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The outcome of the ongoing elections to the West Bengal legislative assembly will have important implications for the working of not just the state’s polity but on the future of democracy in India. If the Bharatiya Janata Party is able to come to power for the first time in Bengal, there will be no stopping Narendra Modi’s relentless drive to create an Opposition- mukt Bharat and his unabashed endeavour to establish what can best be described as an ‘electoral autocracy’ in the country. Even if...

Half a century ago, long before artificial intelligence became a commonly-used phrase, well before computers were used not just to predict electoral outcomes but human behaviour as well, decades before Google, Facebook, Amazon and Cambridge Analytica became household names and giant conglomerates started exercising an overweening influence on what more than half the population of the planet read, heard and watched, there used to exist a corporation called Simulmatics in the United States of...

Gurugram: Less than a month after Suvendu Adhikari, former Trinamool Congress (TMC) Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) of West Bengal from Nandigram, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, other TMC leaders have become increasingly vocal in expressing their unhappiness and frustrations with the functioning of the ruling party in the state led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, and are apparently preparing the ground to join BJP in the run...

Gurugram: On Friday, the Centre for Justice and Accountability, a non-profit organisation based in San Francisco, California, the US, filed a complaint with the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee on behalf of Ahimsa Wickrematunge, daughter of slain Sri Lankan journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge, who was murdered on January 8, 2009, the international news agency Associated Press reported. The committee is a body of experts established by the International Covenant on Civil and Political...

IN recent weeks, a series of attempts have been made by governments in different countries, notably Australia and the United States, to curb the overweening dominance of two of the biggest digital monopolies on the planet. Unlike many parts of the world where a consensus has emerged that the unrestrained dominance of Alphabet (the parent company of Google, YouTube and the Android operating system on mobile phones) and Facebook (including WhatsApp and Instagram) is terrible for humankind, the...

Bengaluru/Gurugram: On September 23, Annapurna Devi, member of the Lok Sabha from Koderma, Jharkhand, and R K Singh Patel, MP from Banda, Uttar Pradesh, both belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), wrote letters to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India, levelling allegations of financial malpractices against Sanjay Gupta, the resolution professional appointed by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) to manage the corporate insolvency resolution proceedings for the ailing...

Gurugram: In a regulatory filing for the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE) on November 26, CG Power and Industrial Solutions Limited (earlier Crompton Greaves Limited) announced that all its existing directors––Ashish Guha, Sudhir Mathur, Ramni Nirula, Jitender Balakrishnan, Narayan Seshadri, Pradeep Mathur, Aditi Raja and Rathin Roy––had resigned from the company and its subsidiaries. In their place, six new directors were appointed, signalling the change in...

Gurugram: On November 20, banks that had loaned money to CG Power and Industrial Solutions Limited (formerly Crompton Greaves Limited), which used to be headed by Gautam Thapar, agreed to a one-time loan restructuring programme paving the way for the Murugappa group to take over the well-known power equipment manufacturer. Once among India’s high-profile, jet-setting corporate captains, why is Thapar a beleaguered man today? He has been ousted from the company he once headed. He cannot leave the...

Bengaluru/Gurugram: In a letter dated September 20 to Union Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Congress member of the Rajya Sabha, Kumar Ketkar, has claimed that the government’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is failing to collect huge amounts running into lakhs of crore rupees in back payments of Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) dues that it is entitled to claim from Mukesh Ambani-headed Reliance Industries Limited (RIL). Ambani is India’s and Asia’s richest man and also one of...

Gurugram/Bengaluru: The September 3 decision of the Supreme Court in the so-called Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) case has left wide open the question of whether the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) in the Union Ministry of Communications must be paid past dues by telecommunications companies (telcos) that have undergone or are undergoing insolvency proceedings. At stake is Rs 38,959 crore that the DoT is owed by three companies – Aircel, Reliance Communications (RCom), and Videocon...

On October 16, the Department for Promotion of Industry & Internal Trade, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, issued a clarification to the note it had issued on September 18, 2019 “liberalising” the foreign direct investment (FDI) regime for digital news media entities by specifying that those “engaged in uploading/streaming of news and current affairs…have been permitted FDI up to 26% through the Government approval route.” The following categories of entities, registered or located in India...

Bengaluru/Gurugram: In April 2017, one of the authors of this article met the then President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, in Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi. The purpose of the meeting was to ask him a question for a book that was published by Penguin Random House later that year titled, Thin Dividing Line: India, Mauritius and Global Illicit Financial Flows, authored by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta with Shinzani Jain. At the meeting over tea and snacks in ornate cutlery, the discussion moved to a...

On October 8, Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Ram Vilas Paswan died at the age of 74. This was less than a week after he went through a heart surgery. Tributes started pouring in from all ends of the political spectrum. Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted: “I am saddened beyond words. There is a void in our nation that will perhaps never be filled. Shri Ram Vilas Paswan Ji’s demise is a personal loss. I have lost a friend, valued colleague and someone who was...

India’s mediascape has changed dramatically in less than a decade. The pace of these changes has accelerated since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and the accompanying economic recession. Across the world and in this country as well, daily newspapers and periodicals on paper are closing down faster than ever before; advertising flows from private corporate entities have reduced drastically; journalists are being thrown out of their jobs or being asked to accept deep salary cuts, and...

Gurugram: The assets of two bankrupt companies in the Mumbai-headquartered, Nagpur-based Uttam group of companies, promoted by members of the Miglani family, are being sought to be purchased by firms owned by non-resident Indians under the statutory Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). The processes are, however, being questioned, past complaints to tribunals as well as a recent affidavit filed on September 26 in the Supreme Court, reveal. The two companies are Uttam Value Steels Limited (UVSL)...

Gurugram: The decade of the 1980s saw one of the most talked-about clashes in corporate India between late Dhirubhai Ambani, the founder of the Reliance group of companies, and Nusli Wadia, the head of Bombay Dyeing, a rival manufacturer of synthetic textiles. In his biography of Ambani, titled The Polyester Prince, published in January 1997, Hamish McDonald detailed the high-profile battle. His book was not available in India due to legal disputes till many years later, in a different version...

There are conspiracy theories galore as to why WhatsApp, the messaging application of the global social media monopoly, Facebook Inc., has been unable to offer a mobile internet-based payments service to its 400 million-plus users in India. Is it on account of lawsuits pending before the Supreme Court? Are two organisations, the country’s central bank and apex monetary authority, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the umbrella body vetting...

Bengaluru/Gurugram: On August 31, a Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Arun Kumar Mishra, that included Justices Vineet Saran and M R Shah, ruled in favour of a company in the Adani group in a dispute with public sector power distribution companies in Rajasthan. The verdict, issued three days before Justice Mishra retired from the court on September 2, has granted Adani Power Rajasthan Limited (APRL) – which owns a 1,320 megawatt capacity thermal power station in Kawai, Baran district –...

On September 1, a Supreme Court bench led by Justice Arun Mishra and comprising Justices S Abdul Nazeer and M R Shah ruled on the so-called AGR (or Adjusted Gross Revenues) issue relating to back-payments for use of spectrum that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is claiming from private companies. The verdict, one of Justice Mishra’s final rulings prior to his retirement on September 2, was on petitions filed by the DoT and by telecom companies to permit a staggered payment schedule...

After a series of bitter legal disputes involving entities located in different parts of the world, such as South Africa, Mauritius, Abu Dhabi and Canada and after search-and-seizure raids were conducted on the corporate group that operates India’s second-largest airport in Mumbai, on the last day of August, the Hyderabad-based GVK group, headed by G V K Reddy, capitulated and decided to “cooperate” with the Adani group to enable the latter to acquire controlling interest in companies operating...

Gurugram: On August 18, NewsClick published an article pointing out how a clutch of former employees of JSW Steel Limited (JSW), headed by Sajjan Jindal, had been hired at senior levels in various offices of the sick and debt-ridden Bhushan Power and Steel Limited (BPSL). These employees had been hired despite the fact that JSW has not released the bid value of Rs 19,350 crore to the creditors of the corporate debtor (that is, BPSL) that comprise over two dozen Indian banks (mainly public sector...

Gurugram: A clutch of former employees of JSW Steel Limited (JSW), headed by Sajjan Jindal, have been hired at senior levels in various offices of the ailing and debt-ridden Bhushan Power and Steel Limited (BPSL) despite the fact that JSW has not released the bid value of Rs 19,350 crore to the creditors of BPSL that comprise over two dozen Indian banks (mainly in the public sector) as well as foreign banks, financial institutions and private entities in the country and abroad. BPSL is a highly...

Gurugram: There is considerable heartburn in the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, the constitutional authority which is mandated to oversee public finances of the Union government, state governments and public organisations. Reason: the appointment of Girish Chandra Murmu to the position after a brief stint as the first Lieutenant Governor of the newly-created Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. A senior officer has proceeded on long leave while others are...

Mumbai/Gurugram: A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India, led by Justice Arun Kumar Mishra, is expected to deliver its ruling in a dispute over electricity tariffs between Adani Power Rajasthan Limited and power distribution companies (discoms) in the state before September 2, two individuals with close knowledge of the matter have confirmed to NewsClick on the condition that they not be named. Justice Mishra, the senior-most judge of the Supreme Court (in terms of age), is heading the...

Over the last week, a document of unknown origin has been circulating in the capital. The two-page document listing eight court cases is reportedly doing the rounds of offices of the judges of the Supreme Court of India and senior lawyers. The document, a copy of which is with NewsClick, lists eight cases that have been taken up by the country’s apex court, each of which involves the Adani group and each of which has been heard by a bench of judges headed by Justice Arun Kumar Mishra. The...

Gurugram: Election Commissioner of India Ashok Lavasa is yet to decide whether or not he should accept the offer to hold the post of vice president of the Manila-based multilateral financial institution, Asian Development Bank (ADB). A source close to Lavasa who spoke to NewsClick on condition of anonymity said he would be consulting his family members and confidantes before taking a decision on whether he should become one of ADB’s six vice presidents. He has been offered the position of vice...

Mumbai/Gurugram, July 16, 2020: On July 12, the Cabinet of the Government of Gujarat announced that it had decided to revoke a government resolution (GR) of December 2018 that would bring down electricity tariffs. A number of news reports have described the decision as a “blow” to three major private power producers in the state––including the owners of two of the largest power plants in India, located near the coast of Gujarat––that are owned by companies from the Adani, Tata and Essar groups...

The largest opposition party, the Indian National Congress, is in a tizzy. Reason: there is a possibility that the Congress government in Rajasthan led by Ashok Gehlot may lose its majority following a revolt by the state’s Deputy Chief Minister and Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from Tonk Sachin Pilot who is reportedly in talks with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Will Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi be able to defuse the crisis and prevent Rajasthan from going the Madhya Pradesh way...

Mumbai/Gurugram: There’s a classic tale. One cold night, a camel asks his master if he could put his nose inside his tent for warmth. “By all means and welcome,” says the man, and the camel stretches his nose first, and then his head into the tent. Soon afterwards, the camel asks the man if he can bring his neck and front legs inside the tent. Again, the master agrees. Finally, the camel asks: “May I not stand wholly within?” With pity, the master beckons him into the warm tent. But when the...

Mumbai/Gurugram: The price of the share of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), headed by India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani, jumped to a record high of more than Rs 1,804 on Monday June 22. RIL thus became the first Indian conglomerate with a market capitalisation in excess of $150 billion or nearly Rs 11,44,00,00,000,000. (Market capitalisation is the amount arrived at by multiplying the price of a company’s share at a particular point in time with the total number of its shares.) RIL’s Chairman...

New Delhi: After signing a binding concession agreement on February 14, 2019, to take over the operations of the international airports at Mangaluru (Karnataka), Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh) and Ahmedabad (Gujarat) from the Airports Authority of India (AAI) within six months, Adani Airports Limited has invoked a “force majeure” clause and requested the AAI to postpone till February 15, 2021, the execution of the agreement it signed with the public sector corporation. The Adani group company has also...

I am writing this personalised opinion piece at the invitation of Outlook because I am supposed to have a viewpoint, having spent 43 years as a journalist, that could add to the discussion currently going on about an article published on June 17 written by Salik Ahmad titled “Dear Editor, I Disagree With Your ‘Both-Sides’ Journalism.” First and foremost, my heartiest congratulations to Ahmad for writing what he did and I am overjoyed that his “open letter” has gone viral on social media at a...

Gurugram/Mumbai: “Today I am both delighted and humbled to announce that we have fulfilled our promise to the shareholders by making Reliance net debt-free much before our original schedule of 31st March 2021. Exceeding the expectations of our shareholders and all other stakeholders, again and yet again,” said Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) on June 19, as the company’s stock price hit a record high. He added: “….on the proud occasion of...

Mumbai/New Delhi: Two months ago, on April 18, the Indian government placed restrictions on the inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) into India by Chinese investors. After concerns were raised about a stake sale of 1.75 crore shares (representing 1% of the total equity capital) of HDFC to the People’s Bank of China (that country’s central bank) worth Rs 3,000 crore between January and March, the government modified rules governing foreign direct investment (FDI) through the “automatic route...

Mumbai/Delhi, June 7, 2020: The “largest-ever” rights issue of shares by India’s biggest private corporate entity, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), closed on June 3, having been over-subscribed by 1.59 times of the announced value of Rs 53,124 crore. RIL will receive this amount from its shareholders after it receives the full pay-out from subscribers to its rights issue scheduled for the end of 2021. As the authors explained in a previous article for NewsClick on May 20, RIL’s rights issue...

From May 20 till June 3, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) will conduct what is being touted as India’s “biggest ever” rights issue, seeking to raise at least US$7 billion (or Rs 53,215 crore). Every eligible shareholder in the company will be entitled to purchase one discounted share for every fifteen shares they hold. The fundraising effort is the latest step in RIL’s effort to become “debt-free.” Over the past three months, as India and the world has grappled with the Covid-19 pandemic, a...

Note: This interview was recorded and broadcast by the Newsclick web portal before a formal request was made on Thursday, April 30 by the Governor of Maharashtra Bhagat Singh Koshyari to the Election Commission of India to conduct elections to fill the vacant positions in the state Legislative Council “at the earliest.” The Commission is scheduled to meet on Friday, May 1 to decide on the dates of the elections. Paranjoy Guha Thakurta (PGT): We are going to discuss the likely Constitutional...

Delhi/Mumbai: On April 22, American social media giant Facebook announced an investment of US$5.7 billion (about Rs 43,574 crore) to acquire a 9.99% stake in Reliance Jio, the Reliance group’s internet data and telecommunications wing. This was soon after a reshuffle within the family in the shareholding of India’s largest private corporate entity Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), which is the Reliance group’s flagship company and of which Reliance Jio is a subsidiary. According to data on...

Instead of promoting a scientific temper among people, much of the media in India is today supporting superstition and injecting communal poison in the hearts and minds of viewers and readers, NDTV India Managing Editor and Magsaysay Award winner Ravish Kumar told Paranjoy Guha Thakurta in an interview published on Sunday April 12, 2020. Here is an edited version of the video interview translated into English. Paranjoy Guha Thakurta: We are going through an unprecedented international crisis...

The media may never be the same in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic collapse that will accompany and follow the health emergency across the world, and in India. Many governments across the globe are claiming that state control over information flows is essential, not just to combat fake news over the internet and social media, but also to confront and combat the ongoing multi-facetted crisis. In this country, there is a distinct possibility that rules could be interpreted...

In his second address to the nation after March 19, announcing a complete lockdown of the country for three weeks from midnight of March 24-25, the Prime Minister of the “world’s largest democracy” omitted addressing several key issues relating to the survival of the bottom 25% of India’s population of 1.3 billion. How would they be fed if they had no work? Even as he urged everyone to stay at home, Narendra Modi did not mention those who had no homes. In his second half-hour speech in five days...

The legal tussle over allegations of fraud and racketeering began a decade ago. The individuals and corporate entities involved are, or have been based, in different countries across the globe. The countries and cities where the dramatis personae have been located, or have operated out of, include: Hyderabad in India; Pittsburgh, Washington and Delaware in the US; Toronto in Canada; Bahamas and British Virgin Islands (tax havens); Singapore; and Hong Kong. This international dispute may not be...

On February 9, Shubanso Pul, the 20-year-old son of former Chief Minister (CM) of Arunachal Pradesh, Kalikho Pul, was found dead under mysterious circumstances in his apartment in Sussex, England. Shubanso was studying law in the country. His death reminds us of the tragic suicide of his father three-and-a-half years ago on August 9, 2016. While news from Arunachal Pradesh often remains under the radar of much of the mainstream media in India, Kalikho Pul’s death did attract considerable...

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Gujarat legislative Assembly recently prepared a report to follow up audit observations that had been submitted in 2014 by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India to the Gujarat government sharply criticising it for bestowing “undue” favours on a company in the Adani group that operates India’s largest private port. Gautam Adani heads the Adani group of companies. He is the country’s second richest man, according to one estimate. The...