Last day to file delayed income tax return for FY18: A step-by-step guide

If you are yet to file your income tax returns for the financial year 2017-2018, you still have few hours left as the deadline ends on March 31. If you fail to file your tax return, the government reserves the right to take legal action against you.
Though the last date for filing Income tax ended on August 31, 2018, the I-T department later allowed people to file their income tax returns till March 31, 2019, provided they also submit a late fee of Rs 10,000.

"Taxpayers can still file their Income Tax Return for the assessment year 2018-19 (the financial year 2017-18) by March 31, 2019, with a late fee," the I-T department wrote on Twitter.
You can still file your Income Tax Return for A. Y. 2018-19 ( F. Y. 2017-18 ) by 31st March, 2019 with late fee if you have not filed yet. pic.twitter.com/3ug7yCc76B
— Income Tax India (@IncomeTaxIndia) March 29, 2019
Despite being a Sunday, income tax offices are open today to facilitate the filing of tax returns by the taxpayers.
Taxpayers can use the I-T department's online portal to file their returns from the comfort of their home.
ALSO READ: Not filing your income tax returns on time? You could be prosecuted
Before you sit down to file your income tax returns, here are some important documents that you need to keep handy with you:
1. PAN card, valid email account, valid mobile number, Aadhaar number
2. Form 16/16A: These forms will help you provide proof of tax deduction on the payments you have made.
3. Investment proof: Proof of tax-saving investments made, medical cover taken, donations made, etc, are all required for helping you claim deductions under Section 80C, 80D and 80G respectively.
4. Bank details: Even if you know that you don’t have a refund this year, you should provide all your bank account details along with the IFSC code in your income-tax return.
Is it mandatory to file I-T return?
Filing income tax return is mandatory for -
1. Individuals and HUFs having income more than Rs 2.5 lakh (Rs 3 lakh for senior citizens aged 60-80 years and Rs 5 lakh for those above 80)
2. All companies, firms, LLPs
3.
Trusts, associations, political parties (whose income prior to the claim of exemptions exceed the minimum chargeable to tax)
You can follow these steps to file your returns through I-T department's official website:
Step 1: Go to e-filing website - http://www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in
Step 2: Users not registered on the website need to register on the website. Those already having an account can login.
Step 3: Go to e-File and select Income Tax Returns
Step 4: Select assessment year, ITR form, submission and verification mode
Step 5: Fill the form using details from Form-16
Step 6: Preview and submit
Another way to file income tax return is through the online portal of ClearTax. Here's a step-by-step guide:
Income tax returns Fill in your personal details along with your address in the first step
Income tax returns If you have other means of income, click on the other boxes shown beside the section 'salary'
Income tax returns You can claim a deduction of up to Rs 150,000 by providing the details shown below. In case you have further deductions, click on the bar 'More deductions' or 'Other deductions'
Income tax returns Provide details of your TDS (tax deducted at source) between April 1, 2017 and March 31, 2018.
Income tax returns This is the last step of filing your income tax return. Provide your bank account number — this is where you will receive your refund, if applicable.
Income tax returns Congratulations! You have now completed all the steps in filing your income tax return. Just review all the information filled out and you are good to go
First Published: Sun, March 31 2019. 12:07 IST
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ISRO's 47th PSLV mission to launch 28 nano satellites, countdown begins

A 27-hour countdown began Sunday for the launch of India's EMISAT satellite along with 28 nano satellites of global customers from Sriharikota Monday, a mission which would witness the ISRO placing payloads in three orbits and conducting space experiments for the first time.
The EMISAT satellite is aimed at electromagnetic measurement.

The countdown began at 6.27 am for the launch on board Indian Space Research Organisation's third generation workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), in its 47th flight, ISRO said.

The four-stage PSLV-C45 will blast off from the second launch pad at the spaceport of Sriharikota, about 125 kms from here, at 9.27 AM Monday, agency officials said.
The mission will mark several firsts to the credit of the space agency as it would manoeuvre satellites in various orbits and orbital experiments including on maritime satellite applications.
According to ISRO, a new variant of the rocket PSLV-QL equipped with four Strap-On motors in the first stage is used for the launch.
PSLV, also used in India's two key missions -- "Chandrayan" in 2008 and Mars Orbiter in 2013, is a reliable and versatile launch vehicle for ISRO with 39 consecutive successful flights till June, 2017 and five-in-a row from January 2018.
The rocket has encountered only two failures so far -- its maiden developmental flight ended unsuccessful way back in 1993. In September, 2017 the flight went off without any hitch but the IRNSS-1H Satellite could not be released into orbit after the PSLV-C39's heat shield failed to open on reaching the orbit.
In Monday's mission, ISRO scientists would place the satellites and payloads in three different orbits, a first for the agency.
After injecting the 436 kg primary satellite EMISAT, intended for electromagnetic spectrum measurement, at around 17 minutes from lift off in a 749 km orbit, they would restart the fourth stage again.
During this initiative, all the other 28 customer satellites, totally weighing about 220 kgs, would be released by lowering the fourth state to around 504 kms orbit.
Again, the fourth stage would be reignited and further lowered to 485 kms orbit to serve as an orbital platform for carrying out space borne experimentations for the first time in ISRO's history.
According to ISRO, this is the first time it has been envisaged to provide a micro-gravity environment for research organisations and academic institutes to perform experiments.
The PS4-fourth stage hosts three payloads in this mission.
They are automatic identification system from ISRO for Maritime satellite applications capturing messages transmitted from ships.
Automatic Packet Repeating System from AMSAT (Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation), India to assist amateur radio operators in tracking and monitoring position data.
Advanced Retarding Potential Analyzer for lonospheric Studies (ARIS) from Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) for the structural and composition studies of ionosphere.
The other 28 international satellites -- 25 3U type, two 6U type and one 2U type nano satellites -- are from Lithuania (two), Spain (1), Switzerland (1) and the United States (24).
All these satellites are being launched under commercial arrangements, ISRO said.
The previous launches by ISRO this year include the imaging satellite Microsat-R for military purpose along with 1.2 kg Kalamsat in January onboard PSLV-C44.
In February, ISRO launched India's communication satellite GSAT-31 from the European launch service provider Ariane from French Guiana.

Roll-out of new, simplified monthly GST return forms deferred

The pilot project envisaged for rolling out simplified monthly GST return forms from April 1 has been deferred and the new forms would be made available once they are notified and the software is ready.
The GST Council had in July last year decided that the simplified GST return forms -- Sahaj and Sugam -- would be rolled out on a pilot basis from April 1, 2019, while mandatory filing across the country would kick in from July.

In July last year, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) had come out with the draft GST returns forms and sought comments from stakeholders.
Under the new return filing format, taxpayers who have no purchases, no output tax liability and no input tax credit in any quarter of the financial year would have to file one 'Nil' return for the entire quarter. Facility for filing quarterly return shall also be available by an SMS.
The new return filing format would replace the current requirement of filing final sales return GSTR-1; but as per the plan, summary sales return GSTR-3B would continue for some time.
"The pilot project of new return filing has been deferred. New date would be decided. The forms would be notified first; following which, the pilot would be launched. Systems are being developed for the new forms," an official said.
Small taxpayers, with turnover of up to Rs 5 crore in the last financial year, can file quarterly return with monthly payment of taxes on self-declaration basis.
The return form 'Sahaj' is for businesses which make supplies to only consumers (B2C). It includes details of outward supplies and inward supplies attracting reverse charge as well as summary of inward supplies for claiming input tax credit (ITC).
Also, such B2C businesses will have to show harmonised system nomenclature (HSN)-wise summary of supplies and interest and late fee liability details along with payment of tax and verification. HSN is a code number to specify a particular product.
Besides, businesses making supplies to both businesses (B2B) and consumers (B2C) have to file returns form 'Sugam'. It includes summary of supplies made and tax liability, summary of inward supplies for claiming ITC, along with details of interest due and tax payment.
When goods and services tax (GST) was rolled out from July 1, 2017, a three-stage monthly return filing system was set up -- GSTR-1 (sales return), GSTR-2 (purchase return) and GSTR-3 (final returns based on GSTR-1 and 2 matching).
However, with businesses facing trouble, the GST Council decided in November 2017 to keep filing of GSTR-2 and 3 in abeyance. It also introduced a simpler GSTR-3B to facilitate easier return filing and tax payment.

Rahul Gandhi to contest from Wayanad in Kerala along with Amethi: Antony

In a bid to improve the Congress' position in south India, party president Rahul Gandhi will contest from Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency in Kerala besides his traditional stronghold of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh.
Veteran Congress leader from Kerala and former Defence Minister A K Antony made this announcement at a press conference here Sunday, saying Gandhi had consented to fighting from Wayanad following requests from the party's state unit.

The decision is seen as an attempt by the Congress to consolidate its electoral base in south India, especially Kerala which has 20 Lok Sabha seats. Tamil Nadu has 39 Lok Sabha seats and Karnataka has 28.
"This is a message to the southern states that they are deeply valued and respected. Congress president Rahul Gandhi has said he will represent Amethi but will also represent southern states as they are an important part of India's way of life,” Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said.
He said Gandhi has said Amethi is his 'karmabhoomi' and he will never leave it.
The announcement evoked sharp reactions from both the Left and the Right of the political spectrum.
Reacting to the development, CPI(M) Politbureau member Prakash Karat said that the decision of the Congress to field Rahul Gandhi from Wayanad shows that the party wants to take on the Left in Kerala.
"Their priority now is to fight against the Left in Kerala. It goes against Congress' national commitment to fight BJP, as in Kerala it's LDF which is the main force fighting BJP there," he told reporters. The CPI(M) ex-General Secretary said his party will work to ensure the defeat of Rahul Gandhi in Wayanad.
BJP chief Amit Shah also took a sharp dig at Gandhi contesting from two seats at a rally in Uttar Pradesh.
"Congress' votebank politics has worked on playing with the security of the country. It is the result of this that Rahul Gandhi has left Amethi and run away to Kerala because he knows that voters will seek account from him in Amethi this time," Shah said.
Earlier, Surjewala said the state units of Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu had requested him to contest from south India at a time when there is attack on the language and culture from the Modi government, he said.
"This is a fight to espouse the aspirations of south India. This is a fight to give a befitting reply to those forces that attack cultures, languages, way of life and also the deep connect between north and south India between which BJP has created a division," he said.
On BJP's criticism that Gandhi's is "not very strong" in Amethi, Surjewala said: "Why doesn't BJP answer why Moddi ji left Gujarat and went to Varanasi. Does that mean that his condition was bad in Gujarat. Instead of discussing these type of immature things, they should discuss key political issues. Why is BJP so scared." In a swipe at Union minister Smriti Irani who is contesting against Gandhi in Amethi, he said, "Pehle Delhi mein Chandni Chowk ne haraya, phir Amethi ne bhagaya. Jis mantri mahoyadaya ki charcha kar rahe hain, jinko ticket di hai, ab haar ki hattrick ka mahaul bana hai (First lost from Chandni Chowk, then Amethi. And now, the minister in question has created an atmosphere of a hat-trick of defeats)".
Surjewala said the people of Amethi trust the fact that they are protected with Rahul Gandhi being there. "The BJP has the task of conspiracy while we have the task of construction," he said.
He said Wayanad has a unique geographical feature as it links all the three states of Tamil Nadu's Nilgiri, Karnataka's Mysore and has the geographical and cultural representation of the three states.
"That is why party decided that Gandhi will, in a way, represent the three states and strengthen the unity between north and south India.
Senior Congress leader Antony said Wayanad is situated in Kerala, but also surrounded by Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
"In a way it'll satisfy the requests of three southern states," he said.
There were many requests from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the former defence minister said, adding that one of the major reasons for consideration was that it is a trijunction of the three southern states.
"Amethi and Rahul do not have a political relationship. Amethi ke mann mein Rahul baste hain. It is a family relationship and cannot be broken by BJP's politics," Surjewala said.
He said when the Congress government will be formed with the blessings of 130 crore Indians, Rahul Gandhi will represent every corner of the country in a bigger way.
"We will discuss about the future slowly," he said in reply to a question on whether Gandhi will retain Amethi or Wayanad seat if he wins both.
"Don't question Amethi's intelligence. Amethi has chosen Rajiv ji, Sonia ji and Rahul ji in difficult circumstances. They trust the fact that this country's management and Amethi is secure in the hands of Rahul Gandhi. Nobody can break the bond between Amethi and Rahul and least of all BJP," he said.
Congress had won eight Lok Sabha seats in Kerala in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, besides two by its ally Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) and one by Kerala Congress (Mani) and one by Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP).
The party is hoping to further consolidate its position this time in the state.
Wayanad district is in the north eastern part of Kerala and houses various tribal groups of the state. The area was badly affected due to last year's floods.

Foreign investors pull out Rs 44,500 crore from Indian market in 2018-19

Despite heavy fund infusion by FPIs over the past two month, the domestic financial market suffered a foreign fund outflow of over Rs 44,500 crore on net basis in the fiscal 2018-19 as macroeconomic headwinds weighed on investor sentiment through the year.
Hike in rates by the US Federal Reserve, depreciating rupee, rise in crude oil prices, worsening current account deficit, concerns over fiscal deficit and current account deficit target, coupled with trade tiff between the US and China dampened the mood in emerging markets, experts said.

In financial year 2018-19, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) pulled out a net sum of Rs 1,629 crore from equities and Rs 42,951 crore from the bonds market, taking the total net outflow to Rs 44,580 crore, the depositories data showed.
In comparison, FPIs had infused a net amount of Rs 25,634 crore in the equities and over Rs 1,19,035 crore in the debt market, a total net investment of Rs 1,44,669 crore in the previous fiscal.
"After two years of good foreign fund inflows, Indian market witnessed reversal in the trend. We received Rs 48,411 crore and Rs 1,44,682 crore in the year 2016-17 and 2017-18, respectively. Global and domestic causes alike have prompted the flows of funds in 2018-19 from the markets and both the equity and debt segments have witnessed outflows", Alok Agarwala, Senior VP and Head Investment Analytics, of Bajaj Capital said.
FPIs remained net sellers almost throughout the recently concluded fiscal except for the past couple of months. October emerged as the month of steepest outflow with FPIs pulling out a massive Rs 38,900 crore from the market.
However, fresh fund infusion was witnessed in the last two consecutive months of the fiscal, with March alone accounting for a net infusion of Rs 45,981 crore including a net Rs 33,980 crore in equities and Rs 12,001 crore in debt.
In February, the overseas players pumped in a net amount of Rs 11,182 crore in capital markets.
This inflow "could be attributed to the shift in stance on monetary policy outlook by various central banks globally, which led to the improvement in global liquidity condition. In January 2019, the US Fed announced a pause in rate hike, followed by China and European Central Bank providing stimulus to their respective economies," said Himanshu Srivastava, Senior Analyst Manager Research, at Morningstar.
This, along with expectation of a positive outcome from the US-China trade agreement bolstered the risk-on sentiments among foreign investors who diverted huge investments towards emerging markets, Srivastava pointed out adding "it is difficult to say anything conclusive about continuity of foreign funds at this stage".

Crisis averted at Jet Airways; pilots defer by 2 weeks decision not to fly

A major crisis at the struggling carrier Jet Airways was averted Sunday after its pilots' body National Aviator's Guild (NAG) deferred to April 15 its call of halting operations.
The decision was taken at an open house meeting of NAG members that took place both in Mumbai and Delhi Sunday afternoon, a guild source said.

The NAG, which claims representation of around 1,100 pilots of the total 1,600 with the full-service carrier, last month announced that its members will not fly from April 1 unless their pending salary dues were cleared and clarity on future payments was provided by March 31.
Jet Airways has been defaulting on salary payments to pilots, engineers and senior management since August last year.The loss-making airline, which is now under the ownership of SBI-led consortium of lenders following a debt-recast plan, Saturday said it could remit only the remaining amount of December salary to pilots and others.
Jet Airways engineers have also reportedly threatened to stop work from April 1 if their dues are not cleared by March 31.
However, the airline expressed its inability to clear the remaining three months dues of the staff immediately.
"The board of directors and the management team are working as fast as possible to implement the resolution plan agreed with the consortium of Indian lenders to quickly restore the much-needed stability to our operations and build a sustainable future for the airline," Jet Airways chief executive officer Vinay Dube said in a communication to pilots and engineers Saturday.
"These are complex processes and it has taken longer than we had expected and as such we are only able to remit your remaining salary for December 2018," he said.

Top 10 business headlines: RBI rate cut, Jet clears Dec salary, and more

Market, economists see a rate cut in RBI's April 4 monetary policy review
Economists and bank treasurers are almost certain that the six-member monetary policy committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will cut the policy repo rate by at least a quarter percentage point in its April 4 review meeting. Read here
Global bond market's soaring performance leave investors nervous
The global bond market’s soaring performance has left investors queasy about the ride ahead.
The Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate index has earned 2.3 per cent through March 28, its best quarter since mid-2017. But with yields sinking across major sovereign markets, investors now face a dilemma. Buying government bonds at these levels is perilous because economic data may improve, while taking more risk could leave investors nastily exposed to a global downturn. Read more
Jet Airways clears pending December salary
Jet Airways on Saturday cleared the pending salaries for December, but pilots maintain they would stop flying from April 1 if full dues are not settled. The pilots’ union has called for a meeting on Sunday to decide further steps. More details
IPO activity sees a slump in FY19; fund raising via IPOs down 82%
The initial public offering (IPO) market witnessed a huge slump during 2018-19 (FY19). Funds raised by the way of IPOs were down 82 per cent year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 14,674 crore. The number of issues to hit the market were just 14 — the lowest since FY15 — compared to 45 in FY18. The slump in primary market activity came even as the benchmark indices gained the most in four years, at 17 per cent. More details
Sebi slaps Rs 94.5-lakh fine on 17 entities for fraudulent trade practices
Capital markets regulator Sebi slapped Rs 94.5 lakh penalty on 17 entities for indulging in fraudulent trade practices in illiquid stock options segment on the BSE. The regulator, during the course of investigation between April 2015 and September 2015, found that 81.38 per cent of all the trades executed in the stock options segment involved reversal of buy and sell positions by the clients and counter-parties in a contract on the same day. Read more
Gold cheaper by Rs 2K over past 5 weeks due to low demand, cash crunch
Gold prices fell sharply on Friday, hurt by low consumer demand and a cash crunch among traders. A strengthening rupee following a sharp surge in the inflow of foreign money from investors and “illegal imports” were among the other reasons for the fall, say experts. More details
Rising cotton price to hit margins of textile companies
Rising cotton prices are set to hit profit margins of textile and apparel players due to their inability to pass on the high production cost on to consumers as seasonal demand is weak. Read here
General Atlantic, Varde Partners check into PNB Housing Finance
State-owned Punjab National Bank (PNB) on Friday said it is selling a 13% stake in mortgage lender PNB Housing Finance Ltd to private equity (PE) firms General Atlantic and Varde Partners for ₹1,851 crore, or $268 million, reports Livemint
India wants EU to relax sampling norms for fish exports, reduce clearance time
India has asked the European Union (EU) to make its market friendlier for Indian exporters of fisheries by reducing the sampling frequency of exports to 10 per cent from 50 per cent, allowing the de-listed establishments that have improved their practices to be listed again and reducing the clearance time for marine exports at the Customs, reports The Hindu BusinessLine
Will jobs actually be top of mind when India casts its vote this summer?
What is the top issue dominating the minds of voters this critical election season?
Multiple surveys have thrown up a unanimous answer— jobs, or more precisely, the lack of them. Surveys by Pew Research, Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Times Now have revealed unemployment as the top issue. The ADR survey, which queried 2.7 lakh people, said employment is the top priority for voters, and they ranked the incumbent government’s performance in this area at an abysmal 2.15 on a scale of 5 — a forgettable performance appraisal, reports Economic Times.

RBI rate decision, macro data announcement to drive equities this week

The domestic equities market is likely to be guided by a host of key macroeconomic data announcement lined up this week, mainly the RBI interest rate decision, say analysts.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) interest rate decision is scheduled to be announced on April 4.

During the week, PMI data for the manufacturing and services sector, which would also influence trading sentiment, will also be released.
Auto stocks will remain in focus amid monthly sales data announcement on Monday.
Besides, foreign fund movement, trend in rupee and outcome of the US-China trade talks would also be monitored for further cues, analysts said.
Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) sold shares worth a net of Rs 86.21 crore on Friday, while domestic institutional investors (DIIs) purchased shares worth Rs 1,724.39 crore, provisional data showed.
The rupee, meanwhile, appreciated 16 paise to close at 69.14 against the US dollar on Friday.
"Investors should look for the line up events in the Indian market for this week. Where, one should keep an eye on Nikkei manufacturing PMI on Tuesday, while related to banking industry one should look for RBI's monetary policy on Thursday. Auto stocks will be in focus as sales number is coming on this week," said Debabrata Bhattacharjee, Head of Research, CapitalAim.
Over the last week, the Sensex advanced over 508 points, or 1.33 per cent, while the Nifty gained 167 points or 1.45 per cent.
"India is likely to continue its outperformance among emerging markets due to FII inflow, expectation of revival in earnings growth and political stability," said Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit Financial Services.
As this week marks the beginning of the new financial year, all eyes are set on the Lok Sabha elections scheduled to be held in seven phases beginning April 11.

Zuckerberg calls for global internet regulations to address harmful content

Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg called for new global regulations governing the internet on Saturday, recommending overarching rules on hateful and violent content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.
In a statement that was also published as an op-ed in the Washington Post, Zuckerberg said the company is seeking regulations that would set baselines for prohibited content and require companies to build systems for keeping harmful content to a minimum.

"We have a responsibility to keep people safe on our services," he said. "That means deciding what counts as terrorist propaganda, hate speech and more. We continually review our policies with experts, but at our scale we’ll always make mistakes and decisions that people disagree with."
Zuckerberg’s comments mark his most visible effort so far to shape the discourse around the way the company collects information, uses and disperses it around the world.
Government Probes
Facebook has been the target of probes by various governments after news broke about a year ago that it allowed the personal data of tens of millions of users to be shared with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. Earlier this month, it came under fire for taking too long to take down a live video of a shooting in New Zealand and allowing it to be circulated across the internet. Millions of users also had personal information accessed via a recent breach.
Over the past year, lawmakers have focused greater scrutiny on the company and its immense influence, asking its executives -- including Zuckerberg -- to testify in front of Congress to explain the proliferation of misinformation, hate speech and election manipulation on the platform.
In his post, Zuckerberg proposes that "regulation could set baselines for what’s prohibited and require companies to build systems for keeping harmful content to a bare minimum." The tech industry has long said that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is vital to its ability to operate open platforms. The provision exempts companies from being liable for user-generated content.
Content Scanning
Facebook built a content-scanning system that over the years has added rules based on reactions to changes in user behavior or public uproar after an incident such as the New Zealand mass shooting. Last week, the company moved to ban content that references white nationalism or white separatism from the platform.
When the website’s users or computer systems report posts as problematic, they’re sent to one of the company’s 15,000 content moderators around the world, who are allowed to take content down only if it violates a rule.
But that process is not always precise. "Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over speech, and frankly I agree," Zuckerberg wrote in Saturday’s post. "I’ve come to believe that we shouldn’t make so many important decisions about speech on our own."
Zuckerberg said Facebook would welcome common standards for verifying political actors, citing practices deployed by advertisers in many countries of verifying identities before buying political ads. He also suggested updating laws to include "divisive political issues" in addition to candidates and elections.
“Every day we make decisions about what speech is harmful, what constitutes political advertising, and how to prevent sophisticated cyberattacks,” he said. “But if we were starting from scratch, we wouldn’t ask companies to make these judgments alone.”
The billionaire said it’d be good for the internet if more countries adopted rules such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation as a common framework.
Facebook has an incentive to play a strong role in the debate around technology companies’ data regulation. The company’s rapid revenue growth and billions of dollars in profits are fueled by collecting numerous data points around its customers and making that easily available to advertisers.
Instagram Spinoff
Progressive groups have been urging the Federal Trade Commission to carve up Facebook and split off its popular services Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger into their own companies. In January, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook is planning to integrate the chat tools of those products, making a breakup harder to accomplish if the services are more tightly intertwined. The move has also increased concerns about transparency into how Facebook’s data collection works.
Privacy regulations "should protect your right to choose how your information is used -- while enabling companies to use information for safety purposes and to provide services," he said. "It shouldn’t require data to be stored locally, which would make it more vulnerable to unwarranted access."
Zuckerberg also said there should also be rules guaranteeing portability of data that protects information when it moves between services.
The Facebook chief’s statement was in keeping with his efforts this year to frame the company’s more critical problems as part of broader issues for the internet at large. Zuckerberg’s willingness to embrace regulation could pave the way toward taking the thorniest problems about speech and privacy out of Facebook’s hands -- or at least give the company more time to solve them.

Jeff Bezos' phone hacked by Saudis to access personal data: Investigator

The investigator hired to look into the release of intimate images of Jeff Bezos said Sunday he has concluded that Saudi Arabian authorities hacked the Amazon chief's phone to access his personal data.
Gavin de Becker linked the hack to extensive coverage by The Washington Post newspaper, which is owned by Bezos, of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul last year.

"Our investigators and several experts concluded with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos' phone, and gained private information," de Becker wrote on The Daily Beast website.
He said that while the brother of Bezos's mistress was paid by the National Enquirer scandal sheet for the release of the information, his role may have been a red herring, and the plot went far beyond one man seeking to cash in.
"It's clear that MBS considers The Washington Post to be a major enemy," de Becker wrote, referring to the oil-rich kingdom's powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom the US Senate, after a closed-door briefing by the CIA, named as "responsible" for the murder.
But de Becker did not specify which part of the Saudi government he was blaming for the hack, and gave few details about the investigation that led him to the conclusion that the kingdom was responsible.
The results, he wrote, "have been turned over to federal officials." Bezos hired Gavin de Becker & Associates to find out how his intimate text messages and photos made their way into the hands of the Enquirer, which reported on the Amazon chief's extramarital affair, leading to his divorce.
Bezos has accused Enquirer publisher American Media Inc, led by David Pecker, of "blackmail" for threatening to publish the intimate photos if he did not halt the investigation.
The Amazon chief declined to do so, instead publishing copies of emails from AMI. Saudi Arabia has stressed that the crown prince was not involved in the killing of Khashoggi, a Post contributing columnist.
Riyadh initially said it had no knowledge of his fate, but later blamed the murder on rogue agents.

Meet Nirav's A-Team that may have helped him pull off Rs 14,000-cr scam

How did fugitive jeweller Nirav Modi pull off what he is accused of — the country’s biggest banking fraud at Punjab National Bank, worth over Rs 14,000 crore — without an army of trusted lieutenants while keeping his moves under wraps? After all, he employed over 2,200 people and it’s a matter of conjecture as to why someone didn’t blow the whistle earlier. It turns out that while his family council was involved, he also — according to a report submitted to a US Bankruptcy Court by an appointed examiner — had a highly organised core management team. The common denominator: They were predominantly Gujarati, mostly male, and either related by blood or very well-known to Nirav.
The family: Nishal Modi who was his half-brother and in charge of diamond trading was a director and has a look out notice on him and is wanted by the authorities. Nehal Modi, Nirav’s other brother in New York was reportedly a consultant with Firestar and involved with the Ithaca Trust, an entity set up to fund and buy real estate for the fugitive jeweller through questionable sources of finance.

Mehul Choksi, Nirav’s uncle and mentor, and boss of Gitanjali Group, is hiding out in Antigua. Purvi Modi Mehta, Nirav’s sister, managed the Hong Kong business but was not a key director in the holding companies, sources say, adding that she and the brothers were intentionally put in positions with no or very limited liability, but supported Nirav by transferring funds when required. Nirav’s wife Ami Modi is supposedly in the United States and like Purvi assisted by transferring funds through her account when required, according to the examiner’s report. There’s a look out notice on her and she has also been recently charge-sheeted by the enforcement directorate.
graph
Nirav’s sister was also involved with other facets that involved shadow companies and transferring money to various group companies as well as to Nirav’s wife, according to the report.
Choksi's daughter Priyanka wed Antwerp-based diamond merchant Akash Mehta in 2011. At the time Priyanka was running A.Jaffe, in which Nirav had invested and was deeply involved in. A.Jaffe was also a company that allegedly saw funds from LoUs routed through it.
Former CEO of Firestar Diamonds and Firestar India Mihir Bhansali, who is Nirav’s cousin, worked closely with him and allegedly had involvement that ran deep into the shadow companies — a set of firms that were supposedly created by Nirav to divert funds. Bhansali, a graduate from Babson College and HR College of Commerce and Economics, was Nirav’s “de facto number 2” and is alleged by the Indian authorities to have a significant control over the entire group.
In May 2017, Bhansali allegedly directed Shyam Wadhwa, an alleged Nirav confidante and employee of Firestar India, to replace the director in Hong Kong with Bankim Mehta a diamond trader in New York working for FDI.
In an interview with the examiner, Mehta admitted that he did little more than sign paperwork. In other discoveries by the examiner, managers of shadow companies say that Bhansali trained them to say they were jewellers with several generations of experience when in fact they were just Firestar employees.
A.Jaffe CEO Sumay Bhansali is also the brother of the wife of Anurag Jain, the boss at Parag Diamonds, the company which ended up buying A.Jaffe for $8 million at its bankruptcy sale. It was valued at $22 million. It’s not clear whether the two Bhansalis were related. Vipul Ambani, CFO of the firm’s India operations, was arrested and had been in jail for a few months when the scam broke. He has since been released but the extent of his involvement is not clear.
Working shoulder to shoulder with Mihir Bhansali was Ajay Gandhi, CFO of the US-based Firestar companies, who received his Bachelor’s degree in India and became a licensed CPA in 1994 after graduating from York College in New York City. Gandhi allegedly had control over all of Firestar’s financial transactions including managerial sign off on loose diamond transactions with the shadow companies that were worth hundreds of millions. His day-to-day role at the US entities included checking all account balances, monitoring cash flow, reviewing payments, managing payables, and receivables and reviewing inputs from sales teams.
He would also sign monthly borrowing certificates for lending banks IDB and HSBC and based on the reviews by the examiner’s team it’s inferred that he clearly controlled the finances of the debtor entities. In several interviews with the examiner, Gandhi was quizzed about his knowledge of shadow companies and their ties to the debtors. In his first interview he said he only knew that they were Bhansali’s customers.
Bhansali allegedly hired proxy or placeholder employees who would do what they were asked to without question.
This included the likes of Hemant Bhatt, who — though identified as Nirav’s business partner and director in the group’s oldest company Diamonds R Us — was, some former employees say, just “the canteen supervisor at the India Office”.
According to Firestar India’s general manager of accounts Saju Poulose Parokaran, the authorities were told Bhansali requested he “select some of the trusted employees from the company who do not apply much brain to work for Firestar overseas entities”.

NYAY, PM KISAN problematic, target narrow group: Arvind Subramanian

The Narendra Modi government’s new flagship scheme PM Kisan, as well as the Congress’ NYAY scheme do not meet the criterion of being good, targeted universal basic income (UBI) schemes, former Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian has said.
In a series of tweets on Friday, Subramanian said schemes like NYAY (Nyuntam Aay Yojana), PM Kisan and Telangana government’s Rythu Bandhu are “problematic because they target a narrow beneficiary group”.

“I am strongly for quasi-universal schemes that ‘exclude out’ a few rather than ‘target in’ many. Despite progress, our experience with ‘targeting in’ has been poor. Schemes such as NYAY, PM-KISAN or Rythubandhu that target a narrow beneficiary group are problematic,” Subramanian tweeted.

“None of the current schemes or proposals meets what I consider necessary and desirable conditions for a good UBI or quasi-UBI,” he said.
ALSO READ: RBI reserve should be used to fix financial system: Arvind Subramanian
Subramanian has long been a champion of UBI and dedicated a chapter to it in his 2016-17 Economic Survey.
The Congress’ data analytics chief Praveen Chakravarty has said that Subramanian advised on the party’s idea of minimum basic income guarantee proposal for the country’s poorest 20 per cent. Former Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan also said that he gave advice to the party on the matter.
In his tweets, Subramanian repeated a point from the 2016-17 Economic Survey — that quasi-UBI schemes should be rural schemes. “Given the agrarian situation, I am in favour of starting these schemes in rural India with as wide coverage as possible, along the lines of — but even wider than — Odisha’s KALIA,” he said.
“I am strongly of the view that any new schemes must not add to the fiscal deficit. Any credible new scheme should be clear, transparent and responsible about the financing,” Subramanian added.
ALSO READ: The challenge of counsel
In an article for Business Standard in January, Subramanian argued that schemes like Fasal Bima Yojana and Minimum Support Price should be abolished as these were “demanding, duplicative, and dysfunctional”. He had said these should be abolished to finance a quasi-UBI, which would provide guaranteed income, irrespective of agricultural conditions.
The Modi government’s PM Kisan scheme, announced in the 2019-20 interim Budget, promises a support of Rs 6,000 annually to small and marginal farmers. It has been allocated Rs 20,000 crore for 2018-19 and Rs 75,000 crore for 2019-20.
In his tweets, Subramanian also said any new scheme must be implemented by the Centre and the states in a cooperative federalism setting. “This would allow for more ambitious and better-designed schemes, and create ‘skin in the game’ for all parties,” he elaborated.
This approach is similar to that of the GST Council, where the Centre and states together take decisions on the nation-wide tax. Based on Subramanian’s previous pieces on UBI, this would also mean states and the Centre share costs of the programme.

Banks face higher provisions on resolution delays to big-ticket NCLT cases

Four big-ticket National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) cases — Essar Steel, Bhushan Power and Steel, Jaypee Infratech, and Alok Industries — will see their resolution getting pushed to the next financial year (2019-20), increasing the provisioning burden on lenders. It will also postpone the benefit of reversal of money set aside as provisions.
These cases were in advanced stages of resolution, and their settlement was expected by the end of the March quarter of 2018-19. This would have brought relief to lenders in the form of release of provisions made, which could have been used for some other stressed accounts.
ALSO READ: Govt moves NCLT seeking immunity for directors of IL&FS subsidiaries
Instead, many banks will now have to make extra provisions, said senior public sector bank executives. These accounts, part of the RBI’s first list, were classified as non-performing assets (NPAs) in March 2016, and were taken to the NCLT in 2017-18 for insolvency proceedings.
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In the normal course, lenders would have to make 100 per cent provisions in four years. The aggregate provisions for these were about 70 per cent, according to ICRA's estimates.
Banks with exposure to Essar Steel were expecting significant write-backs on account of the account’s resolution by March 31, 2019. However, if the account remains unresolved, they would need to increase the provisions, affecting their balance sheets.
ALSO READ: NCLT yet to fire fully with over half of admitted cases still unresolved
For example, SBI is expecting to write back about Rs 6,000 crore from Essar’s resolution in Q4, according to a senior official at SBI. However, if the resolution does not happen, the bank would need to make additional provisions, said the official. SBI’s provisions for List 1 cases were about 66 per cent.
Earlier, Mallikarjuna Rao, MD and CEO of Allahabad Bank, had said the bank was expecting a write-back of Rs 360 crore from all NCLT accounts by the end of Q4. Of this, a major chunk would be from Essar, he had said.
According to Mrutyunjay Mahapatra, MD and CEO of Syndicate Bank, if the Essar Steel account remains unresolved till March 31, the bank will have to make ageing provisions.
In June 2017, the RBI had asked banks to refer 12 accounts with exposure of Rs 2.5 trillion to the NCLT under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. Out of these, three accounts aggregating Rs 80,000 crore have been resolved: Bhushan Steel (went to Tata Steel), Electrosteel (to Vedanta) and Monnet Ispat (JSW).

Market, economists see a rate cut in RBI's April 4 monetary policy review

Economists and bank treasurers are almost certain that the six-member monetary policy committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will cut the policy repo rate by at least a quarter percentage point in its April 4 review meeting.
All the 15 participants in a Business Standard poll, comprising three top bank treasurers and 12 senior economists, said they expected at least a 25 basis points (bps) cut. Some even said they expect 50 bps cut, or even a cut in the cash reserve ratio as growth dives, even as heavy government borrowing meant liquidity conditions should be kept easy. Inflation is not a real concern now, the participants concluded, but falling growth certainly needs a careful watch.
ALSO READ: Cash-spot spreads spike to record high of 46 paise over huge dollar supply
Gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to grow at about 7 per cent, or slightly lower, in the current fiscal year. Employment generation has also fallen, which makes growth a must consideration for the RBI. The Index of Industrial Production (IIP) grew at just 1.7 per cent in January, much lower than 7.5 per cent recorded a year ago. The consumer price-based index (CPI), the key gauge of inflation, meanwhile, was at 2.57 per cent, well below the RBI’s medium-term target of 4 per cent. Therefore, it makes sense for the central bank to frontload its rate cuts. An assurance by the central bank to continue with its open market operations (OMO), under which it buys bonds from the secondary market, is perhaps a must. Also, banks are really not passing on the past rate cuts, and therefore ensuring transmission of rates is also imperative.
Market, economists see a rate cut in RBI's April 4 monetary policy review
The tone of the policy would predictably be dovish, said the participants. “I expect the RBI to frontload the rate cuts and reduce the repo rate by 50 bps on April 4 to give a clear cut signal of policy easing. This is needed to kick-start transmission,” said Rupa Rege Nitsure, chief economist, L&T Finance.
“A change in stance to accommodative combined with a 25 bps cut is also a possibility. Post elections, whichever government comes to power will adopt fiscal prudence in the initial years. Uncertainties on account of El Nino, expiry of Iran crude oil waiver and elections, etc, would prompt the RBI to frontload the rate cuts in the first half of fiscal 2019-20,” Nitsure said, adding aggregate monetary demand, too, had slowed as reflected in M3 (broad money) to GDP (gross domestic product) ratio slipping below 80 per cent.
She is not alone in her assessment of a sharp rate cut.
According to Soumya Kanti Ghosh, chief economic advisor of the State Bank of India (SBI) group, a 50 bps rate cut is a possibility, but 25 bps is more likely. The stance would likely be changed to accommodative, he said. This is because of growth.
“We are currently in a quasi-asynchronous growth cycle. While growth for India could remain muted for the next couple of quarters, the US could slip into slowdown mode in 2020. This warrants frontloaded policy support, though there has to be a delicate choice between exhausting the ammunition now, or may be to keep the powders dry for later use,” Ghosh said.
Others also expressed similar views.
“This is an unusual situation when inflation outlook is relatively clearer, but assessment over growth is full of quagmire. Thus a 25 bps cut and neutral stance along with better transmission through liquidity is a better outcome,” said Soumyajit Niyogi, associate director at India Ratings and Research.
ALSO READ: India Inc's foreign borrowings fall to $2.81 bn in Feb, down by 9%: RBI

The economic conditions have really not changed that drastically on the ground, and therefore even if there is a rate cut, a change in stance may not be warranted, said Madan Sabnavis, chief economist of Care Ratings.
Gaurav Kapur, chief economist of IndusInd Bank, said there was a case to cut the CRR by 50 bps, along with a rate cut, now that banks’ liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) was made 100 per cent.
Meanwhile, the bond market is already factoring in at least two rate cuts.
“The OIS (overnight index swaps) curve is pricing not only an April 4 rate cut, but another one in the coming months. However, bond yields have remained where they were in February when the last cut happened. Therefore, it is imperative that the RBI ensures liquidity conditions remain easy enough to create enough demand for the heavy supply of bonds in the next fiscal,” said Jayesh Mehta, country treasurer at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Meet Nirav's A-Team that may have helped him pull off Rs 14,000-cr scam

How did fugitive jeweller Nirav Modi pull off what he is accused of — the country’s biggest banking fraud at Punjab National Bank, worth over Rs 14,000 crore — without an army of trusted lieutenants while keeping his moves under wraps? After all, he employed over 2,200 people and it’s a matter of conjecture as to why someone didn’t blow the whistle earlier. It turns out that while his family council was involved, he also — according to a report submitted to a US Bankruptcy Court by an appointed examiner — had a highly organised core management team. The common denominator: They were predominantly Gujarati, mostly male, and either related by blood or very well-known to Nirav.
The family: Nishal Modi who was his half-brother and in charge of diamond trading was a director and has a look out notice on him and is wanted by the authorities. Nehal Modi, Nirav’s other brother in New York was reportedly a consultant with Firestar and involved with the Ithaca Trust, an entity set up to fund and buy real estate for the fugitive jeweller through questionable sources of finance.

Mehul Choksi, Nirav’s uncle and mentor, and boss of Gitanjali Group, is hiding out in Antigua. Purvi Modi Mehta, Nirav’s sister, managed the Hong Kong business but was not a key director in the holding companies, sources say, adding that she and the brothers were intentionally put in positions with no or very limited liability, but supported Nirav by transferring funds when required. Nirav’s wife Ami Modi is supposedly in the United States and like Purvi assisted by transferring funds through her account when required, according to the examiner’s report. There’s a look out notice on her and she has also been recently charge-sheeted by the enforcement directorate.
graph
Nirav’s sister was also involved with other facets that involved shadow companies and transferring money to various group companies as well as to Nirav’s wife, according to the report.
Also, Choksi had a daughter — Priyanka — who wed Antwerp-based diamond merchant Akash Mehta in 2011. At the time Priyanka was running A.Jaffe, in which Nirav had invested and was deeply involved in. A.Jaffe was also a company that allegedly saw funds from LoUs routed through it.
Former CEO of Firestar Diamonds and Firestar India Mihir Bhansali, who is Nirav’s cousin, worked closely with him and allegedly had involvement that ran deep into the shadow companies — a set of firms that were supposedly created by Nirav to divert funds. Bhansali, a graduate from Babson College and HR College of Commerce and Economics, was Nirav’s “de facto number 2” and is alleged by the Indian authorities to have a significant control over the entire group.
In May 2017, Bhansali allegedly directed Shyam Wadhwa, an alleged Nirav confidante and employee of Firestar India, to replace the director in Hong Kong with Bankim Mehta a diamond trader in New York working for FDI.
In an interview with the examiner, Mehta admitted that he did little more than sign paperwork. In other discoveries by the examiner, managers of shadow companies say that Bhansali trained them to say they were jewellers with several generations of experience when in fact they were just Firestar employees.
A.Jaffe CEO Sumay Bhansali is also the brother of the wife of Anurag Jain, the boss at Parag Diamonds, the company which ended up buying A.Jaffe for $8 million at its bankruptcy sale. It was valued at $22 million. It’s not clear whether the two Bhansalis were related. Vipul Ambani, CFO of the firm’s India operations, was arrested and had been in jail for a few months when the scam broke. He has since been released but the extent of his involvement is not clear.
Working shoulder to shoulder with Mihir Bhansali was Ajay Gandhi, CFO of the US-based Firestar companies, who received his Bachelor’s degree in India and became a licensed CPA in 1994 after graduating from York College in New York City. Gandhi allegedly had control over all of Firestar’s financial transactions including managerial sign off on loose diamond transactions with the shadow companies that were worth hundreds of millions. His day-to-day role at the US entities included checking all account balances, monitoring cash flow, reviewing payments, managing payables, and receivables and reviewing inputs from sales teams.
He would also sign monthly borrowing certificates for lending banks IDB and HSBC and based on the reviews by the examiner’s team it’s inferred that he clearly controlled the finances of the debtor entities. In several interviews with the examiner, Gandhi was quizzed about his knowledge of shadow companies and their ties to the debtors. In his first interview he said he only knew that they were Bhansali’s customers.
Bhansali allegedly hired proxy or placeholder employees who would do what they were asked to without question.
This included the likes of Hemant Bhatt, who — though identified as Nirav’s business partner and director in the group’s oldest company Diamonds R Us — was, some former employees say, just “the canteen supervisor at the India Office”.
According to Firestar India’s general manager of accounts Saju Poulose Parokaran, the authorities were told Bhansali requested he “select some of the trusted employees from the company who do not apply much brain to work for Firestar overseas entities”.

When aspiration and joblessness collide: Decoding the Hindu vote in West UP

Clouds of dust flew into people’s faces as the next white SUV full of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) karyakartas (workers) drove up to the maidan (ground) in Sutyana village, 56 km east of India’s capital.
Gautam Buddh Nagar is not as well known as its urban half, the Delhi suburb of Noida, a land of IT companies and glass-fronted buildings. Sutyana is at the other end of this parliamentary constituency, a space of shrunken farmlands and former farmers. Some were happy to sell their land, others protested when the government tried to acquire it in 2011 to build an expressway, and, more recently, in villages in and around Noida and Jewar town over various government projects including a new airport.

On a recent March day, protesters and party workers gathered for an election rally of union culture minister Mahesh Sharma, BJP member of parliament (MP) from the Gautam Buddha Nagar constituency. Sharma, 59, won 50% of the votes in 2014--a margin of 23.37% over his nearest rival from the Samajwadi Party. He hoped to re-create that result.

It was a BJP yuva morcha, or youth event, and they were getting louder. It was 12:20 pm, mantri-ji was expected any minute. But instead of the 2,500 people anticipated--for whom adequate chairs, microphones, megaphones and posters had been arranged--there were no more than 50.
The next SUV revved up and a leader from an adjoining village walked in, led by a thin drummer boy in a shiny outfit fraying at the edges. He drummed loudly and vigorously. ‘Modiji ki jai ho!’ they shouted, referring to their main vote catcher, Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
With a right-wing Hindu party in power appealing to the majority vote, this is the first of a six-part series that explores the Hindu vote from India’s most important battleground state: UP, home to 80 of 543 Lok Sabha constituencies or 14% of Parliament’s lower house. A state that is 79.7% Hindu and 19.2% Muslim, according to Census 2011, UP is where the Hindu right first gained ground with the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, and the movement to construct a Ram temple in Ayodhya began.
How votes are garnered here in India’s second-poorest state by per capita income, how caste will compete with religion--or a combination of the two--will determine who gets India’s biggest bank of votes. Our journey through the heart of UP during the campaign of 2019 will bring you stories behind the electoral math, as we gauge how religious and caste issues are being presented and how voters anxious for jobs are reacting.

Gautam Buddh Nagar--84.6% Hindu--is crucial to the story of UP.
It is one of UP’s newest constituencies, carved in 1997 out of bits of Ghaziabad and Bulandshahr. It is an industrial hub, UP’s second-largest district economy (after Lucknow), and its urban face, Noida, was meant to provide opportunities for millions of the state’s job aspirants.
The state needs those opportunities realised because it has India’s largest working-age population among its 200 million people, as many as in Brazil, which is however 35 times larger than UP, but an economy half as large as Hong Kong’s, which is smaller in area than Gautam Buddh Nagar.
These opportunities are important because UP has India’s second-highest fertility rate, which means it will keep adding young people. That means its window to exploit its demographic dividend--the economic growth that accrues from a young population--is likely to be “fully open” till about 2050, according to a 2018 United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) study.
“With its enormous potential, Uttar Pradesh will need to follow a growth path that results in remunerative jobs for its labour force, both within farm and non-farm sectors,” said a 2017 International Labour Organization study.
Between the last election and this, however, even BJP loyalists gathered in Sutyana village admitted, their sarkar has done precious little to alleviate rural distress. The real question was--whether or not this was going to make a difference to their voting.
‘We don’t have any other issue except Hindu versus Muslim’
UP has India’s largest youth (15-24) population, more than 40 million, which is almost double the state that is next, Maharashtra. Under-development, and a lack of employment have combined to create a political cauldron of caste politics over the last two decades. Religion is now stirred into this mix.
A year after minister Sharma won his 2014 election, this constituency also witnessed the first mob lynching since the Modi government was sworn in. Mohammad Akhlaq was killed on the September 28, 2015, in a village in the Dadri segment of Gautam Buddh Nagar because a mob believed he had killed and eaten a cow.
Since 2014, 11 people have been lynched in cow-related hate crimes in UP, 73% of them Muslim, the highest number of such attacks in any Indian state, according to a database run by FactChecker.in.
Now, in election season, in a tiny BJP office in another village in the same constituency, a party leader, speaking on condition of anonymity, commented on the BJP’s official campaign, sabka saath, sabka vikaas (with everyone, development for all).
“Hamarey paas iske sivaye aur koi mudda nahi--Hindu Muslim ke alaava, jeetney ka. We have no other issue except Hindu versus Muslim, to win this election,” he said.
The man saying this also belonged to the BJP’s parent body: the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Once upon a time, his plain speaking had prevented him from getting a ticket to contest an election. Now, he sat in a tiny party office, in front of posters of the founders of the RSS--KB Hegdewar and his immediate successor, MS Golwalkar.
“From the bottom of my heart, I want there to be no Modi sarkar,” said the BJP leader. “I don’t want to be made to do things that weigh heavy on my conscience.”
But there was already a pile of things, that by his own admission, did weigh him down. That included the breaking of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992 and the divisive religious politics his party had played in Gautam Buddha Nagar in the decades that followed.
Akhlaq and after
In the last election, Mahesh Sharma defeated his rival from the Samajwadi Party by a margin of 23.37%. A year later, in Bisada village in Dadri, Mohammad Akhlaq was lynched. After Akhlaq’s lynching, Sharma had said: “It [the murder] took place as a reaction to that incident [cow slaughter].”
In the local Rajput settlement, there is a large electricity transformer at the head of the street. On the night of September 28, 2015, an announcement had been made from the village loudspeaker that the carcass of a dead calf had been found nearby. The transformer is not anywhere close to the Muslim neighbourhood where Akhlaq once lived, but in these parts, the save-the-cow campaign is strong emotional currency.
In the lane where Akhlaq was killed, Sanjay Rana sat in the outer courtyard of his house. His son, Vishal, was sent to prison for two years, one of the 17 young men accused of killing Akhlaq. “Woh ek swabhavik ghatna thi. Nahin honi chahiye thi, ho gayi [What happened was a natural outcome of the circumstances. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did],” Rana said.
His son is out on bail but has not been acquitted of the charges against him. Rana spoke of his despair as a father, and how it was not the BJP but the political opposition that turned Akhlaq’s killing into political capital.
“Jo gau maas paya gaya, usko bakre ka gosht keh kar ke ek tareeke se sarkaar ki chhavi kharaab karney ka kaam kiya. [Some politicians claimed it wasn’t beef but goat meat that was found in Akhlaq’s fridge, and they tried to spoil the government’s reputation],” said Rana.
Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal, Asaduddin Owaisi, Brinda Karat. They were the real culprits in Rana’s eyes. It was the BJP’s elected representative, minister Sharma, who was trying to keep the peace.
Outside Rana’s house, there was no evidence of peace, only tension and anger.
Such was the atmosphere of Bisada village that as this reporter walked out of the narrow lane, past the murder site, the police were on a flag march. More than 80 of them patrolled the area because Holi was around the corner and, as one of Rana’s relatives explained, people in the area needed to get the message: do not stoke violence.
Elections or otherwise, Bisada, like vast swathes of Gautam Buddh Nagar, is now polarised.
‘A Hindu nation? How can it be any other way?’
In a clearing in Bisada, a cement mixer was in action. Construction of a boundary to a public ground was under way--a tiny, local undertaking that a cluster of men tried to project as “Modi sarkar’s development”.
When asked if they wanted India to be a Hindu nation, they circled this reporter and asked belligerently: “How can you even ask that question? What kind of negative question is that? Is there any possibility of things being any other way?”
It was clear that things were uncomfortable, so the reporter sped away in her cab to the other side of the village, to the settlement around the mosque, where about 30 Muslim families live. After the lynching, Akhlaq’s family had moved out. Of those that remained, a man in a skull cap, carrying logs of wood in a wheelbarrow, watched with discomfort as this reporter approached.
“We are all fine here, we have no problems, we are all very happy,” he said breathlessly before he was even asked.
Two years after Akhlaq’s killing, the polarisation yielded results for the BJP.
In the state elections of 2017, the MLAs contesting from the assembly segments of Noida and Dadri, which are part of this Lok Sabha seat, won by larger margins of 40.89% and 30.2%, respectively, a substantial bump up from the 23.37% lead Mahesh Sharma had in the Lok Sabha election in 2014, before the lynching. This is significant because of the way the caste math works in UP.

Although the government has not made caste census figures public, various reports quote National Sample Survey Office and panchayat data that show more than 40% of UP is made up of other backward classes (OBCs), which have traditionally voted for the Samajwadi Party, also known locally as the Yadav-Muslim party.
But the consolidation of the Hindu vote in many constituencies, such as Gautam Buddh Nagar, helped the BJP, previously known as the go-to place for upper-caste Hindus. Votes came in from other castes, including some from OBCs.
Polarisation, it would appear, helped the party trump UP’s traditional caste math. This time, despite the BJP’s renewed attempts to talk up Hindu issues and Modi, it may be more difficult.
‘Mahesh Sharma go back!’
One part of Gautam Buddh Nagar not convinced by the-Muslims-eat-beef kind of campaign message was Jewar, where a new airport is proposed on land that needs to be acquired from farmers.
The BJP won Jewar in the state election of 2017 by a much lower margin than Noida and Dadri--the lead was 10.49%. Since then, various parts of the constituency have been roiled by farmers’ protests.
In a village called Kachera, adopted by minister Sharma, farmers put up sign boards that said: “The BJP is strictly prohibited from coming to this village, adoptive village of Mahesh Sharma.”
They were upset that their standing crop was razed for the airport, and when they called their MP for help, none was forthcoming. The government said the farmers did not own the land, which had been acquired by a private company.
There was dissent and anger around Gautam Buddh Nagar and BJP watchers, including those who voted for Sharma the last time around, were wondering if he would get a ticket to contest. But the terrorist car bomb that killed more than 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) troopers in Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir, on February 12, 2019, turned the tide, according to some party workers.
Sharma got the ticket. Where development failed, polarisation would work, was the calculation, said a party worker from Dadri, Radhacharan (he uses one name), who has been with the BJP and the RSS for over four decades.
“Pulwama ka kaafi asar hai. Pehle ki sthiti hum bahut kamzor mantey they, uske baad nahi. Pulwama has changed things quite a bit. We thought we were on a weak wicket before, not any longer,” said Radhacharan.
Radhacharan was once a communist. He spoke of the farmland takeover in Marxist terms: how a capitalist economy worked, how farmers were edged out.
Still, he fell out with his former colleagues, allied with former Prime Minister Charan Singh, in 1979 and crossed over to the BJP soon after. Radhacharan is a reflection of the complex matrix that the BJP and its extended arm of the Sangh Parivar--the family of Hindu nationalist organisations owing allegiance to the RSS--comprises. He was opposed to the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992, but also felt that he had chosen the winning side with all its inherent contradictions.
In many ways, politics in these parts is not always about a coherence of ideas or ideologies. It is, often, about picking the winning side.
The costs of doing business
The polarisation over 27 years, from Babri to Dadri and now Pulwama, is taking root in different ways amongst the rank and file of Gautam Buddh Nagar, explained a BJP official on condition of anonymity.
On two separate occasions, this man said, he had filed police complaints against young men in Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) outfits loosely affiliated to his own party, when they had broken idols of Hindu gods at night in areas contiguous with Muslim residences--to pin the blame on Muslims.
Polarise and you are in business, is the message that some on the ground have picked up. These Sangh Parivar foot-soldiers were not expecting resistance from within their own party.
Back at Mahesh Sharma’s rally in Sutyana, it was 2 pm. Sharma had been expected to arrive at 12.20. The youth leaders had to prevent the few hundred who had been mobilised from leaving. One youth leader came up and made a rousing speech about the benefits of demonetisation, the voiding of 86% of India’s currency by Modi in November 2016.
Some in the audience tried to keep a straight face. Others laughed as hard as they could. “Demo ne toh mujhe berozgaar bana diya. [Demonetisation made me jobless],” said one young man. Two of the five companies he had worked for had shut down.
“But if I say anything, I will be kicked out and told to shut up,” he said. Realising he had spoken before party colleagues, he quickly added: “So many schemes announced by the Prime Minister are eaten up by middlemen.”
Despite the disappointment with his own sarkar over the downturn of the economy, this man came for Sharma’s rally. He sensed this was where he needed to be if he wanted to do business.
A BJP supporter summed it up: “This is election season, jod-tod toh hogi hi. [Some making and breaking of people, communities is bound to happen].”
It was a hot day, and a water dispenser was set up on a table at the back. By now, the area around it was a pile of strewn plastic glasses. On stage, the youth leaders spoke of the Prime Minister’s many campaigns, including Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, or the Clean India mission.
Cynics versus cynics
“Caste will be a big factor in this seat,” said a tall, lanky man in glasses, a self-confessed BJP supporter at Sharma’s rally. He explained what he meant: “Mahesh bhai is an outsider to UP. He is from Rajasthan. And there is a huge outsider population [in Noida] that will vote for him and that will mitigate local caste factors.” By local caste factors he meant Gujjars, a pastoral community that are Hindus in UP, who observers said are likely to vote for the Gujjar candidate from the opposition party, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
“Yeh double MA hain. [He has a double MA degree],” one of the party workers said, introducing a BJP supporter, Dilip Kumar Swami, originally from Churu in Rajasthan, now settled in Noida. Swami beamed at the introduction and dissected the math, as the crowd around him grew. “3-33 ki ladai hai. [It’s a fight of three versus 33],” he said, referring to three communities in the opposition camp--the Jatavs (or Dalits as they are commonly known), Muslims and Gujjars--and 33 other castes supporting the BJP.
Despite this math and visible support for his party, Swami was cautious and expressed dissent against the party line. “There should be no mandir built,” said Swami. “And we need a strong opposition for a robust democracy, [but] here whatever Amit Shah says, goes.”
Swami then took some of the heat off the obvious criticism of his party with praise for the prime minister. He presented a proverb about the invincibility of the telis, Modi’s caste. “Baavan baniya, trepan teli. [If the trader’s brain size is 52, then the teli’s is 53]. When Modi dies, even his head will be preserved, even that will be valued,” said Swami.
Everyone was pleased. His audience clapped. It took away the monotony of waiting for their minister to show up. An enthusiastic supporter said Modi’s head would be preserved forever “just like Suraiya’s”. “Her voice was so sweet, they preserved her head to see what kind of vocal chords she had.” No one realised that perhaps the prime minister might not appreciate a comparison to a Muslim actor-singer from the 1960s.
Some dreams come true
At a cafe in Noida, the urban part of Gautam Buddh Nagar, a BJP intern called Mayank Mishra looked very happy.
A year ago, he had been struggling to find the Rs 87,000 he needed for his dream: a bachelor’s degree in journalism. His father was unemployed, and his mother taught Hindi at a local school. Several banks turned him down or said he needed to submit a salary slip proving his parents earned at least Rs 25,000 a month.
A member of the RSS, Mishra realised in April 2018 that the BJP youth wing or Yuva Morcha had a national internship programme. He was one of 150 to be chosen. After being humiliated because of his background and lack of money, he was finally being recognised. One day, he would rise, like minister Sharma, who started out as a doctor with a small clinic in Noida and now owned a fleet of hospitals and was a member of India’s cabinet.
“Main apne aap ko mazboot karna chahta tha, itna mazboot karna chahta tha ki koi mujhe daba na paye. [I wanted to make myself so strong that no one can trample over my ego ever again],” he said, his eyes shining.
The task handed to him in his internship was a test of this resolve. He was asked to design a Swachh Bharat campaign. “I was feeling a bit awkward about this, that I had to do jhaadu [sweep] on the streets,” he said, peering into his coffee.
Mishra and his family are migrants from Jharkhand, a state poorer than UP, but belong to an “upper” caste. To do the job of “lower” castes was difficult. “So, I thought I would pick an area far away from where I live and set out at 4:30 am, when nobody was watching,” he said.
Eventually, he went along with his fellow interns to a public park. It was a “big success”, he said. Mayank measured success by the fact that as soon as they had cleaned the park, taken before-and-after videos and pictures and tweeted and re-tweeted them, 1,700 people had followed suit on Twitter.
Soon after, his photo and profile were on the Internet. On Google search, his name appeared right at the top of the search for “BJP Noida”, above that of the MLA or the state legislator from the area, Pankaj Singh, who is the son of India’s home minister, Rajnath Singh.
Without saffron, dissent rises
Meanwhile, in Jewar, at the other end of Gautam Buddh Nagar, where minister Sharma in November 2018 got official sanction to build an airport for the district, he has realised that turning a rural area into urban is complicated.
One person’s dream is another’s nightmare when land is acquired, as it was in Jewar with farmers. Under the Land Acquisition Act of 2013, the formula for compensating farmers for taking their land was applied. In a rural zone, farmers are entitled to a compensation of four times the “circle rate” of the land (the minimum price at which land can be sold, set by the state government's revenue department). In an urban area, farmers get only two times the circle rate as compensation.
In the beginning, it was not the BJP but their opponents, the Samajwadi Party, which ran the government when acquisition started, that antagonised the farmers. The then government declared the entire constituency to be urban in 2013, so farmers could only get two times the circle rate as compensation and not four.
But when the BJP government, “the party with a difference”, replaced the Samajwadi Party in 2017, nothing changed. Farmers whose land was visibly rural were paid the reduced urban compensation. When many of these angry farmers launched protest after protest, the BJP MLA from the area took the farmers to meet chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who changed the compensation from two times to two-and-a half-times the circle rate.
The farmers have “nothing to complain about”, said MLA Dhirendra Singh. The airport will mean progress, development, hospitals, consumers.
Over time and so many elections, voters and contestants have developed a cynicism. So, those who turned up for Sharma’s rally appeared to be hedging their bets, trying to be seen with the winning side. But first they had to assess if he might win.
By 3.20 pm news filtered in that Sharma was not going to show up at the rally, after all. Party managers quickly found another leader to garland and declared the rally a success. The drummer left. The maidan was full of empty plastic glasses, as the last SUV sped away.
(Laul is an independent journalist and film-maker and the author of The Anatomy of Hate, published by Westland/Context in December 2018.)
This is first of six stories exploring the Hindu vote in Uttar Pradesh.
Republished with the permission of IndiaSpend. You may read the original story here.

Shanghai world's first district with 5G coverage, broadband gigabit network

Shanghai claimed on Saturday that it has become the world's first district using both 5G coverage and broadband gigabit network as China seeks to establish lead over the US and other countries in the race to develop next generation cellular mobile communications.
5G is the next generation of cellular technology with download speeds that are 10 to 100 times faster than 4G LTE networks.

Shanghai has developed what it claims to be the first district boasting both 5G coverage and a broadband gigabit network, the state-run China Daily reported.
Trial runs of the 5G network, backed by state-run telecom carrier China Mobile, officially started the service in Shanghai's Hongkou on Saturday, where 5G base stations had been deployed over the last three months to ensure full coverage, the report said.
During a launch ceremony, Shanghai vice-mayor Wu Qing made the network's first 5G video call on an Huawei Mate X, the world's first 5G foldable, AI phone, it said.
When fully operational, subscribers stand to avail of the same service without having to upgrade their SIM cards, it said.
Huawei, China's telecom technology giant, whose revenue in 2018 crossed $100 billion, is battling a wave of opposition to its 5G trials from the US and different countries.
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The 5G stations are being installed in different parts of China, including Tibet, as part of Huawei's plans to lead the 5G trials despite the opposition.
The US has been pressurising countries it has closer ties to ban Huawei and other Chinese telecom firms from providing gear used to build 5G wireless networks.
Huawei has denied official links with the Chinese government.
China has also protested to the US about its efforts to extradite Huawei's CFO, Meng Wanzhou, who has been arrested in Canada to face prosecution for violations of US sanctions against Iran.
Meng, daughter of Huawei owner Ren Zhengfei has been accused of allegedly misleading banks about the company's business dealings there.
Zhang Jianming, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Economic and Informatisation Commission, the local telecom and industry regulator, said Shanghai city aims to build over 10,000 5G base stations by the end of this year, and that figure is expected to surpass 30,000 in 2021.
A comprehensive deployment of the network, which transmits at least 10 times faster than 4G at peak rates, will help develop industrial manufacturing, internet-connected cars, healthcare and smart city management, Zhang said.
Zhang further said that these are all strategically critical industries for both Shanghai and China.
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"Shanghai also targets to nurture over 100 innovative companies specialised in exploring 5G-related application scenarios, whose industrial output is expected to reach 100 billion yuan (USD14.9 billion) by 2021," he said.
Jian Qin, vice-president of China Mobile, said it has invested the most in Shanghai to date to help the city expand its 5G trial network and related applications.
"China Mobile has invested the most in Shanghai to date to help the city expand its 5G trial network and related applications, because it is the most developed city in China with rather solid infrastructure in many aspects," he said.
Liang Zhiqiang, China Mobile's Shanghai deputy general manager, said the city's sound economic environment, systematic industrial outlay, huge market potential and vast talent pool have given it a unique edge in information technology.
In February, Shanghai announced a 5G deployment program in Hongqiao Railway Station, where users will be able to watch live broadcasts of town hall meetings and avail of lightning-quick downloads of high-resolution movies, when mobile devices such as 5G-powered phones and tablets become available.
Apart from speed, 5G also enables high-definition transmissions in real time (which means low latency) and will bolster development in the internet of things industry.

Ties with J&K will be over if you scrap Article 370: Mehbooba to Modi govt

Hitting back at Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for advocating repeal of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, PDP president Mehbooba Mufti said on Saturday that the relationship between the Union and the state would be over if Article 370 of the Constitution is revoked.
"Jaitley must understand this. It is not an easy thing to say. If you scrap (Article) 370, your relation with J-K will be over," Mehbooba told party workers at her residence.

Jaitley had on Thursday advocated repeal of Jammu and Kashmir's special status and said Article 35A, which restricts non-permanent residents to buy property in Jammu and Kashmir, is "constitutionally vulnerable" and also hampering economic development of the state.
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Mehbooba said Article 370 was a bridge between the Union and the state and if the special provision of the Constitution was revoked, then New Delhi would have to "renegotiate" its relationship with Jammu and Kashmir.
The former chief minister has said in case Article 370 is revoked, Jammu and Kashmir will have to rethink whether it wants to stay with India.
"Because if you have given us a special position in the Constitution of India and you break that position, then we will have to rethink whether we would even want to stay with you without conditions," she said.
Earlier, National Conference leader Mohammad Abdullah Wani and Awami Insaf Party chief Ghulam Ahmad Sheikh Saloora joined the PDP, along with their supporters.
Wani and Saloora were welcomed into the party fold by Mehbooba and party patron Muzaffar Hussain Beigh.

I-T, GST offices open on March 30, 31 to facilitate filing of tax returns

Tax offices, for both income tax and GST, will remain open on Saturday and Sunday as the departments' race against time to meet the revenue collection targets.
"As per past practice, all field offices of CBIC (Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs) will remain open during the last weekend of the current financial year also March 30 and March 31, 2019, for assisting the taxpayers in all matters," CBIC said in an office memorandum.

In an office order, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) asked its field offices to facilitate the filing of tax returns by the taxpayers by opening additional receipt counters, wherever required, on March 30 and 31.
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"The last date for filing belated/revised tax-returns for the assessment year 2018-19 is March 31, 2019. The financial year 2018-19 also closes on (March) 31. In view of the closed holidays March 30 and 31, being Saturday and Sunday, Income Tax Offices throughout India (including the ASK Centres), shall remain open on March 30 and 31 during normal office hours," the CBDT said.
The government has pegged goods and services tax (GST) collection target at Rs 11.47 trillion in the current financial year, while the same for direct tax mop-up is Rs 12 trillion.
GST collections in the current financial year till February totalled Rs 10.70 trillion.
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With regard to direct taxes, the CBDT had collected only Rs 10.21 trillion as on March 23, which is 85.1 per cent of the revised estimate of Rs 12 trillion. The apex policy-making body for income and corporate taxes has asked its field offices to take all possible actions to achieve the collection targets.
The Reserve Bank of India has also asked banks to keep their branches open on March 31, so that all government transactions for the financial year 2018-19 are accounted for within the same financial year. All electronic transactions, including RTGS and NEFT, will continue for the extended time on March 30 and March 31, 2019.

GST rule change to aid businesses with better cash flow management

Reversing its February notification, the central board of indirect taxes and customs (CBIC) has provided a relief to businesses in terms of using credit in the goods and services tax (GST) system towards tax payment. This will aid businesses with better cash flow management.
“Input tax credit on account of Integrated tax (IGST) shall first be utilised towards payment of integrated tax, and the amount remaining, if any, may be utilised towards the payment of central tax (CGST) and State tax (SGST) or Union territory tax (UTGST), as the case may be, in any order,” the notification said.

Abhishek Jain, tax partner at EY said that this amendment would bring relief to businesses, who have been worried in the last couple of months on account of the possible increased cash outgo for payment of GST liability.

“With this change, businesses could now structure IGST credit utilisation in an order, which does not entail unwarranted cash payments of GST liability where credits are available,” he added.
From February 1, companies were mandated to utilise available Integrated GST (IGST) credit to set off tax liability in the form of IGST, Central GST and State GST or UTGST in this very order. As a result, they were unable to use IGST credit to set off SGST liability without extinguishing their CGST liabilities.
With this change, businesses still have to set off IGST liability first. But now, the government has allowed businesses to utiise the remainder of IGST credit to pay off either of CGST or SGST liabilities according to their discretion.
Under the old rules which were in operation in February and March, in most of the cases, IGST credit used to get exhausted in IGST and CGST payments in order. CGST credit used to stay in the system un-utilised, and businesses had to make cash payments for SGST.
Now, under the modified rules, the taxpayer can choose to pay off SGST using IGST credit, even if the latter is not used to set off CGST liability. This will improve the efficiency of credit utilisation in the GST system, while helping the concerned company with marginally increased working capital.
However, some businessmen said that the rules effective in February and March were not implemented in reality, since the GST Network (GSTN) system did not allow for the same. But nevertheless, this change makes it better for businesses, they said.

Jet Airways clears pending December salary, pilots say not enough

Jet Airways has cleared pending December salaries on Saturday but this failed to impress pilots who plan to stop flying from Monday. The pilots union has called for a meeting on Sunday to decide further steps.
The airline has not paid full salaries of January and February to its pilots, engineers and senior management. Only 12.5 per cent of December salary was paid and on Saturday the airline credited the remaining 87.5 per cent. There is still a salary backlog of three months ( January-March) with respect to these sections of employees.
"The board of directors and the management team are working as fast as possible to implement the resolution plan agreed with the consortium of Indian lenders to quickly restore the much-needed stability to our operations and build a sustainable future for the airline. These are complex processes and it has taken longer than we had expected and as such we are only able to remit your remaining salary for December 2018," chief executive officer Vinay Dube said in an email to staff.
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On Monday airline chairman Naresh Goyal and his wife Anita resigned from the board and lenders agreed to provide Rs 1500 crore in emergency funding as a part of the resolution plan.
"We realise that this remittance does not lift the financial hardship that each of you are facing and we do not take your sacrifices for granted. We continue to work on additional funding on an urgent basis and shall advise you about the release of the remaining salary arrears as the funds come in," Dube added.

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The pilots union, however, is not happy with the payout and has decided to continue with its call for no flying.
"There will be no flying provided company pays us substantial salaries and a road map," National Aviators Guild, the pilots union, said in a message to its members.
On Friday around 200 pilots individually wrote to Dube threatening to go on a leave of absence and warning of legal action for non-payment of dues. Similarly, the engineers too threatened to stop work if salaries were not paid.

ED attaches Delhi-based Holiday Inn in Deepak Talwar money laundering case

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has on Saturday provisionally attached Hotel Holiday Inn located in Aerocity at New Delhi in connection with the money laundering case against the corporate lobbyist Deepak Talwar.
Talwar has been charged for illegally indulgences in liaisoning and lobbying with politicians, officials of ministry of civil aviation for securing undue benefits for airlines such as Emirates, Air Arabia and Qatar Airways. He was alleged for illegally managed to secure favourable traffic rights for these airlines during 2008-09 at the cost of National carrier Air India.

ED investigation revealed that in lieu of securing the traffic rights, these Airlines made payment to the tune of Rs 272 crore to Talwar during the 2008-09. “It is revealed that Talwar created a web of entities owned by him and his family members in India and abroad to launder proceeds of crime received from the foreign airlines,” ED said on Saturday.
According to the probe agency, the part of the payments were made in the account of Asiafield Limited, a Singapore company whose ultimate beneficiaries are Talwar and his son.
Besides Asiafield, two more companies -Wave Impex and Wave Hospitality are under the lens for parking the laundered money. “Proceeds of crime were layered through a series of international money transfer to integrate in India in Wave Hospitality which is controlled and owned by Talwar and his son Aditya Talwar. These monies has been utilised in the construction of the Holiday Inn Hotel in the Aerocity.
Investigation under PMLA was initiated by ED in August 2017 on the basis of first information report registered by Central Bureau of Investigation against officials of Ministry of Civil Aviation, NACIL, Air India and unknown private persons.
Talwar has deported by immigration authority in Dubai after he fled from the country in year 2017 and was arrested by ED under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). Currently, he is in judicial custody.
ED is expected to file the prosecution complaint by April 1.