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 Indian Express Sep 24, 2020 Georage Mathew, Sandeep Singh After an association of close to 84 years, the Shapoorji Pallonji Mistry (SP) Group has offered to exit from Tata Sons as protracted litigation with the Tatas has affected the business expansion plans of the SP Group, which has a debt burden of over Rs 30,000 crore. The market value of SP Group’s stake in the listed entities of Tata Group is estimated to be over Rs 148,000 crore, going by the market capitalisation of all listed group firms. It remains to be seen how the Tatas will raise the cash to acquire SP Group’s stake. What is the latest case all about? Earlier this month, Tata Sons moved the Supreme Court seeking to restrain SP Group firms from raising capital against security of their shareholding in Tata Sons. The Tatas argued that the articles of association (AoA) stipulate that shares cannot change hands, including to lenders or other parties, and the right of first refusal rests with Tata Sons. The SP Group was p...

 Indian Express Sep 24, 2020 Sujan R Chinoy India’s Defence Minister  Rajnath Singh  made firm and thoughtful statements in the two Houses of Parliament on September 15 and 17 concerning the situation in Ladakh. Apart from lauding the indomitable courage and readiness of India’s armed forces to deal with any eventuality to protect the country’s territorial integrity, he gave a broad overview of the boundary question and the  Line of Actual Control  (LAC). One of his key points was that there is no commonly delineated LAC in the border areas and that after 2003, the LAC clarification exercise ground to a halt due to China’s intransigence. China had agreed in the 1993 “Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China Border Areas” that, pending an ultimate resolution of the boundary question, the two sides shall strictly respect and observe the LAC. Further, there was agreement that, when necessary, the tw...

 Indian Express September 24, 2020  By: Harikishan Sharma An amendment to Essential Commodities Act, 1955 deregulates key foodstuffs except under extraordinary circumstances. Why was the need felt, and why have farmers and the Opposition raised concerns over it? On Tuesday, Rajya Sabha passed the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2020 which is aimed at deregulating commodities such as cereals, pulses, oilseeds, edible oils, onion and potatoes. The Bill had been introduced and passed in Lok Sabha last week. It replaces an ordinance that the government had promulgated on June 5, along withB. As with the two other ordinances (also passed as Bills) that have seen protests from farmers in Punjab and Haryana, there have been concerns about the provisions of this Bill, too. What is the Bill about? It is a four-page Bill that amends the Essential Commodities Act, 1955, by introducing a new Subsection (1A) in Section 3. After the amendment, the supply of certain foodstuffs — incl...

 Daily Sabah September 23, 2020 The people of Jammu and Kashmir have no words to express their heartfelt thanks to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for reiterating once more his country’s support for the just cause of Kashmir, said Ghulam Nabi Fai, secretary-general of the U.S.-based World Kashmir Awareness Forum, on Wednesday. Fai said Erdoğan's words on Tuesday at the 75th session of the U.N. General Assembly have become a source of inspiration and gave hope to the millions of hopeless people in the region. Erdoğan's statement at the General Assembly was the true reflection of the aspirations of the people of Kashmir, he added in an opinion piece published by Anadolu Agency (AA). Erdoğan had said: "The Kashmir conflict, which is also key to the stability and peace of South Asia, is still a burning issue. Steps that were taken following the abolition of the special status of Jammu-Kashmir further complicated the problem. We are in favor of solving this issue through...

 Indian Express Sep 24, 2020 Sandeep Singh AT least 44 Indian banks have been flagged in connection with transactions by Indian entities and individuals in a set of Suspicious Activity Reports filed by US banks with the watchdog agency, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN),  an investigation by  The Indian Express  shows . As per one set of records where addresses linked to parties are in India, Indian banks figure in SARs linked to over 2,000 transactions valued at over $1billion between 2011 and 2017. Significantly, there are thousands of transactions linked to Indian entities and businessmen where the Indian senders or beneficiaries have addresses in foreign jurisdictions. Records investigated show that Indian banks mentioned in the SARs include: state-owned Punjab National Bank (290 transactions); State Bank of India (102); Bank of Baroda (93); Union Bank of India (99) and Canara Bank (190), among others. Among private banks who figure in the SARs ar...

 Indian Express Sep 24, 2020 Khusboo Narayan Multiple transfers from a bank in Latvia and two electronics firms in the UAE and a series of circular transactions with a Dubai company are among the financial transactions linked to Bhushan Steel Ltd red-flagged by foreign banks to the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), according to   records investigated by The Indian Express . These transactions, totalling $4.39 million, figure in several Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) sent between 2012 and 2015 to the US regulatory agency that enforces money laundering laws, the records show. In 2017, two years after the last of these SARs were sent to FinCEN, the RBI initiated bankruptcy proceedings against Bhushan Steel for alleged loan defaults worth Rs 56,000 crore, triggering probes by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) and Enforcement Directorate (ED). A year later, the company, which was once India’s third largest secondary steel producer and flagship of Bhu...

 Money Control September 24, 2020 By: Reuters The first study to analyze  structure of the novel coronavirus from two waves of infection in a major city found that a more contagious strain dominates recent samples, researchers from Houston Methodist Hospital said on Wednesday. They examined more than 5,000 genomes from viruses recovered in the earliest phase of the pandemic in Houston, an ethnically diverse city of 7 million, and from an ongoing more recent wave of infections. The novel coronavirus from two waves of infection in a major city found that a more contagious strain dominates recent samples, researchers from Houston Methodist Hospital said on Wednesday. They examined more than 5,000 genomes from viruses recovered in the earliest phase of the pandemic in Houston, an ethnically diverse city of 7 million, and from an ongoing more recent wave of infections. The study, which has not yet been reviewed by outside experts, found that nearly all strains in the second wave ha...

 Hindustan Times September 24, 2020 By: Aurangzeb Nashqbandi The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020, the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020, and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2020, have been passed by both the Houses of Parliament during the monsoon session and await Presidential assent The Congress will launch from Thursday its nearly two-month-long “mass movement” against the government for passing “anti-farmer and anti-poor” bills during the monsoon session of Parliament. The party will also collect two crore signatures from protesting farmers against the proposed laws. The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020, the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020, and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2020, have been passed by both the Houses of Parliament during the monso...

 Hindustan Times September 24, 2020 By: V.S. Pandey The three farm reform bills are structured on the recommendations of a state agriculture ministers panel that submitted its report in 2013 Farm sector reforms such as amending the Essential Commodities Act, liberalising the provisions of the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee Acts and contract farming etc. have been debated for decades. After these reforms have been shaped into law, farmers are on the war path in several states to oppose them. Many opposition parties have come out in support of farmers and are demanding withdrawal of these steps. British period with the Berar Cotton and Grain Market act of 1887 in the Hyderabad Residency. This law marked the beginning of the agriculture marketing scene in the country which got support of the Royal Commission on Agriculture 1928 that recommended establishment of regulated markets and establishment of market yards. Later, the Government of India prepared a model bill and circul...

 Hindustan Times September 24, 2020 By: Rahul Singh According to the CAG report, the defence ministry stated as recently as October 2019 (the first Rafale was handed over in France on October 8, 2019) that the vendors had not yet been able to confirm their capability for technology transfer. Two weeks after the Indian Air Force (IAF) formally inducted five of the 36 Rafale jets ordered from France under a Rs 59,000-crore deal, the country’s top auditor on Wednesday said that the plane’s maker Dassault Aviation and weapons-supplier MBDA have not confirmed the transfer of technology (ToT) to the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), which was part of the contract. The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), in a detailed report tabled in Parliament, doubted if the ToT for a key engine would even take place, and pointed out that several offset contracts built into multiple defence deals have “not yielded the desired results”. The critical observations were part of CAG’s...