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Business Line: May 06, 2019 Top US companies from diverse sectors such as aviation & defence, energy, healthcare, digital services, automotive, consumer goods and agribusiness will be in India this week offering ``fair and reciprocal’’ business opportunities to their counterparts in the country. US Secretary for Commerce Wilbur Ross, who is leading the 100-member strong delegation of corporates to India as part of `Trade Winds Indo-Pacific Forum 2019’, will also meet Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Commerce & Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu on Monday to discuss outstanding trade issues and future prospects, a government official said. Trade Winds Indo-Pacific features a three-day business forum in New Delhi, India, with additional trade mission stops in Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Bangladesh. At each mission stop, attending companies will meet directly with government leaders, market experts, and pre-vetted potential business partne...

The Indian Express: May 11, 2019 A panel of three Supreme Court judges has cleared the Chief Justice of India of the allegations of sexual harassment levelled by an ex-staffer of the Court. While the CJI stands vindicated, the procedure adopted by the panel in arriving at its conclusion has left much to be desired. In fact, one of its own, Justice D Y Chandrachud, had reportedly written to the panel to broadbase its membership by including an external member. He also asked the panel to allow legal assistance to the complainant. The Hon’ble judge, it seems, went by the call of his conscience, and echoed the sentiments of a large majority, both within and outside the judicial circles. Given the sensitivities of the case, and the fact that it involves someone as high as the CJI, the stand taken by Justice Chandrachud is highly courageous and deserves kudos. In 1997, in the Vishaka case, the SC laid down that a committee inquiring into allegations of sexual harassment at the work...

Indian Express: May 11, 2019 An Antonov An-12 aircraft from Pakistan’s Karachi, airborne for Delhi, deviated from its scheduled path and entered the Indian airspace, the Indian Air Force said in a statement. The aircraft was intercepted by IAF Air Defence aircraft and forced to land at Jaipur airfield.The aircraft entered the Indian airspace from an unscheduled point in north Gujarat, IAF statement said. The aircraft did not follow the authorized Air Traffic Services (ATS) route and was not responding to radio calls from Indian controlling agencies, a Defence Ministry statement said. It neither responded on international distress frequency nor to visual signals during interception, the statement added. The Ministry said that when the Air Force officials tried to challenge, the aircraft informed that it was a non-schedule aircraft airborne from Tbilisi (Georgia) for Delhi via Karachi. The crew members of the cargo aircraft, which entered Indian airspace at 3:15 pm, were quest...

The Indian Express, Shubhajit Roy, May 11, 2019 India and the UK on Friday agreed to increase their collaboration in the fields of Indo-Pacific cooperation, disaster resilience, climate change and development in third countries, as Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale and British Permanent Under Secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Simon McDonald met in New Delhi for foreign consultations. Advertising The dialogue reviewed a year of progress since Prime Minister  Narendra Modi ’s visit to the UK in April 2018 for the Commonwealth Summit, where he and British Prime Minister Theresa May had agreed on closer collaboration across trade and technology, security and people-to-people links. “The two countries have, over the past year, identified specific areas to work together as a force for good, for example on a global coalition on climate resilience, on disaster relief and on development. Bilateral trade has grown by 14 per cent, and visas for Indian studen...

First Post: Rayan Naqash: May 11, 2019 "We don’t want Hurriyat, only shariat,” reads the graffiti sprayed on a shuttered shop in Jamnagri, a nondescript village in the restive southern Kashmir district of Shopian, close to the hills and surrounded by vast apple orchards. The scribble was signed off ‘ISJK’, an abbreviation for what a band of local jihadists calls itself since 2017: the Islamic State Jammu and Kashmir. The sleepy village does not figure prominently on the map of the region’s conflict. The first time anyone bothered about Jamnagri, perhaps, was in the middle of last year when a video shot here went viral in the Valley. The setting of the recording, located at a stone’s throw from the graffiti, was the house of Adil Ahmad Wani, who became a jihadist as an 18 year old in 2016. The brief video shows an Army soldier sitting on the verandah with Adil’s family, urging them to cooperate whenever an opportunity arises for the young man’s surrender. “If he comes...

The Telegraph: Reuters: May 10, 2019 Economists and investors are increasingly showing that they have little or no confidence in India’s official economic data, presenting whoever is elected as the next Prime Minister with an immediate problem. There have been questions for many years about whether Indian government statistics were telling the full story but two recent controversies over revisions and delays of crucial numbers have taken those concerns to new heights. The government itself has admitted there are deficiencies in its data collection. A study conducted by a division of the statistics ministry in the 12 months ending June 2017 found that as much as 36 per cent of the companies in the database used in India’s GDP calculations could not be traced or were wrongly classified. But the ministry said there was no impact on GDP estimates as due care was taken to adjust corporate filings at the aggregate level. Last December, the government held back the r...

The Indian Express, Khaled Ahmed, May 11, 2019 Prime Minister  Imran Khan  was in Iran on April 22, mending fences with Tehran over cross-border terrorism, which bothers both the countries. His statement that “Iran also suffered from terrorism from Pakistan” has upset many Pakistanis. Khan had also requested Tehran to stop the terrorists on its side, who recently killed 14 Pakistanis on the Karachi-Gwadar highway. The PPP-PMLN opposition in parliament and the media cried that Khan’s statement had put Pakistan at risk by admitting to terrorism. Advertising There was nothing wrong with Khan’s “confession”. That the Iranian Baloch terrorists organise themselves in Karachi’s underworld is globally known. And that Pakistan has helped Iran capture members of the big terrorist outfit, Jundallah al-Adl, also is no secret. In fact, President Hassan Rouhani could have realised on hearing Khan that Tehran too needed to deal with the Pakistani Baloch rebels who flee in...

The Financial Express: Banikinkar Pattanayak: May 10, 2019 Amid mounting fears that more non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) may default like IL&FS due to a growing liquidity crunch, chief economic advisor (CEA) in the finance ministry Krishnamurthy Subramanian said on Thursday that the issue is actually one of solvency of a very few players. So the asset-liability mismatch of firms in the entire shadow-banking space needs to be “very tightly and carefully monitored” to ensure the crisis doesn’t recur or flare up, he added. “Assets of some NBFCs are long-dated while liabilities are short-term. When the going gets tough, those NBFCs that are not solvent enough find it difficult to roll over (payment obligation). So what is typically a solvency issue appears to have been a liquidity issue,” Subramanian told FE in an interview. Amid a controversy over the GDP data and its source (The latest NSSO report suggested that over a third companies in the MCA21 database that ...

Financial Express: Rishi Ranjan Kala: May 10, 2019 The committee of creditors (CoC) of Jaypee Infratech (JIL), which met on Thursday, directed NBCC to furnish clarifications in writing about exit clauses that the state-run company has made in its revised bid and also inquired whether there is an alternative available. The panel also wants NBCC to inform about the avenues that it has at its disposal for arranging funds to infuse in the cash-strapped real estate firm. During the CoC meeting, a majority of members were of the view that NBCC should drop the exit clauses as it creates uncertainty about the firm’s commitment to complete the housing projects as well as claims of the lenders, sources said. “Today CoC directed NBCC to come back with clarifications on some issues by Monday (May 13) and the next meeting is scheduled on May 14. CoC sought clarifications on relief and concessions sought by NBCC. These exit clauses are not acceptable to many members,” one of the source...

The Hindu: May 11, 2019 Justice K.M. Joseph on Friday asked the government why there was still no FIR registered on a corruption complaint made to the CBI in October last year in connection with the 36 Rafale jets deal. “Question here is whether you are obliged under the law to register an FIR when a complaint is made,” Justice Joseph asked Attorney-General K.K. Venugopal. The queries came during a two-hour hearing at the end of which the Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, reserved the Rafale review petitions for judgment. The complaint was made in October under various provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act. Justice Joseph referred to a Constitution Bench judgment in the Lalithakumari case, which held that the police or a statutory authority like the CBI was duty-bound to file an FIR and investigate a complaint. If later no prima facie case was made out, the probe could be closed and a copy of the report given to the complainant. However, the ...

Hindustan Times, May 11, 2019 A militant from an Islamic State-inspired group was killed in a gun battle with security forces in south Kashmir’s Shopian district on Friday, police officials said. The slain militant, identified as Ishfaq Ahmad Sofi alias Umar, belonged to the Islamic State of Jammu and Kashmir (ISJK), police claimed. So far, the central government and security agencies have maintained that there is no connection between ISJK and the terror outfit, Islamic State that operates in Iraq and Syria. In February, Union minister, Hansraj Gangaram Ahir, had said in a written reply in Lok Sabha that “seven local youths have joined ISJK through “self-proclamation”. Of these, four terrorists were killed on June 22, 2018 at Anantnag, two were held and one is currently active in the Valley”. “He [Sofi] died as a member of ISJK. We can’t say [whether] he was the last member of the group [or not],” said Atul Kumar Goel, deputy inspector general of police, south Kashmir. T...

Business Standard: PTI: May 11, 2019 ICRA is working on addressing issues pertaining to credit rating of crisis-hit IL&FS and its subsidiaries and has sought help from external experts in the matter. "The company is in the process of addressing certain matters related to credit rating assigned to one of its customer and its subsidiaries, and an anonymous representation," ICRA said in a regulatory filing on quarterly earnings announced Thursday. In an investor communication in December, ICRA had informed about receiving a notice from market regulator Sebi for conduct of adjudication proceedings in relation credit ratings assigned to Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) and one of its subsidiaries -- IL&FS Financial Services. "These proceedings are under...Sebi Act, 1992, which deals with potential imposition of monetary penalty," it said in the investor communication presented on December 19, 2018. The crisis-ridde...

Business Standard: Samie Modak: May 11, 2019 Investor wealth to the tune of $2.1 trillion was eroded this week, amid rising trade tensions between the US and China. The world market capitalisation (m-cap), as complied by Bloomberg, fell to $77.8 trillion against $79.9 trillion a week ago. China, the world’s second-biggest market, saw the maximum erosion in wealth at $624 billion, followed by the US, whose m-cap has declined by $367 billion this week. India, currently the ninth-biggest in terms of m-cap, has seen erosion of nearly $100 billion. The fall in India’s m-cap is much higher than bigger peers such as the UK, France, Germany and Canada. In fact, Germany overtook India’s m-cap, during this week. Investors fear that the trade tension between the two biggest economies will make a dent in global economic growth and corporate earnings. Besides the trade tiff, uncertainty around election results and economic slowdown has weighed on Indian markets’ performance, say exp...

The Indian Express, ENS Economic Bureau, May 08, 2019 US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross along with other members of the country’s delegation in India met with Prime Minister  Narendra Modi  on Tuesday to discuss issues that have impacted trade between the two countries. Advertising “We just had a meeting this morning with Secretary Ross and others … with Bithe Prime Minister in which we raised all of these issues very clearly and the government understands what our position is,” said Kenneth I Juster, US Ambassador to India, during the Trade Winds Indo-Pacific Business Forum in Delhi. “We must also recognise that it (India) remains a challenging market. The regulatory and policy environment is complex and often difficult to navigate. We at the US embassy and the US missions throughout this country will continually work with the Indian government to seek to lower barriers to trade and increase market access,” he added. According to Commerce Minister S...