Vijay Mallya

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday gave a final opportunity to fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, accused in bank loan default case of over Rs 9,000 crore involving his defunct Kingfisher Airlines, to appear before it personally or through his lawyer in a contempt case where he has been found guilty.

The top court said it has given multiple opportunities to Mallya to appear either personally or through a lawyer and had even given specific directions in its last order dated November 30, 2021.

A bench of justices U U Lalit, S Ravindra Bhat and P S Narasimha posted the contempt case for further hearing after two weeks, saying that respondent contemnor (Mallya) is at liberty to act as per direction given in order dated November 30 last year, failing which the matter shall be taken to its “logical conclusion”.

At the outset, the bench told senior advocate Jaideep Gupta, who has been appointed amicus curiae in the matter, that it has found the contemnor guilty of contempt of court, and now, punishment has to be imposed.

“Going by normal logic, the contemnor has to be heard but from that stage he has not appeared before the court. What course should the court adopt,” the bench asked Gupta, adding that ministry officials say some proceedings are going on but the court does not know what.

Gupta said that the contemnor does not need to be physically present, and he can appear through his counsel, and the court may clarify this further in its order.

Justice Bhat said that the case has different colours, and the contemnor has abstained from the proceedings.

“Next hearing, the same thing will happen. We will have to pronounce the sentence in absentia. In this situation, in other countries courts are not powerless. We want assistance in that regard,” Justice Bhat said.

The bench said this problem should not become a gateway for courts of first instance to adopt this course.

“We will have to say that this is in extraordinary circumstances in which he has been found guilty and is on the run. We need to have appropriate safeguards,” it said.

Gupta said the court would have to make it clear what would happen and what consequences would follow, if Mallya does not appear either personally or through his lawyer.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, said the court has inherent jurisdiction in contempt cases and that it has given enough opportunity to Mallya, which he has not taken.

He said it is not the government’s stand that something confidential is going on, rather the government of India has been informed by UK officials that there is some confidential proceeding going on which cannot be shared.

The bench asked Gupta, “What should the court do? Should we appoint an amicus for the contemnor or do we proceed ahead? Normally, in criminal matters, we appoint an amicus to represent the accused.”

Gupta said that if no lawyer appears for him or makes submissions on behalf of him, then the court should appoint an amicus curiae to represent the accused.

The bench then noted in its order that responding to its request in the order dated November 30, 2021, senior advocate Jaideep Gupta has accepted to assist the court as amicus curiae and submits that on issue of sentence, this court had granted liberty to the contemnor to advance submissions as deemed appropriate.

It said the amicus has submitted that in his opinion, the matter may be adjourned for short time while clarifying that this would be the final opportunity and in case he chooses to not remain personally present or advance submissions through his counsel, the court may proceed further with the matter.

The bench said with regard to the solicitor general’s submission that the court must clarify that it is not the government of India’s stand that a confidential proceeding is going on, this matter does not require elaboration as the position is clear from the November 30, 2021, order.

On November 30 last year, the top court had said it cannot wait any longer and the sentencing aspect in the contempt matter against Mallya would be dealt with finally.

Noting that Mallya, who is presently in the United Kingdom (UK), was held guilty of contempt in 2017, and the matter was thereafter to be listed to hear him on the proposed punishment to be awarded to him, it had said that the apex court has waited sufficiently long .

The top court had in 2020 dismissed Mallya’s plea seeking a review of its 2017 verdict which held him guilty of contempt for transferring USD 40 million to his children in violation of court orders.

The apex court noted that as per an office memorandum, under the signature of the deputy secretary (extradition) of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), the proceedings for extradition have attained finality and Mallya has exhausted all avenues for appeal in the UK.

It had noted that the November 30, 2021 office memorandum also refers to proceedings pending in the UK which are stated to be confidential and as such no details are getting disclosed .

The top court had requested senior advocate Jaideep Gupta to assist it as an amicus curiae in the matter.

On January 18 last year, the Centre had told the top court that the government is making all efforts to extradite Mallya from the UK but the process is being delayed due to some legal issues involved in the matter.

Mallya has been in the UK since March 2016. He is on bail on an extradition warrant executed three years ago by the Scotland Yard on April 18, 2017.

Journalist Rana Ayyub |

New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate has attached over Rs 1.77 crore worth bank deposits of journalist Rana Ayyub in connection with a money laundering probe against her linked to alleged irregularities in charitable funds raised from public donors, agency sources said on Thursday.

The federal investigation agency had issued a provisional order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach a Rs 50 lakh worth fixed deposit and the rest amount kept as bank deposits and held in two accounts of a private bank in Navi Mumbai.

Ayyub is the account holder and deposits totalling Rs 1,77,27,704 have been attached by the ED.

The money laundering case against Ayyub was filed after taking cognisance of a September, 2021 FIR of Ghaziabad Police (Uttar Pradesh) related to alleged irregularities in donor funds of over Rs 2.69 crore raised by her through an online crowd funding platform called ‘Ketto’.

The police lodged the case on a complaint made by Vikas Sankrityayan, founder of an NGO called “Hindu IT Cell” and a resident of Indirapuram in Ghaziabad.

Ayyub had then stated that the “entire donation received through Ketto is accounted for and not a single paisa has been misused”.

According to the FIR, the funds were raised as part of three campaigns: funds for slum dwellers and farmers during April-May 2020; relief work for Assam, Bihar and Maharashtra during June-September 2020; and help for COVID-19 impacted people in India during May-June 2021.

“Funds totalling Rs 2,69,44,680 were raised on Ketto by Rana Ayyub. These funds were withdrawn in the bank accounts of her sister and father,” the agency said.

Out of this amount, Rs 72,01,786 was withdrawn in her own bank account, Rs 37,15,072 withdrawn in her sister Iffat Shaikh’s account, and Rs 1,60,27,822 was withdrawn in her father Mohd Ayyub Waquif’s bank account, it said.

All these funds, the ED found, were subsequently “transferred” in Ayyub’s own account.

Ayyub submitted documents of expense for Rs 31,16,770 to the ED, however, after verification of the claimed expenses, the agency found that the actual expenses were to the tune of Rs 17,66,970, the agency stated.

“Fake bills were found to have been prepared by Rana Ayyub in the name of some entities to claim expenses on relief work. Expenses made for personal travel by air were claimed as expense for relief work,” it alleged.

The ED said its probe “makes it abundantly clear that the funds were raised in the name of charity in a completely pre-planned and systematic manner, and the funds were not utilised completely for the purpose of which the funds were raised”.

“Instead of utilising the funds for the relief work, Rana Ayyub parked some of the funds by opening a separate current bank account,” it said.

Ayyub, it added, created the fixed deposit of Rs 50 lakh from the funds raised on the online platform and subsequently “did not utilise” these for relief work.

The agency found Ayyub “deposited a total of Rs 74.50 lakh in PM Cares fund and CM Relief Fund.”

The attachment order of the ED can be challenged before the Adjudicating Authority of PMLA.

Lucknow: The battle for Uttar Pradesh began on Thursday with polling at 58 assembly seats spread across 11 districts in the western part of the state.

Polling started at 7.00 AM and will continue till 6.00 PM, officials of the state election commission said here.

Campaigning in the constituencies going to vote in the first round of the seven-phase election in the politically crucial state ended on Tuesday evening.

Ministers whose fate would be decided in the first phase include Shrikant Sharma, Suresh Rana, Sandeep Singh, Kapil Dev Agarwal, Atul Garg and Chowdhury Lakshmi Narain.

As many as 623 candidates, including 73 women are in the fray in the first phase and around 2.28 core voters, including 1.24 crore men and 1.04 crore women are eligible to caste their francise, election officials said.

The canvassing for the first phase remained confined to the virtual medium due to a ban on road shows and physical rallies in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Leading the campaign for the BJP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi pitched for a “double-engine” government for fast-paced development while attacking the Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal (SP-RLD) combine.

While Union Home Minister Amit Shah and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath tried to put the spotlight back on alleged “exodus” of Hindus from Kairana before 2017, SP president Akhilesh Yadav claimed that people have made up their mind to vote out the BJP from power.

The SP-RLD alliance has centred their electioneering on farmers’ issues and has attacked Adityanath over poll promises.

BSP chief Mayawati, who started campaigning late, reminded people of her government’s track record on law and order in the past.

The Congress under the leadership of its general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has generated interest as seen in door-to-door campaigns.

The districts where the elections will be held are Shamli, Hapur, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, Baghpat, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahr, Aligarh, Mathura and Agra.

The first phase will cover the Jat-dominated belt of western UP from where farmers had participated actively in the stir against the Centre’s three farm laws in the national capital.

In 2017, the BJP bagged 53 of the 58 seats, while the SP and the BSP had got two seats each. One seat had gone to the RLD.

New Delhi: Around 200 women students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) have extended their “unflinching and unconditional support” to Muslim students in Karnataka, saying prohibiting women from wearing hijab reflects the “patriarchal and Islamophobic tendencies” of the state and its institutions.

In a statement, the students said forcing Muslim women to give up their hijab is a clear violation of Article 25 of the Indian constitution which guarantees religious freedom, and forbidding them from entering the classroom infringes upon Article 21 (A) and Article 15, which guarantee the right to education and prohibit discrimination based on religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth respectively.

Last week, the Karnataka government issued an order making uniforms prescribed by it or management of private institutions mandatory for its students at schools and pre-university colleges across the state.

Protests erupted in the state over students being denied entry to educational institutions due to the hijab.

“We, the women students of JNU, uphold the right of these women to practice their religion and their choice to wear or not wear a hijab, along with their right to education. Disciplining these women, on their choice of clothing and prohibiting them from wearing a hijab reflects the patriarchal and Islamophobic tendencies of the state and its institutions.

“If the choice to not wear a hijab is endorsed in the light of empowerment, one cannot exhibit condescending attitude against one’s choice of wearing a hijab,” the statement read.

The JNU students pointed out that the attempt of these Muslim students to register their protest is “being criminalized as part of a theory of larger conspiracy”.

“In the face of this toxic display of masculinity, the bigotry and Islamophobia and against the sustained attacks on the rights and safety of Muslim women, we the women students of JNU, extend our unflinching and unconditional solidarity and support to these brave Muslim women students in Karnataka and the choice of Muslim women to wear a hijab,” the statement read.

As protests for and against wearing of the headscarf by Muslim women students in class-rooms intensified in different parts of Karnataka and turned violent in some places, the Karnataka government on Tuesday declared a holiday to all high schools and colleges in the state for three days.

Geneva: Describing the new COVID-19 variants as the “wild card”, a top World Health Organisation official has warned that the Omicron will not be the last one and the possibility of other new variants is really high.

During a question and answer session live streamed on WHO’s social media platforms on Tuesday, the WHO COVID-19 Technical Lead Maria Van Kerkhove said that the global health agency is tracking four different versions of Omicron.

“We know a lot about this virus, but we don’t know everything. And quite frankly, the variants are the wild card. So we are tracking this virus in real time as it mutates as it changes But this virus has a lot of room to move,” she said.

“Omicron is the latest variant of concern. It will not be the last variant of concern that WHO will speak about. The next one, you know, that will come hopefully, it will take some time to get there. But with the level of intensity of spread, the possibility that we will have other variants is really high, she said.

“So we need to ensure that we again, not only increase vaccination coverage, but we also take measures to reduce the spread, she added.

Since the designation of B.1.1.529 as a variant of concern on November 26, 2021, several lineages have been identified. These include Pango lineages BA.1, BA.1.1, BA.2 and BA.3, which are all being monitored by WHO under the umbrella of Omicron’.

“BA.2 is more transmissible than BA.1 so we expect to see BA.2 increasing in detection around the world, Van Kerkhove said.

According to the UN health agency’s weekly epidemiological report, released on Tuesday, the Omicron variant is increasingly dominant – making up nearly 97 per cent of all cases.

“The prevalence of the Omicron variant has increased globally and is now detected in almost all countries. However, many of the countries which reported an early rise in the number of cases due to the Omicron variant have now reported a decline in the total number of new cases since the beginning of January 2022, it said.

Globally, during the week of January 31 to February 6, the number of new COVID-19 cases decreased by 17 per cent as compared to the number reported during the previous week, while the number of new deaths increased by 7 per cent.

As of February 6, over 392 million confirmed cases and over 5.7 million deaths have been reported globally.

New Delhi: JNU’s transition from one of the best universities in India to becoming “Jai Nathuram University” seems to be getting consolidated and deepened, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said Wednesday amid criticism from some quarters over Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit’s appointment as its VC.

His remarks came a day after BJP MP Varun Gandhi slammed the choice of Pandit as the vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, saying such “mediocre appointments serve to damage our human capital and our youth’s future”.

Taking to Twitter, Ramesh said, “3 Ministers in the Modi Cabinet are from the old JNU. Sadly, its transition from one of the best universities in India to becoming Jai Nathuram University seems to be getting consolidated and deepened.”

Pandit, 59, is the first woman VC of JNU. She is also an alumna of JNU where she pursued her MPhil as well as PhD in international relations.

There has been criticism of her appointment from some quarters.

3 Ministers in the Modi Cabinet are from the old JNU. Sadly, its transition from one of the best universities in India to becoming Jai Nathuram University seems to be getting consolidated and deepened.

New Delhi: As many as 4,844 foreigners were granted the Indian citizenship in the last five years under the Citizenship Act 1955, Union Minister Nityanand Rai said in Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

Rai, the Union Minister of State for Home, said 1,773 foreigners were granted the Indian citizenship in 2021, 639 in 2020, 987 in 2019, 628 in 2018 and 817 in 2017.

The Indian citizenship is governed under the provisions of the Citizenship Act 1955, he said in a written reply to a question.