerge from the means adopted in achieving them.
The way forward for the government should be to adopt a more collaborative approach with the RBI, instead of a combative one, to achieve the intended economic goals.
IANS
H Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) chief K. Chandrashekhar Rao will take oath as the state’s Chief Minister for a second consecutive term on Thursday.
He will take oath at a ceremony to be held at 1.30 p.m. at Raj Bhavan. Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan will administer him the oath of office and secrecy, TRS sources said.
Some TRS legislators are also likely to take oath as Ministers along with KCR, as Rao is popularly known.
The newly-elected legislators of TRS will meet at the Telangana Bhavan, the TRS headquarters, later in the day to elect KCR as their leader.
TRS has bagged 88 seats in the 119-member Assembly in the elections held on December 7.
Former Jharkhand Minister Enos Ekka was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday in connection with a Disproportionate Assets (DA) case.
CBI sources said that he was arrested here. Ekka had not appeared in the CBI court despite repeated summons.
Ekka was a minister in the Madhu Koda government from 2006 to 2008.
A compliant was registered against him in the State Vigilance Department in 2009 for amassing assets exceeding his known sources of income.
Later the case was transferred to the CBI at the directive of the Jharkhand High Court.
In 2013, the CBI filed a closure report saying the assets were of small amounts. However, the CBI court refused to accept that closure report and asked the probe agency to proceed in the case.
Sources in CBI said that Ekka had disclosed Rs 60,000 cash and a Maruti vehicle in his name in the 2005 election declaration.
Between 2005 and 2009, Ekka purchased a flat worth Rs 8 crore in posh Vasant Vihar area in New Delhi. The payment for the flat was made by a private construction company, which was awarded the contract of stadiums of the 2011 national games in Ranchi.
There were also allegations that the former minister purchased 100 acres of land in the name of his relatives.
Ekka had won the Assembly poll for the first time in 2005. He lost the 2014 Assembly elections. At present he is part of the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha-Prajantraik (JVM-P).
IANS
Former Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das on Wednesday assumed charge as RBI Governor after Urjit Patel abruptly resigned from the post amidst a tiff with the government on the central bank’s autonomy.
“Assumed charge as Governor, Reserve Bank of India. Thank you each and everyone for your good wishes,” the new incumbent said in a Tweet.
Das, who as Economic Affairs Secretary steered the monetary situation post-demonetisation, was appointed the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor on Tuesday.
His appointment came at a time when the government and the RBI are engaged in a tussle over several issues including transfer of the central bank’s reserves, over which Patel had reservations after the government hinted at forcing him using provisions of the RBI Act.
Das, a retired 1980-batch IAS officer from the Tamil Nadu cadre, was a member of the 15th Finance Commission of India and India’s Sherpa to G20. Having a master’s degree from St. Stephen’s College, he earlier served as Joint Secretary in the Expenditure Department of the Finance Ministry.
In a development that came as an embarrassment for the government, Patel resigned on Monday citing “personal reasons” even as his various predecessors hinted that the decision was rooted in the recent controversy involving the government and the central bank.
His resignation came against the backdrop of the tiff between the government and the central bank over the liquidity and credit crunch in the economy that provoked an extraordinary meeting of the RBI board on November 19.
IANS
The National Company Law Tribunal’s (NCLT) city bench has ordered winding up of 13 defunct companies of the Saradha Group and directed the official liquidator to take possession of assets and properties of all these companies.
The group companies are Global Automobiles Ltd, Saradha Tours and Travels, Saradha Shopping Mall, Saradha Agro Development, Bengal Media, Saradha Housing, Rose Capital Ltd, Saradha Construction, Saradha Educational Enterprises, Saradha Garden Resort and Hotel, Saradha Landmark Cement, Saradha Exports and Bhasank Foods.
The group had mopped up money from over 17 lakh depositors through a ponzi scheme before it collapsed in 2013.
The Corporate Affairs Ministry had authorised the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) to file winding up petitions against these companies on behalf of the Centre.
The SFIO had accordingly filed winding up petitions before the tribunal against the group’s entities to initiate proceedings on the grounds that the affairs of the companies had been conducted in a fraudulent manner.
The companies had been formed for “fraudulent and unlawful purpose” and as such the directors of the respective companies had been guilty of “misfeasance or misconduct”.
“I have minutely gone through the report filed by the SFIO after thorough investigation of the affairs of the above companies. The report reveals that the affairs of all the companies were being conducted in fraudulent manner.
“There is every reason for me to believe that the companies were formed for fraudulent and unlawful purpose. The promoters/directors of all the companies appeared to be guilty of offences of fraud, misfeasance and misconduct relating to affairs of the companies…
“Hence, I held that all the above companies are required to be wound up by this tribunal,” Justice Madan B. Gosavi said in his order.
According to the order, the agency, in its summary report, had produced before the tribunal details of the irregularities and contraventions of the provisions of the Companies Act being committed by the promoters and directors of all holding companies of the group.
After the investigation, the corporate frauds investigating agency had concluded that directors of the companies had cheated the public at large, violated provision of Companies Act, 1956, misappropriated Rs 2,542.62 crore, misappropriated funds of Rs 6.59 crore through illegal transfer of shares and prepared false financial statements, among others.
Justice Gosavi also said: “The official liquidator attached to the Calcutta High Court is appointed as the official liquidator for winding up of all the above companies with direction to take possession of the assets and properties of all the companies.”
Debjani Mitra was appointed as the official liquidator.
The tribunal has also restrained all the companies from disposing of their assets and properties.
IANS
Bhopal, Dec 12 (IANS) The path for the formation of a Congress government in Madhya Pradesh was cleared with Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan resigning from the post on Wednesday declaring that the BJP was not going to stake claim.
“As we have not got clear majority, we are not going to stake claim to form the government. And I am going to the Governor to resign as the Chief Minister,” Chouhan said here.
Meanwhile, reports have emerged that Governor Anandiben Patel has invited Congress leader Kamal Nath, who on Tuesday night wrote to her that his party has emerged as the single largest party in the state and has majority support in the 230-member Assembly, staking claim.
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati, whose party won two seats in the state, announced to extend support to the Congress on Wednesday.
The Samajwadi Party (SP) which won one seat in the state also extended its support to the Congress. The announcement was made by SP chief Akhilesh Yadav.
“The Samajwadi Party extends its support to the Congress to form a government in Madhya Pradesh,” Yadav tweeted in Hindi on Wednesday.
According to the Election Commission, the final tally for the 230-seat Madhya Pradesh Assembly showed Congress with 114 seats, while the ruling BJP came close with 109 in a battle that went to the wire on Tuesday.
[IANS]