TOP NEWS

Hitting out at Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, Maharashtra Chief Minister and rebel camp leader Eknath Shinde has said if he and his supporters had been traitors, they would not have received enormous support from the state's people. Speaking at a rally at Saswad in the Pune district, Shinde said the stand taken by him and other Shiv Sena MLAs supporting him "to save Balasaheb Thackeray's Shiv Sena" was vindicated by people's support.

Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, whose coalition government collapsed in June after Shinde's rebellion, has been lambasting Shinde and others, calling them "gaddar" or traitors. Despite being in power, the Sena was consigned to the fourth spot in local body elections in the state (when Thackeray was chief minister), said Shinde.

The United States on Sunday eliminated al-Qaida fugitive and and Osama bin Laden successor Ayman al-Zawahiri in a drone strike in Kabul, the first since its withdrawal from the region, triggering recrimination and infighting among Taliban and its patron Pakistan about who sold him out.

US officials said the Zawahiri was hit by two Hellfire missiles as he stepped the Zawahiri was hit by two Hellfire missiles as he stepped onto the balcony of a Taliban-controlled safe house in Kabul where he had been living with members of his family after moving there from Pakistan earlier this year.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Union government and the Central Vigilance Commission to respond in 10 days to a bunch of PILs challenging a law empowering the Centre to extend the tenures of the directors of CBI and ED from mandatory two years up to five years through extensions given for one year at a time.

With the Enforcement Directorate putting the heat on non-BJP politicians in the last few years, Congress’s Randeep Surjewala and Jaya Thakur, Trinamool Congress’s Mahua Moitra and Saket Gokhale along with advocate and chronic PIL litigant M L Sharma had moved separate PILs challenging the the validity of the Central Vigilance (Amendment) Act, 2021.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday provisionally attached 75 immovable properties including 67 windmills valued at Rs 113.32 crore belonging to the Chennai-based Surana Group of Companies under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002 in connection with three cases of Rs 3,986 crore bank fraud. ED initiated a money laundering investigation on the basis of three FIRs made by the Central Bureau of Investigation against Surana Industries Limited & Others, Surana Power Limited & Others and Surana Corporation Limited & Others.

The investigation revealed that the three companies of Surana Group defrauded the banks by floating a web of shell companies wherein they appointed its employees as Directors, Proprietors, and Partners and indulged in paper transactions with them without actually moving the goods. 

Stressing upon India’s economy is showing “very positive signs” and getting “more robust”, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Monday that there is “no question” of the country “getting into recession or stagflation”.

Replying to a discussion on price rise in Lok Sabha, Sitharaman hit out at the Opposition for comparing the country’s economic conditions with that of neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka, and said India is in a far better position as its “macroeconomic fundamentals are perfect”.

Sitharaman also quoted former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan and said that the Reserve Bank of India has done a “very good job in increasing the foreign exchange reserves in India, insulating (it) from problems being faced by neighbouring countries, such as Pakistan and Sri Lanka".