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GST: Return iling dates deferred

NEARBY

Hotel room tarif threshold increased Rallies at College Square on Sundays only KOLKATA

Softening its stand over the ban on rallies and protest demonstrations at College Square in Central Kolkata, the Kolkata Police has decided to allow such gatherings on Sundays. NATION 쑺 PAGE 6 DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

Chennai couple attacked in Muzafarnagar MEERUT

Two unidentiied bike-borne men shot at a couple from Chennai in Muzafarnagar late on Saturday night. Aditya Kumar, and Vijaya Lakshmi were returning to Delhi after a vacation in Haridwar when they were attacked by the two miscreants on NH-58 in Muzafarnagar.

Special Correspondent

On Mamata’s request, Centre puts of talks on Gorkhaland

Monsoon to be delayed over Central India

Death of agitators, allegedly in police iring, intensiies protests in Darjeeling

The monsoon system, forecast to establish itself over Central India by June 15, will be delayed by a week. This is unlikely to affect the overall rainfall in June and is seen as a part of the monsoon’s natural variability. “There is moisture in the air and thunderstorm along with rain…but the monsoon has been delayed [over Central India] because of strong rain in the east,” D.S. Pai, Chief Forecaster, IMD, said. As of June 17, the country got 79.6 mm of rain, 9% more than the average 72.8 mm it receives in the first fortnight of June. Rain in Central India is 21% more than what is normal for this time. In its updated forecast on June 6, the IMD said rainfall was likely to be 96% of the historical average in northwest India, 100% of the LPA (the 50-year average of the monsoon rains) over central India, 99% of the low pressure area (LPA) over the south peninsula, with a model error of plus or minus 8%.

New Delhi

pro-Gorhaland rally. Those who participated in the procession held posters saying “We support Bimal Gurung come arrest us.” Rehmat Ali, a shopkeeper taking part in the protest said, “We want peace in Darjeeling. Deployment of security forces is not a solution.”

Special Correspondent

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council at its 17th meeting on Sunday decided to increase the room tariff threshold, above which the luxury rate of 28% will apply, to ₹7,500 from the ₹5,000 decided earlier. The Council also decided to defer the dates of filing the detailed return for July and August.

Rules approved It also approved the rules for advance ruling, appeals and revisions, assessment, anti-profiteering, and fund settlements. On e-waybills, it decided that the existing system would continue until consensus was reached on the rules. The Council decided that State-run lotteries will fall in the 12% tax bracket, while all others will be taxed at 28%. “Some States, especially Goa and Rajasthan, made representations for the relook of the rates on ho-

NEW DELHI/Darjeeling

Arun Jaitley addressing a press conference on Sunday. R.V. MOORTHY *

tels,” Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told the media. “It has been decided that the 28% limit be raised to ₹7,500. That means that hotel rates between ₹2,5007,500 will be at 18%.” “The current dates are that the GSTR 1 form, with invoice-wise details, has to be filed by the 10th of the month following the assessing month,” Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said. CONTINUED ON 쑺 PAGE 10 NO GST ON TIRUPATI PRASADAM 쑺 PAGE 5

The talks scheduled for Monday involving the Union Home Ministry, the West Bengal government and representatives of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) were on Sunday indefinitely postponed, even as the death of three agitators allegedly in police firing the previous day intensified protests in Darjeeling. According to Home Ministry sources, the tripartite talks were put off on the request of the West Bengal government.

Rajnath’s appeal Meanwhile, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh spoke to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for the second time in 48 hours, even as he appealed for peace in the hill region. An official statement said Ms. Banerjee briefed Mr. Singh over telephone on Sunday morning about the latest situation in Darjeeling. Mr. Singh appealed to the

Stir in plains: Protesters shout slogans in New Delhi on Sunday, demanding the creation of Gorkhaland and the withdrawal of paramilitary forces from Darjeeling hills. people living in Darjeeling and nearby areas to remain calm, the statement said. In his appeal, he said that nobody should resort to violence. “In a democracy like India resorting to violence would never help in finding a solution. Every issue can be resolved through mutual dialogue,” he was quoted as saying in the statement. In Darjeeling anger spilled out on to the streets on

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PTI

Sunday with back-to-back rallies. At Chowk Bazar in the presence of a huge number of security forces, thousands of protesters raised pro-Gorkhaland slogans. They also brought the body of a person killed in Saturday’s firing and drove it around amid chants of Gorkhaland and anti-police slogans. The protests started at about 10.30 a.m. with hundreds of Muslims taking out a

No violence This was followed by dozens of rallies at Chowk Bazar, with people from different parts of Darjeeling arriving throughout the day. Despite the intensity of the agitation, there was no outbreak of violence. In Delhi, Army sources said there was no decision to increase the deployment of Central forces. The sources said while they were ready for further assistance they have not received any orders. Six Army columns have been carrying out flag marches in the area in aid of civil authorities. A SUMMER OF DISCONTENT; MAMATA’S CLAIM A LIE: GURUNG; BJP NON-COMMITTAL 쑺 PAGE 11

Special Correspondent NEW DELHI

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Bhim Army calls for Azad’s release NEW DELHI

Thousands of members and supporters of the Bhim Army, an organisation championing the Dalit cause, gathered at Jantar Mantar on Sunday, demanding the release of their leader Chandrasekhar Azad. Mr. Azad was arrested by the UP STF and SIT on June 8. DELHI METRO 쑺 PAGE 1 DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

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Tension prevails for second day in Kashmir Peerzada Ashiq Srinagar

Tension prevailed in parts of Kashmir Valley for the second consecutive day on Sunday as restrictions continued in parts of Srinagar. Meanwhile, militants opened fire at security forces in three places. In Bijbehara, militants fired at Army’s road opening party. “Militants fled immediately

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Driving force

NDA candidate may be known tomorrow Consultation with parties almost over

after opening a few shots,” said a police spokesman. Militants also opened fire on the Army and CRPF camps in Bijbehara and Budgam on Saturday night. Meanwhile in south Kashmir, where two civilians and three militants died on Friday, a spontaneous shutdown impacted life.

Nistula Hebbar NEW DELHI

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Setting it up: Fakhar Zaman of Pakistan scored his maiden ODI century in the ICC Champions Trophy Final against India at the Oval on Sunday. Zaman’s 114 helped his team to a total of 338 before India was bundled out for 158. GETTY IMAGES (REPORTS ON PAGE 15)

The suspense over who would be the ruling National Democratic Alliance’s candidate for the presidential polls could be over as early as Tuesday evening. A top BJP source told The Hindu that the party had almost completed meetings with leaders across the political spectrum and the announcement could be made, at a parliamentary board meeting of the BJP, as early as Tuesday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, also a member of the parliamentary board, will leave for Lucknow on Tuesday af-

ternoon to participate in the International Yoga Day celebrations on Wednesday. “BJP president Amit Shah met Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray on Sunday. The committee of Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Venkaiah Naidu and Arun Jaitley have spoken to almost all parties and have sent the feedback to both Mr. Shah and Mr. Modi. With Mr. Modi off on his tour of Portugal and the U.S. on June 24, the nomination process will have to be wrapped up by the previous day,” said the source. CONTINUED ON 쑺 PAGE 10

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Born amidst the clouds, on a Jet light Aditya Anand Mumbai

When Jose Cicymol boarded the Jet Airways flight in Dammam, Saudi Arabia on Sunday, she did not expect to alight with her child. She was actually hoping to reach Kochi to deliver her baby. But when the aircraft was cruising at 35,000 feet, approaching India, she went into labour. Flight 9W-569 declared a medical emergency and diverted to Mumbai, while the crew made an announcement, requesting any doctor on board to help. There was none. But Ms. Wilson, a paramedic nurse returning home to Kerala came forward.

Premature delivery Ms. Cicymol’s male baby was delivered prematurely on the aircraft to cheers, and the mother-and-son were ferried to hospital upon landing in a waiting ambulance. Ms. Cicymol works in Dammam and was 30 weeks pregnant when she took the flight at 3.10 a.m. “It was an unexpected situation and a first for the airline,” a spokesperson CM YK

Safe and sound: The baby has been given a lifetime pass by Jet Airways. SPECIAL *

ARRANGEMENT

said. The cabin crew comprising Mohammad Taj Hayath, Deborah Tavares, Isha Jayakar, Sushmita David, Catherine Lepcha, and Tejas Chavan joined Ms. Wilson to assist in the delivery. “The crew cut the umbilical cord and did everything to keep the mother and child comfortable,” an official said. Being the first to be born on one of its flights, Jet Airways has offered the newborn a free lifetime pass on the airline. The mother and child were taken to Holy Spirit Hospital in Andheri, where doctors said they were doing well. The flight landed at Kochi after a two-and-a-half-hour delay. M ND-ND

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0 DISCLAIMER: Readers are requested to verify and make appropriate enquiries to satisfy themselves about the veracity of an advertisement before responding to any published in this newspaper. Kasturi & Sons Limited, the Publisher & Owner of this newspaper, does not vouch for the authenticity of any advertisement or advertiser or for any of the advertiser’s products and/or services. In no event can the Owner, Publisher, Printer, Editor, Director/s, Employees of this newspaper/ company be held responsible/liable in any manner whatsoever for any claims and/or damages for advertisements in this newspaper.

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8-hour power supply for Punjab farmers SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT CHANDIGARH

With sowing of paddy picking up across the State, the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited is all set to provide eight hours of uninterrupted power supply to farmers. “We have made adequate arrangements to provide uninterrupted eight hours of power supply to 13.75 lakh agriculture consumers in the State,” said PSPCL chair-

man-cum-managing director A. Venu Prasad. Farmers in Punjab have been complaining of frequent power cuts and outfits such as the Bharti Kisan Union (Sidhupur) and the Bharti Kisan Union (registered) had demanded uninterrupted power for agricultural purpose during their protest on June 16 in various parts of the State. Assuring that all consumers of the State, would

be provided uninterrupted and quality power supply, Mr. Prasad said the PSPCL has tied up from all sources, in addition to its own inhouse generation capacity for the paddy season. “The maximum demand on first day of the paddy season touched 9,839 MW. Daily power supply to all agriculture purpose consumers in the State has been divided into three groups at each sub-station,” he said.

OBITUARY & REMEMBRANCE DEATH

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Timings

Monday, June 19

RISE 05:24 SET 19:22 RISE 01:28 SET 14:08 Tuesday, June 20

RISE 05:24 SET 19:22 RISE 02:09 SET 15:12 Wednesday, June 21

RISE 05:24 SET 19:22 RISE 02:53 SET 16:17

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EDUCATIONAL UPSC GS/ESSAY faculties with expertise are needed (English/Hindi) on parttime/contractual basis at Raipur (CG). Drop resume at [email protected]

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IN BRIEF

Clash over LPG plant in Kerala Karnataka colleges slash Several protesters injured as police prevent them from entering project site suffered injuries in the police action, while 73 protesters, including 69 women, had been detained.

Staff Reporter KOCHI

Mangrove forests to be declared bird sanctuary KOLLAM

Spadework for the declaration of the Chettuva mangrove forests in Thrissur district as a bird sanctuary has been completed. The green signal for the formal declaration is expected to be given by the State Board for Wildlife on June 21.

Two missing girls found in Machilipatnam

The wave of protests against the upcoming LPG import terminal at Puthuvype snowballed into a clash between local residents and the police here on Sunday, injuring several persons, including women and children. The incident began to unfold in the morning with the protesters, most of them locals, staging a march to the site where construction work resumed in the morning.

VIJAYAWADA

Two girls who went missing from an orphanage in the city were traced by the police at their relative’s house in Machilipatnam on Sunday. The girls – S. Rohini and Ch. Mariyamma – escaped from a home run by an NGO on June 15 due to some problems.

Stone-throwing The police team, which had been camping in the area on the direction of the District Collector, prevented them from entering the location. The scene, however, took a violent turn around 10.45 a.m. when some of the pro-

‘No evidence of sexual abuse in godman case’ Conirmatory tests are under way G. Anand Thiruvananthapuram

A forensic examination of the clothes of the 23-yearold law student suspected of slashing the genitals of her ‘sexual aggressor,’ a 54year-old godman has ‘turned up no leading biological evidence pointing to sexual abuse,’ according to the Kerala police. The presumptive tests for semen have yielded a negative result. Confirmatory tests were under way at the State Forensic Sciences Laboratory. They have, so far, confirmed the initial finding. The ‘victim’ has refused to be medically examined for sexual assault and remains incommunicado. However, the fingerprints lifted from the knife matched that of the ‘victim,’ the police said.

CM YK

The crime had occurred at the woman’s house early on May 21. She had portrayed it as a desperate act of self-defence against years of domestic rape and sexual abuse. Officials said the initial public perception ‘severely limited’ the police from investigating the crime in a dispassionate way. They booked the godman , Gangeshananda, alias Hari, for sexually abusing the woman as a child, he being a regular visitor to her house since 2008. However, a slew of intriguing factors have now prompted the police to transfer the case to the Crime Branch. For one, Hari was still ‘unclear’ about the identity of his assailant. His statement was riddled with glaring inconsistencies, investigators said.

fees to ill up seats Some are ofering engineering courses for just ₹50,000 annually Tanu Kulkarni

Protest hots up: One of the locals injured during the lathicharge at the project site on Sunday. SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT *

testers allegedly resorted to stone-throwing, causing injuries to several policemen. The police soon resorted to cane-charging and, with the crowd still refusing to disperse, they were taken into custody and shifted to the Armed Reserve Police camp at Kalamassery.

No GST on Tirupati prasadam

The police said those arrested would be booked for rioting and unlawful assembly. Locals claimed that they were staging a peaceful protest but it turned violent as someone purposefully threw stones. About 30 persons

‘In violation’ M.B. Jaya Ghosh, chairman, Puthuvype LPG Terminal Virudha Janakeeya Samara Samiti, said the contractors, in connivance with the top IOC officials, resumed the work at the project site in violation of an assurance from the State government. ‘‘We were laying siege to the project site when stones were thrown from inside the terminal. Soon, the police resorted to caning without any provocation," he said. Meanwhile, the Congress has called for a dawn-todusk hartal in Puthuvype on Monday in protest against the police action.

Bengaluru

Engineering seat aspirants in Karnataka have a reason to cheer. Anticipating lesser demand for their seats, several private engineering colleges have slashed their fees for seats offered under COMEDK quota. While Karnataka Unaided Private Engineering Colleges’ Association — through an agreement with the State government — is allowed to charge a fee of a maximum of either ₹1.21 lakh or ₹1.7 lakh, depending on infrastructure and faculty, some colleges have reduced the fee by over 70%. Sixty-five out of 138 engineering colleges under COMEDK have

voluntarily decided to slash fees. Some colleges are even offering seats for ₹50,000, which is less than the fees charged under the government quota, sources said. The government quota seats in engineering colleges, which consists of 45% of the total seats, is fixed at ₹49,500 and ₹55,000. The COMEDK quota seats consists of 30% of the total seats, while the remaining 25% seats are reserved for the NRI and management quota.

Differential pricing However, several top colleges in the city have not reduced their rates and were demanding a 10% increase in fees this year too but the gov-

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When self-help is the only help Teachers do a ‘swachh’ routine everyday as classroom turns cow shed after school

Staff Reporter VIJAYAWADA

T. Appala Naidu

The GST Council has decided to exempt prasadam and human hair at the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) from tax following a request by the Andhra Pradesh government. At the 17th GST Council meeting held in New Delhi on Sunday, A.P. Finance Minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu said the TTD was a reputed religious trust involved in services to lakhs of devotees every day. Hence, the TTD be exempted from GST registration. With regard to other services, the State would take necessary action within its purview. The Minister said the government supported exemption from tax for food grains though the State would lose ₹1,000 crores per annum.

MACHILIPATNAM

It is a tiny house with a thatched roof, sandwiched between a drain on one side and bushes on the other. In the monsoon, storm water floods the floor. Welcome to the government-aided Ananta Jaihind Primary School in Laxmanaraopuram area of Machilipatnam in Andhra Pradesh. The school struggles to stay afloat, despite the efforts of two women teachers to make conditions suitable to hold classes. They regularly sweep the floor and remove cattle dung from the classroom, since it is used by local residents as a shed after school hours. A neighbouring building has been rented to help the students cope with the rainy season.

most of the year, and the task of running the school is taken up by the two teachers. The students lack basic facilities, they say. The thatched roof collapsed last year and the teacher duo chipped in with ₹ 30,000 to get it renovated. They store drinking water in the adjacent rented room. Sad relection: A view of the Ananta Jaihind Primary School in Laxmanaraopuram. T. APPALA NAIDU *

The teachers begin their day in the sole classroom available with the cleaning routine. “No worker is willing to remove cattle dung despite being offered a good wage. We clean the dung and sweep the floor before the students come,” said C. Rajya Lakshmi, one of the teachers, who is helped by her colleague,

P.A. Niranjana. Established in 1969, the school has 26 students, all from poor families. Speaking to The Hindu over phone, the school’s correspondent, B. Santosam, said the management had no plans to have a permanent building. The correspondent stays outside Machilipatnam

No inspection Two tanks from the Municipality store a week’s drinking water. Education Department officials have not inspected the institution. When contacted, departmental officials said they were not aware of the condition of the school. Many poor families have decided to admit their children to the school this year, as they are unable to afford private education in Machilipatnam.

ernment did not relent. Analysis of the fee structure among these engineering colleges shows that several colleges have differential pricing for different streams. For instance, an engineering college in Bagalkot has priced their COMEDK quota fees as ₹1.7 lakh for civil engineering and computer science engineering streams, while a electronics and instrumentation engineering stream is ₹75,000 and the lowest fee is ₹50,000 for a biotechnology engineering seat. Among the colleges that have slashed the fees, streams such as biotechnology and information science and engineering have the least fees.

3 die in A.P. suicide pact Staff Reporter VIJAYAWADA

A couple died here on Saturday in a suicide pact after consuming dosas laced with poison. While one of their children also died, two siblings — B. Likitha and B. Janu — were battling for life in a private hospital. The condition of Janu is stated to be critical. The deceased had been identified as B. Suresh, 35, his wife Yesamma, 30, and their son Hari Charan,10. Hari Charan and Janu were in Class II while Likitha was studying in first standard in a private school. The family celebrated the 10th birthday of Janu on Saturday and within an hour after the party ate the ‘dosas’. Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP-Law and Order) G. Pala Raju on Sunday said the family had a quarrel after the party which led to the extreme step.

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IN BRIEF

Chief Minister Chouhan cancels Russia tour

Rallies to be allowed at College Square on Sundays

OHRC slams police over missing boy’s case

Ban will remain in force from Monday to Saturday: Kolkata Police Commissioner

Staff Reporter

BHOPAL

Staff Reporter

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has decided to put off his six-day visit to Russia. “Chouhan’s six-day visit to Russia from today (Sunday) stands cancelled,” S.K. Mishra, principal secretary to the CM said. PTI

Kolkata

One killed in explosion in Kannauj LUCKNOW

One person was killed and six were injured in an explosion at Kanshiram Colony in the Chhibramau area of Kannauj on Sunday, the police said. All the injured persons were rushed to a hospital, where Niraj succumbed to his injuries during treatment, while the condition of the others was stated to be stable. PTI

3 more PO passport kendras to come up BHUBANESWAR

Three more Post Office Passport Seva Kendras (POPSKs) will be opened in Odisha in the second phase shortly. This was conveyed by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in a letter to Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. PTI

Four killed in vehicle collision MUZAFFARNAGAR

Four persons were killed and five injured in a vehicle collision on the DelhiDehradun national highway on Sunday. The five injured, including three women, have been rushed to the hospital in critical condition The deceased have been identified as Rajpal, Shishu, Niraj and Praveen, they said. Praveen belonged to Delhi, the police said. PTI

Softening its stand over the ban on rallies and protest demonstrations at College Square in Central Kolkata, the Kolkata Police has decided to allow such gatherings on Sundays. Agitations and protest demonstrations were banned at College Square, a hub of educational institutions, from June 5 on Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s instructions. College Square, a park of half a square kilometre area on College Street, has been a hotbed of political activities and agitations since the early 19th century. The Chief Minister’s decision had generated strong reactions from both Opposition parties and the civil society. “We have decided to allow meetings and protest demonstrations at College Square on Sundays when the educational institutes are closed. We will issue a notification tomorrow [Monday] in this regard,” Kolkata Po-

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s decision to ban protests at the College Square from June 5 had generated strong reactions from both Opposition parties and civil society. FILE PHOTO *

lice Commissioner Rajeev Kumar told journalists on Sunday. However, he clarified that the ban on gatherings at College Square will remain in force from Monday to Saturday. Mr. Kumar also said that the reason behind imposing the ban

was the “inconvenience to students of nearby schools”

A ploy Rights organization Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) has dubbed the Commissioner’s announcement as a

“ploy to hoodwink the people” and demanded that rallies and protest demonstrations at College Square be allowed everyday. APDR also announced that it will take out a protest march from Sealdah to College Square on Monday.

Chennai couple attacked in Muzafarnagar They were returning to Delhi on a motorcycle after a vacation in Haridwar Staff Reporter Meerut

Two unidentified bike-borne men shot at a couple from Chennai in Muzaffarnagar late on Saturday night. Aditya Kumar, 31, and Vijaya Lakshmi, 28, who belong to Ramapuram in Chennai, were returning to Delhi after a vacation in Haridwar when they were attacked by the two miscreants on National Highway-58 in Muzaffarnagar disitrict of UP. Muzaffarnagar DSP Arun

BHUBANESWAR

Taking strong exception to the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack police cremating the body of a boy despite possessing a missing report filed by his parents, the Odisha Human Rights Commission (OHRC) on Sunday lashed out at the police for its insouciant attitude and directed it to submit details.

Kumar Singh, who is also incharge of the Nai Mandi police station under which the area where the couple was attacked falls, said that Aditya was hit in the neck by a bullet. Vijaya was also hurt in the attack. “There is a possibility that the attack happened due to road rage or due to mistaken identity. It might as well be just be an attempt to loot the couple. We are trying to get the CCTV footage of the hotels on National Highway-58

EDUCATIONAL

where the incident happened,” Mr. Singh said.

One serious The couple were immediately referred to a hospital in Meerut where the condition of Aditya is said to be serious, the police said. “After Aditya was hit by the bullet, he lost control of the motorcycle and fell on the road along with his wife. We do not have their exact Chennai address. A friend called Syam Teja, who was

travelling with them, informed the police about the attack. We are expecting to arrest the culprits soon,” he added. Mr. Singh said the couple and their friend had apparently hired two bikes in Delhi and had gone on a trip to Uttarakhand. “According to our information, the couple and their friend were on their way back to Delhi on their motorbikes as they had to catch a flight to Chennai on Sunday,” he added.

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Negligent attitude “It is very unfortunate that because of the negligent and lackadaisical attitude of some police officers manning the police stations, general public are losing faith on the functioning of the system and puts the entire police administration to a great embarrassment and especially to the Commissionerate. Now, the time has come to weed out the dead woods,” OHRC issued a stronglyworded notice. When Isak Digal, 14year-old son of Pabitra Digal residing in Saliasahi, Bhubaneswar’s biggest slum, did not return on June 5 evening, Mr. Digal reached Nayapalli police station next day on June 6, but he was not paid any heed. Even after the Deputy Commissioner of Police asked the respective police station to register a case, no effort was made to search the missing boy. On June 15, Mr. Digal received a call from an unknown person that his son had met with an accident and was being treated at SCB Medical College Hospital, Cuttack. Later, he succumbed to his injuries. When Mr. Digal wanted to see the body, the police told him that the body had been cremated as unclaimed.

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Published by N. Ram at Kasturi Buildings, 859 & 860, Anna Salai, Chennai-600002 and Printed by S. Ramanujam at HT Media Ltd. Plot No. 8, Udyog Vihar, Greater Noida Distt. Gautam Budh Nagar, U.P. 201306, on behalf of KASTURI & SONS LTD., Chennai-600002. Editor: Mukund Padmanabhan (Responsible for selection of news under the PRB Act). Regd. DL(ND)-11/6110/2006-07-08 RNI No. TNENG/2012/49940 ISSN 0971 - 751X Vol. 7 No. 145 ●

CM YK







M ND-ND

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THE HINDU

NATION 7

NOIDA/DELHI

MONDAY, JUNE 19, 2017

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INTERVIEW | KESHAV PRASAD MAURYA

IN BRIEF

‘We want to instil fear in those who kill the cow’ National Security Act will not be misused and will be invoked only if there is evidence, says Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Omar Rashid

Six killed in landslides in Meghalaya

Lucknow

SHILLONG

The death toll in Saturday’s landslide in Meghalaya’s Ri-Bhoi district has risen to five. The five victims belonged to two families. In another landslide at Mawjrong in East Khasi Hills, one child was killed. PTI

Man held for lewd behaviour on flight

Defending the Uttar Pradesh government’s decision to invoke the National Security Act (NSA) against those involved in cow slaughter and cow smuggling, U.P. Deputy Chief Minister and State BJP president Keshav Prasad Maurya tells The Hindu that it was aimed at “instilling fear in the hearts of such people”. During a trip to Bihar recently, you challenged CM Nitish Kumar to hold snap polls in his State. He said he was ready to do so but also dared you to hold simultaneous polls in U.P..

NEW DELHI

The police arrested a 56-yearold man at the Indira Gandhi Airport here on Saturday for allegedly masturbating on-board an aircraft from Hyderabad. The arrest came after a woman filed a police complaint against the Rohini resident, the police said.PTI

IAS officer claims threat to life by mining mafia BHOPAL

The police have given more security to IAS officer Sonia Meena, posted in Umaria district of Madhya Pradesh, after she claimed a threat to her life from the sand mining mafia. Ms. Meena has named Arjun Singh Bundela, a criminal, in her complaint. PTI

He already got a taste of the BJP’s strength in the 2017 U.P. election. He toured U.P. with full force and had come here with the sole motive of stopping the BJP. But he had to return to Bihar disappointed. The current government that Nitish Kumarji is running in Bihar is more unsuccessful than the previous Akhilesh Yadav government in U.P. The people are not in a mood to bear them any more. If elections are held today in Bihar, the results will be as exciting as that were in U.P.



What has your government accomplished in U.P. so

far? You are nearing 100 days of power. Your top three achievements. ■ Why top three, why not top six? The most important, for the party as well as the State, is the ₹36,000 crore in loan waiver for 86 lakh farmers. Then, providing 18-hour power supply in villages, 20hour in tehsils and 24-hour supply to district headquarters. We purchased more wheat in 100 days than what Akhilesh Yadav achieved in five years. We shut down illegal slaughterhouses. Our government is poor-centric, youth-centric, farmer-centric and sensitive to women. Today, criminals are terrified, they know that either they will have to give up crime or leave U.P..

Despite your claims, we have still had many incidents of crime, like the Jewar gangrape-

Two girls stripped as uniform fee not paid Asian International

News

Begusarai

Two children, both girls, were allegedly stripped and thrown out of their school in Bihar’s Begusarai as their father was unable to pay the fee for their school uniform on time. One of the girls is a Class I student and the other is in Class II. The incident took

place on Friday. The father, Chunchun Sah, had gone to pick up his daughters when a teacher asked him to bring the money for the uniforms immediately. The school in Sikraula village, in Koriya panchayat, had given school uniforms to the two girls. “I pleaded for some time, but the teacher stripped my daughters in

front of everyone,” Mr. Sah said. He then complained to the police. The school’s Principal and a woman teacher have been arrested, Sub-Divisional Police Officer Rajesh Kumar said. State Education Minister Ashok Choudhary termed the incident insensitive and said stern action would be taken.

murder and cases where police personnel are being beaten up. ■ I’m not saying that crimes have come to a 100% stop. But today criminals are not getting political patronage from the ruling party in any form. The police have been given a free hand. Due to this, the criminal is in fear.

So you are saying that law and order has improved after the BJP came to power? ■

■ Incidents will happen and you will obviously report them. But you go around and ask 100 people — go as a commoner not as a journalist — whether they feel secure or insecure after the BJP government was formed. Their answer will explain it all. The Samajwadi Party government was synonymous with lawlessness. Land grabbing was considered the special right of any SP neta.

All that is gone now?

Dennis S. Jesudasan CHENNAI

The Edappadi K. Palaniswami government in Tamil Nadu, which is saddled with internal dissent and is battling alleged ‘cash- for-vote’ charges, faced fresh onslaught from the Opposition on Sunday after it came to light that the Election Commission of India had ordered registration of FIR against the Chief Minister and others for alleged electoral malpractices during the Dr. Radhakrishnan Nagar bypoll. The apex poll body had re-

Says justice will prevail as investigation is in progress

New Delhi

JAIPUR

Two days after the alleged lynching of social worker Zafar Hussain in Pratpagarh, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje broke her silence on Sunday and described his “demise” as unfortunate. She said justice would prevail in the case as the investigation was in progress.

Vasundhara Raje

Controversy over tweet The statement on her official Twitter account drew criticism, as she also re-tweeted a post from an unverified account of the Inspector-General of Police, Udaipur, which said the scientific evidence “did not suggest murder.” A group of civic officials allegedly beat Hussain, 52, to death on Friday when he

tried to prevent them from scaring and taking photographs of women defecating in the open. Hussain, a CPI (ML) member, was at the forefront of an agitation for getting toilets in the households in the Bagwasa slum of Pratapgarh. The police have booked Municipal Council employees, including Commissioner Ashok Jain, under

synonymous with lawlessness... today criminals are in fear ■ Definitely. A fear has been created. Be it for the criminal or the corrupt. I’m not saying that all crime and corruption have come to an end but there is a fear that if you do wrong, nobody can save you.

You are also talking a lot on checking cow slaughter.

There’s no special need to be strict on the issue of cow slaughter. A stringent law already exists in U.P.. After coming to power, our government has merely implemented it. ■

■ If the NSA is lodged against somebody who smuggles or slaughters cow/cow progeny, I feel that will create fear in another person who is planning to do it. The government’s thought behind invoking the NSA in such crimes is to instil fear in the hearts of those who work in this sector that if such incidents happen, harsh action will follow.

Isn’t there a scope for its misuse? People can be booked and harassed...

Not at all. How can it be misused? If anyone kills a cow and evidence is found against the person, only then the NSA will be invoked. It is not invoked on the first day. I have full hope that in the land of U.P. nobody will dare take a knife close to a cow’s throat... ■

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has announced that the farm loan waiver promised by

the government will be implemented after the State budget. The Opposition parties are criticising you for not even having started the process. ■ Those who are saying it are not well-wishers of farmers. They are just pretending to be well-wishers and making the occasional trip to Mandsaur or Saharanpur. Who claims to be really pained has gone on a holiday to his maternal grandmother’s house. By that you can assess...

But why is the process of farm loan waiver delayed?

There is no delay. It will be processed when the budget is brought... Akhilesh Yadav did not leave behind separate funds for us. We will have to take it from the budget



Do you see any impact of the farmers’ protests in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra in U.P.? ■ Those seem Congress mischief to me. The Opposition parties have no issues against

either our State governments or the Centre. The Opposition parties are trying to trigger discord and chaos to defame the government. But instead of getting any benefits, they have been unsuccessful as the truth is exposed to the people. Some BJP leaders have expressed concern that that Hindu Yuva Vahini [outfit founded by Yogi Adityanath] is growing too fast and that it’s members have got bolder after Yogi Adityanath was made CM. Is the HYV posing a challenge to the BJP government?

Not at all. The HYV is not a BJP organisation. We have nothing to do with it. Hundreds of such organisations are running in the State and country. The HYV is one of them... it’s a separate outfit. The BJP has its own organisation at every booth level. It has its own strength, on the basis of which we won the 2014 Lok Sabha election, 2017 Vidhan Sabha election, and hope to secure 80 out of 80 seats in U.P. in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

EC ordered FIR against Palaniswami, inds RTI plea

No-ly list norms likely in July

Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code. The tentative post-mortem report released on Sunday said Hussain died of cardio-respiratory failure. “There were no serious external injuries. We have handed over his viscera to the police for forensic examination,” O.P. Dayma of Pratapgarh Government Hospital told The Hindu. Dr. Dayma said the reasons for the cardio-respiratory failure could be ascertained only after tests of internal organs. Pradesh Congress Committee chief Sachin Pilot took a swipe at Ms. Raje’s tweet. “Killed would have been a far too appropriate word to use, and going by the previous lynching incidents, justice is unlikely to prevail.”

Party < > Samajwadi government was

Definitely.

Then why are such cases still being reported?

Raje breaks her silence on lynching of social worker Special Correspondent

So why have you now decided to invoke the National Security Act in cow slaughter cases?

commended similar action against five of his Cabinet colleagues and the ruling AIADMK (Amma) deputy general secretary T.T.V. Dhinakaran, who was fielded from the constituency, last represented by former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa.

I-T raids In April, the ECI rescinded the by-election notification in the constituency after the Income Tax Department recovered certain documents from the house of Health Minister C. Vijaya Baskar, in-

Edappadi K. Palaniswami

dicating massive bribing of voters. The document purportedly contained the names of the Chief Minister

and some Cabinet colleagues, who were allegedly vested with the responsibility of handling the money meant for distribution to voters. Chennai-based advocate M.P. Vairakkannan had filed an application under the Right to Information Act asking the ECI what action it proposed to take against Mr. Dhinakaran, Mr. Palaniswami, Mr. Vijaya Baskar, School Education Minister K.A. Sengottaiyan, Municipal Administration Minister S.P. Velumani, Coopera-

tion Minister Sellur K. Raju and Electricity Minister P. Thangamani for alleged election misconduct of distributing money to voters. To this, the ECI responded on May 25, saying “The Commission has directed that an FIR may be filed by the Returning Officer, in the instant case vide Commission’s letter dated April 18, 2017.” The ECI enclosed the April 18 letter addressed to the Chief Electoral Officer, Tamil Nadu, which referred to the documents seized by the I-T Department.

Press Trust of India

The norms for no-fly list to rein in unruly passengers are expected to be ready early next month, the government said on Sunday amid a parliamentarian being barred by domestic airlines for allegedly creating ruckus. A revised Civil Aviation Requirement (CAR) is being finalised after receiving comments from the stakeholders. The Civil Aviation Ministry has already come out with draft rules for a ‘national no-fly list’ of unruly passengers for all domestic carriers, under which the flying ban could extend from at least three months to an indefinite period. The CAR related to the no-fly list is expected to be notified in the first week of July, Civil Aviation Secretary R N Choubey said.

Farmers meet Rajini

Unifying cause: A delegation of farmers meeting actor Rajinikanth at his residence on Sunday. SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT *

Staff Reporter CHENNAI

Members of the National South Indian Rivers InterLinking Farmers Association met actor Rajinikanth at his residence in Poes Garden here on Sunday. The farmers’ delegation was led by association president P. Ayyakannu. Addressing mediapersons after a brief interaction with the actor, Mr. Ayyakannu pointed out that Mr. Rajinikanth had in the past stressed the need to interlink rivers such CM YK

as Mahanadhi, Godavari, Krishna, Palar and Cauvery. “Mr. Rajinikanth said that he would hand over the ₹1 crore that he had promised us. But we have asked him to hand over the amount to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as a step towards initiating the river-linking project,” he said. In 2002, while taking part in a fast demanding the release of Cauvery water, Mr. Rajinikanth said he would donate ₹1 crore towards the cause of interlinking rivers. M ND-ND

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8 EDITORIAL

NOIDA/DELHI

THE HINDU

MONDAY, JUNE 19, 2017

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New playground for non-state actors ‘Internet-enabled’ terrorism has introduced greater complexity in an already diicult scenario

Contest vs. consensus idden terror was, till now, believed to be conined mainly to the less developed regions of the world — the 9/11 attack in the U.S. was seen as an aberration, or exception, rather than the rule in this respect. Since 2015, however, with the attack in January of that year on the Charlie Hebdo oices in Paris, followed by a series of major terrorist incidents in Brussels, Paris, Nice, Berlin and Istanbul during the past two years, it is evident that the developed world is no longer immune from terror strikes. The Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility for the vast majority of these attacks, though this may not be true in all cases. What is not disputed any longer is that the West now has a sizeable number of radicalised Islamist elements who are willing to perpetrate acts of terror — either on their own, or under instructions from elsewhere.

H

Timeline of the new phase Terrorism can be said today to be the single most serious threat to peace across the world. Several aspects, political, security and developmental, are afected adversely by terrorism. Meanwhile, those indulging in acts of terror appear to have moved beyond the earlier non-traditional, non-state actors who were legatees of the Afghan Jihad (1979-1989). The new breed of radicalised terrorists is not overly dependent on external sponsors or state support. Their inspiration is diferent. While their origins may be traced to outits such as al-Qaeda and its ailiates — and they still continue to adopt the techniques and belong to the same genre of terror — they are distinct. The United Kingdom, which has a reputation of possessing the best counter-terrorist organisation in Europe, and displays a steely re-

T

he architect of a reuniied Germany and a staunch champion of European integration, Helmut Kohl, who died at 87, was the longest-serving German Chancellor since World War II. The steely politician, who lost his bid for a ifth consecutive term as head of his conservative Christian Democratic Union in 1998, went into political wilderness within months thereafter, following a controversy over anonymous donations to his party. Raised in an austere Roman Catholic family, Kohl irst came into prominence when he was 39, becoming minister-president of Rhineland-Palatinate in 1969. He emerged as president of the CDU in the early 1970s, and held the position with a irm grip until the end of his political life. Over the decades he mentored the careers of several leaders, including two former presidents, and the incumbent Chancellor Angela Merkel in the 1990s. Kohl was catapulted to high ofice in 1982, when the liberal Free Democratic Party quit the ruling coalition with the Social Democrats to back the CDU. His early years as Chancellor were notable for the eforts to embed Germany in the Western alliance, improve relations with the Soviet Union and promote post-War reconciliation. His 1985 visit along with President Ronald Reagan to the site of the Bergen-Belsen SS concentration camp and the Bitburg military cemetery, marking the 40th anniversary of liberation from Nazi rule, stoked controversy both at home and in the U.S. But it took until almost the close of the decade before Kohl would begin to play a pivotal part in the developments that culminated in the end of the Cold War. The prospect of a reunited Germany, following the momentous 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, caused deep scepticism among both European leaders and the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev over the potential economic dominance by what would become Europe’s largest nation. However, Kohl’s broader vision of a Germany at the heart of a federal Europe and his instinct for compromise helped overcome such apprehensions in the years that followed. His embrace of Europe’s move towards the adoption of a common currency was a French idea. François Mitterrand, his French counterpart, regarded the Deutschemark as Germany’s nuclear bomb. The euro thus emerged as a concrete, if controversial, symbol of forging a collective European economic future, above all between the union’s two locomotors, Paris and Berlin. When faced with a domestic audience reluctant to see the national currency replaced, Kohl declared that the adoption of monetary union would be a matter of war or peace in the 21st century. Indeed, the recent debt crisis in the Eurozone exposed the limits of introducing a common currency without concomitant political integration. Berlin’s commitment to closer union within the EU, despite recent setbacks to the original project, is a lasting legacy from the Kohl era. CM YK

Copycat methods Copycat methods have often featured in IS attacks. In both the London attacks, vans were used, and even the locale was much the same. Not to be lost sight of also is the fact that in quite a few other ISsponsored attacks vans/trucks have been employed. Instances of this kind have been reported earlier in Stockholm, Antwerp, Berlin and Nice in the past two years. All this needs to be viewed against the backdrop of the complicated pattern of relationships that exist between various radical Islamist terrorist organisations worldwide. These exist, notwithstanding the fact that the IS, for instance, preaches an exclusive brand of puritanical Islam alongside a vision of a new Caliphate, while some of the other terrorist organisations do not fully subscribe to this ideal. The reality is that many present-day terrorists have a common origin, and this includes the IS and al-Qaeda, though they

Speciic instances already exist of the IS undertaking this kind of recruitment via the Internet. Thereafter, the individual is guided through every single step along the way for several months by anonymous “handlers” to carry out a terror attack. This marks a quantum jump as far as the terror matrix is concerned. We are possibly still at the beginning of the curve as far as the phenomena of ‘enabled’ or ‘remote-controlled’ terrorism is concerned; yet, the impact of this could be quite shattering.

Remote-plotting The IS appears to be in the lead in this respect as of now. Other international terrorist organisations are also beginning to resort to ‘remoteplotting’. Such situations will result in little or no dependence on the maintenance of safe havens for the plotters, since the plotters are anonymous. Visa restrictions and airport security, including perimeter security of the installations to be targeted, would again mean little to attackers, since they will strike where they live, and will no longer have to travel abroad or long distances for both training and action. Welcome, hence, to the world of ‘cyber-planners’, who will be responsible for planning terror attacks, identifying recruits, assess possible opportunities, act as “virtual coachers”, and provide guidance and encouragement throughout the process. These elements could be involved in every single planning stage of an operation, including where to obtain weapons that will be needed for use. All the while, the ‘cyber planners’ and ‘cyber controllers’ would be able to maintain almost total anonymity. The Internet has thus become a dangerous ‘plaything’ in the hands of the many of the new-era terror outits. Some like the IS are said to be also preparing to use the ‘deep web’ and the ‘dark net’. The ‘dark net’, in particular, could become a vicious instrument in the hands of terrorist groups such as the IS.

M.K. Narayanan is a former National Security Adviser and a former Governor of West Bengal

A quantum step to a great wall for encryption China’s experiment also underlines the extent to which the West’s domination of science has eroded derstood fairly well since the 1980s, it has been hard to transmit entangled photons through the atmosphere because they are extremely fragile and can disintegrate through contact with other particles in the air. Until last week the world record was a transmission of a few hundred kilometres.

major leap in employing QM to the cause of secrecy.

The uniier Helmut Kohl was instrumental in shaping post-Cold War Europe

resulted in the killing of eight persons, and injuries to more than 40. The attackers utilised a van driven at high speed across the London Bridge to mow down bystanders in its wake. The attackers proceeded, thereafter, to knife many more persons in the neighbouring Borough Market. Similarities between the March and June terror attacks in London are quite eerie. So, likewise, are the similarities between the May 22 Manchester attack in the U.K., and the November 13, 2015, Bataclan terror attack in Paris.

solve not to allow emotion to cloud its judgment unlike many other European nations, has lately been hit in rapid succession, by three signiicant terror attacks. This is indicative of the shifting trajectory of terror today, and the determination of ‘new era’ terrorists to attack not only ‘soft states’, but even those who pride themselves on being fully prepared to meet all contingencies. The irst of the attacks occurred in March. This came after a gap of several years following the 2005 terror attacks in London. The March attack took place on Westminster Bridge and in the shadow of the Big Ben, in which ive persons were killed and around 50 injured. A far more serious terrorist incident occurred subsequently in Manchester in May, in which at least 22 people were killed and more than a hundred injured. It featured a home-grown ‘jihadist’, whose victims were mostly teenagers attending a music concert, possibly the irst instance of a large scale killing by the IS in the U.K. There had been prior warnings that the IS would focus on ‘soft targets’ and large crowds, rather than on protected areas with high security. The IS propaganda magazine ‘Rumiyah’ had speciically listed ‘concert halls’ as ideal target locations for attacks, while publishing a lengthy defence on the killing of women and children in ‘crusader’ countries. The IS has claimed responsibility for the latest June 3 attack. This

jacob koshy

Q

uantum mechanics (QM) is the dark arts of physics. Though physics — in the Newtonian mould — tells us how every object will precisely behave when pushed and hurled, QM deals with the invisible world of subatomic particles, where counter-intuitive rules apply. QM inhabitants such as electrons and photons live in zombielike ‘undead’ states. The very act of observing them makes them beguiling tricksters. Though not always understandable, science knows, in bits and pieces, how they can be manipulated for purposes that beneit the visible world such as making integrated circuit chips and ibre-optic lines for global, instantaneous communication. Transparency may be the shining ideal of modern society but countries and corporations are now ininitely more obsessed with secrecy than in the days of ancient Greece. On Friday, the world took a

How it works China — as a study in the journal Science reports — has combined satellite technology and the elusiveness of quantum mechanics to demonstrate how secret information can be transmitted over a thousand kilometres — a tenfold increase over what has so far been achieved — with the guarantee that any unauthorised attempt to decipher it would be immediately discernible. One of quantum mechanics’ cardinal principles, of Heisenberg Uncertainty, follows that no physical object can be known entirely. Measuring, say, its momentum with increasing precision reduces the accuracy with which you can determine its position. For long this was seen as a barrier imposed by nature to us fully comprehending a physical system but for a few decades now, the ield of quantum cryptography has evolved around designing ‘keys’ or alpha-numeric codes exploiting quantum mechanical strictures. Pairs of photons share their quantum properties no matter how long they are separated or how far they have travelled. These can even be created in a laboratory and are

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Aryan migration It is marvellous what genetic science can do, enabling us ‘to look at the history of time’ without distorting the truth (‘Ground Zero’ page – “How genetics is settling the Aryan migration debate”, June 17). Irrefutable genetic indings should discredit the long-held right-wing stance on Aryan migration. That birth-based social hierarchy was brought into being by the Aryans is of particular signiicance. It is time we recognise that we are all migrants. As we are all earthlings, and children of “Mitochondrial Eve”, the time of migration need not matter much or divide us in any manner. Planet Earth is our common home. G. David Milton, Maruthancode, Tamil Nadu

Indo-European linguists have long held the belief that “a band or bands of speakers of an Indo■

called entangled photons. Modern, electronic secrecy works by two parties encrypting the messages they want to exchange and sending each other ‘keys’ (which are chains of numbers) that can be used to decrypt the information. The trouble is that a third eavesdropper can intercept these keys. An “un-crackable” system would be one where both parties know if an intruder is trying to pry out information from the keys. Enter the entangled photons of QM. Connected just like the ends of a see-saw, in that one going up necessarily means the other is going down, and using such photons to forge a key would mean that any change in their state indicates that someone’s been trying to manipulate them. While this principle has been un-

Leading the way The Chinese set-up transferred entangled photons through a satellite, called Micius, between two ground stations that were 1,200 km apart. According to a report in Science News, the researchers shot a laser beam into a light-altering crystal in the satellite. The crystal emitted pairs of photons entangled so that their polarisation states (or how they are oriented in space) would be opposite when one was measured. The pairs were split, with photons sent to separate receiving stations in Delingha and Lijiang, which are telescopes on mountains, 1,200 km apart. Both stations are in the high mountains of Tibet, reducing the amount of air the fragile photons had to traverse. This team then simultaneously measured more than 1,000 photon pairs. They found the photons had opposite polarisations far more often than would be expected by

chance. Only one out of six million photons sent could be recovered, which experts told Science News, was better than previous ground studies of entanglement but still not good enough for the moon-shot goal of sending secure keys using quantum mechanics principles. Doughty China has publicised plans for international collaborations and transmitting entangled photons in a trans-continental project. Were that to be successful, organisations and people reliant on online inancial transactions — that are increasingly dependent on satellite-based Internet — and paranoid about security would take a shine to quantum satellite encryption technology. The endeavour also underlines the extent to which the West’s domination of science has eroded. Today, the number of high-quality science publications out of China is second only to the U.S. Along with advances in the manipulation of stem cells, this latest step shows their command over the great symbols of the modern scientiic age: the satellite, quantum and the Internet.

[email protected]

Letters emailed to [email protected] must carry the full postal address and the full name or the name with initials.

European language, later to be called Sanskrit, entered India over the northwest passes,” some time in the second millennium BC and needed just the kind of new DNA evidence in settling this hotly contested topic. Indeed, all of the world’s populations, regardless of their speciic geographic location, are migrants. There is no such thing as a pure race. Each is distinct yet bound by the underlying principle of unity. A.K. Merchant, New Delhi

The article is nothing but yet another western attempt — through inconclusive genetic research — to it India into its template of a 5,000-yearold Indian history. There have been numerous articles in scientiic publications where the indings have raised great hope only to be rejected in ■

GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO

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hether an enlightened public igure or an active politician, the next President should be one who enjoys the widest possible acceptability. For this to happen, there should be meaningful discussions towards building a consensus among the major political parties ahead of the presidential election. The BJP’s overtures to key leaders in the opposition appear to be merely exploratory. Approaching opposition parties for their cooperation without putting forward a name will be unfruitful. It appears that the Union Ministers who met key opposition leaders requested that the latter should not ield a candidate merely for the sake of a contest. Such an approach is more likely to succeed if the Centre draws up a list of possible names and seeks the cooperation of opposition parties in getting one of them elected. It would also help the opposition parties arrive at an agreement among themselves on whether to ield a candidate or back the ruling party’s choice. The BJP may want to elect a President who will share its political outlook and philosophy. After all, in the last two elections the Congress succeeded in getting its party leaders elected President. But it is worth recalling that the main opposition of the day did not oppose K.R. Narayanan and A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in 1997 and 2002, respectively. A consensus is still possible if the candidate chosen meets one of the most important qualiications for the presidency — a general acceptability. Too often, contestations in the political realm make it imperative for the opposition to ield a candidate in the interest of demonstrating its unity in the hope that its combined strength will pose some sort of a threat to the ruling dispensation. There is little doubt that the current political mood in the country is not entirely conducive to successful cooperation among diverse political forces to get an eminent citizen elected without a contest to head the republic. There is widespread unrest among farmers and there are credible fears among several sections that there may be an attempt at homogenising the country’s cultural diversity. There will be little surprise if parties opposing the policies of the National Democratic Alliance regime would want to make use of this opportunity to join hands and make a determined attempt to challenge the electoral supremacy enjoyed by the BJP in the recent elections. On the other side, the BJP may believe it has an edge in the electoral college consisting of all members of Parliament and the State Assemblies, as it can count on the backing of some regional parties. In such circumstances, a contest is likely. However, it would be best if someone who inspires conidence that he or she would act in a non-partisan manner is elected with the support of both the ruling party and the major parties in the opposition. It would enable the next incumbent to be the honest broker and wise counsel the Constitution envisions him or her to be.

m.k. narayanan GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO

The latter should be the default approach for selecting a presidential candidate

may be rivals today. A fair amount of cooperation at the operational level is hence inevitable, and does exist among terror outits, alongside a commonality in tactics and techniques, including in the use of high grade explosives such as TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide). What also cannot be ignored while comparing the banal with ground realities is that terrorism is becoming even more asymmetric by the day. This is becoming more evident by the day as new terrorist groups emerge. Collaboration agreements among terror outits are, meantime, increasing, with signs of greater sophistication in the means and methods to perpetuate terror. This last aspect is especially important. Both ‘direct to home jihad’ and the ‘lone wolf’ syndrome have gained new meanings of late. Radicalisation via the Internet has attained a whole new dimension. Propaganda via the Internet today involves far more than mere recruitment imperatives, even though elaborate recruitment videos continue to be distributed via the social media, which depict the IS ighters as ‘knights’. All this still remains highly appealing to some Muslim youth. Nevertheless, a far more dangerous aspect today is the arrival of ‘Internet-enabled’ terrorism. This has introduced a far greater degree of indeterminate complexity into an already diicult scenario. The result is that the ‘lone wolf’ is no longer alone. Internetenabled terror involves violence conceived and guided by “controllers” thousands of miles away. The attacks are masterminded from afar, guided via the Internet, and the actual perpetrators of violence act almost like robots. ‘Enabled’ or ‘remote-controlled’ terrorism is fundamentally diferent from anything seen previously. Remote controllers choose the target, the actual operative, the ‘nature’ of the attack, and even the weapon to be used. Operating behind a wall of anonymity, this helps obscure the role played by individual members of terrorist groups, who utilise various individuals to carry out attacks and leave no trace.

Lessons from London

Still unclear

As a political tango takes place over choosing the next President, political parties must remember that the President is required and expected to be apolitical. What all political parties look for from a President is that he should act within the letter and spirit of the Indian Constitution. Therefore, if such a pivotal constitutional post is held by a retired Supreme Court judge, he will act as per the ‘holy book’ — the Constitution. By and large, retired Supreme Court judges are apolitical, and discharging their constitutional duties will be child’s play for them.

The deadly ire in a high-rise building in London must be seen in a larger context. At the turn of the 1930s, the British Tories dreamed of creating a “propertyowning democracy”. When they returned to power in 1951, the emphasis shifted towards slum clearance and rehousing people in purpose-built Council houses or high-rise blocks. In time, cronyism impacted design and architecture and the standard of construction. Safety soon became a casualty. The recent ire is an example of this. India too is embarking on massive, Janata-type housing plan. Fire department clearances and particularly external ire escapes must be sacrosanct. Lessons from faraway London must be learnt closer at home.

Although the government says the new GST regime will take efect in July, there are still many discrepancies, ambiguity and confusion relating to customs duties and concessions, causing hardship especially to those engaged in import and export activities. Imported stocks of components, consumables and raw materials worth crores of rupees have been unsold on account of confusion over input credit availability against Counter Value Duty/ Special Additional Duty paid imported goods.

K. Pradeep,

R. Narayanan,

Chennai

Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh

subsequent analysis. I am certain that this article too will end up this way. L. Jayasree, Guntur, Andhra Pradesh

The next President

Ways and means should be found to retain the exemptions/concessions granted under “preferential treatments” accorded to imports under trade agreements such as ASEAN Free Trade Agreements and from least developed countries. There needs to be a formula to calculate Integrated Goods and Service Tax and compensation cess on imports, so that the efective rate of duty levied is error free. A. Sathyanarayana, New Delhi

more letters online: www.hindu.com/opinion/letters/

corrections & clarifications: A Sports page report, “Srikanth stuns Ho, enters inal”( June 18, 2017), said the 24-year-old player (Srikant) fought ... to outclass the Korean player Son 21-15, 18-21, 24-22. The correct scoreline is 21-15 14-21, 24-22. It is the policy of The Hindu to correct signiicant errors as soon as possible. Please specify the edition (place of publication), date and page. The Readers’ Editor’s office can be contacted by Telephone: +91-44-28418297/28576300 (11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday); Fax: +91-44-28552963; E-mail:[email protected]; Mail: Readers’ Editor, The Hindu, Kasturi Buildings, 859 & 860 Anna Salai, Chennai 600 002, India. All communication must carry the full postal address and telephone number. No personal visits. The Terms of Reference for the Readers’ Editor are on www.thehindu.com M ND-ND

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THE HINDU

OPED 9

NOIDA/DELHI

MONDAY, JUNE 19, 2017

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Muzzling freedom of expression Unless a trade is prohibited by law or taken over by the state, restrictions of the kind imposed by the rules regarding sale of cattle are constitutionally suspect

FROM THE READERS’ EDITOR

Sting journalism is not investigative journalism It is a lazy substitute to meticulous reporting. It may create a buzz but can never examine anything in depth

Kapil Sibal

Dangerous discourse The preceding enunciation is necessary to put in perspective controversies that have bedevilled the national discourse that has consumed public attention. I am talking of vigilantes who beleaguer, maim or even take people’s lives to allegedly save a cow; of anti-Romeo squads who allegedly prevent ‘eve-teasing’; of sentinels of morality who take revenge for what is called ‘love jihad’; and of self-appointed nationalists who brand all those who dare to oppose this government’s policy prescriptions in Jammu and Kashmir and towards Pakistan as ‘anti-national’. What I eat is part of my freedom of expression. It is part of my identity. Also my desire to eat what I want, unless prohibited by law, is a matter of my choice. Exercise of choice is part of a person’s individuality. No one can pre-empt my right to exercise that choice. The recent decision of the Ministry of Environment prohibiting trade of cattle and other animals meant for slaughter is baffling. This is sought to be accomplished by

A.S. Panneerselvan

GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO

At the heart of the fundamental right of freedom of expression is free speech. But the human right to freely express oneself is not limited to free speech. We all express ourselves in different ways. A child expresses hunger, and other needs, before learning to speak. Form of dress is an expression of your personality. Personality attributes express themselves in different ways. Protest in all its manifestations represents expression. Expression of cultural traits of individuals, communities, nationalities may also be discerned from custom and the food we eat. Through speech we merely communicate our thoughts, feelings, desires attributable to that moment. Such expressions may be transitory. What is fundamental and inalienable is the individual’s right to freely express himself or herself. This, of course, is subject to caveats. Such expression should not be abusive, defamatory, immoral or in any way forbidden by law.

issuing a notification under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Regulation of Livestock Markets) Rules 2017 (‘Rules’). Cattle under the new Rules include bulls, bullocks, buffaloes, cows, heifers, steers, calves and camel. Apart from a written declaration that cattle will not be sold for slaughter, an undertaking will have to be given to market committees that cattle will be sold for agricultural purposes and not for slaughter. Under the Rules, records of such sales will have to be preserved for six months. Given this, the grievance of the States that the Union is seeking to interfere in areas within their exclusive domain is justified, despite a facile clarification by the Finance Minister. Such Rules are, first, beyond the scope of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960. Since the said Act does not prohibit the slaughter of animals, the Rules under the law cannot seek to impose any such prohibition. Second, Article 19(1)(g) makes carrying on any trade, business or profession a fundamental right. Unless a trade is prohibited by law or taken over by the state, restrictions of the kind imposed by the Rules regarding sale of cattle are constitutionally suspect. Lastly, sacrifice of an animal, including cattle, as part of religious tradition, or slaughter for consumption, is part of the fundamental right to freedom of expression. Even other-

wise, it is arbitrary and irrational to allow non-milch cattle not to be traded for slaughter as that affects a number of farmers’ right to livelihood.

Adverse impact The government is not unaware of the adverse consequences of the notification on livelihoods of the more than 22 lakh people employed in the meat industry. Farmers too would suffer. Maintenance of uneconomic cattle costs a farmer ₹40,000 a year, a huge cost for small farmers to pay. Of the overall meat production, cattle are a bare 5%, buffalo 23% and poultry 46%. After the new definition of cattle, 28% of the meat trade will be affected. In 2014, India toppled Brazil and became the highest beef exporter globally with a volume of $4 billion. The leather industry too will be badly hit. Meat exports fell by 13% during April-December 2016. The worst is yet to come. Hides and bones of slaughtered cattle are used not just in the leather industry but also in the manufacture of soaps, toothpastes, buttons, paint brushes, surgical stitches, pharmaceutical products and musical instruments. India’s leather industry accounts for around more than 12% of the world’s leather production of hides and skins. India also accounts for 9% of the world’s footwear production. If cattle are not slaughtered, they would need to be protected and cared for. This

will, in turn, impose an unprecedented burden of ₹3000 a month on owners, apart from massive adverse economic consequences. What is under threat is the ‘mixed crop-livestock farming’ system. Livestock supplement farm incomes by providing employment, draught animals and manure (Economic Survey: 20152016). The state itself slaughters the highest number of buffaloes (6.2 million). With the new Rules, none of them can be bought from the market.

For electoral reasons The government’s decision clearly has no rational basis. Its objective is to keep the communal pot boiling so that the issue of slaughter of cows, prohibited in most States, continues to occupy the public space, to emotionally exploit majoritarian sentiments. That it will adversely impact consumption, trade, business, livelihoods does not matter as long as it delivers electoral benefits. Besides, the real issue, that of freedom of expression, gets buried, encouraged also by shrill debates in the electronic media. While the mayhem caused continues, the self-proclaimed chowkidar watches unmoved. While he does not express himself, his government chokes others’ freedom of expression. Kapil Sibal is a former Union Minister and senior Congress leader

In this age of digital storage of information, one is not sure whether it is the power of the search engines or their own stupendous memory that helps readers to remember and recollect information and pose questions. Whatever be the case, the fact remains that the printed word, which has now entered cyberspace, seems to have acquired a muchlonger shelf life since Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press. Some of the readers wanted to know whether the latest sting involving AIADMK MLAs taking money for switching factional affiliations has changed my opinion on sting journalism. They wanted to know whether, as a Readers’ Editor, I would recommend undercover journalism and deployment of spy cameras for The Hindu. They cited two of my earlier columns — “The dilemmas of sting journalism” (December 16, 2013) and “Means and ends matter” (September 22, 2014) — in which I had strongly repudiated the idea of ‘sting’. My reservation against sting journalism goes back to the days when Tehelka ventured into ‘Operation West End’ that looked at murky deals in defence procurement. I am convinced that sting journalism is a lazy substitute to meticulous investigative reporting. It is true that some of the defence deals are murky. However, the investigations that have had some sort of national resonance are the ones that have deployed conventional investigative modes. For instance, the Bofors investigation by this newspaper was a longhaul exercise that involved meticulous documentation, first-hand interviews and, in the words of Columbia Journalism School, “evidence of a qualitatively new, unimpeachable kind”. The ubiquitous 24x7 news channels do not understand the rigours of serious investigative journalism. The moment they access a sheet of paper coming from officials, they think they have unearthed a scam, and their decibel levels reach a crescendo, only to be lost following the discovery of another sheet of paper, to proclaim another exclusive expose. In 2008, Aidan White wrote an excellent handbook, To Tell You the Truth, in which he laid down the ground rules for journalism to remain a trustworthy endeavour. “Fierce competition and a lack of regula-

tion have created a dangerously competitive environment in which ethical and professional standards have been sidelined. In broadcasting, for instance, where 40 television news channels compete for viewers in one of the world’s most crowded media markets, ‘sting journalism’ — some might call it voyeurism and entrapment — has come to dominate the news mix,” he wrote about Indian television channels. Now, with numbers of channels going up, the downward spiral in standards seems to be touching a new low.

In public interest? One of the defences advanced by sting journalists is that the subterfuge is in public interest; hence, it should be accepted as a normal journalistic practice to bring out the truth. I can cite at least ten outstanding investigative reports for each decade since Emergency. For instance, in the mid-1980s, Praful Bidwai explained the huge gap between the claims and reality in the functioning of the Indian nuclear establishment. Unlike the garrulous AIADMK MLAs, the Indian nuclear establishment is known for maintaining its secrecy — remember how the West was hoodwinked about Pokhran-1 in 1974? — and has a powerful legal cover in the form of the Atomic Energy Act, 1962. The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) had made a claim that nuclear energy had become a major source of energy. Bidwai collected data on the quantum of power purchased from the DAE by various State electricity boards and established that the DAE’s figures were highly overstated. Sucheta Dalal’s investigative stories — which broke the securities scam in 1992, India’s biggest financial scandal until then — still remain a touchstone on how to look at data from the financial institutions. The Saturday special of this newspaper, Ground Zero, is a contemporary version of ethical investigation that is rigorous, factchecked, and in public interest. The stories are not based on hit-and-run, off-the-cuff, surreptitious recordings of a gullible single source, but involve painstaking suturing together of facts culled from multiple sources that make up our interlocking public. Is it possible to do a sting to replicate Tony Joseph’s “How genetics is settling the Aryan migration debate” ( June 17, 2017)? Lord Leveson’s voluminous report refers to sting journalism as “journalistic dark arts”. Sting journalism may create a buzz, but its logic is never to examine anything in depth but to just skim the surface till it finds a new villain of the day. [email protected]

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FROM

Deuba’s fourth innings

FIFTY YEARS AGO JUNE 19, 1967

Nepal’s new Prime Minister faces a tough year ahead

Israel will refuse to comply with any United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for a return to pre-war boundaries in the Middle East, Foreign Minister Abba Eban said in an interview published to-day [ June 18]. The Government and Press stepped up attacks on the Soviet Union on the eve of the emergency Assembly session requested by the USSR to demand that Israel give back the territory it captured in the six-day war. Mr. Eban was interviewed by the English-language “Jerusalem Post” before he flew to New York yesterday [ June 17] to head Israel’s U.N. delegation. “If the General Assembly were to vote by 121 to one in favour of Israel returning to the (1948) armistice lines to-morrow [ June 19], Israel would refuse to comply with that decision,” he said. “This has been made clear to the major powers.” Mr. Eban said Israeli strategy would try to prevent “harmful intervention in the new Middle Eastern realities”.

Israel dares UN to order return to old frontiers

Kallol Bhattacherjee

AFP

Nepal’s new Prime Minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba, who took charge on June 6, has a tough job on hand. He got a taste of the diicult times ahead even before taking over, as the second phase of the local-level elections were postponed to June 23. The postponement was necessary in view of the fact that this round of polls were meant for the Madhes region that has opposed Nepal government’s plans for elections, calling it a ‘drama’. Locals and Madhesi party leaders have been holding strikes and protests for days in this regard.

A curious situation Mr. Deuba’s irst task, therefore, is to conduct polls in Madhes provinces without violence. However, widespread incidents of arson and protests in the plains, partly due to a lack of consensus among the political parties, have struck a blow to the hopes. A signiicant number of leaders of the Madhesi morcha, led by the newly formed Rashtriya Janata Party-Nepal, say in private that elections should not be held without irst completing the process of bringing amendments to the Constitution. Yet, they have expressed support in public. It is in this curious situation — where participating parties can go back on their promises — that Mr. Deuba has to run his government. Despite being a seasoned political leader with three past stints at the top post, Mr. Deuba is bound to ind the current spell a new experience. In his three previous stints, Mr. Deuba — a product of the politics of durbar-democracy conluence — dealt with a diferent Nepal. Present-day Nepal, on the other hand, is facing disruptive politics due to an upsurge in democratic sentiments from all sections of the society. The old vs. the new On the one hand, the Madhesis and the Janajatis are demanding an amendment to the Constitution passed in September 2015. On the other hand, there is the old order, in which Mr. Deuba was trained, trying to preserve its inluence. Mr. Deuba is therefore going to face a tough year ahead, beginning with the June 23 elections. This will be followed by another round of local elections and general elections. He will also have to balance Nepal’s expanding role in the region and beyond. His irst challenge, next week’s elections, will not just test him but also send a message on the resilience of the Himalayan nation’s democracy. CM YK

ARCHIVES

A HUNDRED YEARS AGO JUNE 19, 2017

At Allahabad CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC

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CONCEPTUAL

SHELF HELP

Ordoliberalism

Patterns out of chaos

Economics An economic ideology that views the the state as an institution that offers an appropriate legal framework for the efficient functioning of the market economy. It emphasises that the state has a crucial role to play in fostering market competition, by preventing the rise of monopolies that can exert harmful economic and political power. At the same time, the state must also avoid distorting the free market. Ordoliberal principles, famously adopted by former German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, played a major role in the miraculous rise of the German economy in the post-Second World War era.

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The Hindu explains: How worms could solve plastic pollution http://bit.ly/wormssolveplasticpollution

Making sense of the populist wave around the world Suhasini Haidar

In these times of turbulent change and unexpected outcomes, it is natural to take comfort in patterns. Which is why surprise elections, mass movements and the rise of authoritarian but popular leaders in the past few years have sparked a flurry of books worldwide. Some writers have found the pattern to be about politics, others have tried to study leadership styles, and some others have turned to history to try and understand just what is happening. There are books like Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance’s riveting account of social and economic strife in the U.S., that seek to find purely American reasons for the Donald Trump victory. But a host of others ask if there are global threads we can draw. Is the anti-globalisation plank of Mr. Trump in America or Viktor Orban in Hungary linked to the platform of Nigel Farage or the Brex-

iters in U.K., or Marine Le Pen in France? Is discomfort with civil society organisations a factor that brings Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Rodrigo Duterte together? Are the religious nationalisms of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey and Narendra Modi in India part of a pattern?

Populism vs. pluralism One of the best places to start is Princeton professor Jan Werner Muller’s What is Populism? In his treatise, Mr. Muller strips down the current wave of ‘populist movements’, both left-wing and right-wing, to their basics: Populism, according to Mr. Muller, is a “rejection of pluralism”. An equally important body of work has come from Ivan Krastev, who has followed his bestseller Democracy Disrupted: The Politics of Global Protest (2014), with a well-timed book called After Europe, almost presaging the recent NATO spat between German Chancellor Angela

Merkel and Mr. Trump. The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics, by John N. Judis tries to draw explanations from history, as do a series of books trying to trace the roots of today’s authoritarian leaders to 1930s Germany: Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 by Volker Ulrich and Becoming Hitler by Thomas Weber (out later this year). Two Indian authors have contributed significantly to the debate this year. Basharat Peer’s comparison of the politics of Mr. Modi with that of Mr. Erdoğan, A Question of Order: India, Turkey, and the Return of Strongmen looks at the phenomenon of antiliberal “elected autocrats” worldwide. In The Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra, who clearly experiences much of that anger, dissects the many ‘isms’ of our time: religious extremism, nationalism, revivalism, majoritarianism… and yes, cynicism.

A public meeting to be held on Friday is being arranged to ask for the withdrawal of the internment order [against G.A. Arundale, B.P. Wadia and Annie Besant, issued on June 7, 1917 by the Acting Chief Secretary of Madras, Lionel Davidson]. It is expected that the Hon’ble Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya will preside. A large number of leading Allahabad citizens who have hitherto kept aloof from the Home Rule League for one reason or other propose now to join it. The Hon’ble Dr. Tej Bahadur Sapru, President of the United Provinces Congress Committee, has sent a telegram to the Home Secretary, Simla, this morning conveying the protest of his committee against the internment orders and saying that the action of the Madras Government will excite the public mind throughout India and the only consequence will be stronger agitation, and that the committee views the new policy with apprehension and suggests that the Governor-General may direct local Governments generally not to embark upon it. CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC

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10 NEWS

NOIDA/DELHI

THE HINDU

MONDAY, JUNE 19, 2017

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INTERVIEW | SAUD BIN MOHAMMED AL-SATY

FROM PAGE ONE

‘Saudi-Qatar situation is not like India and Pak.’

NDA’s choice may be known tomorrow “An early announcement, latest by Tuesday evening therefore will give our supporting parties a heads-up on the name, and time to reach Delhi for the nomination process at Parliament House,” added the source. Mr. Shah’s meeting with Mr. Uddhav Thackeray too did not result in any disclosure of the name of the probable NDA candidate. The Shiv Sena has been a bit of a troublesome ally to the BJP, and had broken ranks with the National Democratic Alliance twice before on presidential polls, in 2007 to elect Pratibha Patil and in 2012 to support the candidature of President Pranab Mukherjee. “This morning [Sunday], however, Mr. Shah told Mr. Thackeray that as per the resolution passed by the NDA two months ago to endorse the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra

Saudi envoy says India’s irm stand on terror is appreciable, the country’s eforts in this regard are welcome

Modi, the Sena should support any name put forward by him. “Mr. Thackeray did not deny support, but did put forward the name of agricultural scientist M.S. Swaminathan as their choice,” said a source privy to the meeting. “Dr. Swaminathan’s advocacy by Sena is just a posture to project a pro-farmer stance as the Devendra Fadnavis government is facing protests by farmers,” said the source, who added that the Sena in all likelihood will vote with the rest of the NDA.

Time to consider “We have consulted parties without disclosing the name of the candidate, and therefore it is only fair that some time be given for them to consider our candidate after we announce our choice,” a BJP office-bearer added.

GST: Return iling dates deferred “But, to give some relief to businesses getting ready, we have decided to introduce a new form GSTR 3B that will need to be filed by August 20 for July and September 20 for August,” Mr. Adhia said. “The invoice-wise details needed in GSTR 1 for July can be filed by September 5, and for August by September 20,” he added. “The announcement of an extended timeline for filing the returns for July and August is a welcome development. However this should not make businesses complacent as the additional time available is very limited,” M.S. Mani, Senior Director at Deloitte Haskins & Sells said. Mr. Jaitley said that while some flexibility has been given for returns for July and August, those for September will follow the original dates. “If people are not ready by then, then that’s to their own detriment,” he said.

E-waybills delayed “There were two opinions prevalent in the Council regarding e-waybills,” Mr. Jaitley said. “The discussion will continue on this until a

consensus is reached. Till this happens, an alternative rule will operate which will authorise the existing system to continue.” “The decision to leave ewaybills to the States for now would increase the complications for businesses that were expecting to operate in a simpler environment for inter-State trade,” Mr. Mani added. “Hopefully e-waybills will be used only for selected goods and on highly restricted basis and will not become a mandatory transit document.” However, the other view is that the system of ewaybills is highly complex and that the additional time is welcome. “Discussion on e-waybills has been a contentious issue for States, as some of them already have a robust mechanism in place and shifting back to hand bills would cause them revenue loss,” Ansh Bhargava, Senior Consultant at Taxmann.com, one of the 34 GST Suvidha Providers said. “We don’t have the luxury of time to defer the rollout of GST,” Mr. Jaitley said. “The official launch of GST will take place on the midnight of June 30.”

we are ready to help with humanitarian needs, if necessary. The food shortages are not because of us. They import most of their foods, it is true, through KSA, but they will have to look for alternatives for now.

Suhasini Haidar NEW DELHI

The deadline for Qatari diplomats to leave Saudi Arabia and five other countries expired on Sunday, part of a series of measures against Qatar for sheltering groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and extending ties with Iran, measures that include sealing borders for trade and supplies and access to Qatari flights. Speaking to The Hindu, Saudi Ambassador to India Saud bin Mohammed Al-Saty (also called the Ambassador of the Custodian of the two holy mosques) says India’s firm stand on terror is appreciable, but rejected comparisons between the Saudi-Qatar relationship to India-Pakistan. Just a week after we saw a show of strength by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) with U.S. President Donald Trump attending a summit of Islamic nations in Riyadh, the region seems to be in disarray with actions against Qatar by several nations led by KSA. What led to this?

countries, and to remove all the leaders of extremist organisations from its soil, including the Muslim Brotherhood. We exhausted all other means before taking these steps. Qatar is a neighbour and a brotherly country, we have close societal ties, tribal ties…they even call themselves Wahabbis, and we want to resolve the situation.

■ This didn’t happen overnight. We have been speaking to Qatari authorities since 2012. In 2013 and 2015, the Qatari government signed agreements, and said it would stop support to extremist groups that work against the security of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and UAE and Egypt. Among the commitments were to stop the negative messaging from the Al-Jazeera channel that aims to create social unrest in our

Saudi Arabia too is accused of arming and funding rebels in Syria, of funding Wahabbi extremism in madrassas in South Asia….when KSA points the finger at Qatar, it has many fingers pointing at it.

There is no truth, whatsoever, in the allegation that the Kingdom funds extremist madrassas or mosques. I don’t even know if there are



Has India expressed concern? Since half of Indian expatriates in West Asia work in Saudi Arabia, and more than half-amillion work in Qatar.

portedly, indicates that monsoon will only hit Central India around the end of this month. It plans to make this the base for all future forecasts, ranging from short-term weekly projections to the trajectory of the fourmonth-long monsoon. However, for its June update, the IMD chose to rely on its workhorse statistical model that forecasts the monsoon based on six meteorological parameters. The dynamical model, according to the IMD statement, showed monsoon rains to be 89 cm or 100% of the LPA. (With inputs from PTI)

Saud bin Mohammed Al-Saty Saudi Ambassador to India

secute. Why would we make up such accusations against a member of the GCC family? Yet the blockade against them is reportedly causing some hardships. ■ I want to clarify that there is no blockade whatsoever. We have closed our borders with them, and we have banned Qatar airlines from going through our airspace. However, their airspace is not closed, and their access to the seas, ports is open. Our foreign ministry has said

New Delhi

On edge: Security personnel cordon of an area after a group of militants attacked an Army convoy in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district on Sunday. SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT *

Tension prevails in Kashmir Amid shutdown, militants open ire at security forces in three places Tension prevailed in Kashmir Valley for the second consecutive day on Sunday as restrictions continued in parts of Srinagar. Meanwhile, militants opened fire at security forces in three places. In Bijbehara, militants fired at Army’s road opening party. “Militants fled immediately after opening a few shots,” said a police spokesman. Militants also opened fire on the Army and CRPF camps in Bijbehara and Budgam on Saturday night. Meanwhile in south Kashmir, where two civilians and three militants died in Friday’s gunfight, a spontaneous shutdown impacted life. There were also sporadic incidents of stonethrowing. Locals alleged security forces barged into their residences following an incident of stone throwing in As-

Cops to donate a day’s salary to martyrs’ kin Press Trust of India Srinagar

Jammu and Kashmir police personnel will donate a day’s salary for the families of the cops who were killed in the line of duty in the State this year. Fourteen police personnel and two special police officers

tan Pora in Anantnag and “thrashed inmates”. Meanwhile, train services resumed services after halting it for two days. The service on Budgam-SrinagarAnantnag-Qazigund-Banihal track has been resumed, said an official. Most separatist leaders were also placed under house arrest.

have sacrificed their lives in various militancyrelated incidents during the year, according to a police spokesman. Showing solidarity and their concern for the families, personnel will donate one day salary for the kin of the martyrs, the spokesman said.

A 26-year-old youth, who was injured after unknown gunmen opened fire at him at Pingleena area of Pulwama in south Kashmir on Saturday evening, succumbed to injuries in Srinagar hospital on Saturday night. The victim has been identified as Aijaz Ahmad Malik.

Clean Ganga oicials to discuss polluting facilities with Uttar Pradesh government

He had received two bullets in the abdomen.

‘No threat to pilgrims’ Hurriyat chairman Syed Ali Geelani said on Sunday that there was no terror threat to the Amarnath Yatra pilgrims. “The people of Kashmir have always been friendly and generous to visitors, especially the Amarnath pilgrims. They have treated the Amarnath pilgrims with unique hospitality,” he said. “An adverse propaganda is being launched by the media suggesting that the pilgrims are facing a threat from the people of the State. Terror threat to the Amarnath yatra is a brazen lie, aimed at maligning the people’s movement,” he said. He said the people of Kashmir “are not against any religion”. “Fanatical forces in India are desperate to give a bad name to the freedom movement and are relying on negative propaganda...”

Salem moves EU court Press Trust of India Mumbai

only with the river getting cleaned.” The tannery clusters at Jajmau employ over two million people; for long, tannery managers have argued that the new-technology effluent treatment plants are expensive. Were the tanneries to shift, a new common effluent treatment plant would have to be developed.

Jacob Koshy NEW DELHI

Affect employment Were the tanneries to be shifted, it could affect nearly two CM YK

A ile photo of the Ganga.

*

RANJEET KUMAR

million people dependent on them for their livelihood. It could also mean that alternative technologies — like the zero liquid discharge (ZLD) plant promoted by the CSIRCentral Leather Research Institute, Chennai — may not

Well, let me just say that when it comes to terrorism,



Vijaita Singh

Kanpur tanneries may be shifted out Officials of the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) will meet Uttar Pradesh government officials to discuss the State’s decision to shift over 400 tanneries from Kanpur. The previous Samajwadi Party government had told the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in 2016 that the tanneries could not be shifted, for no land was available. The Yogi Adityanath government has reportedly identified fresh land.

Has KSA asked India for support? Reports this week suggested King Salman asked Pakistan PM Sharif to pick a side…

■ I could put that question back to you..as these are not similar or comparable situations. Do you have open borders with Pakistan, as we normally have with Qatar? Do you have the kind of trade we have with thousands and thousands of trucks moving back and forth [normally]? The idea is to find workable solutions through dialogue. We hope to see that the comprehensive dialogue between India and Pakistan is resumed, as this is the best way to resolve differences. From our side, we will be happy to help in any way we can, as we have excellent relations with Pakistan and India.

Report had spoken of ‘foreign IS jihadis’

Peerzada Ashiq

The IMD said last week that the southwest monsoon had advanced across some parts of Central and eastern Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Bihar, most parts of Odisha, and the rest of West Bengal. It had reached Karnataka, Goa and the Konkan on the western coast while on the eastern coast it covered Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, parts of Telangana and the North East. In April, the IMD shifted to using a new monsoon forecast system, called a dynamical model that uses supercomputers to simulate the weather and extrapolating it. This model, re-

< >

We exhausted all other means before taking these steps

Some in India have suggested that everything KSA accuses Qatar of, India accuses Pakistan of. If India were to enforce a similar blockade, would KSA support India?

‘No Indian ighting in the Philippines’

Srinagar

Monsoon to be delayed over Central India

Well, India has issued a statement, expressing its concerns for the millions of Indians that live there, that we appreciate. It made a very strong point about countering terrorism, and rightly calls it a grave threat to our region, and to South Asia. Terrorists take advantage of differences between countries, and they carry out attacks as we have seen in Yemen, and other areas, and strongly believe cooperation is essential to defeating terror.



such mosques in India, it’s not for me to say. Our strategy on counter-terrorism and security cooperation and to ensure terrorists cannot find funds is excellent. We work very closely with India on this. We do not donate a single penny without the full consent of the government of India. We take any request for funding to the Indian government, and even before transferring funds we notify the government. We have also banned giving to any charity outside Saudi Arabia. If individuals break that law, we will prosecute them. With Qatar, we have a list of entities and individuals who are terrorists who we want them to pro-

all countries should have a full commitment to countering it. India’s statement on this issue was very clear, and if we can work together more on fighting terrorism and extremism, we welcome any efforts from India in that regard.

be implemented. “If the tanneries were to be shifted, there would not be any need for ZLD plants,” NMCG chief U.P. Singh told The Hindu. “We will be meeting U.P. government officials this week. We are concerned

Contamination aspects In a report covering various aspects of contamination in the river, the Central Pollution Control Board had informed the NGT that the Ganga, running 543 km between Haridwar and Kanpur, was affected by 1,072

seriously polluting industries that were releasing heavy metals and pesticides. At present, 823.1 million litres per day (MLD) of untreated sewage and 212.42 MLD of industrial effluent flow into the river, while three of the four monitored sewage treatment plants do not comply with the set standards. The green panel has divided the cleaning work in segments — Gomukh-Haridwar (Phase-I); Haridwar-Unnao (segment B of Phase-I); Unnao-the border of Uttar Pradesh; the border of Uttar Pradesh-the border of Jharkhand; and the border of Jharkhand-the Bay of Bengal. (With inputs from PTI)

Gangster Abu Salem, convicted for his role in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case, has moved a court under the European Union to facilitate his return to Portugal from where he was extradited to India to face trial. “We have moved the European Court of Human Rights, a court under the EU, seeking his recall to Portugal as there were many violations to his extradition order,” his lawyer Sabha Qureshi said. Salem contended that after the Portugal court terminated the 2014 order for his extradition, his entire trial in India had become illegal.

Security agencies here have denied that an Indian fought alongside the Islamic State (IS) at Marawi in southern Philippines which was seized by the Islamist militant group a month ago. A Reuters report said on May 30 that “dozens of foreign jihadis”, which included an Indian, “fought side-by-side with Islamic State sympathisers against security forces”.

Enquiries conducted Following the report, security agencies conducted enquiries but could not get any information on the presence of an Indian there. At least two top intelligence officials told The Hindu that they could not identify any Indian who could have travelled to the island city to participate in the fight. “No Indian who travelled to Syria-Iraq or Afghanistan is said to be in the Philippines. We got in touch with the authorities in the East Asian country, but they have not shared any such information with us,” said one of the two intelligence officials. Around 25 Indians are said to have travelled to the IS-controlled territory in Iraq-Syria in the past three years, while 21 men, women and children from Kerala made their way to the Khorasan province in Afghanistan in 2016. Rumiyah, a propaganda magazine of the IS, in its

latest issue has dedicated a chapter on the Philippines’ fight and also carries an interview with the Shaykh Abu Abdillah al-Mujahir, the amir (chief ) of the IS in East Asia. He says in the magazine that a large number of mujahideen have reached Philippines from “various countries in the region of East Asia, and even from regions outside East Asia”, confirming the presence of foreign fighters but doesn’t mention their nationality. “We have identified the Indians who made their way to the IS-controlled territory, but so far no evidence has emerged that any Indian travelled to the Philippines. It could be an expatriate but we are not sure,” said another official. The official, however, said there were tell-tale signs of trouble brewing in the East Asian country since February-March this year when it was informed of the militant outfit’s plan to lay siege in the predominantly Catholic nation. The Armed Forces of Philippines (AFP) have been engaged in a prolonged battle with the Maute-IS group, which has claimed the lives of more than 300 civilians so far. The radical outfit formed in 2012 by two brothers, Omarkhayam and Abdullah Maute, has pledged allegiance to the IS. It has the support of Isnilon Hapilon, leader of the Abu Sayyaf and one of the most-wanted terrorists in the U.S.

Army oicer, 3 others arrested in graft case Press Trust of India New Delhi

A Colonel was arrested by the CBI for allegedly taking a bribe of ₹50,000 from a Pune-based private company for supply of rock splitting equipment. The agency also arrested three officials of the com-

pany. Col. Shaibal Kumar posted in Planning and Engineering branch of the Kolkata-based Army’s Eastern Command, Sharat Nath, Pune-based Xtech Equipment Pvt Ltd. MD, Vijay Naidu, a director in a company and Amit Roy, a company official were arrested.

M ND-ND

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THE HINDU

NEWS 11

NOIDA/DELHI

MONDAY, JUNE 19, 2017

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In West Bengal’s hills, a summer of discontent On the fourth day of the protests, Singhamari, the epicentre of the agitation for a separate State of Gorkhaland, wears a look of devastation

GJM plans to revive paciist wing

Shiv Sahay Singh Darjeeling

An eerie silence prevailed on Sunday in Singhamari, the stronghold of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM). Three people were killed allegedly in police firing during a violent agitation for a separate State of Gorkhaland on Saturday. On the fourth day of the indefinite strike called by the GJM in Darjeeling hills, Singhamari, which has been the epicentre of the protests, wore a look of desolation and devastation. A smell of burnt tyres and vehicles pervaded the air, and evidence of a violent clash between the agitators and the security forces lay scattered on Lebong Cart Road that connects Singhamari to Darjeeling town.

Ceaseless unrest Blood stains that have not yet been washed away by the rain, broken glass, bricks and half-a-dozen burnt vehicles stand testimony to the unrest that continues to rage in the hills. There is absolutely no sight of any security personnel in the region. A few GJM youths stood in solemn silence around a vehicle in which was placed a picture of one of the protesters who was killed the day before. After Saturday’s violence, the ongoing shutdown in the hills has become even more pronounced. The few shops serving essentials that had remained open till Saturday, were kept shut. Internet services were down and according to the protesters, this was a ploy of the administration and the police to counter the Gorkhaland movement. “It was through the Internet and WhatsApp services that we were getting our instructions from our leaders. Even local television channels have gone off air. They are trying to weaken our movement. But I can tell you they will not be successful,” Amu Sherpa a young proGorkhaland activist told The Hindu. ‘Point of no return’ According to Col. Ramesh Allay (retd.), Deputy Chairman of the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) and central committee member of the GJM, after “Saturday’s killings”, there is no going back in the agitation for Gorkhaland. “The movement has reached a point of no return. The Chief Minister is now facing the courage of the Gorkhas. There are many

Press Trust of India Darjeeling

In unison: Supporters of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha take part in a rally in Darjeeling on Sunday to honour protesters who were killed in clashes with security forces a day earlier.

and State govt. must < > Centre work together. The Centre

residents should come < > The out of their houses to resist

should extend full cooperation Mamata Banerjee Chief Minister

the administration

BJP non-committal on statehood issue ‘Demand needs to be examined’

More than a hundred Dalit families of Saharanpur villages threatened on Sunday to renounce Hinduism and embrace Buddhism to “protest the atrocities against Dalits by the Thakurs and the subsequent one sided police action against the Bhim Army.” The Dalits living in Rupdi, Kapurpur, Ighri and Unali villages in the neighbourhood of Shabbirpur village that saw Thakur-Dalit clashes early this month warned that they would re-

A mark of protest “We are taking this extreme step as a mark of protest, because first the Thakur community attacked and burnt our lifetime earnings merely because we asked them to respect Saint Ravidas and not play loud music in Shabbirpur. Then the U.P. government headed by Adityanath, who is also a Thakur, takes action against

Mamata’s claim a lie: Gurung PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

Soumya Das

Darjeeling

Kolkata

Gorkha Janmukti Morcha chief Bimal Gurung on Sunday termed a “white lie” West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s claim that the agitation in the Darjeeling hills was supported by insurgent groups. Ms. Banerjee on Saturday called the agitation a “deep-rooted conspiracy” supported by the insurgent groups of the Northeast and some foreign countries. “The allegations are baseless. Ms. Banerjee is trying to mislead the people. It is not a political fight but a fight for our identity. We will not stop until Gorkhaland is created. The struggle will be intensified in the hills,” Mr. Gurung said in a statement.

As unrest continued in the Darjeeling hills over the demand for the State of Gorkhaland, the BJP unit in Bengal remained non-committal. The BJP, however, in its manifesto for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, had indicated that it would “consider” the demand of the people of the hills. Speaking to The Hindu, BJP MP from Darjeeling S.S. Ahluwalia — who is also a Minister of State — said that the “demand” of the people of Darjeeling needs to be examined. However, he did not indicate the party’s position on Gorkhaland. “One has to properly understand what is written there [in the BJP’s manifesto]. Gorkhas and tribals will come forward with their demands which will be ex-

us for speaking up and protesting against Thakur atrocities. How long should we remain silent? At the time of elections you call us Hindu and after that you start treating us like slaves,” said Narendra Gautam, whose family is among 180 families that have threatened to convert. Dalit families gathered at a local canal and floated idols of Hindu gods and goddesses into the water. The move comes weeks after Advocate Chandrashekhar Azad Ravan, founder of the Bhim Army, was arrested by the Special Task Force.

S.S. Ahluwalia

amined,” said Mr. Ahluwalia. The 2014 manifesto said that the BJP will “sympathetically examine” the demand. Asked if the wording of the manifesto indicated acknowledgement of the demand, Mr. Ahluwalia said the media is “pre-judging the issue.” “The Centre is the authority here (regarding Gorkhaland). State BJP has no role to play. The Centre will take a call,” State BJP president Dilip Ghosh said.

Three Maoists killed in Chhattisgarh NAGPUR

nounce Hinduism if the Yogi Adityanath government did not stop the “unfair targeting” of Dalits and the Bhim Army.

tension is due to autocratic < > The rule of State govt. and Centre’s Pramod Boro ABSU president

others who are willing to sacrifice their lives for Gorkhaland. All parties in the hills are fully behind the GJM on the Gorkhaland demand, and a concrete action plan would be devised at the allparty meeting scheduled on June 20,” Col. Allay said. GJM MLA from Darjeeling Amar Singh Rai told journalists that the State government’s claim that the police did not open fire was “laughable.” “Three people have been killed. We have bullets to show that they were fired by security sources,” he said, adding that they were not happy with the role of the Central government in the imbroglio either. “We are being made pawns by the Centre and the State,” he said. The people of Darjeeling, he said, were disappointed that the BJP MP from Darjeeling (S.S. Ahluwalia) had not come to stand beside them. “I have doubts whether the Centre is really trying to help us.” The GJM is an electoral partner of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.

Staff Reporter

Meerut

AFP

utter negligence to the problem

Bimal Gurung GJM chief

Saharanpur Dalits threaten to convert to Buddhism mohammad ali

*

With the GJM gearing up for a prolonged confrontation with the West Bengal government over the Gorkhaland statehood issue, the party’s leadership is planning to revive Gorkhaland Personnel (GLP) — its “peacekeeping” wing. “The situation is getting worse with each passing day. We feel that a head-on collision is just a matter of time. So we need to prepare ourselves to counter the State government democratically,” GJM central committee member and former in-charge of GLP Colonel (retd.) Ramesh Alley said. “We (GJM) will revive and recruit more youths in GLP, our own peacekeeping force. We have to prepare ourselves,” he said. The GJM, Mr. Alley said, wants to raise a 8,000strong force in Darjeeling hills to tackle “any kind of situation”. The idea of the GLP was first mooted by GJM supremo Bimal Gurung during the Gorkhaland agitation of 2008.

The Chhattisgarh police claimed to have gunned down three “dreaded Maoists” in Rajnandgaon district of the State on Sunday. “Three dreaded Maoists have been killed by the district police force in Pendaudi hills of Aundhi area of Rajnandgaon district today,” Rajnandgaon SP Prashant Agrawal said in a statement. The police team had left for Pendaudi hills at 11 a.m. on Sunday after receiving inputs about the presence of Maoist leader Sameela Potai

along with the Maoists of Aundhi Local Operating Squad in the area. “Around 2.30 p.m., the Maoists opened indiscriminate fire on the police team near Pendaudi Hills. The police team retaliated. The Maoists ran towards Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra as the police team was getting the upper hand in the battle. A search resulted in the recovery of three bodies in Maoist uniform,” said a statement by the Chhattisgarh police. In a separate development, two women Maoists surrendered to the police in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra on Sunday.

President turns down two more mercy pleas Separate cases of rape and murder involve ive men Press Trust of India New Delhi

President Pranab Mukherjee rejected two mercy petitions in the last week of May, just two months before he completes his tenure. The cases pertain to rape and murder of a 4-year-old girl by three men in Indore in 2012, and of a 22-year-old woman by two men in Pune in 2007. The two pleas were received at the President’s secretariat in April and May. The convicts had urged the President to commute the CM YK

death penalty awarded to them by local courts concerned and upheld by respective High Courts and finally by the Supreme Court. In the gruesome rape and murder case of Indore, Jitendra alias Jeetu, Babu alias Ketan and Sanni alias Devendra were handed down death sentence by a city court a year after the crime was committed. The sentence was upheld by the Madhya Pradesh High Court in 2014 and by the SC on January 6, 2015. Mr. Mukherjee rejected

their mercy petition on May 25, a Rashtrapati Bhavan communique said. The convicts had kidnapped the child from outside her relative’s house in Indore. They then sexually assaulted, strangled her to death and dumped the body in a drain. In the Pune case, the convicts — cab driver Purushottam Dashrath Borate and his accomplice Pradeep Yeshwant Kokade — had raped and murdered the woman. The trial court had awarded death penalty to the duo, which was upheld by the SC. M ND-ND

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THE HINDU

MONDAY, JUNE 19, 2017

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ELSEWHERE

Iraqi forces launch ‘inal chapter’ of Mosul assault About 1,00,000 civilians are still trapped in the IS-held Old City district and motorbike bombs, booby traps and sniper and mortar fire against the troops.

Reuters

Pollsters project Macron alliance winning big REUTERS

Pollsters on Sunday projected French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party and its ally winning between 355 and 360 seats in the 577-seat chamber. The Republicans and its allies are projected to be the main Opposition force. REUTERS

Taliban storm police base, killing five KABUL

Taliban stormed the regional police headquarters in Gardez, eastern Afghanistan, on Sunday, killing five officers and injuring 22 people.The assault was launched by a suicide bomber. Of the seven attackers involved, one blew himself up in a car at the entrance to clear the way for the others to rush in. AFP

Romania ruling party moves to remove PM BUCHAREST

Romania’s ruling party, the The center—left Social Democratic Party, will submit a vote of no-confidence against its own government after it withdrew its support for the Prime Minister for not implementing the party programme. But Sorin Grindeanu has refused to quit, sparking a crisis. AP

Mosul/Erbil

Iraqi forces began storming the Islamic State (IS)-held Old City of Mosul on Sunday, an assault they hope will be the last in the eight-month campaign to seize the militants’ stronghold. The historic district is the last still under control of the militants in the city, which used to be their capital in Iraq. It is a densely populated maze of narrow alleyways where fighting is often conducted house by house. About 100,000 civilians remain trapped there in harrowing conditions, with little food, water and medicine and limited access to hospitals, according to the United Nations. “This will be a terrifying time for around 1,00,000 people still trapped in Mosul’s Old City... now at risk of getting caught up in the fierce street fighting to come,” the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said in a statement. “This is the final chapter” in the offensive to take Mosul, said Lieutenant General Abdul Ghani al-Assadi, commander of the Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) elite

*

units spearheading the assault. A U.S.-led international coalition is providing air and ground support to the campaign. Several air strikes during the day hit a medical complex located just north of the Old City, alongside the western bank of the Tigris river, a Reuters TV reporter said. Armoured vehicles were heading toward the front-line north of the Old City as shelling and gunfire could be heard. The medical complex, housing the two biggest hospitals of Mosul, is still held in part by the milit-

ants who are using its buildings as sniper outposts.

Top IS leader killed IS’s security services chief in the Old City, Kanaan Jiyad Abdullah aka Abu Amna, was killed in the morning clashes, Hisham al-Hashimi, who advises several Middle East governments on Islamic State affairs, told Reuters. The Iraqi government initially hoped to take Mosul by the end of 2016, but the campaign took longer as militants dug in the middle of civilians to fight back. IS is also using suicide car

‘24 killed in air raid on Yemen market’

Four missing after tsunami hits Greenland

Agence France-Presse

STOCKHOLM

At least 24 civilians were killed in an air raid on Sunday on a market in northern Yemen, a medical official and witnesses said, blaming the Saudi-led coalition battling Yemeni rebels. Most of the casualties worked in the Mashnaq market in the rebel-controlled Saada province on the Saudi border, an official at a

Four people were listed as missing on Sunday after an earthquake sparked a tsunami off Greenland and forced some residents to be evacuated. There were no confirmed fatalities. “Four people are missing,” local police chief Bjorn Tegner Bay was quoted as saying by a television channel. AFP

The inal push: Iraqi forces take positions as they advance towards Mosul’s Old City on Sunday. AFP

Vulnerable buildings “The buildings of the old town are particularly vulnerable to collapse even if they aren't directly targeted, which could lead to even more civilian deaths than the hundreds killed so far in air strikes across the rest of the city,” the IRC said. “We are trying to be very careful, using only light and medium weapons... to avoid casualties among civilians,” CTS commander Major General Maan Saadi told Iraqi state TV. Hundred of civilians were killed near the frontlines in the past three weeks while fleeing the Old City, as Iraqi forces couldn’t fully secure exit corridors. “We expect thousands of families to escape from the Old City; we made all preparations to evacuate them from the frontlines,” Army colonel Salam Faraj told Reuters. IS snipers are shooting at families trying to flee on foot or by boat across the Tigris River, the UN said on Friday.

Sana’a

nearby hospital told AFP on condition of anonymity. Witnesses said the market was a centre for trafficking in qat, a leafy stimulant plant that is widely used in Yemen but illegal in Saudi Arabia. One of the witnesses said some of the casualties had “just returned from a trip across the border”. The Saudi-led Arab military coalition has been accused of air strikes in Yemen

for more than two years against areas controlled by the Shia Houthi rebels.

Frequently targeted Saada itself has come under heavy bombing since 2015, when the coalition intervened to support the government of Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi in its fight against the Iran-backed Houthis. The coalition claimed responsibility for a deadly at-

‘U.S. destroyer almost foundered’ U.S. Vice Admiral says bodies of missing sailors found in looded compartments

tack on the rebel-held capital Sana’a in October 2016 which targeted a gathering of mourners at a funeral ceremony, killing more than 140 people. The Houthis have also accused the Saudiled coalition of a raid last month that killed 23 civilians, including women and children, in the southwestern city of Taez. The Saudiled coalition has not claimed responsibility for that attack.

Wall of ire: Fireighters work to put out a forest ire near Bouca in central Portugal on Sunday. The EU has activated its civil protection eforts responding to Lisbon’s call for assistance. REUTERS *

62 dead in central Portugal wildires; many killed in cars Government declares three days of national mourning Associated Press AVELAR

Raging forest fires in central Portugal killed at least 62 people, many of them trapped in their cars as flames swept over a road, in what the Prime Minister on Sunday called “the biggest tragedy” the country has experienced in years. Portugal has declared three days of national mourning for the victims in the blaze “which has caused an irreparable loss of human life,” according to a government statement. A lightning strike is believed to have sparked the blaze in the Pedrogao Grande area after investigators found a tree that was hit during a “dry thunderstorm,” the head of the national judicial police told Portuguese media. Dry thunderstorms are frequent when falling water evaporates before reaching the ground because of high temperatures. Portugal, like

most southern European countries, is prone to forest fires in the dry summer months. “This is a region that has had fires because of its forests, but we cannot remember a tragedy of these proportions,” said Valdemar Alves, Mayor of Pedrogao Grande. “I am completely stunned by the number of deaths.”

Firefighters injured Interior Ministry official Jorge Gomes said that 60 people died from the flames and suffocating smoke, while another two people perished in a traffic accident related to the fires. Other 54 people were injured, including four firefighters and a seriously injured minor, Mr. Gomes told state broadcaster RTP. Authorities had previously said that 40 C heat in recent days might have played a part in the inferno about 150 km northeast of Lisbon. More than 350 sol-

Queen’s Speech for 2018 cancelled to deal with Brexit

Gunmen attack tourist resort in Mali capital

Parliamentary session doubled in length to two years

Reuters Yokosuka

The bodies of missing sailors were found in flooded compartments of the USS Fitzgerald, which came close to sinking after a collision with a container ship off Japan tore a gash under the warship's waterline, the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet commander said on Sunday. Vice Admiral Joseph P. Aucoin declined to say how many of the seven missing sailors had been recovered, but Japanese media said all had died. “Out of concern for the families and the notification process, I will decline to state how many we have found at this time,” Vice Admiral Aucoin told a news conference, adding that the search at sea had ended.

London

Staggering loss: A television crew ilms the damage to the guided missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald at its mother port in Yokosuka, southwest of Tokyo, on Sunday. AFP *

Desperate efforts The USS Fitzgerald could have foundered, or even sunk, but for the crew’s desperate efforts to save the ship, he said. “The damage was significant. There was a big gash under the water,” Vice AdmiralAucoin said at Yokosuka naval base, home of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, the docked Fitzgerald behind

year was planned for Monday and has since been postponed to Wednesday as the Conservative party stitched up its deal with the Democratic Unionist Party for support of its minority government.

Press Trust of India

him. “A significant portion of the crew was sleeping” when the destroyer collided with the Philippine-flagged container ship, destroying the commander’s cabin, he said. The Fitzgerald is salvageable, he said, but repairs will likely take months. “Hopefully less than a year. You will see the USS Fitzgerald back,” Vice

Adm. Aucoin said. Multiple U.S. and Japanese investigations are under way on how a ship as large as the container could ram into the warship in clear weather. Vice Adm. Aucoin was asked if damage on the starboard side indicated the U.S. ship could have been at fault, but he declined to speculate

on the cause of the collision. Maritime rules suggest vessels are supposed to give way to ships on their starboard. The Seventh Fleet said in a statement earlier on Sunday: “Divers were able to access the space and found a number of bodies.” They were transferred to a U.S. naval hospital for identification.

In a rare move, the U.K. government on Sunday announced the cancellation of the Queen’s Speech for 2018 to give Parliament more time to push through controversial Brexit laws after Prime Minister Theresa May’s election debacle. The speech, which is prepared by the government and read out by Queen Elizabeth II, marks the official start of parliamentary proceedings every year and sets the agenda that is to be passed by both houses during the course of the year. Leader of the House of Commons Andrea Leadsom said the next parliamentary session was being doubled in length to two years. Announcing the scrapping of the 2018 event, Ms. Leadsom said the European Union exit legislation would begin with the “Great Repeal Bill”. She said: “We will build the broadest possible consensus for our Brexit plans, and that means giving Parlia-

Theresa May

ment the maximum amount of time to scrutinise these bills by holding a two-year session of Parliament. It will mean we can work together to deliver a successful Brexit deal and a strong social legislative programme that delivers justice and opportunity to everyone.”

Unusual move The highly unusual move would allow MPs to scrutinise “substantial amounts of legislation”, she said. The Queen’s Speech traditionally takes place during the ceremonial state opening of Parliament, which this

Rare decision The last time the Speech was cancelled was in 2011 by the then Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government. That decision, the first time it had been taken since 1949, was criticised at the time by Labour as an “abuse of power” aimed solely at easing the passage of controversial legislation. The Queen’s Speech is a major moment in the Parliamentary diary. It is seen as a critical test for the government and failure to win the backing of a majority of MPs is seen as a vote of no confidence. By cancelling the speech, Prime Minister Theresa May removes from the diary a vote that could have bought down her government, The Telegraph reported.

Brothers who brought death and ruin to their hometown Twenty years after receiving education at a church-run school in Marawi, the Maute brothers came back and set ire to their alma mater Agence France-Presse Marawi

Twenty years after obtaining Christian educations, Muslim brothers Omarkhayam and Abdullah Maute returned to their southern Philippine city with the black flags of the Islamic State group and set fire to their alma mater. Hundreds of gunmen, many of them young locals recruited by the Maute brothers, destroyed Dansalan College in a rampage across Marawi city last month as they launched a brutal offensive to stamp their credentials as Philippine leaders of Islamic State. It turned the siblings, aged CM YK

in their mid 30s, into the most infamous high school alumni of the Protestant church-run institution, which had been a symbol of religious tolerance in the mostly Muslim city of 2,00,000 people. The brothers have since remained holed up in parts of Marawi, using their local knowledge of tunnels and bomb-proof basements, to withstand a military offensive that has left entire neighbourhoods in ruins and claimed more than 300 lives. “We do not understand where that hate is coming from,” said Zia Alonto Adiong, a member of the regional Parliament in a self-

ruled Muslim area in the southern Philippines’ Mindanao region that includes Marawi. Duma Sani, an ex-dean of Mindanao State University whose daughter also went to school with one of the Maute brothers, said most locals did not support their radical brand of Islam, under which non-believers must be killed.

Inspired by IS The Maute group emerged as a small rag-tag group around 2012 from a decades-old Muslim separatist rebellion in Mindanao, which makes up one third of the predominantly Catholic Philippines. As the main rebel organ-

isation — the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) — sought to broker peace with the government, the Maute and other small hardline groups filled a vacuum for fanatics as they took inspiration from the IS’s atrocities in Iraq and Syria. “I think what transformed the Mautes from a small band of siblings to a real serious military threat was the emergence of ISIS in the Middle East,” security analyst Sidney Jones told AFP, using an alternative acronym. But the brothers were radicalised much earlier: while pursuing studies in the Middle East after college, according to Jones

and Rommel Banlaoi, head of the Manila-based Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research. Omarkhayam headed to Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, while Abdullah went to Jordan. Mr. Banlaoi said they returned to Mindanao after about a decade overseas to be mentored by a fugitive Indonesian militant, Ustadz Sanussi, who in turn put them in touch with other Southeast Asian jihadists. Their main ally is Isnilon Hapilon, a leader of another hardline group called the Abu Sayyaf, who is on the U.S. government's list of most-wanted terrorists.

diers were joining on Sunday the 700 firefighters who were struggling to put out the blaze since Saturday, the government said. RTP showed terrifying images of several people on a road trying to escape the intense smoke that had reduced visibility to a question of a few metres. A young man shared a bottle of water with a distraught woman as she stumbled down the road. Mr. Gomes said that at least 30 people were killed when their vehicles were engulfed by flames on a road between the towns of Figueiro dos Vinhos and Castanheira de Pera, and three others died from smoke inhalation in Figueiro dos Vinhos. The rest of the bodies were found outside of the cars or in the forest, the official said, adding that firefighting crews were having difficulties in battling the fire, which was “very violent” in at least two of its four fronts.

No mercy: Abdullah Maute,right, points at an improvised map of Marawi as he plans an attack along with Isnilon Hapilon, second from left, the leader of hardline group Abu Sayyaf. AFP *

Agence France-Presse Reuters Bamako

A tourist resort popular with Westerners in the Malian capital was under attack on Sunday, according to witnesses and an AFP journalist. Gunmen stormed Le Campement Kangaba in Dougourakoro, to the east of the capital Bamako, a resort foreign residents often visit for weekend breaks. Malian troops and soldiers from France’s Bakhane counter-terrorist force headed to the site, where nearby residents reported hearing shots fired while smoke billowed into the air. There was no information immediately available on any casualties. “Security forces are in place. Campement Kangaba is blocked off and an operation is under way,” Security Ministry spokesman Baba Cisse said by telephone. “The situation is under control.”

Surge in violence Militants on Saturday killed five soldiers in northern part of the country, where a surge in violence has prompted calls for the UN to create a new anti-jihadist force. Eight soldiers were wounded and nine vehicles were destroyed in the attack on the camp at Bintagoungou. The west African country has been battling a jihadist insurgency for several years, with Islamist fighters roaming the north and centre of Mali. In November 2015, gunmen took guests and staff hostage at the luxury Radisson Blu hotel here in a siege that left at least 20 people dead, including 14 foreigners. The attack was claimed by al-Qaeda’s North African affiliate al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. A state of emergency has been renewed several times since that attack, most recently in April when it was extended for six months. M ND-ND

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THE HINDU

BUSINESS 13

NOIDA/DELHI

MONDAY, JUNE 19, 2017

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IN BRIEF

Ministry may roll back airport charges Centre had increased charges in December; the current move will make fares cheaper Somesh Jha NEW DELHI

Vedanta to set up steel plant in Jharkhand JAMSHEDPUR

A steel plant would soon come up at Manoharpur in West Singhbhum district, Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das said. The Vedanta Group and the Jharkhand Mineral Development Corporation would set up the plant. “₹700 crore of the total MoU signed with prospective investors have already been implemented on the ground and project proposals worth ₹15,000-₹16,000 crore will be effective in July.” PTI

‘Half of the laid-of IT staf will be re-skilled’ MUMBAI

With nearly two lakh jobs expected to be slashed in the Information Technology sector in the next two years, all is not lost as more than 50% of the laid-of employees will be re-skilled and transferred to other opportunities, a survey said. The survey was conducted by CIEL HR Services among mid to senior-level staf in 50 IT irms. “There are enough opportunities to be leveraged upon,” CEO Aditya Narayan Mishra said. PTI

Foreign investors pump in $3.55 billion in June NEW DELHI

Foreign investors have pumped in $3.55 billion in the Indian capital market this month so far due to inalisation of GST rates for bulk of the items and forecast of a normal monsoon. Interestingly, most of the funds have been invested in debt markets by foreign portfolio investors (FPIs). According to latest data, FPIs have invested ₹4,022 crore in equities during June 1-16 and ₹18,821 crore in debt markets. PTI

CM YK

Airfares are set to become cheaper as the Civil Aviation Ministry has recommended a rollback of an airport charge increase, across all non-major airports operated by the Airports Authority of India (AAI), which came into effect December last year. “Civil Aviation Secretary [R.N.Choubey] has written to AAI earlier this month demanding a rollback of hike in airport charges at non-major airports which were notified in December last year,” a senior Civil Aviation Ministry official said, on condition of anonymity. The Aviation Ministry asked the AAI to take back the increase in aeronautical charges at non-major airports from July this year. In December, airport charges were raised by 10% — a first such hike in eight years. This was followed by a subsequent hike by 5% in airport charges beginning April 1.

Turning back: AAI has been asked to roll back the hike in airport charges at non-major destinations from July. REUTERS *

The airport charge increase was applicable on non-major airports such as Amritsar, Nagpur, Bagdogra, Surat, Madurai, Vijayawada, Jammu, Varanasi, Vadadora, among others, which handle an annual traffic of less than 15 lakh. “The rising aviation turbine fuel prices and switching over to Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime will

lead to a sudden rise in the airfares. So, the Ministry has asked the AAI to cut airport charges so that airfares do not soar,” another senior Aviation Ministry official said.

AAI protest However, AAI, which is already facing a challenge to meet the expenses of flight operations from remote airports under the Centre’s re-

gional connectivity scheme UDAN, has “strongly” opposed the move fearing an impact on its revenue. “We have strongly opposed the Ministry’s recommendation to rollback airport charge hike. We had recommended a 43% hike last year taking inflation into account, however, an increase of only 10% in airport charges was accepted by the Ministry,” a senior AAI official said. The AAI has told the Aviation Ministry that the move will lead to a revenue loss of ₹200 crore in 2017-18. “The Ministry wants us to go back to airport charges set in 2009 from July this year. This will lead to a revenue loss of ₹200 crore in 2017-18 and ₹500 crore in 2018-19,” the AAI official said. AAI Chairman Guruprasad Mohapatra confirmed that the Aviation Ministry has recommended a cut in airport charges and it is already reviewing its pro-

China-led AIIB touts ‘green’ growth Some non-governmental organisations are critical of energy policy Reuters JEJU

Leaders of the China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank touted its growing membership and commitment to sustainable development at its annual meeting, even as environmental groups were disappointed by its openness to investing in coal projects. The AIIB, which has 80 member countries, was set up to help meet the estimated $26 trillion need for infrastructure spending in Asia through 2030, while also demonstrating that a Chinaled institution can meet international standards for best practice. The United States and Ja-

Jin Liqun

*

AP

pan, both members of the Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB), have not joined the AIIB. The AIIB has pledged to use its investments to help members fulfill their commitments to the

Paris climate accord, which the United States is withdrawing from under President Donald Trump. “We will not consider proposals if we are concerned about the environmental and reputational impact,” AIIB president Jin Liqun, a former vice president at the ADB, said. But the bank did get pushback from environmental groups about its commitment to being green, with several NGOs saying they were disappointed the bank's new energy industry strategy, adopted on June 15, left the door open for coal sector investment. “I have a hard time reconciling in the energy strategy

a statement that says up front the purpose of the energy strategy is to help countries meet their commitments under the Paris agreement, with ‘we’re going to finance coal projects,’” said Andrew Deutz of the Nature Conservancy. Other groups saw improvement over the last year in how the bank engages with NGOs. “We thought this was a really interesting opportunity to see if this new institution can foster a race to the top in terms of creating strong sustainable credit practices, or foster a race to the bottom,” said Katherine Lu of Friends of the Earth. “I think the jury is still out,” she said.

posal. “The Aviation Ministry’s decisions had some representations which we discussed with them. The Ministry will come up with a separate order now,” Mr. Mohapatra told The Hindu.

Gobbling up: The Centre is considering a merger plan in the PSB banking space by this iscal-end. GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCK *

Service fee The passenger service fee, which is charged as a part of air ticket fare, was increased from ₹77 per passenger to ₹85 in December last year and then to ₹89 in April this year. A passenger service fee is charged by the airport operator for providing services such as baggage trolleys, escalators, air conditioning at airport terminals, conveyor belt systems for baggage, wifi systems, public address systems and other facilities. Other expenses such as landing, parking and route navigation charges at all AAI airports were also increased by 10% in December which was to be paid by airlines to pass the cost burden onto the customers.

IPOs worth ₹1,000 cr. to hit market PRESS TRUST OF INDIA NEW DELHI

Aiming to tap the upbeat investor sentiment, two companies — CDSL and GTPL Hathway — will unveil initial public offers (IPOs) this week to raise more than ₹1,000 crore. The bidding in BSE-promoted CDSL’s IPO will begin on June 19 and close on June 21, while that of GTPL Hathway, part of Hathway Cable and Datacom Ltd, will be open for public subscription from June 21-23. The IPO of Central Depository Services (India) involves its shareholders, including BSE, offloading over 3.5 crore shares through the OFS route.

PSBs told to explore smaller peers’ buyout NITI Aayog report to lend clarity PRESS TRUST OF INDIA NEW DELHI

The Finance Ministry has asked four large PSU lenders to explore opportunities for acquisition of small and mid-sized banks with a goal to create global sized lenders, sources said. One of the possibilities is that large public sector banks (PSBs) like Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda, Canara Bank and Bank of India could try looking for potential candidates for acquisition, they said. So, informally, the Finance Ministry has sounded them that they should study the possibility for mergers and acquisitions so as to acquire scale and size of State Bank of India (SBI), the sources added. There are factors like regional balance, geographical reach, financial burden and smooth human resource transition that have to be looked into while taking a merger decision, they said, adding there should not be merger of a very weak bank with a strong one “as it could pull the latter down.”

NITI report However, the clear picture would emerge only after the NITI Aayog report sets the tone and tenure of the roadmap for the second round of consolidation in the banking sector.

In the last consolidation drive, five associates and Bharatiya Mahila Bank (BMB) became part of SBI on April 1, 2017, catapulting the country’s largest lender to among the top 50 banks in the world. State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of Hyderabad, State Bank of Mysore, State Bank of Patiala and State Bank of Travancore, besides BMB, were merged with SBI. With the merger, the total customer base of the SBI reached around 37 crore with a branch network of around 24,000 and nearly 59,000 ATMs across the country. The merged entity began operation with deposit base of more than ₹26 lakh crore and advances level of ₹18.50 lakh crore. The government in February had approved the merger of these five associate banks with SBI. Later in March, the cabinet approved merger of BMB as well. SBI first merged State Bank of Saurashtra with itself in 2008. Two years later, State Bank of Indore was merged with it. Enthused by the success of SBI merger, the finance ministry is considering clearing another such proposal in the public sector banking space by this fiscalend. Another round of merger should kick off once the NPA situation improves.

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14 BUSINESS REVIEW

NOIDA/DELHI

THE HINDU

MONDAY, JUNE 19, 2017

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GUEST COLUMN

Success, the ‘ZED’ way Rana Kapoor

The ‘Make in India’ initiative unveiled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014, provided the much-needed boost to the languishing manufacturing sector and also an overarching framework for long pending structural reforms. Supply side interventions including FDI reforms, ease of doing business, scaling up physical infrastructure and competitive federalism are all being addressed under this initiative. While the ‘Make in India’ program has been incessantly analysed by economic commentators, the relatively less talked about the initiative is the effort to align with “zero defect, zero effect” (ZED). The ZED focus of the program is not only the most arduous to achieve but also most durable in its impact on overall competitiveness. A survey conducted by Statista-Dalia Research in 52 countries showed that ‘Made in Germany’ products were perceived as the best among 49 countries analysed followed by Switzerland and EU reflecting the inherent strength of their manufacturing engines. Interestingly, China was ranked last (49th) in terms of quality perception. India only fared marginally better at 42nd position.

Why you don’t feel the record-low inlation Your personal experience with price rise may not gel with the oicial reading as it depends on three main factors ence with price rise may not gel with the official reading.

Aarati Krishnan

It is not just RBI’s forecasters who are likely to be scratching their heads after the release of India’s latest retail inflation numbers for May 2017. Aam aadmi is quite bewildered too. The data shows that the inflation rate, measured by the Consumer Price Index (Combined — new series) was 2.2% for May 2017, slipping from a 3% reading for April which everyone thought was the rock-bottom. The food component of the index actually deflated by 1.1%. A CPI inflation rate below 2.5% is a once-in-a-bluemoon occurrence in India. Looking back at the history of the CPI – Industrial Workers (the older avatar of the index which has a longer history), we find that India has registered CPI inflation of less than 2.5% only in 12 months in 20 years. But if retail inflation is at a stand-still, how come most of us don’t feel it? Shouldn’t this be boosting our purchasing power and visibly fattening our wallets? There are three reasons why your personal experi-

EXPLAINER

Where you live If you live in Jammu & Kashmir, Puducherry or Sikkim, the inflation rates in your household budget may bear no resemblance to the headline inflation number. This is because the All-India CPI Combined is compiled by collecting town and village-level data on the prices of goods and services across States and then aggregating them. Now, all States and Union Territories do not get equal weighting in the total. The weights are decided by the consumption expenditure within each State relative to the all-India consumption basket. While the State of Maharashtra gets a 13.2% weight in the all-India CPI (Combined), J&K weighs in with just 0.94%, Puducherry with 0.17% and Sikkim with 0.05%. In effect, price trends at Maharashtra carry nearly 260 times the influence that Sikkim carries in deciding the final CPI number. Runaway inflation in India’s less populous low-spend States

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and Union Territories is unlikely to show up in the form of a big swing in the overall index. But even small blips in the States of Maharashtra (13.1% weight), UP (12.4%) and Tamil Nadu (7.3%) can swing the headline number. This is why, in May 2017, CPI inflation at J&K (6.3%), Delhi (5.1%) and Himachal Pradesh (4.7%) ruled at many times the all-India reading of 2.2%.

Consumption basket Does 45.8% of your monthly household budget go towards food and groceries? Would house rent makeup just 10.1%? Do you fritter away 2.4% on ‘tobacco and intoxicants’? If not, the inflation in your household is likely to be very different from the official inflation rate. In order to arrive at a CPI General Index that is representative of both India and Bharat, the statistics office assigns different weights to the different products and services. These weights are derived from the actual spending patterns of rural and urban households as captured by the NSSO’s

we focus on < > Ifthree-year trends, we ind that price levels have gone up steadily ground-level survey of expenditure patterns across India. The latest such survey was the 68th round conducted over 2011-12. (See graphic). Because the majority of Indian households belong to lower-income strata, the CPI General Index thus carries a far higher weight to products than services. Services often witness higher price rise than products in the Indian context. But in practise, more affluent households will tend to spend a far lower proportion of their income on food and essentials and make a higher allocation to non-essentials and services.

One-offs The official CPI print captures the point-to-point change in the index in the latest month, compared to the same month last year. This makes the number susceptible to distortions from

one-off factors both in the base month and in the current one. The CPI inflation rate for May 2017 has, for instance, been suppressed by the base effect. As we know, a bountiful monsoon this year has led to a bumper production of pulses, oilseeds and horticultural crops. This has triggered a rout in agri-commodities ranging from tur and urad dal to potatoes, onions and tomatoes, prompting farmers to protest. Agri-market watchers also add that the note ban and GST impact on the agri-supply chain have led to poor offtake and offloading of stock, thus adding to this downward spiral. But a fall in retail food prices at this time of the year is quite a one-off situation. Every year, food prices usually soar in the months of April-May as they represent the pre-monsoon months when food crops are in short supply. In May last year, for instance, two consecutive poor monsoon years had fuelled a sharp flare-up in the prices of pulses, oilseeds, vegetables and spices. In May 2016, therefore the item-

wise breakdown of CPI showed the prices of pulses up 33% (year-on-year), vegetables higher by 10% and spices rising 9%. But in May 2017, the respective CPI index for vegetables was down by 13%, that for pulses had plunged 15% and fruits and oils were up by just 1-2% compared to the same time last year. If we ignore the monthly numbers and focus on threeyear trends instead, we find that price levels have continued to creep up steadily. Between May 2014 and now, the CPI Combined has risen at an annual 4.5%. Food prices in this span have climbed 4.1%. In the preceding three-year span from 2011 to 2014, the CPI Combined had soared 9.6% and the CPI Food Index 10.9%. In short, yes, inflation has moderated of late, but for most middle class folk, it is likely to be higher than 2.2%. To get a real feel of your personal inflation rate, you should check out CPI trends in your State of residence, and in the products and services that make up the lion’s share of your budget.

Silver lining Nonetheless the silver lining for India is that no other Asian country is listed in the rankings, presenting an opportunity. Despite the twodecade lead taken by China in unleashing its manufacturing prowess, it continues to be at the bottom in the battle for perceived quality. Enhancing the quality quotient of ‘Made in India’ is a huge challenge as well as an opportunity for India’s manufacturing push. The Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index published by Deloitte Touche and the Council on Global Competitiveness indicated the rise of the “Mighty Five”—Malaysia, India, Thai-

land, Indonesia and Vietnam. Indian manufacturing stakeholders should be acutely aware of the following in this regard. First, Chinese factory wages have trebled over the past decade and are almost at par with eastern Eurozone countries. Low-cost production jobs are now moving to countries in South/South-East Asia. India could potentially be one of the countries to benefit from this realignment.

defect, zero < > “Zero efect” program is most arduous to achieve but also most durable Second, about 131.29 million people are employed in as many as 58.5 million establishments in our country, according to the sixth economic census, 2016 reflecting the ultra fragmentation of our manufacturing base. The baby steps taken by some States in labour reforms need to be scaled up to remove the hurdles for micro units in achieving the scale of operations. Only reasonable sized enterprises shall have the economies of scale to compete globally. Finally, while low-cost manufacturing is important for India, a comprehensive policy on value-addition to transform the economy is needed. Existing competitive edge in sectors like textilesneeds to be supplemented with focused strategies under the ZED philosophy (certification, productivity, technological depth, energy efficiency and IPR). While Government’s immediate concern is job creation , it has to be kept in mind that unless India starts competing on quality and technology, healthy moats around manufacturing can’t be created. The initiatives under ZED Model, National Productivity Council and QCI need to be amplified multi-fold for achieving quality consciousness at the MSME level. (The author is MD & CEO, YES Bank)

INTERVIEW | DINESH KUMAR SARRAF

Nitty-gritty of bankruptcy code

‘I kick-started ₹1 lakh crore of stalled projects’

Sanjay Vijayakumar

We are spending public money and we have to generate returns for stakeholders. This was the biggest challenge’

CHENNAI

Last week, Reserve Bank of India said its internal advisory committee (IAC) had identified 12 accounts, which account for 25% of non-performing assets of the Indian banking system for immediate resolution under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). The gross bad debt in the banking system as on March was ₹7.11 lakh crore, which means the 12 accounts contribute to about ₹1.78 lakh crore.

What does bankruptcy mean? 쐍 A company is bankrupt if it is unable to repay debts to its creditors (banks, suppliers etc). The inability to repay debts by some of the Indian firms has resulted in a huge pile of non-performing assets for the banking system. A mechanism to free up the money stuck as bad loans is one of the key for the banking system. IBC is seen as one such. Which are the most stressed sectors having a problem of non-performing assets? 쐍 While the names of the 12 accounts which have been referred have not been made public officially, the RBI had earlier hinted that stress was coming from sectors such as power, telecom, steel, textiles and aviation. Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley later said the number of highly stressed accounts would be about 40-50. How the RBI came into the picture of referring accounts for resolution under IBC? CM YK

쐍 The government had recently amended the RBI Act, which gave powers to the central bank to direct banks to take punitive action against individual accounts under IBC. How does the process work under IBC? 쐍 To being with any creditor including banks can start bankruptcy proceedings against defaulters by filing a petition with the National Company Law Tribunal. After that, an insolvency professional with significant powers is appointed to take control of the defaulting company and assist the process. A creditors committee is formed to represent the interest of lenders and any other party that have been affected due to the default by the company. The committee should come up with a resolution plan (which may include selling off defaulted loans or liquidate the company outright). The resolution would require a nod from 75% of the creditors on the committee. The insolvency professional gets 180 days to come up with a feasible solution on the default issue. The timeline can be extended by another 90 days. If no solution is found within 270 days, a liquidator is appointed. The company can also opt for voluntary liquidation by a special resolution in a general meeting. Does IBC resolve the bad assets crisis of the banks? 쐍 Only time will tell. The proceedings under IBC are at a nascent and untested stage in India.

Piyush Pandey

Dinesh Kumar Sarraf, chairman of the $33-billion energy major ONGC, will retire in the next couple of months. In this interview, he talks about his stint at the helm of ONGC. Edited excerpts: are $28 a barrel, how do you take a capex (capital exHow satisfied are you with penditure) decision of $5 bilyour term as the lion? It is not a matter of chairman of ONGC that joke. What we are spending comes to an end in is public money, and we have August? to generate returns for the ■ I am very satisfied. A lot of stakeholders. This was the things were done in the last 3 biggest challenge. Despite all years or so. I kick-started a these challenges, we took the majority of incomplete and investment decision in most stranded projects. Also, sig- adverse time. nificant discoveries were made during my term. The Does it make commercial development plan for cluster sense to invest $5 billion 2 of KG block 98/2 at a cost of when oil and gas prices $5 billion is quite significant. are so low? That field alone will produce 27% of ONGC’s gas and 17% of ■ Yes. I believe this is the crude oil. Such develop- right time because prices of ments don’t come every oil field services are low, new year. We have made up our contractors are available and mind to go for the develop- best of the technologies are ment of cluster 3 in some available. All these have time. Believe me, this is go- helped. The challenge is that ing to be much bigger. We ex- the contractors are failing. pedited production and kept This means that while there the development cost under is a silver line, there is black control. The production of line too. We need to evolve a oil and gas were falling each strategy to deal with this. year, and we arrested the fall in oil and gas production. Why are the contractors And now, the production is failing? What strategy are rising. I kick-started more you talking about? than ₹1 lakh crore of stranded projects during my term. Some of the business partners in project execution What were the major have failed and left us midchallenges faced by you? way. The financial position of one of the contractors be■ Market conditions are a came bad and they went into major challenge. The crude liquidation. They were handoil was trading at $120 per ling three major projects, inbarrel when I took over as cluding the Daman project. chairman, and within a year, This forced us to think how it fell below $50 a barrel. Fur- to evaluate the business partther, the prices touched its ners and keep an eye on the low of $28 a barrel in January financial status of our busi2016. When crude oil prices ness partners.

the first stand-alone gas based power plant in India to give dividend. We are looking at all options, and what is required to be done will be done in today’s context.

Any regrets about things you wanted to do but couldn’t do within your term?

I wanted to do the cluster 3 development within my tenure. Significant work has been done on that front, and I will ensure that there is no looking back. ONGC is a vibrant organisation. Many things are happening at any given point of time.



Is ONGC making profits in selling gas at $2.48 per mmBtu? The price of gas used to be $2.5 per mmBtu 10 years ago.

Many past chairmen also wanted to complete cluster 3 during their term. ■ Many people tried. Cluster approach for development of discoveries started seven years back. I have the satisfaction that cluster 2 has been done. And, cluster 1 field development plan (FDP) will be made for whatever gas is remaining as it is in dispute for migration of gas to Reliance since 2013. ■ The GSPC deal is a game-changer, and it would bring much expertise to ONGC especially in HP-HT (High Pressure-HighTemperature) production that ONGC was not able to do so. We will pay them $1.2 billion - $1 billion for the Deendayal block and remaining $200 million for other discoveries. $1.2 billion is just a fraction of the cost that they incurred to develop the block, infrastructure and platform. We will use this platform for Deendayal as well as KG basin and other discoveries nearby. We will integrate the development to produce from other fields as well. Some of the gas from our cluster 2 can be produced from GSPC’s platform. So, it

There is no point in finding about the losses. What is required to be done is to find a solution and implement the solution. If you talk of crude oil, the price of crude oil today used to be the same 10 years back also. These are all cyclical, and the biggest challenge of oil industry. If oil firms can’t withstand this, they will not exist. Having said that, crude oil prices are deregulated, and we float or sink with market. Gas prices are artificially fixed. We have been requesting the government to remove the benchmark and allow the prices to be fixed by demand and supply. But the government has its own concern for city gas distribution, power and fertilizer consumers.



deal is a < > GSPC game-changer as it brings expertise to ONGC in HP-HT production can be also used as back up. All this benefits will accrue in due course. If GSPC can’t develop the block after $2 billion of investments, how can ONGC?

We have to do it the right way. They have lots of experience on HP-HT discoveries, and it will come to ONGC. All the decision were taken by the ONGC board and committee after deliberations of 8-9 hours. We have bought it at quite a reasonable price as we have paid them less then the cost of facilities that they have created. Not just money, but you have to look at it from time value of money concept.

Going by your time value of money concept, similar investments in Russian fields have given you profitability of Rs 700 crore. GSPC investment will, however, take 10 years to give results.

Each investment is of different nature. If I invest in exploration, it will give me return in 10 years but if I invest in producing field, it will start giving returns from next month itself.





Are you looking at monetizing the downstream assets as they near completion?

We had initiated many joint ventures such as Opal, OTPL, Dahez SEZ, Mangalore SEZ and Mangalore-Bangalore pipeline. All these projects were completed in 2016-17. Monetisation has already started in some of the projects. OTPL has given a dividend of 7.5%, and it is



What is the update on the mega merger of PSU oil firms to create a oil behemoth? What role is ONGC playing?

I would not like to speak much as this is a price-sensitive issue. Whatever role we can play, we have informed that role to the government. The government had asked us to give our views and we have given ours. Now it is up to the government to decide what is to be done.



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THE HINDU

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Inspired Pakistan gives India a hiding

‘Historic victory’ Special Correspondent

Zaman’s cavalier hundred and Amir’s crucial strikes propel the side to a 180-run win in the summit clash CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC

CHAMPIONS TROPHY

앫 Kohli’s average in tournament inals is now 22.00 (8 matches, 154 runs, 1 not out, HS: 43) CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC

Shreedutta Chidananda London

Pakistan entered the ICC Champions Trophy as the tournament’s bottom-ranked side; it left the Oval on Sunday with the top prize. Fakhar Zaman scored an entertaining, cavalier hundred before Mohammad Amir starred with the ball as Pakistan drew a line under years of hurt, beating India by an emphatic 180 runs in the final. It had been eight years since Pakistan achieved victory over its Eastern neighbour in a global event. Talk about choosing the moment. Chasing 339 for victory, due in no small part to a disappointing bowling display, India sank to 158 all out in 30.3 overs. Rohit Sharma fell three balls into the second innings, trapped leg before by Amir. Virat Kohli, who walked in next, was dropped on five by Azhar Ali at first slip. Pakistani shoulders slumped but India’s captain lasted only one more ball, closing the face of the bat early as the edge was grabbed at point. Zaman had been similarly reprieved in the morning, when he was caught off a no-ball for three. He went on to add the small matter of 111 runs. Shikhar Dhawan, who had hitherto had a fine time in England, followed Kohli, edging Amir behind for 21. Yuvraj Singh and M.S. Dhoni then departed in the space of four balls. Yuvraj was out leg-before to Shadab Khan on review, and Dhoni pulled Hasan Ali straight to the fielder on the square leg boundary.

Pandya’s resistance Only Hardik Pandya offered resistance, producing an astonishing counter-attacking innings. He hammered six sixes in his 43-ball-76 and ap-

London

He raised his first international century with a sweep to the fence at square leg. It was an ungainly shot, but like the rest of his innings hugely effective.

On top of the world! The Pakistan players celebrate after trumping India in the Champions Trophy inal.

peared to have breathed life — however little of it — back into the contest. His run out, however, ended a partnership of 80 (57b) for the seventh wicket and killed the game off. India lost its last four wickets for six runs in 25 balls as Pakistan celebrated its first major ODI success since 1992 and first global trophy since the 2009 World T20. In the morning, after Pakistan had been invited to bat first, Zaman rode his luck. He could have been run out for one and Jasprit Bumrah appeared to have struck early when he had Zaman edge behind. Replays showed, however, that Bumrah had overstepped. India would pay dearly. Zaman came out swinging like he has all tournament, his approach uncomplicated, his mind free of doubt. There were inside edges, a

boundary off the helmet, a couple of wild heaves that evaded fielders; but nothing rattled Zaman. Instead, it was India that was shaken. The left-hander, who at one stage was training to join the Pakistan Navy, was severe on Ravindra Jadeja and R. Ashwin, both of whom struggled. Jadeja was short and wide, when he was cut, or predictable,

when Zaman stepped out to swipe him over the infield. At the other end, Azhar Ali, usually staid and unremarkable, unfurled some shots of his own as Pakistan’s openers put together a 128

SCOREBOARD

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REUTERS

runs. Ali’s run-out for 59 brought India some relief but appeared to have galvanized Zaman, who soon launched Jadeja and Ashwin over the ropes and raced from 60 to 100 in 15 balls.

Excellent catch India was desperate for a foothold in the game when Pandya broke through, getting rid of Zaman as Jadeja took an excellent catch running back from point. Shoaib Malik and Babar Azam threatened to explode before they were claimed by Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Kedar Jadhav respectively. That slowed Pakistan down somewhat but Mohammad Hafeez proved an unlikely aggressor, wallloping a 34-ball half-century as India’s bowlers suffered. It did not help that they delivered 13 wides (out of 25 extras) and three no-balls, with Ashwin and Bumrah particularly guilty. Pakistan ran up its highest total of the tournament. It would prove well beyond India’s reach.

INDIA VS PAKISTAN, FINAL, THE OVAL

Pakistan: Azhar Ali run out 59 (71b, 6x4, 1x6), Fakhar Zaman c Jadeja b Pandya 114 (106b, 12x4, 3x6), Babar Azam c Yuvraj b Jadhav 46 (52b, 4x4), Shoaib Malik c Jadhav b Bhuvneshwar 12 (16b, 1x6), Mohammad Hafeez (not out) 57 (37b, 4x4, 3x6), Imad Wasim (not out) 25 (21b, 1x4, 1x6); Extras (lb-9, w-13, nb-3): 25; Total (for four wkts. in 50 overs): 338. Fall of wickets: 1-128 (Azhar, 22.6), 2-200 (Zaman, 33.1), 3247 (Malik, 39.4), 4-267 (Azam, 42.3). India bowling: Bhuvneshwar 10-2-44-1, Bumrah 9-0-68-0, Ashwin 10-0-70-0, Pandya 10-

0-53-1, Jadeja 8-0-67-0, Jadhav 3-0-27-1. India: Rohit Sharma lbw b Amir 0 (3b), Shikhar Dhawan c Sarfraz b Amir 21 (22b, 4x4), Virat Kohli c Shadab b Amir 5 (9b), Yuvraj Singh lbw b Shadab 22 (31b, 4x4), M.S. Dhoni c Imad b Hasan 4 (16b), Kedar Jadhav c Sarfraz b Shadab 9 (13b, 2x4), Hardik Pandya run out 76 (43b, 4x4, 6x6), Ravindra Jadeja c Babar b Junaid 15 (26b), R. Ashwin c Sarfraz b Hasan 1 (3b), Bhuvneshwar Kumar (not out) 1 (8b), Jasprit Bumrah c Sarfraz b Hasan 1 (9b); Extras (lb-2, w-1): 3; Total (in 30.3 overs): 158. Fall of wickets: 1-0 (Rohit, 0.3),

2-6 (Kohli, 2.4), 3-33 (Dhawan, 8.6), 4-54 (Yuvraj, 12.6), 5-54 (Dhoni, 13.3), 6-72 (Jadhav, 16.6), 7-152 (Pandya, 26.3), 8156 (Jadeja, 27.3), 9-156 (Ashwin, 28.1).

Sarfraz Ahmed hailed Pakistan’s Champions Trophy victory as historic, hoping that it would encourage teams to tour the nation hereafter. “This win will be remembered not just today or tomorrow but for a long, long time. Now, nobody can talk that we have not beaten India in the World Cup or a major tournament like that. “When we arrived, we were No. 8 in the World. Now, we’re champions. This will be the legacy we leave behind, that we beat India in the final. Hopefully this will boost Pakistan cricket. Hopefully all countries will now visit Pakistan,” he said. Sarfraz will pleased with the performances of the likes of Fakhar Zaman and Hasan Ali, who despite lack of experience delivered on the big stage. “This is the first ICC event for many of these players. Nobody believed we’d win. I told the youngsters ‘Just play the way you play in domestic cricket. Don’t think, just hit the ball. And Fakhar played like he does in domestic cricket.’ “Many people felt we couldn’t beat India. Credit to the players and the coaching staff for working hard.” Virat Kohli, meanwhile, was gracious in defeat. “No one goes out there to throw their wicket away or get out. We give our best every time we go out on the field, and I’m really proud of the way

the team has played in this tournament,” he said. “The cricket is played between two teams. So you have to accept losses, you have to accept that the other team has outplayed you and they’ve shown better skill than you, they’ve shown better composure in pressure situations than you.” Kohli rued India’s failure to string partnerships together. “When Hardik started hitting, everyone started getting the feeling that if we could take the game deep, then we could probably get closer to the total. “But early wickets are never good, especially in a chase. One big partnership would have been the key to set it up nicely, but credit to the opposition. “They made us make those mistakes because of the way they were bowling and the way they applied pressure in the field, as well, and we have no hesitation or shame in admitting that we could not play our best game today.” The Indian skipper was also displeased that the team had conceded 25 extras in a final. “Twenty-five extras is a bit too much in a game like that, and that’s something that we certainly need to take care of in the future. Obviously the same bowlers are going to play, but the more consistent you get in learning from games like this, it’s better for the team in the future.”

Pakistan bowling: Amir 6-216-3, Junaid 6-1-20-1, Hafeez 10-13-0, Hasan 6.3-1-19-3, Shadab 7-0-60-2, Imad 0.3-03-0, Zaman 3.3-0-25-0. Toss: India. Man-of-the-match: Zaman.

Fakhar

Man-of-the-tournament: Hasan Ali.

What went wrong? India captain Virat Kohli seems to ponder after the defeat to Pakistan. AP *

Pakistan won by 180 runs.

India demolishes hapless Pakistan

Don’t quit Real, Zidane to Ronaldo

Harmanpreet, Talwinder and Akashdeep score a brace each

Madrid

Agence France-Presse

Real Madrid coach Zinedine Zidane broke off his holiday to call Cristiano Ronaldo in a bid to persuade his unsettled star not to quit the club, Spanish sports daily Marca claimed on Sunday. Ronaldo, on Confederations Cup duty in Russia with Portugal, is reportedly furious over a tax probe into

the off shore accounts dealing with his image rights, and has reportedly vowed to leave Spain. “I am leaving Real Madrid,” Marca claims Ronaldo told his Portuguese colleagues. “I have made a decision. There is no turning back,” the daily sports paper reported. According to Marca, Zid-

ane called his No. 7 to tell him Madrid “needed him for his goals, and also his winning mentality”. Marca also reported that club captain Sergio Ramos had called Ronaldo to ask him to stay. In just 265 games for Real Madrid, Ronaldo has scored 285 goals, winning three Champions League finals in four seasons.

Moreno snatches late draw Video Referees disallow early Portugal goal

Reactions on Twitter I was hoping a team in green and gold would win. Seems there was a mix-up in countries though Well done Pakistan, congrats Mickey. — Dale Steyn Congratulations to Team Pakistan on their great performance in winning #CT17 And how wonderful to watch Fakhar’s raw talent in action — Imran Khan Wow wow wow unbelievable performance by team green. It feels like deja vu after winning the 1992 WCup. I am over the moon — Wasim Akram Congratulations to Pakistan on winning the #ct17 no one gave them a chance, but here they are — Darren Sammy

No World T20 in 2018 Press Trust of India London

The World Twenty20 Championship’s seventh edition next year is all set to be scrapped and pushed to 2020 as the top member nations will be busy with bilateral commitments in 2018. According to highplaced sources in the International Cricket Council, the next edition of ICC World T20 will only be held in 2020. CM YK

CONFEDERATIONS CUP Reuters KAZAN, Russia

Two-goal hero: Talwinder Singh, centre, scored two quick-ire goals in the irst half to put India on course.

HWL SEMIFINAL Press Trust of India London

A clinical India demolished a hapless Pakistan 7-1 to register its third consecutive victory and seal a place in the quarterfinals of the Hockey World League Semifinal, here on Sunday. Goals by Harmanpreet Singh (13, 33), Talwinder Singh (21, 24), Akashdeep Singh (47, 59) and Pardeep Mor (49) ensured India toppled the Netherlands to lead the points table with its third successive win. Pakistan, on the other hand, is at the bottom. India will next play the Netherlands on Tuesday, while Pakistan will face Scotland on Monday. It was Pakistan that got its first real opportunity, coming within three minutes of the match, when Ajaz Ahmad drifted away just a little bit from his man Pardeep Mor to take a shot on goal. But he was wide off the mark. As the match progressed, India started to control the proceedings with Pakistan playing a catch-up game.

Harmanpreet gave India the lead in the 13th minute, converting a penalty corner with a low grounded flick. India secured another penalty corner four minutes into the second quarter but Harmanpreet’s flick was saved by Amjad Ali. Talwinder doubled India’s lead soon after combining well with Satbir Singh and S.V. Sunil.

Talwinder dazzles Minutes later, Talwinder scored his second goal of the day when he neatly lifted over Amjad a high ball from Satbir and India went into the breather with a comfortable 3-0 cushion. India continued in the same vein after the change of ends and three minutes into the second half, Harmanpreet scored from another set piece to extend the lead. Alert Chikte In between, Pakistan had its share of chances but failed to get past an alert Akash Chikte. After Chinglensana Singh was brilliantly denied by Pakistan goalkeeper Amjad Ali, Akashdeep scored a bril-

liant field goal from the top of the circle after fine onetwo with Sardar Singh. Two minutes later, Pradeep Mor drilled home from a tight angle to beat Amjad Ali at the post. Umar Bhutta scored a consolation goal late into the match but Akashdeep re-

stored India’s victory margin with yet another fantastic strike just a minute from the hooter. The result: India 7 (Harmanpreet Singh 13 & 33, Talwinder Singh 21 & 24, Akashdeep Singh 47 & 59) and Pardeep Mor 49) bt Pakistan 1 (Umar Bhutta 57).

Mexico claimed a 2-2 draw with Portugal in its Confederations Cup opener on Sunday with a last-gasp equaliser by Hector Moreno after Cedric seemed to have won the game for the European champion with a goal five minutes from time. Portugal had an early effort controversially disallowed by the video referees but it eventually took the lead after 34 minutes through Ricardo Quaresma after a mistake by Carlos Salcedo let Cristiano Ronaldo through on goal. The Portugal captain could not control the ball to shoot but his brilliant pass

between three defenders left Quaresma free to round keeper Guillermo Ochoa and tap into the empty net. Mexico equalised eight minutes later through a Javier Hernandez diving header after poor defending by the Portuguese. Raphael Guerreiro miskicked a cross into the box, allowing Carlos Vela to play the ball back in for Hernandez to score. Portugal looked to have won when Cedric fired home a deflected shot but Moreno headed home a corner in added time to give Mexico a share of the points. “I think we were superior, we created more chances and we leave the field frustrated,” Cedric said. Although Mexico had

more possession, Ochoa was the busier of the two keepers and the Europeans could have taken all three points had the Video Assistant Referees (VAR) not controversially disallowed Nani’s firsthalf goal for offside. Ronaldo smacked a longrange shot onto the bar and Nani picked up the rebound to volley home. However, the VAR disallowed the goal for an offside infringement earlier in the move. The result: Portugal 2 (Quaresma 34, Cedric 86) drew with Mexico 2 (Hernandez 42, Moreno 90+1).

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Australia vs Germany 8.30 p.m.

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Respect to martyrs Special Correspondent NEW DELHI

Members of the Indian hockey team took the field against Pakistan wearing black arm bands. While the reason for the same was not announced before the game, Hockey India later said that the black bands were to “condole the deaths of soldiers in the recent attacks on the Indian army,” in a press release. The Indian support staff too wore the bands. “The players of Indian hockey teams have always shown tremendous belief and support for the armed forces who guard the safety of our nation.

“They are proud of the nation’s soldiers and are inspired by their dedication and sacrifice. As sportsmen, the Indian hockey teams have always shown solidarity and compassion towards the Indian army and have often dedicated their victories to them. “Today, the team strongly felt the need to condole the recent attacks carried out in Jammu & Kashmir where Indian soldiers lost their lives. It was a unanimous decision to wear black arm bands to condole these deaths and they wish for peace in the State,” Hockey India secretary general Mohd. Mushtaque Ahmed said in the release.

Heartbreaker: Hector Moreno rose highest from the inal corner of the game to head in the equaliser. AFP *

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Harman in the van

IN BRIEF

Thomas dazzles with a record-equalling nine-under 63

Nagal meets Poonacha in opener SPORTS BUREAU NEW DELHI

Davis Cupper Sumit Nagal has been seeded No. 1 and drawn to face compatriot Niki Poonacha in the first round of the $15,000 ITF men’s Futures tennis tournament in Colombo. The two will be joined by Suraj Prabodh, S.D. Prajwal Dev and Gokul Suresh, the last two coming through the qualifying event. In fact, 14 Indian players competed in the qualifying event, making it look like a ‘home’ event. In the ITF women’s event in Fergana, four-time National champion Prerna Bhambri opened with a 6-1, 6-3 victory over Maria Zhdanova of Russia in the qualifying event.

‘Fight with McGregor is what people want’ LOS ANGELES

Boxing legend Floyd Mayweather says he has no problem coming out of retirement to fight mixed martial arts star Conor McGregor. “McGregor is a tough competitor. People all around the world demanded this fight so I had to give them what they wanted to see,” Mayweather said in an interview. AFP

Aditi in sight of best finish of the season GRAND RAPIDS (US)

Aditi Ashok stayed on course for her best finish of the season as she held on to tied 18th with a three-under 66 in the third round of the Meijer LPGA Classic golf here. With three birdies against one bogey, Aditi is just two shots away from a possible top ten finish. Meanwhile, Lexi Thompson took best advantage of the soft course conditions and leads by one stroke. PTI

Hogging the limelight: Justin Thomas vaulted up the leaderboard with a nine-under 63, and was a shot behind leader Brian Harman. AP *

Agence France-Presse ERIN HILLS

Brian Harman opened up a one-shot lead at the 117th US Open on Saturday in a dramatic third round lit up by a record-equalling 63 from Justin Thomas. Torrential rain that doused the 7,818-yard layout overnight presented the field with a feast of birdie chances, transforming the leaderboard into a sea of red as dusk fell. Harman, who had begun the day in a four-way tie for the lead, carded a five-under-par 67 which included six birdies and one bogey. The 30-year-old from Georgia had never gone past the second round in a US Open before this year, missing the cut on his two previous visits in 2012 and 2015. “We’re breaking down all kinds of barriers,” Harman quipped. “I’m proud of the way I hung in there today. I got off to a pretty good start, which

Sharvan clinches gold, Deepak silver TAICHUNG (TAIWAN)

The Indian wrestlers clinched three medals, including a gold by Sharvan, on the final day of the junior Asian championships on Sunday. Sharvan bagged the yellow metal in the men’s 60kg freestyle, beating Yones Aliakbar Emamichoghaei of Iran 9-2. Deepak Punia claimed the silver in 84kg freestyle while Karan won the 66kg freestyle bronze. PTI

TV PICKS Hockey

World

League:

STAR Sports 2 & HD 2, 4.15 p.m.

FIFA Confederations Cup:

Sony Six & Six HD and TEN 2, 8.30 p.m.

I really haven’t done yet, so that was nice. Struck it well, hit a bunch of greens, and that’s what you’ve got to do to play well around here.” The World No. 50 headed to the clubhouse on 12-under, one ahead of Thomas, Brooks Koepka and England’s Tommy Fleetwood. The soft, forgiving conditions created opportunity for major movement up the leaderboard for those players willing to take it. And the prime beneficiary was Thomas, who catapulted up the leaderboard with a nine-under-par 63. The 24-year-old world No. 13 produced a magnificent eagle three on the 600-yard 18th hole to crown a spellbinding display that was the lowest to par score in US Open history. The previous lowest score in relation to par was the eight-under 63 shot by Johnny Miller in the final round of the 1973 Open.

Thomas was already on course for a share of the lead as he stepped up to the 18th having carded nine birdies against two bogeys in a spectacular round. He then drilled a 300-yard second shot to around eight feet before rolling in his eagle putt to roars from the galleries. Rickie Fowler was two behind Harman on 10 under after a four-under-par 68 which kept him firmly in contention. Top scores: Third round: 204: Brian Harman (67-70-67); 205: Justin Thomas (73-69-63), Brooks Koepka (67-70-68), Tommy Fleetwood (67-70-68); 206: Rickie Fowler (65-73-68); 207: Kim Si-Woo (69-70-68); 208: Patrick Reed (68-75-65), Russell Henley (71-70-67), Charley Hoffman (70-70-68); 209: Bill Haas (72-68-69), Brendan Steele (71-69-69), Brandt Snedeker (70-69-70), Xander Schauffele (66-73-70); 210: Bernd Wiesberger (69-7269), Hideki Matsuyama (74-6571), J.B. Holmes (69-69-72).

The results: $25,000 ITF men, Lisbon, Portugal: Qualifying singles (first round): Afonso Cortez (Por) bt Sharanraj Yuvaraj 6-4, 6-1. $15,000 ITF men, Colombo, Sri Lanka: Qualifying singles (second and final round): Rafael Izquierdo Luque (Esp) bt P.C. Vignesh 6-2, 6-1; Hao Sheng Koay (Mas) bt Chandril Sood 3-6, 7-6(4), 6-3; Gokul Suresh bt Anirudh Chandrasekar 6-2, 7-6(5); Nicholas Bybel (USA) bt Tarun Anirudh Chilakalapudi 6-1, 6-1; S.D. Prajwal Dev bt Alex Fairbanks (Aus) 6-2, 6-4; Nicolas Rosenzweig (Fra) bt Lakshit Sood 6-4, 6-4. $15,000 ITF men, Hua Hin, Thailand: Qualifying singles (third and final round): Socrates Leon Tsoronis (Aus) bt Ankit Chopra 6-3, 6-4. $25,000 ITF women, Fergana, Uzbekistan: Qualifying singles (first round): Prerna Bhambri bt Maria Zhdanova (Rus) 6-1, 6-3. $15,000 ITF women, Anning, China: Qualifying singles (first round): Zhangwenli Yan (Chn) bt Krishnali Bhonsle 6-0, 6-1.

Bedi questions reprieve for Gambhir ‘Giving him a margin or suspended sentence of two years is laughable’ Vijay Lokapally NEW DELHI

Former India captain Bishan Singh Bedi has expressed “disappointment” at Justice Vikramajit Sen handing Gautam Gambhir a suspended sentence for his act of indiscipline against the team coach K.P. Bhaskar at the end of the Vijay Hazare Cricket Tournament last March. Bedi conveyed this in a message to Justice Sen, who took the decision in his capacity as the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) administrator and despite the inquiry committee recommending a four-match suspension on Gambhir starting next season. “We are indeed disappointed to note how the ex-Delhi captain Gautam Gambhir has been first handed a four first-class match ban for his spat with coach K.P. Bhaskar

Bishan Singh Bedi. *

SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA

during the Vijay Hazare tournament and how thereafter he has been ‘exonerated’ by you despite a stinging report of his unprovoked verbal assault against the Delhi coach, a much-respected ex-cricketer himself,” said Bedi. Bedi continued, “It is unfortunate to note that you, as the High Court-appointed administrator, had yourself appointed the a three-mem-

ber inquiry committee (consisting of Madan Lal, Rajendra R. Rathore and Soni Singh) who had investigated the matter and recommended the penalty, which now has been deferred to March 2019 by you.” Pointing out the behaviour of Gambhir, Bedi said, “The committee checked the facts, followed due process and, gave a chance to both the parties to explain their side of the story. The committee gave a detailed report soon thereafter. The committee members agree that considering the above facts and circumstances that have come to light, Mr. Gambhir’s actions towards Mr. (Bhaskar) Pillai with premeditated intent to humiliate the coach were highly inappropriate and of serious nature. It is recommended that such behaviour requires to be penalised not only in a

proportionate manner, but in a manner that has a deterrent effect so that it is not repeated and such issues are taken seriously by all team members.”

Sitting on the report Bedi added: “You first sat on the report for a good six months. Rather than follow up on the recommendation, you took the plea for conducting the IPL matches which the DDCA had to organise. Rather than initiating action against Gambhir, who had been clearly held guilty, you chose to allow him to play the IPL without meting out any punishment as was warranted by the report.” Bedi maintained, “Since no one was ever disciplined (at the DDCA), the same people would nonchalantly breach the norms of normal discipline again and again. Gambhir himself is a classic

example of a specially-favoured man. He has got away by abusing and misbehaving with several cricketers, umpires, match referees and support staff in the past. He is 36, and giving him a margin or suspended sentence of two years is laughable, to say the least.” On a concluding note, Bedi asked, “What happens to the Delhi coach, Bhaskar Pillai, who was roundly and soundly abused in front of senior players. You will never understand the coach’s position, which has been immensely compromised. In the instant case, not only has justice been delayed, it has not been delivered. We are extremely disappointed by your inaction. We expect action to be taken, in consonance with the indiscipline and in line with the inquiry report.”

Rashid Khan inishes sixth Press Trust of India Koh Samui (Thailand)

Rashid Khan (70) and S.S.P. Chawrasia (72) could not find their rhythm on the final day and ended tied sixth and tied 15th respectively at the Queen’s Cup golf here on Sunday. As Rashid finally found

his first top-10 finish of 2017, Malaysia’s Nicholas Fung overcame nerves to secure a maiden Asian Tour title with a 15-under 269 and dedicated the career breakthrough to his father. Chawrasia finished tied 15th, the same as Rahil Gangjee, who got his first

top-10 finish since Macau Open last October. Chiragh Kumar (70) was tied 31st, while Sujjan Singh (74) was tied 42nd. Jeev Milkha Singh had the best Indian cards on Sunday with a 66 and finished at tied 48th alongside Shiv Kapur (74). PTI

India has world-class facilities Could host pre-season games: NBA’s deputy commissioner to India, to train and work with the physical education teachers to teach them how to teach the game of basketball. We have around 5000 coaches there who have been trained by the NBA coaches. That said, we think of this as a very long-term opportunity.

Srinivasan Ramani Chennai

Mark Tatum, the NBA’s deputy commissioner and chief operating officer, spoke to a group of Indian journalists about the NBA’s plans in India, its liberal policies and other issues. The journalists were in Cleveland, Ohio, at the invitation of the NBA to cover the 2017 finals. Excerpts from the interview: Where can India be on the basketball map.

India can have a very prominent place on the basketball map. It is no accident that we have decided to put one of our first academies in India which I had the opportunity to go and open, a couple of weeks ago. And we have our first 21player (21 of the best [upcoming] players in India) who we are going to provide NBA-style basketball coaching, development, training, strength & conditioning, nutrition and so on. We are going to apply all the knowledge we have learnt [here in the NBA] for this young men. Hopefully one day, one of them is going to have the opportunity to play right here in the NBA finals — in an NBA game. In a country where there are 1.3 billion people, we feel very excited about the prospects for basketball. We already have an Indian

Mark Tatum. AP origin owner in the NBA. Vivek Ranadive of the Sacramento Kings. I suppose there are lot of Indian hands working in back-offices, in terms of helping with NBA analytics and so on? *

Oh yes! You think there is enough of a critical mass that will help to build something big, like what is happening in China now, in India as well, with regard to participation, presence and support base with respect to the NBA?

Very much so. One of the things we are doing to promote the game is to develop the junior NBA programme. One of the opportunities in India is to get more and more kids to play the game. That is why we launched it. We have been able to reach 6 million kids through the schools system. Importantly, we are also bringing NBA coaches there

What kind of constraints do you see in India in terms of facilities, in terms of court availability to play the game. Where do you think India stands among other developing countries in terms of basketball infrastructure?

I think there are opportunities to improve the infrastructure. The great thing about basketball, though, is that you don’t need a lot of space — it can be played indoors or outdoors. I know that some parts of the country and in some parts of the year, it is very hot to play the game outdoors and the game should be brought indoors. But that is why facilities like the Jaypee Academy are unbelievable. You have three NBA-style basketball courts indoors. They have incredible world-class facilities and we need such facilities to be able to host games, to be able to give kids better access to facilities. But there are a couple of arenas in India which could host NBA pre-season games, which is our hope.

RSPB stays on top of pool

Aaroh inishes on top

Chandigarh continues to impress

V.V. Subrahmanyam

Sports Bureau Lucknow

Railways Sports Promotion Board (RSPB) stayed on top of Pool A with a comprehensive 9-1 win against Jharkhand in the men’s National hockey championship A division here on Sunday. Yuvraj Walmiki struck twice with eight players getting their names on the scoresheet as RSPB scored at will for its third win in as many games. Anselem Hemrom reduced the margin. In Pool D, Chandigarh continued its impressive performance, notching up its third consecutive win to stay on top and on course for a spot in the quarterfinals while Air India finally got a win under its belt against Haryana. The results: Pool A: RSPB 9

(Yuvraj Walmiki 2, Amit Rohidas, Rajin Kandulna, Manpreet, Ajit Kumar Pandey, Affan Yousuf, Karanpal Singh, Gauravjeet Singh) bt Jharkhand 1 (Anselem Hemrom); SSCB 5 (Jugraj Singh 2, Chandan Aind, Rana Pratap Singh, Robin) bt Namdhari XI 2 (Sukhdev Singh, Gagandeep Singh). Pool B: Punjab 6 (Baljinder Singh 2, Gurjant Singh, Ajit Pandit, Sarvanjit Singh, Dharamvir Singh) bt Bhopal 2 (Harshal Sharma, Abhishek); CAG 5 w/o FCI 0. Pool C: PSB 4 (Karamjit Singh, Prabhdeep Singh, Parvinder Singh, Gurinder Singh) bt Odisha 1 (Rakesh Tete); MPHA 2 (Nikky Kaushal, Haider Ali) bt Patiala 1 (Gursahib Singh). Pool D: Chandigarh 2 (Damanjit Singh 2) bt AIU 1 (Joginder Singh); Air India 2 (Harsahib Singh, Armaan Qureshi) bt Haryana 1 (Munish Rana).

HYDERABAD

Mumbai’s Aaroh Ravindra (Rayo Racing) clinched the honours in the opening round of the Senior Max category of the Meco Motorsports FMSCI National Rotax Max karting championship here on Sunday. Aaroh took advantage of the intense tussle between Manav Sharma (BPC Racing) and Nirmal Umashankar (Meco Racing) to finish at the top of the points table. The results (finals): Senior Max: 1. Aaroh Ravindra (Rayo Racing); 2. Nirmal Umashankar (Meco); 3. Manav Sharma (BPC). Junior Max: 1. Yash Aradhya (Meco); 2. Chirag Ghorpade (BPC); 3. Muhammad Ibrahim (BPC). Micro Max: 1. Ruhaan Alva (Birel Art); 2. Arjun Rajiv (Peregrine); 3. Saathvik Raju (Peregrine).

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THE HINDU CROSSWORD 12037 1

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(set by Sunnet)

12 Half-hearted note to decline is sent back (5)

9 10

13 Awareness of knight present on ridge (9)

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16 Tax responsibility (4)

7 Muscle into ship's teams (6)

19 Book of giving it away (4)

8 Double cross after fall guy's left (6)

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26 Join cell and point (5) 28

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■ ACROSS 1 Mould elsewhere expire in large numbers (3,3) 4 Drew attention to sister's plait and head regularly (8) 10 Reversal of measure to obliterate without force (5-4) 11 Chew a bit of camel's shoulder (5)

CM YK

9 Journalist chasing money is evident (6) 15 Al's one opponent in camp (9)

25 Lake duck stops generating heat (5) 26

5 Minimum support to initially establish control (7) 6 Coal rates made one easier to take instead of a light (9)

24 Special treatment for Carmine's rug (3-6)

Go now, come tomorrow

3 Pick up land (5)

14 Dropped boy at the end of old university (7)

21 Reportedly swallows small fruits (7)

FAITH

SUDOKU

17 A ilm can be watched by you if you are past this (8)

27 Fancy revelries with attendants (9)

18 Fool's an engineer and tax payer (8)

28 A smart use of opening (8)

20 One who dreams of a steeple run (7)

29 Strategic road builder takes New Zealand's low grade alloy (6) ■ DOWN 1 Commitment to back one inside county (8) 2 Measure police cadre's measurement system retrospectively... (8)

21 Daring answer for old ight (6) 22 A host on radio — one with a warrior (6) 23 Notice wrong recommendation (6) 25 It indicates possession by the Indian Railways (5)

Solution to puzzle 12036 S T O L E

T E Q H U A A T I C O N A S

E V A S U F I I V A R E E S

N N I MB B E L I U N G T S F E N N I O U R

I S I G H Y A T L T P O G R E T S H E P R

P L E U A D R E R E S H L I P D A E D D I S

A Y E R A R A L Y S R C E S S T R A I I N

E R A S N T E E E N I S E D I O P E N L G M E N N D A T U E I A W F U L U S G L Y

Solution to yesterday’s Sudoku

The noble human qualities such as compassion, righteousness, patience, etc, come alive from mere descriptions and definitions in Rama’s life, prompting people to emulate and uphold these in daily life, pointed out Srimati Jaya Srinivasan in a discourse. Though Rama has every reason to be angry with Ravana, He delays the punishment simply because he hopes Ravana might atone for his sin and also see if war can be avoided. Already Sita, Hanuman, Mandodari and many others have often advised Ravana on the path of dharma. All this goes unheeded. Then Rama sends Angadha to deliver His message of ultimatum: “The sinner Ravana who is afraid and hides in his fortress has either to surrender Sita immediately or face battle the next day. His entire race is doomed.” Ravana is furious and orders Angadha to be seized and dashed to the earth. Angadha easily overpowers the rakshasas and comes back to tell Rama that Ravana is a fool and will yield only his crowned head to the Lord. In the fierce battle that ensues between the rakshasas and the Vanara army, both sides face much blood flow and slaughter. But at one point the rakshasa army is decimated and Ravana stands alone in his chariot confronting Rama. Rama aims arrows in quick succession to break Ravana’s bow. The horses drawing the chariots are killed next and Rama quickly sends arrows to bring down the umbrella and flag and dismantle his armour. Ravana’s crown is knocked off. Kamban draws a perfect word picture to describe the weaponless and drooping Ravana in defeat with the analogy of the banyan tree whose roots seek the earth from its branches. Rama tells the worst of sinners to go back and come refreshed with weapons, army and strength the next day to continue the fight. Such is His commitment to mercy and Kshatriya dharma. M ND-ND

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THE HINDU

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IN BRIEF

Srikanth seals it with ease The Indian downs Japanese qualiier Kazumasa for his third Superseries crown

To dad, with love A Father’s Day gift, says Srikanth V.V. Subrahmanyam

PRESS TRUST OF INDIA JAKARTA

Kerber withdraws from Aegon Classic BIRMINGHAM

World No. 1 Angelique Kerber has suffered a preWimbledon injury scare, pulling out of this week’s Aegon Classic at Edgbaston due to a recurrence of a hamstring problem. REUTERS

Karlovic, Muller in ‘oldest inal’ in a long time 'S-HERTOGENBOSCH

Luxembourg’s Gilles Muller (34) downed Croat Ivo Karlovic (38) 7-6(5), 7-6(4) on Sunday to claim the ATP Tour title here in a final with the oldest combined age for two players since 1976. It was the oldest men's singles final since Ken Rosewall (42) and Ilie Nastase (30) went headto-head in Hong Kong 41 years ago. AFP

Indian shuttler K. Srikanth clinched his third Superseries title, lifting the Indonesia Open men’s singles trophy with a straight-game victory over Japanese qualifier Kazumasa Sakai in the final here on Sunday. World No. 22 Srikanth, who had reached the Singapore Open final in April, outclassed Sakai, ranked 47th, 21-11, 21-19 in just 37 minutes to take home a cheque for $75,000. Reacting to the win, the Badminton Association of India announced a cash award of ₹5 lakh. “He was playing well, especially in the second game and I think for me to come back from 6-11 down and make it 13-13 was the turning point,” said Srikanth, who had clinched the 2014 China Superseries Premier and 2015 India Superseries. “My coach will have a special place in my heart as after he came, I reached the final at Singapore and to win this tournament, which is considered the bigger tournament. I want to thank all the

HYDERABAD

INDONESIA OPEN

K. Srikanth said the Indonesian Open singles title he won on Sunday was a Father’s Day gift to his dad K.V.S. Krishna.

fans who have been rooting for me all this week,” he added. Srikanth played a patient game and didn’t allow his opponent to engage in any fast-paced rally. He dictated the pace with his precise angled returns and unleashed his smashes at perfect intervals to down his rival. Playing in tricky windy conditions, Srikanth took time to gauge the conditions as his initial returns went wide and out. But his rival also suffered because of similar unforced errors. Virender Sehwag Congratulations Kidambi Srikanth on becoming the first Indian to win the #IndonesiaOpen . Ek killa Fateh. P.R. Sreejesh Congratulation @srikidambi for winning the title and becoming world No 2 ...... proud moment

“Of the three Superseries titles I won — 2014 China Open, 2015 India Superseries and now Indonesian Open — this one is special as it came on Father’s Day and I dedicate this to my dad who has been a great source of inspiration right through,” Srikanth told The Hindu from Jakarta on Sunday. “Every Superseries win has its own importance. I don’t want to compare this with the other two. But, coming after a long gap, I feel this is very significant as I have set my eyes on August’s World Championship in Scotland,” the World No. 22 said. “A lot of credit for my recent performances should go to my Indonesian coach

I have done it! K. Srikanth is ecstatic after coming up trumps in the inal on Sunday. AP *

Mulyo Handoyo (singles coach at Gopi Academy and the one who trained Taufik Hidayat to the Olympic gold). After he joined us, I have been doing well,” he said. “Mulyo’s style is different from Gopi anna’s. He makes us do things in a very different way. I am more confident, mentally tougher and feeling much better out there in the middle,” he said. “The urge to excel at the highest level will always be there. Sometimes things don’t fall in place. The main objective is to keep improving and be consistent,” said Srikanth. “It is always a great feeling to see Indians figure in the knockout stages of the Superseries. Clearly a reminder that men’s players are a force to reckon with. Now, I hope to make sure that there is greater consistency in winning big titles,” Srikanth signed off.

Tania helps India win Sports Bureau Khanty Mansiysk (Russia)

Tania Sachdev’s 51-move victory over SabinaFrancesca Foisor proved decisive as India defeated USA 2.5-1.5 in the second round of the women’s World team chess championship here on Sunday. The results (second round): Open: China (4) beat India (0) 2.5-1.5 (Ding Liren drew with Vidit Gujrathi; Yu Yangyi bt B. Adhiban; Wie Yi drew with K. Sasikiran; Li Chao drew with Parimarjan Negi). Russia (3) drew with Turkey (2) 2-2; Belarus (1) drew with Ukraine (2) 2-2; Norway (2) bt Egypt (0) 2.5-1.5; Poland (4) bt USA (2) 2.5-1.5. Women: United States (0) lost to India (3) 1.5-2.5 (Anna Zatonskih drew with D. Harika; Sabina-Francesca Foisor lost to Tania Sachdev; Katerina Nemcova drew with Padmini Rout; Akshita Gorti drew with S. Vijayalakshmi). Vietnam (2) lost to Russia (4) 1-3; Ukraine (3) drew with China (1) 2-2; Azerbaijan (2) bt Egypt (0) 4-0; Georgia (2) drew with Poland (1) 2-2.

Porsche completes a hat-trick LE MANS

Open ield for top four men’s seeds

Reuters Le Mans (France)

Madhurika will look to add to her national champion’s crown Amol Karhadkar INDORE

After football, Maldini tries his hand at tennis ROME

For over a glorious quarter of a century, he starred for AC Milan on the football pitch, now at 49 years of age, Paolo Maldini has qualified for a tennis tournament in Milan. Maldini qualified by wild card in the doubles in the weekend long Aspria Tennis Cup, part of the challenger circuit, the level below the ATP. AFP

CM YK

Cometh the wet season, cometh the racquet sport season in India. The monsoon hasn’t really made its presence felt in western India, but that hasn’t stopped table tennis players from across the country to get indoors in order to make a mark on the bigger stage. The top talent in the country will be on display in the maiden 11Even Sports National ranking table tennis championship of the season at the Abhay Prashal from Monday. The fact that the first of

the five zonals is planned in the middle of a national camp for all age-groups presents an opportunity for promising paddlers to impress India’s head coach Massimo Constantini, who will be monitoring the action from close quarters along with his battery of Indian coaches. While veterans Subhajit Saha and Soumyadeep Roy will continue their quest to keep pace with the youngsters, the tournament will miss the presence of India’s top two paddlers. A. Sharath Kamal and Soumyajit Ghosh will miss

the tournament due to their commitments for their respective German clubs. In the absence of the duo, it will be a sort of open field for the top four seeds — G. Sathiyan, Sanil Shetty, A. Amalraj and Harmeet Desai — to start the domestic season on a winning note. Seasoned campaigner Madhurika Patkar will be eager to build on the National champion’s crown she won earlier this year in the absence of veteran Mouma Das in the women’s section. It will be interesting to see if Olympian Manika Batra, seeded fourth, can lift her

game after a mini-slump last season. The six-day tournament will see more than 1,400 participants vying for honours in 10 categories. The seedings: Men: G. Sathiyan (PSPB), Sanil Shetty (PSPB), A. Amalraj (PSPB), Harmeet Desai (PSPB), Jubin Kumar (PSPB), Subhajit Saha (PSPB), Manav Thakkar (PSPB), Devesh Karia (Guj). Women: Madhurika Patkar (PSPB), Sutirtha Mukherjee (WB), Pooja Sahasrabudhe (PSPB), Manika Batra (PSPB), Mousumi Paul (PSPB), Krittwika Sinha Roy (PSPB), Poulomi Ghatak (PSPB), Ankita Das (PSPB).

Porsche won the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the third year in a row on Sunday after a race of retirements that scuppered Toyota’s bid for a first triumph. The German manufacturer’s 19th outright win at the Circuit de la Sarthe followed a night of drama with Toyota’s top two cars retiring and the number one Porsche also suffering a terminal problem while leading with four hours to go. That left the number two Porsche, shared by German Timo Bernhard and New Zealanders Brendon Hartley and Earl Bamber, to move surprisingly back into contention and take the

Over the moon: The Porsche team — Timo Bernhard, Brendon Hartley and Earl Bamber — celebrates its Le Mans triumph. *

AFP

chequered flag with Bernhard at the wheel. The trio’s chances had been written off by team bosses on Saturday evening when its car suffered front axle problems and spent 90

minutes in the garage before rejoining at the back of the field. Toyota’s wait for a maiden Le Mans triumph goes on after two of its three cars failed to finish.

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CM YK

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