SC QUASHES PREMATURE RELEASE OF 11 BILKIS BANO CASE CONVICTS BY GUJARAT

The Supreme Court on Monday quashed the premature release of 11 men convicted of raping Bilkis Bano and killing seven of her family members during the 2002 post-Godhra riots, saying the Gujarat Government didn’t have the jurisdiction to deal with their remission pleas.

A Bench of Justice BV Nagarathna and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan held that “the Gujarat Government had no jurisdiction to entertain the applications for remission or pass the orders of remission on August 10, 2022, in favour of respondent No. 3 to 13 (the convicts) herein as it was not the appropriate government within the meaning of sub-section (7) of Section 432 of the CrPC”.

It said the “appropriate government” to consider their remission pleas was the Government of Maharashtra where the trial took place. “The Government of Gujarat had usurped the powers of the State of Maharashtra, which only could have considered the applications seeking remission. Hence, the doctrine of usurpation of powers applies in the instant case,” it said.

The Bench directed the convicts to surrender before jail authorities concerned in two weeks. It slammed the Gujarat Government for being “complicit” and “acting in tandem” with one of the convicts and “usurpation” of powers not vested in it in granting remission to the convicts.

BILKIS BANO THANKS SC FOR GIVING HOPE OF JUSTICE FOR ALL

"I have wept tears of relief... This is what justice feels like. Thank Surpreme Court for giving me & every woman this vindication and hope of equal justice for all," said Bilkis Bano yesterday.

"‘Save the daughter’ became ‘Save the culprit’! SC decision is restoration of justice. It exposes misdeeds of the MHA and the Gujarat Government," said Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress chief

REMARKS ON PM MODI: MEA CALLS MALDIVES ENVOY, RAISES CONCERNS

The Ministry of External Affairs Monday called the High Commissioner of Maldives to India Ibrahim Shaheeb and conveyed its strong concerns over disparaging social media posts against Prime Minister Narendra Modi by three now-suspended ministers, as the backlash over the remarks continued for the second day.

In Male, the Maldivian government conveyed to the Indian High Commissioner, Munu Muhawar, that the remarks against Modi do not represent its views.

The Maldives government of President Mohamed Muizzu, whose party rode to power last year on an “India Out” poll campaign, suspended three ministers Sunday for making derogatory remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the people of India.

Without naming its ministers or Modi, the Maldives government in a statement Sunday said, “The Government of Maldives is aware of derogatory remarks on social media platforms against foreign leaders and high-ranking individuals. These opinions are personal and do not represent the views of the Government of Maldives.”

WE’RE LUCKY, INDIA IS A TRUSTED FRIEND: SHEIKH HASINA

Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina on Monday termed India a “trusted friend” of Bangladesh. “We are very lucky...India is our trusted friend. They supported us during our Liberation War in 1971 and also in 1975, when we lost our whole family and only we two (Hasina and her younger sister Rehana) survived... They gave us shelter. So, we have our best wishes to the people of India,” she said.

“We consider India as our next-door neighbour. We had many problems but we resolved it bilaterally. So, I really appreciate that we have a wonderful relationship with India,” she said while responding to a question.

Her ruling Awami League swept to a comfortable three-fourth majority in Parliament on the back of an election boycott by the main opposition alliance which contributed to a low 41% polling.

The Awami League won 222 out of 298 seats where polling took place followed by independent candidates as the next biggest bloc with 62 seats. India, China and Russia which have backed Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina with Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally calling her up to congratulate her on her victory for a fourth consecutive term.

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

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ISRAEL STARTS NEW PHASE OF WAR WITH ‘FEWER’ TROOPS AND STRIKES

The Israeli military has begun a new and less intense phase of its invasion of Gaza, its chief spokesman said Monday, after weeks of pressure from the US and other allies to scale back an offensive that has caused widespread devastation and civilian deaths.

The spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said the Israeli campaign had already started the transition to a campaign that would involve fewer ground troops and airstrikes. “The war shifted a stage,” Hagari told NYT. “But the transition will be with no ceremony. It’s not about dramatic announcements,” he added.

Hagari said Israel would continue to reduce the number of troops in Gaza, a process that began this month. Indicating that Israel has degraded Hamas’s military capabilities in northern Gaza, Hagari said that the military would now focus on the group’s southern and central strongholds, particularly around the cities of Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah. He said Israel was also aiming to allow more humanitarian aid, including tents to house displaced people, into Gaza.

His comments came hours before Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, was scheduled to arrive in Israel as part of a multistop tour of West Asia aimed at preventing the Gaza conflict from escalating into a broader regional war.

PAK SC SCRAPS LIFETIME DISQUALIFICATION OF LAWMAKERS

Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Monday declared the lifetime disqualification of lawmakers null and void, a ruling that paved the way for former three-time PM Nawaz Sharif to participate in the upcoming national elections slated to take place on February 8.

The SC declared that no person can be barred for his/ her lifetime from running in elections if they are disqualified under Article 62 (1)(f) of the constitution, under which in 2017 Sharif was disqualified for life from holding public office in the Panama Papers case.

While announcing the verdict, the chief justice noted that since the election schedule was issued, it was “necessary” to release the order at the earliest.

With his main rival, former PM Imran Khan, in jail and barred from contesting the polls for five years, Sharif’s party, PML-N, is considered a frontrunner to win the election.

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INDIAN NAVY STEPS UP ARABIAN SEA PATROL, ADDS 5 MORE WARSHIPS

Stepping up its fight against piracy in the Arabian Sea, the Indian Navy has doubled the deployment of warships on patrol duty to keep the economically vital sea trade safe from pirates and from attacks by Houthi rebels based out of Yemen.

All these ships are carrying helicopters. Besides having marine commandos on board, the warships are fortified with equipment to launch or thwart an attack.

The maritime surveillance planes, including the Boeing P8I and Predator drones, are on constant surveillance from air, scanning the area and flagging all suspicious vessels. The warships have been tasked to watch out for rogue ships sailing mid-sea which could be used by pirates to launch drone attacks. Pirates have been operating out of Somalia in Africa, but now attacks are taking place far from the coast, adding to the suspicion of the role of rogue ships.

The recent pirate attack on merchant vessel Lila Norfolk on January 4 was 850 km east of Africa’s Somalian coast. A bunch of pirates with small speedboats could not have carried this out, indicating that a rogue ship must have been used to launch the pirates.

INDIA ALLIANCE MAINTAINS SILENCE ON FAULT LINES WITHIN

As the new year dawned, some silences in the INDIA alliance made a statement and some statements and developments were met with silence.

The Congress and most of the INDIA bloc parties did not react to the AAP apprehensions that the ED could arrest Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in connection with the now-scrapped Delhi excise policy.

There was little ripple in the bloc on the repeated ED summons to Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren in a money laundering case and the surprise resignation of a JMM MLA that prompted the BJP to claim that Soren plans to resign and install his wife Kalpana Soren as his successor.

The JD(U)’s salvo at the Congress — its senior leader K C Tyagi has said the alliance is “running out of time and ideas”, that the grand old party has to show urgency to see a vibrant INDIA bloc, and that it should not have announced a yatra on its own — has been met with silence.

The JD(U) last week deftly let out that talks are on within the INDIA bloc on nominating Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as the convener of the alliance and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge as the chairman. The Congress rubbished the reports while sources in the party say it was neither interested in the chairman’s post nor was it staking claiming for it. The other parties were silent.

Even while acknowledging that they had received invitations for the Ram Temple inauguration on January 22, Kharge and the party’s Lok Sabha leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury were silent on whether they would attend or give it a miss. The party is divided on accepting or rejecting the invitation — a political minefield.

The Congress central leadership was also silent on Shiv Sena’s open claim for 23 seats in Maharashtra and the widening chasm between it and the TMC in West Bengal. The argument is that talks will take place behind closed doors and not through the media, perhaps the right approach at least on the vexed issue of seat sharing.

The Congress also ignored Arvind Kejriwal’s announcement that its jailed MLA Chaitar Vasava will be the party’s candidate from Bharuch in Gujarat for the Lok Sabha polls and the JD(U)’s declaration of its candidate for the Arunachal West Lok Sabha constituency.

BOYCOTT COULD HIT HARD AS OVER 200,000 INDIANS VISIT MALDIVES YEARLY

Over 2 lakh Indians visited Maldives annually in the last three years, the highest from any country post-COVID 19 pandemic, according to the official data amid calls from several quarters to boycott the island nation as a travel destination following a diplomatic row between the two nations.

According to the Maldives Tourism Ministry statistics, over 17 lakh tourists visited the island nation in 2023, out of which more than 2,09,198 visitors were Indians followed by Russians (2,09,146) and Chinese (1,87,118).

Many netizens on social media claimed that they have cancelled their scheduled trips to the Maldives because of the row with the hashtag "Boycott Maldives" trending.

At least one major online travel booking portal–EaseMyTrip–has suspended sale of flight tickets to the Maldives. There are close to 60 flights per week between India and Maldives, of which, Indian carriers operate around 50 flights. IndiGo, Air India, Vistara, and Air India Express currently operate flights between India and Maldives. So far, no Indian carrier has indicated changes to its Maldives schedule due to the controversy.

INCOME INEQUALITY DECLINES, SAYS SBI RESEARCH UNIT

Income inequality has declined in India with a higher tax base and a shift in taxpayers from lower income to higher income tax bracket, the Economic Research Department of the State Bank of India said in a report released Monday. Terming the claims of K-shaped recovery as “prejudiced” and “ill-concocted”, the report also cited the transition of small firms into larger firms and consumption trends such as the rising trend of ordering from food ordering platforms such as Zomato of being indicative of “vanishing inequality”.

About 36.3 per cent of taxpayers have moved from lower income to higher income tax bracket resulting in 21.3 per cent additional income, the report said adding that the top 2.5 per cent of taxpayers’ contribution in income declined from 2.81 per cent in FY14 to 2.28 per cent in FY21. The income-tax returns (ITRs) filed by individual taxpayers earning between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh, climbed by 295 per cent between the assessment years (AY) 2013–14 and AY 2021–22, showing a positive trend of migration to a higher range of gross total income, the report said.

“Growth is seen in all income classes but its skewedness has been decreasing with convergence of income towards the middle from both top as well as bottom,” the report said.

EX-ENVOY AJAY BISARIA’S BOOK: ISI TIPPED OFF INDIA IN 2019 ABOUT QAEDA PLOT

Pakistan’s spy agency ISI had tipped off India through the Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad about an al-Qaeda plot to carry out an attack in Kashmir in June 2019, which turned out to be genuine, former Indian envoy Ajay Bisaria has revealed in his latest book.

In his book, titled “Anger Management: The Troubled Diplomatic Relationship between India and Pakistan”, published by Aleph Book Company, Bisaria says that the Indian envoy was used as a channel since ISI was taking no chances and wanted no repeat of Pulwama, and it wanted to make it clear at a political level that it was not involved.

Another surmise was that “General (Qamar Javed) Bajwa, then army chief, through the ISI, was trying to improve the atmospherics in the relationship in the run-up to the Bishkek summit of 14 June, hoping that Pakistan’s sincerity about trying to better relations would register on the Indian side.

Bisaria served in Pakistan as India’s High Commissioner from 2017 to August 2019 – when he was expelled by the Pakistan government in response to the abrogation of Art 370. His book, which is part memoir and part history, and is a study of the diplomatic engagement between India and Pakistan, hit the bookstores on Monday.

MF ASSETS GO PAST RS 50 TRILLION

The mutual fund industry added a record Rs 10 trillion to its total assets under management (AUM) in 2023, taking the cumulative tally past the Rs 50 trillion mark for the first time, in December. This 20 per cent growth in AUM last year was fuelled by a robust rally in the equity markets and a record Rs 1.62 trillion net inflows into active equity schemes.

In another first, the AUM linked to systematic investment plans, too, hit Rs 10 trillion by the end of 2023.

The AUM of mutual funds — which took two years to climb from Rs 30 trillion to Rs 40 trillion — achieved the next Rs 10 trillion in a mere 13 months, according to data from the AMFI.

Despite the rapid growth in the MF industry, its AUM is still a fraction of bank deposits, which stood at Rs 198 trillion as on December 15. Mutual funds also lag direct equity investing. The number of MF investors at 42 million is nearly half the figure for direct equity investors at 85 million.

RICH INDIANS LAP UP $865 MILLION LUXURY HOMES IN GURUGRAM IN JUST 3 DAYS

DLF Ltd., India's biggest real estate developer sold all the luxury apartments on offer in a $865 million project near Delhi, even before starting construction.

DLF Ltd. sold 1,113 luxury residences in Gurugram in just three days, with a quarter bought by non-resident Indians. All four-bedroom and penthouse units were sold out across seven towers in the DLF Privana South project, the developer said in an exchange filing.

The apartment complex is spread over 116 acres.

Expensive apartments have been flying off the shelves in India as the well-off splurge on everything from luxury cars to pricey homes with rising income levels in one of the fastest growing major economies in the world. The seemingly insatiable demand for premium apartments has prompted builders to launch more such projects in key cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.

DLF managed to sell the apartments swiftly despite measures to discourage bulk bookings, including limiting allotments to one unit for each buyer and raising the booking amount to five times the industry standard.

GOLDEN GLOBES: ‘OPPENHEIMER’ LEADS WITH FIVE WINS

“Oppenheimer” reigned at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday just as it once loomed large at the summer box office. The sprawling examination of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the atomic bomb racked up five wins, the most of any movie, including the prize for best motion picture drama.

“Poor Things,” a feminist reimagining of the Frankenstein tale, was named best motion picture, musical or comedy, one of two victories for the post-modern film.

On the television front, “Succession,” a scabrous look at a Murdoch-esque mogul and his dysfunctional family, won a leading four prizes, including best drama series. The show ended its four-season run in May. “The Bear,” the story of a Chicago restaurant struggling to keep its doors open, earned three prizes, including best comedy series and best leading actor and actress in a musical or comedy for Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri.

“Oppenheimer’s” Christopher Nolan, who leveraged his success making blockbusters like “The Dark Knight” and “Inception” to get Universal to produce a $100 million drama about a physicist, won best director. Cillian Murphy, who played the brooding scientist at the center of the film, was named best actor in a drama. The movie also was honored for its atmospheric score.

Lily Gladstone received the award for best female actor in a drama for playing an Osage woman who is targeted for her oil wealth in “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. - John Adams

OFF TRACK

I was so glad that this was my last child support payment. Month after month, year after year, those payments, ever since my divorce!

So I called my daughter to come over to my house, and when she got there, I said to her, "Baby girl, I want you to take this last check over to your mother's house and tell her that this is the last check she's ever going to get from me, and I want you to come back and tell me the expression that's on her face."

So my daughter took the check over to my ex-wife.

As she came back to report to me, I said, "Now what did your mom have to say?"

"She told me to tell you that you ain't my daddy, and to watch the expression on your face.