Markets regulator Sebi has barred Sunshine Agro Infra Ltd (SAIL) and its directors from mobilising funds from investors through issuance of securities till further orders.

The entities have also been restrained from accessing the market, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) said in an interim order.

It was alleged that the company raised Rs 8.23 lakh illegally from 112 investors through redeemable preference shares (RPS) in 2011 12.

Since the firm had issued shares to over 49 persons, it qualified as a public issue of securities that requires compulsory listing on a recognised stock exchange.

It was also required to file a prospectus, among others, which it failed to do.

The company and its directors have also been prohibited from soliciting money from the public for the issue of securities in any manner, directly or indirectly.

Further, the entities have been directed not to dispose of, alienate or encumber any of their assets or not divert any funds raised from public through the offer and allotment of preference shares.

They have also been ordered to furnish all information in connection with the offer and allotment of preference shares.

Besides, the regulator has given a time of 21 days to the firm and its directors to file their replies and a time period of 90 days to seek an opportunity of personal hearing.

In case they fail to do so, Sebi said they would have to refund the entire amount to the investors along with an interest of 15 per cent per annum and would also be barred from the securities market for four years from the date of repayment.

Stocks: The BSE benchmark Sensex marked biggest loss not seen since five weeks, dropping 448.86 points to finish at 26,040.70, while the broader Nifty dipped below the psychological 8,000-level.

Bearishness tagged the trading momentum from day-one of the week, borne by cascading effect of demonitization, it was further restricted by mute sentiment across the globe due to long Christmas and New Year holidays.

While, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) pursued selling of Indian equities amid US outlook over rate-hike next year, while local delay over GST implementation led investors fret.

Investor sentiment, void of any triggers opted mostly to stay sidelines or cashed in profits on opportunity during the week, while it led the key indices to mark one-month lows and revist 25K-level.

However, the market did overcome string of losses to witness mild recovery and reclaim the key 26K-level during the weekend trade on bouts of shortcovering after signs of progress in two-day GST-council meet and optimism about its implementation.

During the week, the Sensex dropped 448.86 points, or 1.69 per cent, to finish at 26,040.70. It hovered in the range of 26,505.66 and 25,872.38.

The Nifty 50 index during the week slumped 153.70 points, or 1.89 per cent, to conclude below the key 8K-level at 7,985.75 after shuttling between 8,132.50 and 7,942.05.

Across the spectrum selling pressure was witnessed led by Health Care, Metal, IPOs, FMCG, Capital Goods, PSUs, Power, Auto, Teck, Consumer Durables, IT, Realty and Oil&Gas sectors. The broader midcap and smallcap shares also saw heavy selling. 

Meanwhile, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) and foreign institutional investors (FIIs) sold shares worth whopping Rs 4,319.76 crore during the week, as per Sebi's record including the provisional figure of December 23.

In the broader market, the BSE Mid-Cap index dropped by 475.79 points or 3.89 per cent, to settle at 11,760.78 and the BSE Small-Cap index fell by 316.58 points or 2.61 per cent, to settle at 11,796.94.

Among sectoral and industry indices, Healthcare dipped 4.25 per cent followed by Metal 4.22 per cent, IPO 3.35 per cent, Banking 2.65 per cent, FMCG 2.11 per cent, Consumer goods 2.05 per cent, PSU 2.01 per cent, Power 1.79 per cent, Auto 1.73 per cent, Teck 1.66 per cent, Consumer Durables 1.40 per cent, IT 1.32 per cent and Realty 1.08 per cent.

Among the 30-share Sensex pack, 23 stocks fell, seven stocks rose.

Major lossers from the Sensex pack were, Axis Bank 7.26 per cent, Adaniports 6.12 per cent, SBIN 5.85 per cent, Tata Steel 5.64 per cent, BhartiAirtel 4.66 per cent, ONGC 4.31 per cent, Sun Pharma 3.60 per cent, HDFC 3.30 per cent, Hindunilever 3.22 per cent, Dr Reddy 3.15 percent, Asianpaint 3.01 per cent, HeroMotoco 2.91 per cent, Larsen 1.62 per cent, Lupin 1.58 per cent, Infosys 1.48 per cent, ICICI Bank 1.43 per cent, Tata Motors 1.34 per cent, Bajaj Auto 1.25 per cent and PowerGrid 1.17 per cent.

While, GAIL rose by 4.00 per cent and Cipla by 2.42 per cent.

The total turnover during the week on BSE rose to Rs 12,523.76 crore from last weekend's level of Rs 12,267.93 crs while NSE fell to Rs 71,531.91 crs from Rs 82,768.15 crores.

Dense fog disrupted air, rail and road traffic in Punjab and Haryana on Saturday even as the minimum temperature rose in the region

Narnaul in Haryana was the coldest place with a low of 4.5 degrees Celsius, one notch below normal.

Among other places, Hisar and Karnal braved cold weather at 6.3 degrees Celsius and 6.2 degrees Celsius, respectively, while Ambala's minimum was 9.3 degrees Celsius, three notches above normal.

In Punjab, Amritsar's minimum was 8 degrees Celsius, five notches above normal while Ludhiana and Patiala recorded their minimums at 5.3 degrees Celsius and 7.4 degrees Celsius respectively.

UT Chandigarh, the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana, had a low of 9.2 degree Celsius, three degrees above normal.

The MeT predicted shallow fog with dry weather in Punjab and Haryana during the next 48 hours.

Dangal, the most anticipated movie of the year, made its way to the theatres on Friday and as expected, it packed a punch at the box office by collecting over ₹30 crore on the very first day of its release.

Earlier, trade analysts Taran Adarsh and Komal Nahta had predicted that Aamir’s wrestling-drama would create history with its box office records.

Disclosing the first-day collections, Taran Adarsh and Komal Nahta wrote on Twitter, “Dangal wrestles demonetisation. Sets the BO on fire. Ends the lull phase. Fri ₹29.78 crore, including ₹59 lacs from Tamil and Telugu.”

Dangal is said to be a movie that has wrestled demonisation better than Shah Rukh Khan's Dear Zindagi and Ranveer Singh's Befikre.

He also confirmed that the business would be even better on the weekends.

Although Aamir earlier said that the monetary gains don’t affect him and he is not at all nervous about it, he is more concerned whether the cine-goers would like it or not.

"I'm really nervous.I have been constantly thinking about Dangal and it is taking my sleep away. Numbers do not matter to me, neither do awards. The audience’s praise is equivalent to winning an award for me," he said.

Even Salman Khan who made a wrestling-themed film Sultan openly expressed on Twitter that his family liked Dangal more than Sultan, and that is both a sad and a happy feedback for him.
 

Lieutenant Governor is the "administrative head" of the national capital, the Delhi High Court ruled in 2016 besides pronouncing a series of judgements that came as setback to the Arvind Kejriwal government which had a hate-hate relationship with the Centre over governance.

The body blow given by the judgement denying its claim for full statehood for Delhi had its impact on other agendas of the AAP government which lost its fight in the high court over its right to appoint parliamentary secretaries without the consent of the LG.

While Kejriwal protested the landmark August 4 verdict, Lt Governor Najeeb Jung, who was at loggerheads with the AAP regime and has now resigned, did not miss the opportunity to order re-examination of all decisions of Delhi government, particularly those concerning shuffling of bureaucrats whose postings remained a bone of contention between it and the Centre.

The judgement proved to be a thorn for the Delhi government with the Supreme Court's refusal to stay it pushing the AAP regime to backfoot as it lost its voice in supporting many of its decisions like the right to appoint Anti- Corruption Branch chief.

However, it later came to the high court with a statement that many of its decisions like appointment of Commission of Inquiry to probe alleged scams in CNG fitness and the Delhi and District Cricket Association, besides selection of Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission Chairman was done without the LG's nod, which was made clear by the August 4 judgement.

While ruling party cadres and its leaders were trying to come to terms with the loss in its fight for statehood, they suffered another jolt when the high court refused to stay criminal defamation proceedings against Kejriwal lodged by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

Jaitley also dragged in other AAP leaders – Raghav Chadha, Kumar Vishwas, Ashutosh, Sanjay Singh and Deepak Bajpai – for their allegations against him in connection with the running of DDCA when he was heading it for over a decade.

On-going fitness issues have forced Juan Martin del Potro out of next month's Australian Open and his planned warm up event in New Zealand, organisers of the Auckland Classic announced on Saturday.

"Juan Martin del Potro has confirmed he will withdraw from the Australasian swing due to fitness issues," the Classic organisers said in a statement, referring to the two tournaments in January.

"Del Potro confirmed via his management team overnight that he has not had sufficient recovery time and will be withdrawing from the (Auckland) Classic and the Australian Open."

The announcement came a month after del Potro staged an incredible comeback to down world number six Marin Cilic of Croatia in an epic five-setter to set Argentina up for their first Davis Cup crown.

Del Potro was the 2016 tennis comeback success story.

After missing most of last year because of injury, he began 2016 ranked 1,042th and finished at 38th after a meteoric rise which included wins over Stan Wawrinka, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray.

The 1.98 metre (6ft 6in) del Potro beat Roger Federer in the final of the 2009 US Open and the following year reached a career high of world number four before he began to be troubled by wrist injuries.

Auckland Classic director Karl Budge said it was disappointing for tennis "that these ongoing issues are keeping him off court".

Fifty-two trains were delayed and one other was cancelled on Saturday due to fog in most parts of north India, a railway official said.

According to the Northern Railway official, Nanded-Amritsar Sachkhand Express delayed by 14 hours, the Jogbani-Anand Vihar was running over 13 hours behind schedule, Sikkim Mahananda Express and Udyan Abha Toofan Express were over 12 hours late.

The official also said that at least five trains were rescheduled.

Meanwhile, according to the Delhi International Airport Limited, which manages operations at the Indira Gandhi International Airport here, flight operations were not affected on Saturday.

Heavy floods in Indonesia's West Nusa Tenggara province has forced evacuation of more than 100,000 people and closure of a main airport, officials said on Saturday.

Nearly 20,000 houses, over 60 health facilities and two bridges were damaged by the flood, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman of the national disaster management agency, told Xinhua news agency.

The flood also cut communication and electricity supply which hampered emergency relief efforts, the spokesman said.

"Authorities have to apply 'shut and open' at our main airport," Agung Pramuja, a senior official of provincial disaster agency, said.

An emergency period has been declared for 14 days until January 4, said Sutopo.

The spokesman said the number of affected could rise as assessment of the flooding was underway.

Soldiers, police and rescuers from disaster agency office were taking part in the emergency relief operation, he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be on a day's visit to Maharashtra on Saturday, where he will lay foundation stone for the grand memorial of Maratha warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and the metro rail projects in Mumbai and Pune.

Modi will land in the metropolis at 11.30 AM and leave for MIDC Patalganga in neighbouring Raigad district where he will inaugurate the newly-built campus of the National Institute of Securities Management.

The PM will then reach Raj Bhavan and later move towards Girgaum Chowpatty for the Shivaji Memorial event.

He will proceed to the site in the Arabian Sea off Mumbai coast, where the state government is planning to build a mega memorial for Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.

The Prime Minister's visit assumes political significance as the high-stake elections to Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) are just a few months away.

The main feature of the Shivaji memorial, slated to cost Rs.3,600 crore, will be a 192-metre-tall statue of the iconic Maratha king.

The site is a rocky outcrop, roughly 1.5 km from the Raj Bhavan shore.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis recently said the 'Shiv Smarak' will not only be the tallest memorial in the country, but in the entire world.

He had thanked Modi for "making it possible." 

Later, Modi will address a public function at the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) ground in suburban Bandra, after laying foundation stone for two Metro rail projects, Elevated Rail Corridors Project and Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL).

Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray, whose party is an ally of ruling BJP, is expected to share the dais with Modi at the MMRDA event.

The PM will then leave for Pune, where he will lay the foundation stone of the Pune Metro Rail project at the Agriculture College ground there. NCP leader Sharad Pawar will share the stage with Modi at this event.

The memorial project has been facing stiff opposition from fisherfolk and environmentalists, who have alleged that it would affect marine life and ecology of the Arabian Sea.

For the MMRDA event, the government has sent out invitation to over 3,000 VVIPs and dignitaries, including members of the royal family and Shivaji historians.

Ever since it came to power in Maharashtra in October 2014, BJP has been quietly trying to usurp the near-monopoly that bickering ally Shiv Sena has held over the 17th century Maratha king for the last many years.

Ahead of the Maharashtra Assembly election in 2014, BJP had used the name of Chhatrapati Shivaji for electoral gains, with a famous tagline seeking to evoke Shivaji's blessings.

The government and BJP are trying to make the memorial event a success with hoardings at important places of all districts and also through campaigns in print, TV and social media.

An official said those who would accompany Modi in the hovercraft to the 'jalpujan and bhumipujan' venue off Mumbai coast, will include Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao, Chief Minister Fadnavis, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, NCP's Satara MP Udayanraje Bhosale and BJP's Rajya Sabha MP from Kolhapur Sambhaji Raje Bhosle.

Carrie Fisher is in stable condition after suffering a medical emergency aboard a flight.

Her brother, Todd Fisher, told The Associated Press that she was "out of emergency" and stabilized at a Los Angeles hospital on Friday afternoon.

He said he could not discuss any other details about what happened.

The 60-year-old Star Wars star experienced medical trouble during a flight from London and was treated by paramedics immediately upon landing in Los Angeles around noon on Friday, according to reports citing unnamed sources.

Celebrity website TMZ, which first reported the incident, said anonymous sources told them the actress suffered a heart attack.

Fisher's publicists and representatives for her mother, Debbie Reynolds, and her daughter, Billie Lourd, did not immediately return calls from the AP.

Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Erik Scott said paramedics administered advanced life-saving care to a patient at Los Angeles International Airport on Friday and transported the person to a nearby hospital.

He did not identify the patient as Fisher.

The actress and author is considered a member of Hollywood royalty her parents are Debbie Reynolds and the late singer Eddie Fisher.

Catapulted to stardom as Princess Leia in 1977's Star Wars, Carrie Fisher reprised the role as the tough-as-nails leader of a galactic rebellion in three sequels, including last year's Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Fisher is best known for her portrayal of Leia, but she is also an accomplished writer known for no-holds-barred accounts of her struggles with addiction and mental illness.

Her thinly veiled autobiography Postcards from the Edge was adapted into a 1987 film version starring Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep.

She transformed her one-woman show Wishful Drinking, which played on Broadway and was filmed for HBO, was also turned into a book.

She has recently been promoting her latest book, The Princess Diarist in which she reveals that she and co-star Harrison Ford had an affair on the set of Star Wars.

A concert hall bursting at the seams is a pretty rare sight, especially in these times of downloads and live streaming. That said one mustn’t forget the City of Joy’s unparalleled capacity to pleasantly surprise particularly when it comes to the arts. And if there’s a festival celebrating the guitar, then one can safely vouch that Kolkata will shower it with all its attention.

That was the case at the seventh edition of the Calcutta International Classical Guitar Festival, organised, as always, by the Calcutta Classical Guitar Society in the Satyajit Ray auditorium of ICCR in Ho Chi Minh Sarani recently. The four-day schedule packed in a galaxy of guitar royalty from countries as diverse as Argentina, Spain and Sweden and they veritably regaled audiences during the course of 10 concerts.

The festival was centred on the theme, “Celebrating Spain” and was laced with renditions of Spanish classical guitar music, tributes to seminal composer and pianist Enrique Granados, flamenco fusion and a special concert to commemorate the 400th death anniversary of Spain’s greatest writer, Miguel de Cervantes.

Daniel Zapico on theorbo and Pablo Zapico on baro-que guitar — both hailing from Asturias in Spain — paid glowing salutations to Cervantes through musical pieces from that time period on the first evening. Their performance was an absolute revelation and formed a musical kinship between Spain and Kolkata that was to last for the duration of the festival and one hopes, even beyond.

On the second day, the noon slot featured Akash Saha, one of the founders of the Calcutta Classical Guitar Society and an accomplished guitarist, chamber musician and composer. That evening began with guitar prodigy Johannes Moller from Sweden launching his album India and thereafter playing a magnificent concert with tabla exponent Arindam Chakravarty in tow. Moller showcased why he is considered one of the foremost classical guitarists of his generation by performing complex Indian ragas like raga kirwani and raga khamaj on the western classical guitar. It was pure sonic bliss!

up was Trilogy, comprising Pandit Subhen Chatterjee’s and his band, KARMA, the trail-blazing Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and guitar god Amyt Datta. Bhatt was, of course, the top draw with his mohan veena and the songs, which were based on ragas like jog, jhinjhoti, kamodh and megh, reached newer heights thanks to his inimitable instrument. For once though, Datta seemed overshadowed and a tad indifferent to the overall proceedings. Special mention must be made of Sambit Chatterjee on the drums as the young man held his own amid such musical stalwarts.

Day three began with Lautaro Favaloro’s Music of Argentina on the Guitar at noon. He performed music from his native country — the tango, zamba, milonga, vals argentina, carnavalito and gato. On the other hand, Czech virtuoso Pavel Steidl’s slot that evening was filled by a plethora of performers as he was unable to attend. They included David Russell, Johannes Moller with his students from a workshop conducted during the festival and Jose Manuel Dapena among several others.

The night ended with Indialucia comprising Miguel Czachowski on flamenco guitars, percussion and palmas; Avaneendra Sheolikar on sitar; Sandesh Popatkar on tabla and Pierluca Pineroli on cajón. It was the dose of flamenco the festival needed and it was supplied in splendid measure by the musicians on stage.

The final day kicked off with a tribute for Granados by Dapena and the pieces by the Spanish composer were beautifully rendered. David Russell, an university unto himself when it comes to the classical guitar, took the stage in the evening — his multifarious picking techniques and lyrical phrasing elicited gasps of wonder from the audience. Pieces like Granada (Albeniz), My Gentle Harp, Granados’ Poetic Waltzes, Stephen Goss’ Cantigas de Santiago and Tarrega stood out for his exceptional skill. One must say that Kolkata was privileged to host a guitarist of Russell’s calibre.

The curtains fell on the festival with The String Fraternity featuring Purbayan Chatterjee on sitar, Ehsaan Noorani on guitar, Bijit Bhattacharya on bass and Premjit Dutta on the drums. They got the audience swinging with compositions like Fourplay, Auto rickshaw Mambo, Softly Spoken Blues and Peace of Mind among others. It was a rousing finale to four wonderful days of music.

One has to mention Moller’s unique project called the Indian Songbook that seeks to exhibit arrangements of Indian ragas on the Western classical guitar. He is looking for pieces that can be incorporated into the album and as of now, the growing list contains only two tracks.

The Calcutta International Classical Guitar Festival has come to characterise Kolk-ata’s passion for the guitar and towards that end, this year’s edition was no different.

Time was when women would swoon over every crinkle of Rajesh Khanna’s eyes and his lip-synching of romantic songs. Then came the angry young man Amitabh Bachchan to be followed by gangster protagonists.

The changing face the Bollywood hero, at least that caught the eyeballs, has happened not only because values began to change with the pressures of materialistic aspirations, the lust to make a fast buck within the shortest time possible, but also because there was a time when the underworld funded films in Bollywood, directly or subtly, dictated the norms of the story and the script.

In retrospect, the metamorphosis from idyllic screen romance then to the angry young crusader out to right all the wrongs in the society, and to the underworld don a perceived victim of circumstances seems almost in the natural order of things. Though the protagonist as gangster possessed the classic characters of the villain, the audience tended to develop an ambiguous stance towards him. Instead of being angry with him, the audience admired the grit and the courage with which the mafia hero set out to realise his dreams of making it from rags to riches, never mind the graphic violence and bloodshed the screen was bathed in.

This is a bit of a reversal of the box office formula of the “happily ever after” ending because one pre-supposes that the gangster hero would meet with a violent death in the end, anyway. Yet, films like Parinda, Vaastav, Satya, Company, Once Upon a Time in Mumbai and Gangs of Wasseypur (Parts I and II) have had excellent runs at the box office. While the end justifies the “crime never pays” theory, the narrative goes against this because it does pay till the protagonist is trapped in a spidery web of his own making and cannot come out of it.

This ambivalence in the audience is a reflection of the basic contradiction in the Indian mindset today, caught between the horns of a dilemma of whether to go the straight way to succeed in life or to take a short cut through crime and reach there fast. The hero does not think he is doing any wrong because he often has a “sad story” to rationalise his misdeeds. Does “success” translate into ethics, hard work and moral integrity? Or does it really mean financial success and the power that this brings where the means adopted to gain such riches does not matter?

Ram Gopal Verma laid the foundation of the gangster-heroes with Satya (1998). The film tracks a young man who comes to Mumbai in search of a job. A series of events pulls him unwittingly into the underworld. An impressive screenplay, fine camera work, good editiong, remarkable performances and a realistic portrayal of the underworld made it a stand-out film. In the process it gave birth to a new genre of film that came to be known as the Mumbai noir.

The Bollywood gangster film might have taken Hollywood as its inspiration but veered away in treatment, style and approach in a way created the Bollywood gangster hero. Fran Mason in his study of gangster films in America writes, “During the 1970s the iconography, narrative structures, and ideological or cultural parameters of the gangster film were established as part of critical methodology, very often alongside or in contrast to the Western, because of shared concerns with individuality, masculinity, and social concerns.”

In Hollywood, gangster films evolve around the sinister actions of criminals or gangsters, particularly bank robbers, underworld figures, traffickers of arms, women and drugs, or ruthless hoodlums who operate outside the law, stealing and violently murdering their way through life.

He is usually a materialistic, street-smart, immoral, megalomaniac and while destroying others, some his juniors and peers and some his foes, becomes self-destructive, sadistic and masochistic.

Bollywood has changed this theory to construct its own. The gangster-hero in films like Satya, Once Upon a Time in Mumbai and Vaastav are portrayed as victims of circumstances. They became gangsters and subsequently turned leaders of their own gang, holding their fiefdom under persistent threat to life and property of innocent people only to end up being killed by the very powers-that-be that used them to fight their own battles as front men and soldiers-in-reverse. He is basically a kind-hearted guy who lives in a family setting, helps the poor in his neighbourhood and generally lives in a slum. The script fleshes him out in such a way that the audience begins to empathise with him, feels sorry that he dies in the end.

A brilliant example of the true-blood gangster film Gangs of Wasseypur I and II. This two-part film that uses as much graphic violence as sex and adultery set a new benchmark for gangster films. The films focused on the coal mafia of Dhanbad and got wonderful reviews. Telling the story of war between criminal dynasties, Anurag Kashyap’s gripping narrative and thrilling plot dynamics took the gangster film to a different level altogether. It was a box office hit , of course, and won many awards in the film festival circuit.

Having said this, one nagging question remains — what does it say about audience taste today? Would we cry for the young and dashing Sooraj of Aradhana or the angry Vijay of Deewar or, would we rather wince at the terrible blood and gore Raghunath splatters in Vaastav or Satya does in Satya?

The writer is an award-winning film critic.

India Blooms News Service

The threatened “earthquake” did flatten ~ but only the hopes of those who had imagined that, eventually, the show-boy of the Congress would land a punch that would cause the post-demonetisation wobbles of Modi sarkar to genuinely stumble.

By regurgitating allegations that did not prove a firebomb when initially levelled ~ the final word from the apex court is awaited ~ Rahul Gandhi not only disappointed those suffering after the Modi-Jaitley misadventure, he eroded the contrived credibility that he would be a point around which the Opposition rallied.

His trying to “take the battle” into the Modi-heartland was as much of a squib as Mamata Banerjee’s procession to Rashtrapati Bhawan when the winter session of Parliament opened. As expected, Congress spokespersons tried to project the Mehsana message as a “mauling”, but struggled to avoid the embarrassment of their heir-apparent having let them down: as well as virtually spiking the Opposition’s guns when it was preparing to fire a broadside.

The haste with which Chandrababu Naidu “clarified” his position on demonetisation (as usual, the media got it wrong, he claimed), only confirmed an erosion of Opposition faith in the Congress leading from the front. It will now be no surprise if Nitish Kumar opts to sugar-coat his reviewed stance after Mr Modi’s 50-day grace-period runs out.

A couple of weeks ago Rahul had shown a little “spark”, at Mehsana he proved he had yet to graduate from child-like barbs like “suit-boot sarkar” and “fair and lovely”. In retrospect, the simple village folk in UP had got their diagnosis right when they made off with the string-cots arranged to create a rustic ambience for Rahul’s public meetings ~ they knew he had little else to offer.

The moot point now is whether what tries to project itself as the Congress leadership musters the courage to seek a more powerful talisman in the wake of Rahul’s self-scripted rout.

It is a tragedy of Indian politics that “right” and “wrong” (and everything else) are evaluated on a comparative basis, so even those who firmly believe that Narendra Modi & Co. could lead the nation into disaster really fear the TINA factor (there is no alternative), and will lap up specious theories that success in a series of municipal polls are an endorsement of the demonetisation exercise.

The series of “flips” by the finance ministry and Reserve Bank actually add up to a flop that articulates the inability of the government to address a crisis created by a whimsical, arrogant leadership, immune to the agonies of the common citizen. Yet the sufferings of the people appear set to continue ~ maybe until the Congress ceases to be the principal Opposition party, or it develops the “guts” to install a more potent spearhead.

Taking a jibe at state Congress leadership over a "tug of war" on ticket allocation, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Friday said the party was a "divided house" hardly a match for Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD).

He said Congress was "basically an indisciplined party" divided into various factions, and due to this a squabble for ticket allocation was going amongst the leaders of the party.

"The pulls and pressures within the Congress were evident from the delay in its ticket allocation," Badal said on the sidelines of his 'Sangat Darshan' in Kartarpur segment here.

With such intense infighting and "tug of war", Congress could never compete the SAD, a cadre-based and disciplined party, he claimed.

Badal, the chief minister of Punjab since 2007, dismissed any trouble due to defection of Lok Sabha MP Sher Singh Ghubaya's son to Congress.

"Akali Dal made Ghubaya an MLA and then an MP.

Unfortunate, that even then they were not satisfied, he said adding that shift in allegiance by them was "regrettable".

Badal said that no "true Punjabi" could ever forgive Congress for "sins" like the Operation Blue Star and the killing of people during the 1984 anti-Sikh carnage.

The chief minister blamed Congress for depriving the state of its waters by constructing Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) canal.

He claimed that during the past 10 years, the SAD-BJP alliance has delivered "every promise made to people" and urged the people of the state to repose faith in the alliance government for the third consecutive term.

He claimed that that every vote for the alliance in the upcoming poll would be a vote for stability, development, peace and right governance in the state.

Calling Patidar leader Hardik Patel's arrest "bizarre", Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday asked the Rajasthan government to immediately release him.

"Arrested? Bizarre. Vasundhara (Raje) government should release him immediately," the Aam Aadmi Party leader tweeted.

Patel tweeted earlier that he was arrested after deboarding at the Jaipur airport and a police officer cited threats to his life as the reason for his detention.
 

The Income Tax Department on Friday questioned the manager of a Kotak Mahindra Bank branch here in connection with two of its customer accounts, officials said.

According to a police official, a "raid" was conducted in the morning on the Kasturba Gandhi Marg branch in the heart of Delhi.

Rohit Rao, official spokesperson of Kotak Mahindra Bank, said in a statement: "IT department has visited the bank's branch in connection with survey of two of its customers and their related accounts. 

"No KYC deficiencies were noted in these two customers. The IT department did question the Branch Manager and no adverse report has been submitted to the bank so far."

Rao said the bank had a "robust system of regularly and proactively filing necessary reports with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) for all large transactions.

"The bank denies that there were any fake accounts. The bank is extending full cooperation to the investigating authorities."