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The Indian Express October 1, 2020  A day after Beijing hardened its position and said that it does not recognise the Union Territory of Ladakh and is opposed to the construction of Indian infrastructure there, Indian and Chinese diplomats met through virtual mode and New Delhi said that the two sides should “avoid misunderstandings and maintain stability on the ground”. As the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) met for the fifth time since the border standoff began in May, they said that the next round of the meeting of Senior Commanders “should be held at an early date so that both sides can work towards early and complete disengagement of the troops along the LAC in accordance with the existing bilateral agreement and protocols, and fully restore peace and tranquility”. After the WMCC meeting, the Ministry of External Affairs said that the two sides “reviewed the current situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the...

 The Indian Express October 1, 2020 At the ongoing 45th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva Wednesday, Indian diplomat Pawan Badhe criticised Pakistan’s ‘incessant attempts’ to malign India at international fora. He also stated that Pakistan had “a culture of hatred” and is intolerant of “anybody having modern views on human rights”. “Pakistan’s well-cherished and inherited culture of hatred makes it the perfect candidate for carrying forward the legacy of intolerance against anybody having modern views on human rights,” Badhe, who is the First Secretary at Permanent Mission of India to UN, said. “Incessant attempts to malign India in all international forums is not going to change the fact that tens of thousands of minorities would not stop fleeing Pakistan,” he added. The Indian diplomat also stated that Pakistan should not indulge in the ‘mockery’ of the Human Rights convention when it “attempts to self-crown as an ardent supporter of political dissident...

 The Indian Express September 30, 2020 With the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) meeting in sight, Pakistan is gearing up to gather support from China to avoid the blacklisting. Reports suggest that Islamabad is likely to persuade the US to support it as it feels it can leverage its much-lauded role as a successful negotiator in the US-Taliban agreement signed on February 29. While Pakistan will have support from Turkey and Malaysia, Beijing is expected to push hard in Pakistan’s favour at the meeting. Pakistan has been on the FATF grey list since June 2018 and even though Islamabad is getting its progress report ready, there is little evidence to suggest that its faith in the use of terrorism as a state policy against India will change. Pakistan’s growing alliance with China has been a major factor that has alleviated international pressure on it, altering its strategic calculus. Beijing’s all-out support to Pakistan provided room to shrink Islamabad’s reliance on the West (espe...

Indian Express September 30, 2020 Pushing its old claim line in Ladakh and hardening its position on the situation there, Beijing Tuesday said it does not recognise the Union Territory of Ladakh and is opposed to the construction of Indian infrastructure there. New Delhi reacted sharply, saying it has “never accepted the so-called unilaterally defined 1959 Line of Actual Control”, and that it is “untenable”. This exchange between the two sides comes a week after their military commanders met at the Moldo border point facing Chushul following the Moscow agreement between the Foreign Ministers to dial down tensions along the LAC. In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin, responding to a question on Indian road-building along the border, said China “does not recognize the so-called Union Territory of Ladakh” by India, and “opposes infrastructure construction in disputed border areas for military control purposes”. “According to the recent consensus reached between Chi...

 Financial Express September 29, 2020 India is likely to increase import duty on Phthalic Anhydride, a chemical used in insecticides and plastic industry, for two years from South Korea with an aim to guard domestic players from jump in the inbound shipments. The increase in duty was recommended by the commerce ministry’s investigation arm DGTR after concluding a probe into an alleged increase in imports of the chemical from South Korea following complaints by domestic firms. According to a notification issued by the Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR), IG Petrochemicals Ltd and Thirumalai Chemicals Ltd had filed an application for initiation of the bilateral safeguard probe. In its conclusion, the directorate has stated that increased imports of the product have caused “serious injury” to the domestic industry. The investigation on the imports was conducted under India-Korea Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (Bilateral Safeguard Measures) Rules, 2017. It is a k...

 Financial Express September 29, 2020 India’s fiscal deficit may touch 9 per cent of GDP in the current fiscal year 2020-21, on the back of the twin issues of revenue loss and higher spending due to the pandemic. The fiscal deficit in the current year is estimated to be Rs 17.8 lakh crore, according to a report by Care Ratings. While the budgeted fiscal deficit in the year was Rs 8 lakh crore, an additional deficit of Rs 9.8 lakh crore is projected due to various shortfalls and expenditure. It is estimated that the government will bear a burden of Rs 5.9 lakh crore as a shortfall in tax revenue and Rs 3.8 lakh crore as an additional expenditure.  Given the fact that states have been at the forefront of the control and fight against the pandemic, their fiscal deficit is projected to increase by as much as 1.6 per cent over the budget estimate of 2.8 per cent to 4.4 per cent of the country’s GDP. The states have the onus to effectively implement restrictions to contain the sprea...

 Financial Express September 29, 2020 Telecom major Reliance Jio has questioned the Department of Telecom’s rationale to pause the policy of annual spectrum auction and demanded that the sale of airwaves should be held at the earliest to meet the demand for data services in the country. Mukesh Ambani-led Jio in a letter dated September 28 to Telecom Secretary Anshu Prakash said that the nation-building policies should not be kept hostage to the vested interest of few operators and delay in auction is hurting the national exchequer as well as making investors jittery as perceived against the principle of ease of doing business. The telecom major said that any delay in auction of unutilised spectrum will lead to serious issues around quality of mobile services in terms of call drops etc and also result in “revenue loss to the government.” “We are unable to find any reasonable rationale behind this sudden pause in a successful and fruitful policy of auctioning all available spectrum e...

 Financial Express September 29, 2020 With an aim to help state governments tide over the financial problems triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the RBI on Tuesday extended by six months the additional flexibility provided to states to raise funds through market borrowing and overdraft. The Reserve Bank in April provided additional flexibility to states and Union Territories (UTs) to raise funds to deal with the COVID-19 crisis. The flexibility was available till September 30, 2020. “On a review, it has been decided to extend the measures announced on April 17, 2020 and April 7, 2020 with regard to increase in WMA Limits of states/UTs and overdraft (OD) regulations, respectively, for a further period of 6 months till March 31, 2021,” the central bank said in a press release. With a view to provide greater comfort to state governments in undertaking COVID-19 containment and mitigation measures, and to enable them to plan their market borrowings, RBI in April had increased Ways and M...

 Scroll September 30, 2020 Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar has said that the state government will ensure that farmers from other states do not benefit from selling their produce in the state, NDTV reported on Tuesday. This contravenes the farm laws passed last week by the Centre, which promises barrier-free trade at markets and prices of the farmer’s choice. Khattar, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader, said at a virtual press briefing that Haryana has to take care of its farmers and it “doesn’t have to worry about farmers of other states”. He refused to procure crops from other states. “We will ensure that the maize and bajra of Haryana farmers are completely bought,” Khattar said. “We won’t let it happen that farmers from other states will benefit by selling it in our state. We have to care about the farmers of our state. We don’t have to worry about other states.” Khattar said Congress-ruled states like Punjab and Rajasthan have not been procuring crops like maize and ba...

 Huffpost September 29, 2020 On Wednesday, close to 28 years after the Babri Masjid in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya was destroyed, a special court in Lucknow will pronounce a verdict in a criminal case in which several senior BJP leaders such as LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti are on trial.  Other accused include former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh, Vinay Katiyar and Sadhvi Rithambara. The mosque was brought down by kar sevaks on December 6, 1992 after a rath yatra led by then-BJP president Advani ended in Ayodhya. More than 2,000 people reportedly lost their lives in the riots that occurred after the demolition. There are 32 surviving accused in the case, and a CBI court had on September 16 asked all the accused to be present in court.   PTI reported that it was not clear if Kalyan Singh and Uma Bharti will be present in court since they were both recovering from Covid-19 in separate hospitals.  Bharti, who was in Ayodhya on the day of the...

 Saudi Gazette September 28, 2020 As many as 16,000 Saudis and expatriates have registered for the performance of the Umrah pilgrimage in the first few hours after launching of the Umrah mobile application “I’tamarna” on Sunday, according to the Makkah emirate. The registration of Umrah pilgrims for the first 10 days has been completed, it said in a statement on its Twitter account. The Ministry of Interior announced earlier the gradual resumption of Umrah and visits to the Two Holy Mosques with a limited number of pilgrims, starting from Oct. 4. In the first phase, a total of 6,000 pilgrims will be allowed a day to perform the ritual in 12 groups, each consisting of 500 pilgrims. According to the emirate statement, the Grand Mosque in Makkah will be sterilized 10 times in a day. There will be sterilization before the entry and after the exit of each batch of pilgrims. The Zamzam water will be distributed to the pilgrims in packaged bottles. The Ministry of Hajj and Umrah said that...

The Wire September 29, 2020  A court here on Monday awarded life imprisonment to a man who was convicted for intentionally and knowingly joining ISIS and later proceeding to Iraq to further the activities of the dreaded terror group. The Special NIA court also imposed a fine of Rs 2,10,000 on Subahani Haja Moideen, a Keralite, who was arrested by the NIA in 2016 following a crackdown in Tamil Nadu with the help of central security agencies and other state police. The court on Friday had found him guilty under IPC Sections 120(B) (Criminal Conspiracy), Section 125 (waging war against Asiatic power in alliance with the Government of India) and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, Section 20 (Punishment for being a member of terrorist gang or organisation). The court had also convicted him under UAPA Section 38 (Offence relating to membership of a terrorist organisation) and 39 (Offence relating to support given to a terrorist organisation). However, Moideen was found not guilty for ...

 The Wire September 29, 2020 The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Jammu and Kashmir administration to respond to Iltija Mufti’s amended plea challenging the detention of her mother and former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti under the J&K Public Safety Act, saying that a detention cannot be forever and “some via media” should be explored. People’s Democratic Party chief Mehbooba has been jailed since before the Centre read down Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir on August 5, 2019. In her latest plea, Iltija had challenged both the PSA order that was used to prolong Mehbooba’s incarceration and the subsequent extensions ordered by administration. A bench of Justices S.K. Kaul and Hrishikesh Roy said Mehbooba should place a request to the authorities for attending party meetings. Initially taken into ‘preventive custody’ along with hundreds of politically active people just hours before the Article 370 announcement, Mehbooba was booked under the stringent PSA just just before her si...

 The Wire September 29, 2020 In its response to the show-cause notice issued by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB), Sudarshan News defended the ‘Bindas Bol’ show which accused Muslims of ‘infiltrating’ the civil services. According to The Print, the channel sent a 950 page response in which it claimed that attempts are being made to project a “nationalist channel” as “anti-national and anti-constitutional”. Its editor-in-chief Suresh Chavhanke told the website that the channel stood by its show. The Supreme Court restrained the channel from airing the remaining episodes of the show on September 15. The court was informed by the Centre on September 23 that the MIB had issued a show-cause notice to the channel, finding it prima facie in violation of the Programme and Advertising Codes. The court adjourned its hearing of the matter until October 5, giving the MIB time to take action against the channel, if it so deems fit. The channel was given time until Monday to res...

 Dawn September 30, 2020 Human rights group Amnesty International said on Tuesday it is stopping its work in India because the government has frozen its bank accounts in the latest action against it for speaking out about rights violations. “The organisation has been compelled to let go of staff in India and pause all its ongoing campaign and research work,” the group said in a statement. “This is latest in the incessant witch-hunt of human rights organisations by the government of India over unfounded and motivated allegations.” It said its bank accounts were frozen on Sept 10. Amnesty said it had highlighted rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir and riots in Delhi in recent days and the government had sought to punish it for that. There was no immediate response from government spokesmen to requests for comment. Reference:  https://www.dawn.com/news/1582277/human-rights-group-amnesty-halts-india-operations-says-faces-harassment

 Dawn September 30, 2020 The United States remained Pakistan’s top export destination August as the country earned $334.5 million in proceeds during August, even as they witnessed a decline compared to $341.08m in same period of 2019. According to data released by the State Bank, Pakistan received $671.75m from the US during July-August, compared to $714.63m in the corresponding months of 2019 — registering a fall of six per cent. The United Kingdom was the second biggest buyer from Pakistan at $129.17m in August, down 6.1pc over $137.56m in the corresponding period last year. On the other hand, Pakistan’s merchandise exports to Germany rose by 6.75pc to $111.79m during August, from $104.725m in same month of 2019. Next came China which bought goods worth $93.649m from Pakistan during the month under review, plunging by 25.88pc over $126.345m in the same period last year. The United Arab Emirates closely followed purchasing Pakistani merchandise valued at $93.219m in August, lower ...

 Dawn  September 30, 2020 Chinese Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou and her lawyers returned to a Canadian court on Monday to press for her release, arguing the US misled Canada about her alleged crimes to secure her detention on foreign soil. The defence, according to court filings, will say that the crux of the US charges against Meng — that she hid Huawei’s relationship with former subsidiary Skycom in Iran from HSBC bank — is false and lacks context. “Putting such a misleading and incomplete record before this court disqualifies it from continuing these proceedings,” the documents said. The Chinese telecom giant’s chief financial officer was arrested on a US warrant in December 2018 during a stopover in Vancouver. She is charged with bank fraud linked to violations of US sanctions against Iran, and has been fighting extradition ever since. The case, meanwhile, has added to severe strain in Sino-US ties and created an unprecedented rift between Canada and China. Nine days after...