Times Top10: Today’s Top News Headlines and Latest News from India & across the World

As widely speculated, 16 of the 19 Lok Sabha MPs from the Shiv Sena have urged party’s cornered chief Uddhav Thackeray to back the BJP’s presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu. Uddhav backed former TMC leader Yashwant Sinha against Murmu in the July 18-presidential election.

SC halts fight

• The Supreme Court paused the legal battle between the rebel Shiv Sena faction led by Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde and the Uddhav loyalists for the control of the party. The SC refused urgent hearing on the disqualification notices moved by the two factions against the MLAs from the rival camp.
• The CJI-led bench directed the newly elected Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar not to decide on the disqualification notices till the court rules on them. The Thackeray-led camp had sought an urgent hearing.

Murmu, new rallying point

• Sixteen Shiv Sena MPs, who attended a meeting called by Uddhav on Monday, asked him to support Murmu in the presidential election. There is no whip for the presidential election. This means the MPs can vote without risking disqualification.
• Interestingly, all the MPs, who batted for Murmu, are Uddhav loyalists. This marks a dramatic shift from the position stated by Uddhav, who had accompanied Sinha during the filing of nomination last month.
• Reports indicate that Uddhav, who is fighting to keep control over the party founded by his father, is likely to take a decision on the presidential candidate this week.
• With 55 MLAs and 22 MPs (including three in the Rajya Sabha), the Shiv Sena has 25,200 votes in the presidential election. The Shinde faction has 7,000 votes (not counting the MPs), while the Thackeray camp still controls 18,200 votes.

The AIADMK headquarters in Chennai turned into a virtual war zone on Monday with supporters from rival factions led by O Panneerselvam (OPS) and E Palaniswami (EPS) resorting to violence and vandalism, prompting the authorities to seal the party office in Royapettah.

Interim chief

• Earlier in the day, Palaniswami was elected the party’s interim general secretary and vested with full powers to helm the organisation.
• The party’s general council (GC) accused Panneerselvam of siding with the DMK government and having ties with the ruling party leaders and working to weaken the AIADMK.
• While the GC expelled OPS from the primary membership and the post of treasurer, the defiant leader said EPS has no right to show him the door and rather announced the “expulsion” of the latter from the party.

No HC relief

• Meanwhile, the Madras High Court rejected a plea from Panneerselvam to stay the conduct of the party’s GC meeting by the other faction headed by EPS.

Sasikala stakes claim

• Amid the internal discord, V K Sasikala, confidante of late party matriarch J Jayalalithaa is staking claim to the latter’s legacy. She declared that both OPS and EPS were mere “shadows” while she is the “truth”, meaning she is the real leader.

BJP to benefit?

• The ruling DMK stands to electorally gain to a significant extent and the BJP, though now on the fringes, could aspire to get more electoral space in the wake of churning in the AIADMK. More details here

Sri Lanka’s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is still in the country, Parliament Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena’s office said on Monday. But an AFP report claimed the embattled leader, whose whereabouts are unknown, was flown to an airbase near the main international airport, raising speculation he would flee into exile abroad.

Interim govt soon

• President Rajapaksa has officially conveyed to PM Ranil Wickremesinghe that he will resign on July 13, the PM Office said on Monday. With this, Sri Lanka’s political parties have begun the process to form an all-party government.
• The entire Cabinet will resign and hand over their responsibilities to a new all-party interim government as soon as it is formed. Subsequently, a new President will be elected on July 20 to prevent the bankrupt nation sliding further into anarchy.

‘Hitler-like mindset’

• In a special televised statement, PM Wickremesinghe said the house that was burnt down by arsonists was the only one he had in Sri Lanka as well as abroad.
• “My only house was set on fire. I had 2,500 books in my library, my only asset. There were over 200-year-old valuable paintings. All of them destroyed,” he said adding only people with Hitler-like mindset are capable of doing such things.

Who shot at protesters?

• The Sri Lankan Army has dismissed claims that it shot directly at protesters who attempted to enter the President’s residence during the weekend, but said it fired a few rounds in the air and towards the sidewalls of the main gate to prevent the mob from entering the compound. More details here

• No relief: Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair was sent to 14 days judicial custody by a court in Lakhimpur Kheri in a complaint registered against him by Uttar Pradesh (UP) Police for an offence of promoting religious enmity between different religious communities. Zubair is already in judicial custody since July 4 in a case registered against him by Delhi Police on a similar offence based on a tweet by him in 2018.
• The latest offence: The case in Lakhimpur court was registered against him last year in September, based on a complaint by a journalist working in Sudarshan TV, which was called out by Zubair for airing doctored footage about a mosque attack in Israel. The channel, which defended the airing of a fabricated image as “artistic freedom”, has also been censured by the Supreme Court in 2020, with the apex court calling out the channel’s editor-in-chief for doing a “disservice to the nation” by airing a show alleging a Muslim conspiracy to infiltrate India’s civil services.
• Bail or jail? The channel’s journalist has accused Zubair of inciting Muslims through his tweet that called out the news channel’s fabricated image and also named Twitter as a co-accused for the microblogging site’s failure to remove the tweet. Zubair’s bail plea will be heard tomorrow.

• Noting that “India is projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country during 2023”, the UN World Population Prospects 2022 report says that India’s population will continue to grow till 2050, even as China’s demographic dividend has started tapering off.
• According to the report, while China’s and India’s population in 1990 stood at 1,144 million and 861 million respectively, the gap has narrowed to 1,426 million (China) and 1,412 million (India). Going forward, by 2050, India’s population, which will keep growing, would have reached 1,668 million while China’s population would have decreased to 1,317 million.
• The report, released on Monday on the occasion of World Population Day, also projects that the global population will reach 8 billion by the middle of November this year. Ironically, even as the world population grew at its slowest pace since 1950, the last one billion souls have been added at a faster clip then previous billions.
• While the jump from 7 billion to 8 billion has taken 11 years, it took 12 years each for the world’s population to go from 5 billion to 6 billion — from 1987 to 1999 — and from 6 billion to 7 billion (1999-2011).
• In the hundred year period the report has analysed — from 1950 to 2050 — the world population growth rate fell below 1% for the first time in 2020. The report adds that the growth rate of the global population could continue to decline on a decadal basis till the end of this century.

The Supreme Court (SC) on Monday ruled that gangster Abu Salem, convicted for his role in the 1993 Bombay serial blasts, has to be released after serving his sentence for 25 years.

Keep your word

• In its order, the SC said that after “completing 25 years of sentence, the Central Government is bound to advise the President of India for exercise of powers under Article 72 of the Constitution of India and to release the appellant in terms of the national commitment as well as the principle based on the comity of courts.”

But why?

• In December 2002, the then Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani, in a letter on behalf of the Indian government, offered an assurance to “the Government of Portugal that it will exercise its powers conferred by the Indian laws to ensure that if extradited by Portugal for trial in India, Abu Salem Abdul Qayoom Ansari and Monica Bedi would not be visited by death penalty or imprisonment for a term beyond 25 years.” Bedi, a Bollywood starlet, was rumoured to be Salem’s girlfriend.
• Furthermore, in May 2003, the Indian ambassador to Portugal also assured the Portuguese government that Salem would only face trial for the offences for which his extradition was sought and that he would be not be re-extradited to a third country. It was only after these assurances that Salem and Bedi were finally extradited in 2005.

No credits

• The apex court however also declined to give any relief to Salem for the period of imprisonment he underwent in Portugal prior to his extradition, observing that it was for a different offence in a different country, saying that considering “the gravity of the offence, there is no question of this Court exercising any special power to commute his sentence.”
• Salem was found guilty of transporting and distributing arms and ammunition used to carry out the serial blasts that left more than 250 people dead and 713 injured. The blasts were said to have been carried out in retaliation against the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992.

Fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, an accused in a Rs 9,000 crore loan default case, has now earned the Supreme Court’s wrath. The top court on Monday awarded him a four-month sentence and a Rs 2,000-fine in a contempt case.

The crime

• The apex court had in 2020 dismissed Mallya’s plea seeking review of the May 2017 verdict which had held him guilty of contempt for transferring $40 million to his children in violation of court orders.

And the punishment

• While pronouncing the order on Monday, the bench said the contemnor and beneficiaries of the transactions, shall be bound to deposit the amount received by them along with eight percent interest per annum with the recovery officer concerned within four weeks.
• The failure to deposit the amount within the stipulated time will invite another two months of jail, court said.

On bail

• Mallya, who has been living in the United Kingdom since March 2016, is on bail on an extradition warrant executed by the Scotland Yard on April 18, 2017.
• Earlier, a consortium of lending banks led by the State Bank of India had moved the apex court alleging that Mallya was not following the court orders on repayment of loan which was then over Rs 9,000 crore.
• It was alleged that he was not disclosing the assets and moreover, transferring them to his children in violation of the restraint orders.

• The RBI unveiled a rupee settlement system for international trade on Monday to “promote growth of global trade with emphasis on exports” and to support trade in the Indian currency. Under the new mechanism, exporters and importers can use a Special Vostro account for receipts and payments denominated in rupees.
• Pressure: The rupee is under tremendous pressure in the view of massive outflow of money from India this year. From around 74 against the US dollar when the year began, it has declined by 6.7%.
• How bad: The rupee is not the only currency hit adversely by an uncertain global economy and the US’s policy measures — the Japanese Yen, Polish zloty, Chilean peso and Thai baht are worse hit.
• Two major factors: The Russia-Ukraine war saw India importing high inflation into its economy. An equally strong contributor is the US’s policy misjudgment that the inflationary pressure on its economy was “transitory”.
• Costly course correction: The US went for aggressive inflation control measures which, combined with the Ukraine war, made it worse for the rupee.
• The fall: The rupee breached the 77-mark for the first time in May, the 78-mark in June and 79 this month, despite the Reserve Bank of India and the government’s intervention. The RBI sold dollars, announced measures to boost forex inflows while the government levied a gold tax on imports to help the rupee.
• What next? The rupee hit the lowest ever of 79.49 per dollar on Monday before closing at 79.45, The brutal plunge of the rupee is likely to continue due to the Federal Reserve’s hawkish stance. But will the rupee cross 80-mark against the dollar this week?