BENGALURU: Terming the speed with which the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) prepared a source report, registered an FIR and conducted a search of a flat belonging to an engineer in 24 hours as “mockery of procedure”, the Karnataka High Court chided the ACB for throwing procedures and time required to follow them, to the wind. “It becomes a fit case, where this court cannot turn a blind eye to the plea of the petitioner for exercise of jurisdiction under Section 482 of the CrPC, and obliterate registration of crime against the petitioner. Failing which, it would become a classic illustration of a case becoming an abuse of the process of law and resulting in miscarriage of justice.

Above all, putting a premium on the action of the ACB, notwithstanding the fact that “the ACB blissfully ignored the ABC of procedure”, Justice M Nagaprasanna said, quashing the FIR and further proceedings against KR Kumar Naik, Executive Engineer, Operations and Maintenance Division, Bescom, Nelamangala. Naik’s counsel K Satish argued that the process initiated by the ACB is contrary to law, as no preliminary inquiry was conducted, no source report was prepared, and disproportionate assets shown in the ‘source report’ were zero.

Despite this, an FIR was registered, search was conducted and the petitioner was harassed. To counter this, ACB’s counsel defended the action of the investigating agency. The court said the report, in corruption parlance, is a source information report. It was generated in haste, the FIR was registered on March 16, 2022, and the source report was also done on the same day, in a jiffy.

The ACB, which performs a significant role in checking corruption among public servants, cannot indulge in such a casual act, the court added. A crime was registered against Naik under the Prevention of Corruption Act by ACB, a day after two travel bags and one carton, allegedly belonging to him, were found during a search on his neighbour Munavar Pasha’s flat. This was in connection with a disproportionate assets case registered against J Jnanendra Kumar, Additional Commissioner of Transport, on March 15, 2022, on the allegation that he possessed assets disproportionate to his known source of income.

RAIPUR: A first-ever no-confidence motion moved by the opposition against the Congress government-led by Bhupesh Baghel in Chhattisgarh was defeated by a voice-vote after over 13 hours of marathon debate that continued till the small hours of Thursday in the Assembly.

The motion came up with the 84-point charge sheet which was tabled by the leader of the opposition Dharampal Kaushik in the House. The discussion began with the BJP MLA Brijmohan Agrawal hitting out at the ruling Congress stating that neither the chief minister nor his cabinet colleagues have faith in each other in the government.

“A minister (T S Singhdeo) had himself expressed no confidence in the chief minister. Now even the people have lost trust in the government and the administration,” the BJP leader said.

During the stormy debate over the no-trust motion as many as 20 members participated with the opposition members attacking the Congress government over ‘infighting within Congress’, alleged deteriorating law and order situation, corruption and failure to live up to the poll promises.

Baghel while responding to the charges strongly countered the opposition. He eulogised the state government’s achievements during the three-and-a-half year rule and lashed out at the opposition (BJP) for allegedly “misusing” the Central agencies.

“Our government has raised the self regard with faith in oneself as Chhattisgarhiya and the people can now directly talk to the CM,” he said The Assembly election in Chhattisgarh is due next year.

KOLKATA: After recovering cash worth Rs 21.9 crore six days ago, the Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday found Rs 27.9 crore and jewellery from another apartment in Belgharia near Kolkata owned by the model-cum-actor Arpita Mukherjee.

She is the close aide of arrested Trinamool heavyweight and Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee, who was arrested in an alleged teacher recruitment scam in state schools.

The central agency, which is probing into the money trail in the recruitment scam, brought currency counting machines to assess the volume of cash, which is suspected to be proceeds of crime of the alleged irregularities.

The investigators took more than 12 hours to count the currency notes.

The officials of the investigating agency broke open the door of the apartment on Wednesday morning and started the search operation.

“We found cash in the apartment owned by Arpita. The recovery is followed by leads provided by Arpita during her interrogation,” said an ED official.

The investigators are still ascertaining the value of the gold jewellery, believed to be in kgs, they added.

The money and gold were found five days after the agency seized more than Rs 21 crore in cash, besides jewellery and foreign exchange from another flat of Mukherjee in south Kolkata’s Tollygunge area, following which she was arrested.

In all, nearly Rs 50 crore in cash has been seized so far, officials said.

ED officials on Wednesday conducted coordinated raids at various properties at Rajdanga in south Kolkata and Belgharia in the northern fringes of the city.

During questioning, Mukherjee informed the ED about those properties, officials said.

ED sleuths had to break open a door to get into the two flats in Belgharia’s Rathtala locality as the keys to open them could not be spotted, they said.

Several “vital” documents were also found in the flats during a search, the official said.

Chatterjee, a powerful minister in Mamata Banerjee’s government and the secretary-general of Trinamool Congress, was arrested on Saturday after the cash was found at Mukherjee’s Tollygunge flat.

The CBI, as directed by the Calcutta High Court, is probing the alleged irregularities committed in the recruitment of Group-C and D staff as well as teachers in government-sponsored and aided schools on recommendations of the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC).

The ED is tracking the money trail in the scam.

Chatterjee was the education minister when the alleged irregularities took place.

New Delhi,: Media must confine itself to honest journalism and not use it as a tool to expand its influence and business interests, said Chief Justice of India (CJI) NV Ramana on Tuesday.

Ramana said a media house with “other business interests” becomes vulnerable to external pressures and often business interests prevail over the spirit of independent journalism which compromises democracy.

Asserting that independent journalism is the “backbone of democracy , the CJI a former journalist– also urged the stakeholders to introspect why the standards here are not considered good enough for international recognition and laurel in the field of journalism.

He was speaking at the launch of Gulab Chand Kothari’s book titled ‘The Gita Vijnana Upanishad’. Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla presided over the event.

Last week, the CJI had raised similar concerns and said agenda driven debates and kangaroo courts being run by media are detrimental to the health of democracy.

These recent remarks by Ramana assume significance following the backlash to a verdict earlier this month on former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma’s comments on Prophet Mohammad, which the Supreme Court said had stoked communal tension across the country.

When a media house has other business interests, it becomes vulnerable to external pressures. Often, the business interests prevail over the spirit of independent journalism. As a result, democracy gets compromised, Ramana said on Tuesday.

Journalists are the eyes and the ears of the people. It is the responsibility of media houses to present facts. Especially in the Indian social scenario, people still believe that whatever is printed is true. All I want to say is that the media must confine itself to honest journalism without using it as a tool to expand its influence and business interests, he said.

While the country’s senior-most judge acknowledged the presence of journalists who are equally enthused in today’s media , he remarked that when a brilliant story filed by a journalist is killed at the desk, it is thoroughly demoralising.

He said the true nature of a media house would be assessed and appropriate conclusions drawn from their conduct during testing times as he recollected that only media houses without business baggage, were able to fight for democracy during the dark days of Emergency .

CJI Ramana also said there was no systemic support for journalists in the country and neither was there an award which was comparable to the Pulitzer or many Pulitzer winning journalists.

New Delhi: Firms run by tycoons Mukesh Ambani, Sunil Bharti Mittal and Gautam Adani bid about Rs 1.45 lakh crore to buy fifth-generation (5G) airwaves on the opening day of India’s largest-ever spectrum auction on Tuesday.

Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the response on the first day of the auction exceeded all expectations and will surpass the records of 2015, when revenue collection from auction stood at Rs 1.09 lakh crore.

Even the 700 MHz band, which had not seen any takers in the 2016 and 2021 auctions, received bids this time. As per information put out by the telecom department, in the coveted 700 MHz band, provisional bids worth Rs 39,270 crore were received on day-one of auction, industry watchers said.

All four applicants — Ambani’s Reliance Jio, Mittal’s Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and an Adani group firm “actively” participated in the auction of the 5G spectrum, which offers ultra-high speeds (about 10 times faster than 4G), lag-free connectivity, and can enable billions of connected devices to share data in real-time.

As per the process, it will not be known until the close which company got how much of airwaves. All the radiowaves sold on day one were at the reserve price.

Describing the participation by four bidders as ‘strong’, the minister said bids worth Rs 1.45 lakh crore came in on day one. The auction saw healthy participation, he said, adding the response shows that the industry has turned from its difficult time caused by litigation.

“Now industry is getting converted to sunrise industry…Bids of about Rs 1,45,000 crore show that the industry is moving towards positive territory, now new investments will come, service quality will improve, and new technology will be introduced,” the minister said.

The bidding and demand seen on the first day is over 80 per cent more than government’s internal estimates of Rs 80,000 crore. The minister acknowledged that response had gone “far beyond our expectations”. He added that going by the current participation levels, auctions would surpass the budgeted provisions.

The government, he said, will allocate the spectrum in record time and 5G services are expected to start rolling out by September-October timeframe. The target is to allocate the spectrum by August 14-15, he said.

Four rounds of bidding were held on the opening day, with mid and high-end bands seeing keen interest. Bids were received for 7 out of 9 bands with more than half of the total bids (in value terms) coming in from 3,300 megahertz band – which is for 5G communications. As much as Rs 78,550 crore worth of bids were made for spectrum in the 3,300 MHz band, market experts analysing DoT data said.

The 700 MHz band, which is being widely used by the telcos in the West for a cost-efficient deployment, received Rs 39,270 crore worth of provisional bids while millimetre wave band 26 GHz, which allows for ultra-high-speed mobile broadband services, was the third most sought after band with bids worth Rs 14,632.50 crore.

No bids were received for 800 MHz and 2,300 MHz bands.

In addition to powering ultra-low latency connections, which allow downloading full-length high-quality video or movie to a mobile device in a matter of seconds (even in crowded areas), fifth generation or 5G would enable solutions such as e-health, connected vehicles, more immersive augmented reality and metaverse experiences, life-saving use cases, and advanced mobile cloud gaming, among others.

In all the auction is being held for spectrum in various low (600 MHz, 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1,800 MHz, 2,100 MHz, 2,300 MHz), mid (3,300 MHz) and high (26 GHz) frequency bands.

A total of 72 GHz (gigahertz) of radiowaves worth at least Rs 4.3 lakh crore is up for bidding.

The auction will continue on Wednesday, and is likely to conclude tomorrow itself.

Asked how much will the bids go beyond Rs 1.45 lakh crore levels seen on day one, the minister said, “It looks like it will be at that level, but nothing can be said till the auction is ongoing”.

The minister assured that consumers will be able to experience 5G services in many cities by 2022-end.

“Spectrum is basic raw material for telecom. Good spectrum can improve telecom services. In coming months and years, quality of service will improve significantly,” Vaishnaw said, adding India’s indigenous 5G stack too will be ready in a few months.

Prashant Singhal, EY Global TMT Emerging Markets Leader, said the first day of spectrum auction was in line with the expectations, particularly when it came to 3,300 MHz and 26 GHz bands.

“It clearly highlights that coveted 5G spectrum is much in demand. Bidding in the 700 MHz band was surprising considering the spectrum price. However, it is reflective of the need to provide pan-India coverage for 5G, especially in the rural areas,” Singhal said.

There is no excess demand in any of the bands, Singhal said, adding if the trend continued, the bidding is expected to be over as soon as 100 per cent activity is reached.

“The auction is likely to witness higher than market estimates,” he added.

In the auction conducted in 2021 – that had lasted two days – Reliance Jio had picked up spectrum worth Rs 57,122.65 crore, Bharti Airtel bid about Rs 18,699 crore, and Vodafone Idea bought spectrum worth Rs 1,993.40 crore.