'What happens when you ask leaders in the Narendra Modi government why they resent criticism? You get publicly hauled over the coals – and told you “hurt national interest” – by a whole army of Bharatiya Janata Party ministers and senior leaders. On Saturday, Bajaj Group chairman Rahul Bajaj asked a group of ministers – including Amit Shah, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal – some tough questions on lynching, Pragya Thakur and the government’s ability to accept criticism...
'Biocon Chairperson and Managing Director Kiran Mazumdar Shaw on Sunday said the government did not want to hear any criticism on the economy while expressing hope that it reaches out to India Inc. to work out solutions to revive growth. Shaw’s remarks came a day after veteran industrialist Rahul Bajaj said the people were afraid to criticise the government...'
'Before unveiling the electoral bonds scheme – which renders political funding more opaque and allows parties to receive unlimited amounts of money without having to disclose where it came from – the Narendra Modi government ignored the Reserve Bank of India’s recommendation not to go ahead with it, HuffPost India has reported. Four days before Arun Jaitley was to announce the scheme in his Budget speech of 2017, a tax official going through the documents realised that the change would require amendments to the Reserve Bank of India Act, Nithin Sethi reports.
'The Tatas-controlled Progressive Electoral Trust contributed ₹356 crore to the BJP in the financial year leading up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, making it the top donor to the party in 2018-19 among those listed as having contributed more than ₹20,000 that the BJP had submitted to the Election Commission of India... This disclosure does not include the funding received through electoral bonds. According to the election watchdog, Association for Democratic Reforms, electoral bonds worth ₹6,128 crore have been sold since the scheme was introduced in 2018 till October this year.
'On November 1, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), the investigative arm of India’s customs authorities, filed an affidavit before the Delhi High Court clarifying the status of its investigations into alleged over-invoicing of imports by a number of companies. The imports – which included a range of capital goods and raw materials like coal that were brought into the country by companies operating in core infrastructure sectors, such as power generation and transmission, ports and fertilisers – have been under DRI’s scanner since the last six years.
'The Bharatiya Janata Party-led Centre, which kickstarted a privatisation drive, is all set to hand over six more airports to the private players. Six airports that have been lined up for privatisation in this phase are Bhubaneswar, Varanasi, Indore, Trichy, Amritsar and Raipur, says a report. According to the report in the National Herald, all these airports are likely to be awarded to the Adani Group.
'In a bid to privatise state-owned airports and allegedly to benefit a well-known corporate house, the Central government has planned to privatise six more airports, NH has learnt. All six airports that have been listed for the second round of the privatisation – Bhubaneswar, Varanasi, Indore, Trichy, Amritsar and Raipur – will, in all probability, be awarded to the Adani group. The government has brushed aside the suggestions given by the ministry of finance to allegedly benefit Adani, said sources...'
'The BJP governments in both the states have followed a similar pattern—sideline laws and policy, and to open up buffer zones and allow construction activity... While climate strikes, green parties and green manifestos are gripping the world, environmental concerns are still not an issue in the Indian elections. Two Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states – Haryana and Maharashtra go to polls on October 21. The battle for the 90-member Haryana Assembly and the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly is being fought amid serious environmental degradation in both the states.
'The release of richest people’s lists is usually a signal for much back-slapping and triumphalism in the corporate world and its hangers on in the media. It is seen as some kind of symptom that India is doing well, people are getting wealthier, achhe din (good days) are here, although such lists are only for a 100 people (as in the case of the Forbes India list) or perhaps more (as in IIFL Hurun list), in a country of 1.3 billion people.
'The Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change has given in-principle approval for relaxing air pollution standards for coal-fired thermal power plants. The decision was taken on May 17, 2019 in a meeting chaired by the ministry’s joint secretary, Ritesh Kumar Singh... It is noteworthy that before the meeting, the CPCB had sent a monitoring report on seven units of four thermal power plants to the Ministry of Environment on May 2, 2019. The pollution body found that emissions at just two units out of the seven exceeded the 300 mg/Nm³ emission limit.
