Sahara Pune Warriors withdraws from IPL
The scandal-hit Indian Premier League today suffered another blow with the Sahara Group-owned Pune Warriors Indians withdrawing from the event due to the BCCI’s lackadaisical arbitration proceedings to lower the franchise fee and it’s decision to encash the team’s bank guarantee.
Sahara, which bought the franchise for Rs 1700 crore in 2010, said it was “disgusted” by the BCCI’s attitude towards it and will not rejoin the league even if the entire franchise fee was waved off. “…we would not keep the IPL franchisee even if the entire franchisee fee is waved off. It is firm and final decision of Sahara to withdraw from IPL,” the Sahara Group said in a detailed statement. “In 2010, Sahara had bid 1700 crore for IPL franchise on the basis of revenue calculation on 94 matches.
It was tricky on part of BCCI to put the number in media as 94 matches for getting bigger amount. But we got 64 matches only,” it added. Sahara claimed that the BCCI turned a deaf ear to its pleadings for arbitration and reducing the franchise fee.
“We and Kochi Team immediately protested and requested BCCI to reduce the bid price proportionately for viable IPL proposition. Nothing was heard. We waited with confidence that such a sports body should have sportsmanship spirit,” it said.
“We continuously requested BCCI for Arbitration from June 2011. But BCCI is only concerned about money and not about the genuine interests of the franchisee. Thus, (when) we could not penetrate BCCI’s deaf ears, we announced our withdrawal in February 2012,” it added. Sahara Group said it was tempted to withdraw from the Indian cricket team’s sponsorship also but refrained from doing so in the interest of the players.
China`s Li seeks stronger economic ties with India
China`s premier has told Indian business leaders that the two Asian giants need to establish stronger economic ties.
Li Keqiang said Tuesday that China and India are both enormous markets with major potential for growth.
He said the two nations` strengths complement each other and that strengthening economic cooperation will lead to growth in both countries.
Li was speaking to an Indian business group in New Delhi. He was to address Indian CEOs in Mumbai later in the day.
The Chinese premier met with his Indian counterpart Monday. The two played down a recent border dispute and stressed cooperation.
Sibal gets charge of law ministry, CP Joshi gets railways
A mini Cabinet reshuffle is in the offing , according to sources, after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sacked Pawan Kumar Bansal as the railway minister and Ashwani Kumar as the law minister. Telecom minister has once again got the railways ministry.
A meeting of senior Congress leaders has been called by Congress President Sonia Gandhi to discuss the reshuffle. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is unlikely to be part of the meeting. Congress leader Ahmed Patel is expected the brief the Prime Minister later. It is likely that the reshuffle may happen next week.
Speculation is now rife over other government officials facing the axe. The fate of the Coal Ministry and PMO officials and A-G Ghoolam Vahanvati who attended the meeting with former law minister Ashwani Kumar, where changes were made to the CBI status report on coal allocations, also hangs in the balance.
Meanwhile, the Congress party has given full credit to party President Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi for taking action against the tainted ministers. “Congress President and Rahul Gandhi never tolerate corruption and that is why they took the resignation of the two ministers,” Congress spokesperson Bhata Charan Das said.
The exit of the two ministers came only after Congress president Sonia Gandhi met the Prime Minister and asked for their removal.
K’taka: Siddaramaiah elected Congress leader, set to be CMK’taka: Siddaramaiah elected Congress leader, set to be CM
Prominent backward caste leader K Siddaramaiah is set to be the next Chief Minister of Karnataka after he was elected as the Congress legislative party leader by party MLAs on Friday. Siddaramaiah, along with the new cabinet ministers of Karnataka, will be sworn in on Monday morning.
Congress leader Roshan Baig said it was a unanimous decision. Siddaramaiah was always the frontrunner for the post, but there were other claimants as well such as Labour Minister Mallikarjun Kharge.
Siddaramaiah joined the Congress in 2006. He was earlier with the Janata Dal
Ashwani to get new portfolio, Bansal may resign: Sources
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is still not keen on law minister Ashwani Kumar’s exit, sources said on Thursday. The sources said that the PM’s main worry was that he would be in the line of fire if Ashwani resigned.
At the Cabinet meet at the PM’s residence, the solution offered was changing the portfolio of Ashwani Kumar.
Meanwhile, sources added that Railways minister Pawan Kumar Bansal is unlikely to stay on. The minister had skipped the Cabinet meet. Sources said that his departure is only a “matter of time”.
Even though the clamour to sack Ashwani had been growing ever since the CBI admission before the Supreme Court that the law minister was privy to the coal scam report and even got a few changes made in it, the government had been of the view that no decision should be taken on him under pressure from the opposition parties.
As Parliament was adjourned sine die on Wednesday after Karnataka Assembly results went in favour of the Congress , a decision on the two ministers was imminent.
Even though both Ashwani and Bansal are considered close to Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi had been very firm that the image of the Congress, already on the backfoot on corruption, must not be allowed to take any more beating and any individuals whose actions were detrimental to the fight against corruption should be asked to go.
Earlier on Thursday, Ashwani and Attorney General GE Vahanvati had gone to meet Manmohan Singh, just a day after the Supreme Court came down heavily on the government and the CBI for sharing the coal scam probe report. While Vahanvati was able to meet Manmohan, Ashwani had no such luck as the Prime Minister had left for the Rastrapati Bhawan to meet President Pranab Mukherjee.
Vahanvati, Ashwani Kumar and the two officials of the PMO and the coal ministry have been accused by the CBI in its affidavit of suggesting changes to its report on Coalgate .
Karnataka win a rare boost for battered Congress
The Congress was set for a resounding election victory in Karnataka on Wednesday, early results showed, a rare win the party hopes will put the wind in its sails ahead of general elections.
Election commission results showed the centre-left Congress leading in 113 of 223 seats after Sunday’s vote, ousting the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after five years of rule marred by scandal.
Final results were due later on Wednesday.
The win is a bright spot for Congress, which itself is on the back foot at the national level over a series of scandals.
In one of the biggest cases, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) are investigating how the government awarded coal field concessions to private and state companies. Opposition parties say the process was corrupt.
“So many scams, so many scandals, this will be a bit of a booster dose,” said Vinod Sharma, a Congress party expert and a political editor at the Hindustan Times newspaper.
Congress is expected to do less well in at least four other state elections scheduled for this year. General elections are due to be held by May 2014.
Uproar at the coal scandal and another involving a relative of the railway minister obstructed parliament for two weeks, and on Wednesday the speaker cut the current parliament session short by three days.
The mayhem in Lok Sabha meant the Congress was unable to pass its signature food security bill, which is seen as crucial to the party’s hopes of re-election.
The election in Karnataka was widely seen as a barometer for voter anger at crony capitalism that has plagued India’s economic boom in the past decade.
Karnataka poll results Today, Cong likely to return ??
The results for the Karnataka Assembly elections, which recorded the second highest voter turnout in 35 years with a polling percentage of 71.29 in the May 5 voting, will be known on Wednesday.
A recharged Congress, which is challenging the corruption-tainted BJP, sees the highly impressive polling percentage as clear sign of winds of change that would bring the party back to power after an eight-year long hiatus. However, the ruling BJP has a different take. It feels the increase in turnout was because more BJP supporters came out to vote.
While the finals results will be known only a few hours after the counting begins, trends indicate that the Congress is likely to make a comeback even though its victory march has hit a few roadblocks.
A pre-poll survey conducted in April by Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in 294 locations of 75 constituencies spread across Karnataka interviewed a total of 4,198 people. The results revealed that Congress is all set to decimate the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and storm the Vidhana Soudha with a clear majority. The pre-poll findings were aired on April 25, 10 days before the state voted.
In those 10 days there have been some changes on the ground which now reveal that even though the Congress is still way ahead of its rivals, according to the revised estimates the party’s seat tally is likely to come down to 100-116 even as the BJP and former prime minister HD Devegowda’s Janata Dal Secular are in a neck and neck battle for the second spot with both likely to get 43-53 seats. The revised estimates show that others will bag 16-24 seats.
Pak prisoner attacked in Jammu jail, condition serious
A Pakistani prisoner Sanaullah serving a life term was attacked inside the high-security Kot Balwal jail here by a fellow inmate this morning and his condition is stated to be serious, official sources said.
It was not immediately known whether the attack on the 52-year-old convict with a sharp weapon was a backlash against the death of Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh in a hospital in Pakistan yesterday after being comatose for nearly a week following a brutal assault by fellow inmates in a high- security Lahore jail, officials said.
Official sources said the Kot Balwal jail superintendent Rajni Sehgal has been suspended by the Jammu and Kashmir government which also ordered a probe.
The sources said Sanaullah, a resident of Pakistan, was admitted in Government Medical College hospital in an unconscious condition with serious injuries on his head after being hit by a fellow inmate in the morning. A case of assault was registered against Vinod Kumar, an ex-serviceman who is also serving a life term in the jail in the outskirts of Jammu. Kumar hails from Uttrakhand. The sources said the health condition of Sanaullah was stated to be very critical as he was hit with a very sharp weapon.
He may be shifted to Chandigarh’s PGI for treatment as his Glasgow Coma Scale(GCS) was pretty low. GCS is a scale for measuring level of consciousness, especially after a head injury, in which scoring is determined by three factors: amount of eye opening, verbal responsiveness, and motor responsiveness. Sanaullah was arrested on April 1999 in connection with five cases related to terror activities.
The attack occurred ahead of Sarabjit’s funeral at his native village in Punjab. Following the death of 49-year-old Sarabjit in Pakistan, Union Home Ministry had issued advisories to all states for maintaining high vigil in jails and ensure there was no attack on any Pakistani prisoner lodged there. Excluding fishermen, there are about 220 Pakistani prisoners in Indian jails. A similar number of Indians are lodged in Pakistani jails.
Official sources said the Kot Balwal jail superintendent Rajni Sehgal has been suspended by the Jammu and Kashmir government which also ordered a probe.
Lok Sabha fails to pass Food Security Bill
The government which introduced amendments to the landmark Food Security Bill in the Lok Sabha today could not get it passed as opposition stalled proceedings in the House over killing of Sarabjit Singh in Pakistan and other issues.
Food Minister K V Thomas moved amendments to the National Food Security Bill, which was originally introduced in Parliament in December 2011, but no discussion on it could take place as the Opposition-led by BJP persisted with protest over Sarabjit Singh’s death.
The cause was also not helped as other members raised issued like Chinese incursion and coalgate scam, forcing adjournment of the House for the day without passage of the measure.
“We are confident of the passage of Food Bill in Parliament,” Food Minister K V Thomas said. The proposed Food Bill, the UPA government’s ambitious social welfare programme, aims to provide legal right over subsidised foodgrains to 67 per cent of the population. Over 55 amendments have been proposed in the bill.
Major changes include doing away with priority and general classifications of beneficiaries and providing uniform allocation of 5 kg foodgrains (per person) at fixed rate of of Rs 3 (rice), Rs 2 (wheat) and Rs 1 (coarse grains) per kg to 67 per cent of the country’s population.
Protection to 2.43 crore poorest of poor families under the Antodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) to supply of 35 kg foodgrains per month per family would continue.
That apart, nutritional support to pregnant women without limitation are among other changes proposed in the Bill. At the proposed coverage of entitlement, total estimated annual foodgrains requirement is 61.23 million tonnes and is likely to cost the exchequer Rs 1,24,724 crore.
FM cuts tax on interest in govt, corp debt for foreigners
The government will cut the tax on interest payments to foreigners on government and corporate debt to 5 percent from up to 20 percent for a two-year period, in a bid to draw further inflows to bridge its current account deficit and polish its reformist credentials.
The move meets a long-term demand of foreigners and makes Indian debt more attractive. Many other Asian countries such as Singapore do not tax such interest income.
Finance Minister P. Chidambaram also clarified that a tax residency certificate issued by a foreign government would be an accepted proof of residency for tax purposes.
The government, in its budget proposals, had created confusion with a proposal stating that a tax residency certificate “shall be necessary but not a sufficient condition” to take advantage of double taxation avoidance agreements.
Chidambaram, moving amendments to his budget proposals on Tuesday, said that the February budget proposal to lower withholding tax on infrastructure bonds would now be extended to government debt and infrastructure bonds.
The cut will be effective from June 1, 2013 to May 31, 2015, he said.
The Finance Bill was passed by the lower house of the parliament amid an opposition boycott.
The 10-year benchmark government bond yield fell as much as 4 basis points to 7.73 percent while the Indian rupee breached 54 level to the dollar after the relaxation was announced.
The cut in the withholding tax follows recent easing in rules for investment in government and corporate bonds.
Chidambaram, who has been pushing reforms to draw inflows, recently met investors in roadshows in United States and Canada.