Will Modi Probe Loss-Making Companies Which Donated Electoral Bonds to BJP? India Refuses to Back Israel Arms Embargo
Congress manifesto is out and the party is promising to roll back the Modi government's restrictions on the media, Babri demolition references deleted, primacy to Ram Janmabhoomi in revised NCERT book
A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK
Snapshot of the day
April 5, 2024
Siddharth Varadarajan
India has chosen to abstain in a vote at the UN Human Rights Council today calling for an arms embargo on Israel. The resolution passed with 28 in favour and six opposed and 13 abstentions. A company in India run by the Adani group was reported in early February 2024 to have exported drones to the Israeli Defence Forces.
The Congress has issued its election manifesto. The document is titled ‘Nya Patra’ and features photographs of party president Mallikarjun Kharge and first family rep Rahul Gandhi. Chapter one is Equity.
Among its more interesting proposals: MSP for farmers as per the Swaminathan commission, Rs 1 lakh per year to every poor family with the money going directly into the account of the oldest woman in the family, statehood for Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, a caste census, an end to the 50% cap on reservations, a law to recognise non-heterosexual civil unions, a law to ensure “bail is rule jail is exception” in all criminal cases, abolition of the Agnipath scheme, and “an end to the weaponisation of laws, arbitrary searches, seizures and attachments, arbitrary and indiscriminate arrests, third-degree methods, prolonged custody, custodial deaths, and bulldozer justice”. Notable omissions: there is no mention of what happens to the Citizenship (Amendment)n Act, the old pension scheme.
There is a whole section of promises on the media:
“Congress will defend independent journalism by enacting laws to protect journalists from coercive action by the State. This includes restricting the powers of the government for surveillance of journalists, seizure of their devices and exposure of their source
“Congress will pass a law to curb monopolies in the media, cross-ownership of different segments of the media, and control of the media by business organisations...
“All media houses, irrespective of the size, will be required to disclose their ownership structures (direct and indirect), cross holdings, revenue streams, etc. through their websites.
“Congress will pass a law to preserve the freedom of the Internet and to prevent arbitrary and frequent shutdowns of the Internet.
“Many new laws (e.g. the Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, 2023; Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023; Press and Registration of Periodicals Act, 2023, etc.) give unbridled powers of censorship to the government. The first named Bill will be withdrawn. The restrictive provisions of the two Acts will be amended or deleted to eliminate backdoor censorship.”
CPI(M)’s manifesto was out yesterday — it too proposes inclusiveness for LGBTQ+ unions, as inclusion too.
After almost six years of prolonged incarceration despite having several ailments, the Supreme Court has finally granted bail to scholar and activist Shoma Sen in connection with the Bhima Koregaon violence case. “Section 43(D)(5) restriction should not apply to the petitioner. We have noted that the Additional Solicitor General (who appeared for NIA) stated custody is no longer needed. Once we hold that 43(d)(5) of the 1967 act does not apply.... We have seen she is of advanced age and the effect of delaying trial at this stage.. in addition to her medical conditions. She should not be denied the privilege of being released on bail,” the Court said in its order headed by a bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Augustine George Masih.
All sorts of facts are emerging from the closet on electoral bonds. It appears now that Uday Kotak - linked Linked NBFC donated Rs 1.3 bn in Electoral Bonds – more than twice of the disclosure made by SBI. “Infina Capital Private Ltd purchased Rs 1.06 billion of bonds in FY2019 and FY2020 – years that were critical for Uday Kotak.” Hemendra Hazari writes on the need for further investigations and scrutiny. “The huge difference in the amounts as disclosed to the ECI and the amount revealed in the NBFC’s own accounts underlines the need for analysts studying the electoral bonds data to also use company data. They must reconcile the ECI disclosures with the companies’ own financial accounts to determine the actual amount of electoral bonds purchased by the companies.” If there ever was a ‘money trail’, it is staring ED, IT and other central agencies in the face through crystal clear excel sheets. But the phrase money trail is only used for Opposition leaders.
But alas, the Prime Minister says that all the things the country has endured in the last ten years is just an “appetiser” for the dark and grotesque times ahead.
Meanwhile, the erstwhile state of Jammu & Kashmir, authorities have reportedly put Mirwaiz Umar Farooq under house arrest on Friday while the congregational Jumat-ul-Vida prayers, which are held on the last Friday of the ongoing month of Ramzan, were disallowed at Jamia Masjid in Srinagar city of Jammu and Kashmir. Witnesses said that the mosque was closed for worshippers while authorities prevented the mosque’s managing body from making preparations for Jumat-ul-Vida prayers in the morning. Security personnel also stopped media persons from entering Mirwaiz’s residence in Nigeen locality of Srinagar after he called a press conference on Friday morning purportedly to talk about the new curbs imposed on him.
The Supreme Court has stayed an Allahabad High Court judgement of March 22, declaring the Uttar Pradesh Board of Madarsa Education Act, 2004 unconstitutional and a violation of secularism. The Bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud said the High Court direction to accommodate Madrasa students in regular schools was “unwarranted”. It added, “the finding of the High Court that the very establishment of the board would amount to breach of the principles of secularism appears to conflate the concept of madrassa education with the regulatory powers which have been entrusted to the board.” The SC said that “in striking down the provisions of the Act, the High Court prima facie has misconstrued the provisions of the Act.” It added that “the Act does not per se provide for religious instruction in an educational institution maintained out of state funds…” However, it is worth mentioning that there is the Bharatiya Shiksha Board set up by Patanjali and the Maharshi Sandipani Rashtriya Veda Sanskrit Shiksha Board. But they remain constitutional in the country.
At least 36% of students who have graduated this year from the premier Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, are yet to secure a campus placement, data on IIT placements shared by the Global IIT Alumni Support Group has revealed. As per the Group’s data, of the 2,209 registered students in the institute in 2023, 1,485 were given placement. It means 32.8 % remained without any placement in the last session as well. A Hindustan Times report quoting from the data on IIT-B said it raises concerns over the relatively low number of students from a premier institute of the country getting employment via campus recruitments. Earlier this week, data revealed by Singh’s Group also pointed out a dip in campus recruitments in 2024 at the IIT-Delhi and IIT-Kanpur compared to 2023.
The price of a home-cooked vegetarian thali went up by 7% year-on-year in March 2024. While the price in March this year was Rs 27.3, it was Rs 25.5 in the same month last year, a report from CRISIL rating agency said. In the same period, the agency found that the price of a home-cooked non-vegetarian thali went down by 7%. The veg thali price went up because prices of onion, tomato and potato rose 40%, 36%, and 22% year-on-year.
Yesterday, the rupee hit a record intraday low of 83.4525 to the dollar. This took place while crude oil prices “extended their rise on heightened geopolitical tensions and potential supply risks”, Reuters reported. It later recovered 14 paise to close at 83.39. Meanwhile, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to keep the repo rate unchanged at 6.5% and maintain the policy stance of ‘withdrawal of accommodation’ in the monetary policy.
In most countries, college-educated voters have turned against right-wing populists. But not in India, where things seem to be different. It is nothing but the Modi paradox, writes Arjun Ramani in The Economist’s Essential India newsletter. The piece gives three broad explanations and helps understand the class/caste politics at play, economic growth vis a vis elite admiration for strong manship.
New model rules the Union government has adopted will require parents to record their individual religions while registering their children’s birth, Vijaita Singh reports in The Hindu. State governments will have to adopt and notify the rules before they are implemented.
The IPL has become a model for leagues in other sports, some of which, notably involving kabaddi, have even been successful. But why do some of these leagues do well but others do not? The Economist has a piece.
“The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has reported that nearly 79,000 refugees from Myanmar are living in India including around 22,000 Rohingya registered with the UN agency. Most Rohingya in India have been issued UNHCR cards recognising them as a persecuted community”. However, “anti-Rohingya sentiment has been surging in Hindu-majority India because the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the country’s right-wing ruling party, regards them as a security risk. India is now planning to end its visa-free border policy with Myanmar and deport the Rohingya back to their home country”, reports The South China Morning Post on India’s newly enacted law which is “extremely dangerous” with “Rohingya are at risk of becoming ‘victims of genocide’”.
Tesla’s Berlin factory has started producing right-hand drive cars for export to India, Reuters reports citing sources. Last month, the government announced a new policy under which electric carmakers can import up to 8,000 vehicles for a bumper tax discount in exchange for meeting investment and manufacturing criteria, a move that was seen as a win for Tesla, which is set to scout locations for a factory later this month. The company’s plant in Shanghai has traditionally handled the production of right-hand drive vehicles.
Kerala Chief Minister and Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Pinarayi Vijayan has said that the state-run broadcaster Doordarshan National should withdraw its decision to air the film The Kerala Story, on grounds that the broadcast could “exacerbate communal tensions” ahead of the national elections. The film depicts how women from Kerala were converted to Islam and recruited by the Islamic State terrorist group. The filmmakers initially claimed that 32,000 women from Kerala had joined the Islamic State, but when asked for evidence, they altered the trailer to state that the movie was a “compilation of the true stories of three young girls”. Doordarshan had announced that the movie would be broadcasted today.
T Ramakrishnan explains who the players are in Tamil Nadu’s three-way election battle and what issues the two main parties in the state, the DMK and the AIADMK, have chosen to articulate.
When asked about the rising price of Russian ‘Ural’ oil and a crunch in Russian discounts to Indian refiners, a US treasury department official said that the idea behind sanctions on Russia “is to limit revenue to Russia but not dictate that no trade can be done in Russian oil”, Suhasini Haidar reports. To allegations that India was ‘laundering’ Russian oil to European markets, the official said that “once Russian oil is refined, from a technical perspective, it is no longer Russian oil”.
With this year expected to be hotter than ever with more heat waves days, especially in Gujarat, the most vulnerable women in Ahmedabad have been offered Heat Insurance by VimoSEWA, wherein it would be offering compensation for lost work hours and wages during extreme heat. In Ahmedabad Mirror, Brendan Dabhi has more details.
Babri demolition references deleted, primacy to Ram Janmabhoomi in revised NCERT book
The National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT)’s class XII political science text book has been revised to “give primacy to the Ram Janmabhoomi movement” while dropping references to the Babri Masjid, the politics of Hindutva, the 2002 Gujarat riots, and minorities, reports Ritika Chopra. The NCERT has made the changes in a section on the Ayodhya dispute as a part of the revision of school textbooks for the academic year 2024-25. As per the report, the original chapter listed down the sequence of events from the opening of the locks in 1986 to the “mobilisation on both sides” and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Further, there was also a mention of the President’s rule in BJP-ruled states, communal violence and the “serious debate over secularism.”
Now, the revised book includes this section:
“… the centuries old legal and political dispute over the Ram Janmabhoomi Temple in Ayodhya started influencing the politics of India which gave birth to various political changes. The Ram Janmabhoomi Temple Movement, becoming the central issue, transformed the direction of the discourse on secularism and democracy. These changes culminated in the construction of the Ram Temple at Ayodhya following the decision of the constitutional bench of the Supreme Court (which was announced on November 9, 2019).”“Content is updated as per latest developments in politics. Text on Ayodhya issue has been thoroughly revised because of the latest changes brought by the Supreme Court’s Constitutional bench verdict and its widespread welcoming reception,” the NCERT mentioned on its website.
Rajeev Chandrashekhar accused of concealing facts in affidavit
A complaint lodged against the minister of state for IT and Electronics, Rajeev Chandrashekar, was viral all day today. He is contesting from Thiruvananthapuram. His assets have shrunk, as per the affidavit. The complainant, lawyer Avani Bansal says, “He has filed income tax returns of Rs. 680 in 2021-22. His movable assets are approximately Rs 9 crores 25 lakhs (approx) and immovable assets are 14 crores 40 lakhs (approx), misrepresenting grossly.He has only one bike - 1942 Model Red Indian Scout/Regn. No. XXXXXXX purchased in 1994 of Rs 10000.” But, “He has not disclosed his major holding company - Jupiter Capital and has only declared subsidiary companies to hide the complex web of companies used to hide his true assets”, says Bansal.
Texan temple branding?
A Hindu temple in Texas in the United States has been sued by an Indian-origin man for branding his 11-year-old child. Vijay Cheruvu, a resident of Fort Bend County, said his son was branded with a hot iron rod during a religious ceremony at the Sri Ashtalakshmi Hindu temple in Sugar Land, Texas in August last year, reports PTI.
The Long Cable
Will Modi Probe Loss-Making Companies Which Donated Electoral Bonds to BJP?
MK Venu
By now we know Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not like to respond to inconvenient truths which can dent his image. He took one and a half months to offer his first response to the Supreme Court judgement declaring the electoral bonds scheme illegal and unconstitutional.
As expected, he gave an astounding spin of his own by suggesting at a public meeting that “now at least everyone knows who is paying money and who is receiving it” via electoral bonds. Earlier no one knew who funded whom, Modi asserted.
One wonders what CJI D.Y. Chandrachud might have thought of the sheer mendacity of Modi’s claim that his government made it possible for the public to know who is paying money to which party.
It doesn’t even bother Modi that his government officially stated in the Supreme Court that citizens don’t have a right to know who is funding which political party in the electoral bonds scheme.
Be that as it may, even this bogus assertion by Modi was demolished within 48 hours when The Hindu published an investigation revealing that 33 loss-making front companies (all suspected shell companies) bought Rs.576 crore worth of electoral bonds of which 75% went to the BJP.
After accessing the list of the donor companies from the Election Commission website, The Hindu tracked the nature of these companies through CMIE’s company database and found that they had made aggregate losses of nearly Rs.1 lakh crore in seven years from 2016-17 to 2022-23. Perennially loss-making shell companies have only one purpose – to launder funds for hidden entities.
How did such loss-making companies come to buy electoral bonds? Who are the directors of these companies? Who are the real people behind these shell companies?
All these questions need urgent answers. The fact that the Enforcement Directorate or Central Bureau of Investigation have shown no interest in probing such shell companies is a story in itself.
The CJI during the hearing of the electoral bonds case had spent considerable time discussing how the scheme was so opaque that it might allow shell companies with losses and no real activity to be used as vehicles for laundering money. The CJI even suggested that there should be amendments to prevent this. At one point, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta also agreed that only profit-making companies should be allowed to buy electoral bonds.
So who are the puppeteers controlling these loss-making shell companies? Will the Indian voter ever come to know these facts?
The latest revelations thoroughly expose Modi’s bogus claim that everyone now knows who is paying money and who is receiving it. If his government is serious about finding out the real donors behind the loss-making shell companies, all it needs to do is ask the ED or CBI to question the directors of these companies. The truth will be out in a jiffy. Does Modi have the courage to do something as simple as this?
It also appears many shell companies were created after the electoral bonds scheme was announced. The scheme itself specified that only existing companies, with a record of 3 years of existence, could participate in bond purchases. This clause also appears to have been flagrantly violated. This needs a separate inquiry.
There are many aspects that need to be probed. The ball is in the court of the Prime Minister, whose whose slogan, “Na Khaoonga, Na Khaane Doonga” lies in tatters.
Reportedly
Modi going on about “ghar mein ghus kar maarenge” bodes poorly for any management that this government wishes to do regarding accusations of ‘transnational repression’ in the US and Canada, with the Nijjar case especially on the boil and the US appearing unrelenting. The Telegraph has reported how, in order to enhance machismo associated with his government and bluster about attacks across the border (the so-called ‘surgical strike of 2016 and then Balakot in 2019) Modi may have gone too far. In Bihar’s Jamui, Modi spoke contemptuously about neighbours, without taking names, of course. “Bharat was considered a weak and poor country during Congress rule. Terrorists from small countries that today crave aata (wheat flour) used to return after attacking us. The Congress then used to approach other countries with complaints,” Modi said. “This Bharat is the same Bharat of the great Pataliputra, Magadh and Chandragupta Maurya. Aaj ka Bharat ghar me ghus kar maarta hai (Today’s Bharat thrashes them inside their homes).” Modi has yet to name ‘China’.
Deep dive
Live-in relationships are thriving across India’s small towns. And so are the challenges, especially for interfaith couples — from Varanasi to Vadodara, Aligar to Alwar. Deep-dive into this report from Sabah Gurmat on how small-town India navigates love, landlords and love laws.
Prime number: 3.26%
India has emerged as the country with the highest percentage of doping offenders, according to the 2022 testing figures released by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). The report revealed that out of 4,064 samples collected from Indian athletes (including urine, blood, and athlete biological passports), 127 individuals tested positive for banned substances, constituting 3.26 % of the sample size. The WADA report also found a 6.4 % increase in the total number of samples analysed and reported in its Anti-Doping Administration and Management System (ADAMS) in 2022, compared to the previous year. The percentage of AAF also increased to 0.77 % in 2022, from 0.65 % in 2021.
Opeds you don’t want to miss
“The citizen is not accustomed to … the single-minded hounding of Opposition parties and their leaders by unleashing the ED and the I-T authorities relentlessly on their opponents to ensure an Opposition-mukt Bharat,” writes Julio Ribeiro, adding, “Kejriwal’s arrest has shaken the conscience of the nation’s right-thinking citizens.”
Shailaja Bajpai points to the disparity between the newspapers’ and TV media’s coverage of the Katchatheevu issue, as well as to how certain newspaper explainers “make all the difference” in scrutinising the Modi regime’s claims.
Sankarshan Thakur remembers everything between demonetisation and the throttling of media freedoms that India wasn’t promised but got anyway, as well as one dubious promise we are being made and where we could try and find it.
Cults built around individual players that are powered by social media feedback loops are an important reason behind Hardik Pandya’s ill-treatment as of late, Shahid Judge says.
What does the rise of YouTubers as an alternative to mainstream media mean for the BJP? Shoaib Daniyal explores this question, adding to warn that the government is aware of this gap and is moving to close it. “[Dhruv] Rathee is an outcome of a regime where government control over social media was looser than over mainstream media”.
Listen up
Ex-Mumbai Cricket Association secretary Ratnakar Shetty on the expertise factor which boosts administration of the cricket in Mumbai. Tune into the latest episode of Midday’s Mumbai Cricket Podcast with Clayton Murzello here.
Watch out
Jahnavi Sen is joined by Malayala Manorama bureau chief Jomy Thomas and The Wire’s founding editor MK Venu to discuss this week’s major political developments.
Over and out
Quite a question to pore over in solitude. “Of the thirty films that they acted in together, legendary Bengali cinema superstars, Suchitra Sen and Uttam Kumar appeared as a married pair in just six films. These films are Agnipariksha (1954), Chandranath (1957), Harano Sur (1957), Indrani (1958), Grihodaho (1967), and Nabaraag (1971).” So why do narratives of “married love” form a negligible part of their couple corpus? A new book called Modernities and the Popular Melodrama: The Suchitra-Uttam Yug in Bengali Cinema, Smita Banerjee has the answer. Read an excerpt here.
Oscar-nominated actor Dev Patel has exited the James Bond rumour mill by showing exactly the sort of action star he wants to be. Based in India, his character in Monkey Man, “becomes a symbol of freedom, seeking justice for those who have been oppressed and displaced in the name of power, money and religion”. But how did “his directorial debut beset by challenges, to the finish line”? Bloomberg has a piece. “We’re talking about religion and how religion can weaponize a large mass of people."
That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.