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April 20,2018 The   Supreme Court  on Thursday derided the Loya PIL petitions as a case in point of how public interest litigation has become an “industry of vested interests” rather than a powerful tool to espouse the cause of the marginalised and oppressed. A Bench of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud said the essential aspect of a genuine PIL petition was that the “person who moves the court has no personal interest in the outcome of the proceedings, apart from a general standing as a citizen before the court.” The PIL was envisioned by the Supreme Court’s legendary judges as “a powerful instrument to preserve the rule of law and to ensure the accountability of and transparency within structures of governance”. Reality check Justice Chandrachud, who authored the verdict, said it was time for the judiciary to do a reality check on the advent of PIL petitions which flooded the courts. The judgment said PIL ...

April 19,2018 By Syed Ata Hasnain For a developing country that is committed to enhancing the quality of life of its citizens, defence is usually the last thing on the nation’s mind. Yet, no government that is committed to such a cause can ignore the existing physical and psychological security threats. These threats are more than just ordinary in India, a country located in a dangerous neighbourhood and facing both internal and external threats. Comprehensive national security helps a nation attain its aspirations, and robust security is a subset of that. India has a robust military machine. However, the lack of a national security strategy, a national strategic culture and a transformational approach towards its military capability prevent it from obtaining optimum benefit from its defence expenditure. Resource allotment The defence budget is increasingly looked at as a means to provide incremental resources to other sectors, since procedural delays prevent its optimum an...

April 19, 2018 Less than a month after his former protege (now his arch-nemesis) Viktor Orban led his nationalist Fidesz party to an overwhelming victory in Hungary's federal election, billionaire investor George Soros - who has become a persona non-grata in his native Hungary - has lost another round in its ongoing confrontation with the ruling government, and is closing the offices of his Open Society Foundation in Budapest. Patrick Gaspard, the head of Open Society, announced the closure in an article by  Austria's Die Presse . Soros, who recently donated the bulk of his eleven-figure fortune to Open Society - an international chain of liberal nonprofits dedicated to pushing Soros' pro-immigration, pro-globalization political agenda under the guise of altruism - has been openly feuding with Orban for more than a year, ever since he criticized the Hungarian leader for purportedly running a "mafia state" during a speech in the UK. Observers expect the...

April 18,2018 By Suraj Jaiswal With capital becoming globalised, international investors look for the minutest of opportunities across the world to improve return on their funds. Such endeavours, many a time, fall into the grey zone where the difference between legal and illegal becomes very thin. Two such grey zone cases refer to ‘treaty shopping’ and ‘round tripping’. To simplify, suppose there is an investor in country A, who wants to invest in country B. Instead of investing directly from country A to B, the investor tries to look for a country C which has a tax treaty with B. The objective is to find a tax treaty that can be used to lower the tax payable on the income arising from that investment. Then the investor would route the investment to B through this third country C. This process of routing investment/capital flows through a third country only to take the benefits of tax treaties of that country is called treaty shopping. An extreme case of treaty shopping ari...

News18.com Updated:April 16, 2018, 1:23 PM IST Share price of IT giant Infosys fell as much as 6 percent minutes after markets opened. The slump which came during the early trade on Monday morning caused a loss in market capitilisation of approximately Rs 15,000 crore.  Shares fell to Rs 1,099 as compared to its Friday's close of Rs 1,169 on BSE. This comes after Infosys announced its fourth quarter results on Friday. Analysts said that though Infosys Q4 numbers were in line with expectations, the IT major's guidance for FY19 growth and operating margin were below estimates. For the ongoing financial year, Infosys approximated revenue growth of 6-8 percent. On operating margin front, Infosys guidance for FY19 also disappointed analysts. Infosys expects operating margin at 22-24 percent range in FY19. In FY18 Infosys revenues grew 5.8 percent in constant currency terms, with operating margins at 24.3 percent. "Infosys cut its FY19 EBIT margin guidance ...

NEW DELHI, APR 16 The government plans to launch a natural gas trading hub by October, creating an Indian gas benchmark which will spark a surge in consumption of the cleaner-burning fuel. Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB) has sought bids to hire a consultant to help develop a regulatory framework for operationalising the gas trading/exchange hub. “In order to further boost the consumption of natural gas in the country, Government is considering the establishment of a Gas Trading Hub / Exchange (GTHE), where natural gas can be traded, and supplied through a market-based mechanism instead of multiple formula driven prices,” PNGRB said in the tender floated for hiring the consultant. Currently, the government fixes the price of the bulk of domestically produced natural gas. The rate, arrived at using price prevalent in gas-surplus nations of US, Canada, UK, and Russia, is USD 3.06 per million British thermal unit for six month period beginning April 1. In c...

KOLKATA, APRIL 15 French multinational Thales, which has businesses in defence, aeronautics, transport and security, sees its India headcount doubling and its turnover trebling to €1 billion over the next 3-5 years. While that is the immediate objective, the long-term plan is to employ India as a manufacturing base and also export ‘Made in India’ products and solutions. According to Patrice Caine, Chairman & CEO, Thales SA, India is among the company’s top three priority countries, after the US and China. Reforms by the Narendra Modi government — that include opening up the defence sector for FDI — will only aid growth here, he added. Caine points out that considering the challenges in the country (where no one size fits all) and the level of specialisation required to overcome it, Indian solutions could act as a global prototype which can be redesigned to suit requirements in other countries. Opportunity in Rafale The off-set clause in the Rafale fighter ...

Aswathi Pacha, APRIL 14, 2018 17:00 IST Composition of the gut colony differed in TB patients The abundance and type of bacteria in the intestine gets altered when infected with tuberculosis, a study by Indian researchers shows. The team studied the gut bacteria of six patients diagnosed with TB and compared them with one healthy relative from each household. Despite the food consumed by the patients and healthy individuals remaining the same, there were significant differences in the type and abundance of gut bacteria. The faecal samples of the two groups were examined at three different time points — immediately after TB diagnosis, one week after treatment and one month after treatment. They found that Prevotella and Bifidobacterium were abundant in the healthy individuals. “These bacteria are important for normal digestion and metabolism of the body. You can find them in abundance in the Indian gut due to the carbohydrate-rich diet,” explains Dr. Richa Misra from...

By: PTI | London | Published: April 16, 2018 11:24 PM The rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua district of Jammu and Kashmir was today raised in the House of Lords by a Pakistani-origin peer, who called on the UK government to intervene to bring perpetrators of human rights abuses in the region to justice. Pakistani-origin peer Lord Ahmed, a staunch critic of the Indian government, raised the issue in the Upper House of the UK Parliament. In her response on behalf of the British government, Baroness Stedman-Scott said India has a strong democratic framework which guarantees human rights. “But we do acknowledge it does face numerous challenges relating to its size and development when it comes to enforcing fundamental rights enshrined in its Constitution,” she said. “These cases (of rape and murder) are nothing short of horrific and we extend our condolences to the families of the victims. Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi has been clear that justice will be do...

By: PTI | London | Published: April 10, 2018 12:38 PM The SBI has announced the launch of its UK subsidiary, SBI (UK) Limited, with an initial capital commitment of 225 million pounds from its parent entity. India’s largest state-owned bank, which celebrated the new subsidiary with a special event in London yesterday, becomes the first foreign bank in the UK to ringfence its retail division from its wholesale business. SBI said that the ringfencing and subsidiarisation of the retail franchise SBI UK, the bank’s largest overseas operation, offers UK customers “stability and reassurance” amidst continuing uncertainty around the UK’s decision to leave the European Union (EU). “We are extremely proud of how far the bank has come from the first time it opened its doors to UK residents in 1921,” said Sanjiv Chadha, Regional Head of SBI UK. “The launch of our UK subsidiary shows our commitment to operate in the UK market. Many banks primarily see the UK as the gateway to Europe and ...

By: Bloomberg | Published: April 16, 2018 11:38 AM Oil prices, already at more than three-year highs, may be about to jump further. And, to JPMorgan Chase & Co., crude-related assets are starting to look attractive. Brent oil could spike to $80 a barrel if the US and European Union reimpose sanctions on Iran and as Western powers expand the scope of the Syrian civil war, JPMorgan strategists, led by John Normand, wrote in a note on Friday. While this might ordinarily seen like a time to avoid cyclical assets, the recent ” tax gift” to US corporations and consumers makes it an opportunity to own petro assets, they said. “Risks we thought might materialize this summer through Iran sanctions are emerging somewhat more quickly due to events in Syria,” said the strategists. New Syrian hostilities are likely to have a muted effect on oil, however, since the nation’s production has already fallen so deeply due to the seven-year-long war. A possible decision in May on Ira...

Gowhar Geelani Updated April 16, 2018 UNTIL now, voices of many Kashmiri men have been frequently aired in support or against the young and educated locals picking up guns in the restive India-held Kashmir with the aim to challenge the poli­­tical status quo in the disputed Himalayan region. Not many female voices have been heard. It is equally important to view Kashmir’s armed struggle through a gender lens to hear diverse voices of women; what they think of the gun-wielding Kash­miris, the choices they make, impact of daily violence on children and adults alike, the absence of a meaningful political intervention to resolve Kashmir issue, and the path ahead. When the armed uprising broke out in held Kashmir in 1989, some Kashmiri women could be seen eulogising the fighters in wedding songs. They almost hero-worshipped active militants. And they also romanticised the almost romantic notion of armed struggle and fighters after they were killed by government forces in e...

Written by Jyoti Malhotra | New Delhi | Updated: April 18, 2018 11:23:50 pm Calling for an overhaul of the country’s banking sector, following the multi-crore PNB scam, former prime minister Manmohan Singh said that the government must give “firm indication that wrongdoers will not be allowed to get away”. These three events must have shocked the conscience of our nation. That such events can take place in independent India is a sad reflection on our administrative and political system, and I sincerely hope that all our people will unite to create an environment in which such things don’t take place at all in the future. But it is equally important that those who have committed these horrible crimes must be brought to book as soon as possible. ou must have read how some lawyers in Kathua and two BJP ministers in the J&K government prevented police from doing their job. It is shocking that intellectuals belonging to the legal fraternity can be so oblivious to the har...