Cong beats Akhilesh to it, announces UP alliance

January 17, 2017

Lucknow, Jan 17: Prospects of a "grand secular alliance" in Uttar Pradesh today brightened with Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav saying a decision on tying up with the Congress will be taken in a "day or two".

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"Decision on alliance (with Congress) will be taken in a day or two," he said, buoyed by the Election Commission's order recognising him as the President of Samajwadi Party and allowing him to retain the 'bicycle' symbol.

He was responding to a question on the possibility of tying up with Congress to crush communal politics during an informal chat with mediapersons at his residence here.

SP general secretary Ramgopal Yadav, a close aide of Akhilesh, expressed hope of a grand secular alliance to fight elections in the state.

Ramgopal said the final decision regarding forging an alliance with Congress will be taken by Akhilesh, but he expressed hopes that it will happen.

"It is Akhilesh Yadav who will decide on the alliance. But I am hopeful it will happen," said Ramgopal, who has been a staunch supporter of Akhilesh during the intra-party tussle.

Giving enough indications that Congress was willing for such a tie-up, its spokesman and former Union minister RPN Singh was among the first to hail the EC order, saying it showed that Akhilesh enjoyed "90 per cent support" in the organisation as also among SP legislators.

With the poll process set in motion after the issue of notification today, hectic efforts are underway to hammer out such an alliance, with Congress being offered 90 to 100 seats by the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party, which is also trying to rope in Ajit Singh's RLD as a junior partner.

Congress General Secretary incharge of Uttar Pradesh Ghulam Nabi Azad and Ramgopal Yadav from SP were said to be resolving some disputes over certain seats.

Uttar Pradesh has 403 Assembly constituencies where Akhilesh's party would be contesting the majority of seats and was likely to have RLD as a junior partner in Western Uttar Pradesh, which was once a stronghold of Ajit Singh.

The three parties will have to race against time to finalise the seat arrangements in the next few days as the western Uttar Pradesh, where Ajit Singh enjoys some influence, goes to polls in the first two phases on February 11 and 15.

Samajwadi Party sources said the list of its party candidates will be released in a day or two.

There were reports that the three parties would come out with a common minimum programme.

Leaders from the three parties insist that the main task in Uttar Pradesh is to stop the Narendra Modi-led BJP from coming to power.

In the 2015 Assembly elections in Bihar, Congress had joined hands with JD(U) and RJD to form a grand alliance, which caused a major upset for BJP-led NDA which had won 31 of the 40 seats in 2014 Lok Sabha polls in Bihar.

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News Network
March 22,2024

The Enforcement Directorate on Friday produced Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal before the Rouse Avenue court and sought a 10-day custody in the excise policy-linked money laundering case. "Kejriwal was the kingpin of the scam," the ED reportedly told the court after the AAP chief was produced before Special Judge Kaveri Baweja around 2 pm amid tight security. 

ASG S V Raju was appearing for the agency, while Senior Advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi is representing Kejriwal. 

Raju in his argument said Kejriwal was "directly involved in formulation of the (liquor) policy... he was involved in handling of proceeds of crime as well in the Goa election campaign."

"The expert committee was constituted but it was a sham committee. The policy was made in such a manner that it would enable the taking of bribes and recoupment of people who gave the bribes," the ED counsel said. 

Kejriwal was produced in the trial court shortly after he withdrew from the Supreme Court his plea against arrest by the Enforcement Directorate in the excise policy-linked money laundering case. Kejriwal's counsel said he would contest the remand proceedings before the trial court and then come back to the apex court with another petition.

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News Network
March 27,2024

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The Enforcement Directorate has filed a money laundering case against Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's daughter Veena Vijayan, her IT company and some others to probe a case of alleged illegal payments made by a private mineral firm to her and the company, official sources said Wednesday.

The agency has registered a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and is expected to summon the people involved, the sources said.

The ED case has been booked after taking cognisance of a complaint filed by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), an investigative arm of the Union corporate affairs ministry, they said.

The case stems from an Income Tax Department investigation that alleged that a private company called Cochin Minerals And Rutile Ltd (CMRL), made an illegal payment of Rs 1.72 crore to Veena's company-- Exalogic Solutions-- during 2018 to 2019, even though the IT firm had not provided any service to the company.

The Karnataka High Court had last month dismissed a plea filed by Exalogic Solutions against the probe initiated by the SFIO.

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March 21,2024

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New Delhi: India has now become more unequal in terms of wealth concentration than the British colonial period as income and wealth of the top 1% of the country’s population have hit historical highs, according to a paper released by World Inequality Lab.

By 2022-23, the top 1 per cent income share in India was 22.6 per cent and the top 1 per cent wealth share rose to 40.1 per cent, with India’s top 1 per cent income share among the very highest in the world, higher than even South Africa, Brazil and the US.

Co-authored by economists Nitin Kumar Bharti, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, and Anmol Somanchi, the paper stated that the “Billionaire Raj” headed by “India’s modern bourgeoisie” is now more unequal than the British Raj headed by the colonialist forces. 

The paper said there is evidence to suggest the Indian tax system might be “regressive when viewed from the lens of net wealth”. A restructuring of the tax code is needed, the paper said, adding that a levy of a “super tax” of 2 per cent on the net wealth of 167 wealthiest families would yield 0.5 per cent of national income in revenues and create space for investments.

“A restructuring of the tax code to account for both income and wealth, and broad-based public investments in health, education and nutrition are needed to enable the average Indian, and not just the elites, to meaningfully benefit from the ongoing wave of globalisation. Besides serving as a tool to fight inequality, a “super tax” of 2% on the net wealth of the 167 wealthiest families in 2022-23 would yield 0.5% of national income in revenues and create valuable fiscal space to facilitate such investments,” the paper said. 

The paper has analysed data based on the annual tax tabulations published by the Indian income tax authorities to extract the distribution of top income earners between 1922-2020.

The share of national income going to the top 10 per cent fell from 37 per cent in 1951 to 30 per cent by 1982 after which it began steadily rising. From the early 1990s onwards, the top 10 per cent share increased substantially over the next three decades, nearly touching 60 per cent in the most recent years, the paper said. This compares with the bottom 50 per cent getting only 15 per cent of India’s national income in 2022-23.

 The top 1 per cent earn on average Rs 5.3 million, 23 times the average Indian (Rs 0.23 million). Average incomes for the bottom 50 per cent and the middle 40 per cent stood at Rs 71,000 (0.3 times national average) and Rs 1,65,000 (0.7 times national average), respectively.
The richest, nearly 10,000 individuals (of 92 million Indian adults) earn on average Rs 480 million (2,069 times the average Indian). “To get a sense of just how skewed the distribution is, one would have to be at nearly the 90th percentile to earn the average income in India,” the paper said.

In 2022, just the top 0.1 per cent in India earned nearly 10 per cent of the national income, while the top 0.01 per cent earned 4.3 per cent share of the national income and top 0.001 per cent earned 2.1 per cent of the national income.

Enlisting the probable reasons for sharp rise in top 1 per cent income shares, the paper said public and private sector wage growth could have played a part till the late 1990s, adding that there are good reasons to believe capital incomes likely played a role in subsequent years. For the shares of the bottom 50 per cent and middle 40 per cent remaining depressed, the paper said, the primary reason has been the lack of quality broad-based education, focused on the masses and not just the elites.

“One reason to be concerned with such high levels of inequality is that extreme concentration of incomes and wealth is likely to facilitate disproportionate influence on society and government. This is even more so in contexts with weak democratic institutions. After largely being a role model among post-colonial nations in this regard, the integrity of various key institutions in India appears to have been compromised in recent years. This makes the possibility of India’s slide towards plutocracy even more real. If only for this reason, income and wealth inequality in India must be closely tracked and challenged,” it said.

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