News18 Daybreak | Tripura Goes to Polls, PNB Scam Probe Widens and Other Stories You May Have Missed
In case you missed it
Protesters blocked roads and held rallies in several parts of Gujarat, including capital Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad, and Patan in Mehsana district against the failure of the authorities concerned to prevent suicide by Dalit activist Bhanubhai Vanakar on Friday. The protests were held after police detained Dalit leader and independent MLA Jignesh Mevani, and over 70 others when they tried to stage demonstrations over Vanakar's death.
Manik Sarkar, who has been Tripura’s Chief Minister for the last 20 years, is the ‘poorest CM of India’. He survives on the fee that he gets from his party, the CPI(M). He donates his CM’s salary to the party. But Manik Sarkar is probably fighting one of the toughest electoral battles of his lifetime. The BJP has been on a winning spree in the North East, but CPM’s Sitaram Yechury feels Sarkar is the general who will give the BJP its ‘Waterloo’ moment.
The opposition parties stepped up their attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his silence on the Rs 11,400 crore fraud in Punjab National Bank involving billionaire jeweller Nirav Modi. While Congress president Rahul Gandhi continued his onslaught and demanded that both PM Modi and finance minister Arun Jaitley speak up and take responsibility for India’s “biggest bank scam”, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee linked it to the PM’s demonetisation decision.
At least 200 shell firms and "benami" assets have come under the scanner of the investigative agencies that are probing the Rs 11,400-crore alleged fraud at the PNB.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in the presence of top party leaders including Amit Shah, inaugurated the new BJP headquarters in Delhi's Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg. The multi-storeyed modern construction, fitted with latest communication technologies, will make the BJP the first major national party to shift its office outside Lutyens' Bungalow Zone, following a Supreme Court directive that party offices should be relocated from there.
Just days after the Punjab National Bank (PNB) Rs 11,360 crore fraud came to light, another state-run bank has reported a million dollar scam. The parent company of Rotomac Pens has been accused of fleeing with loans of more than Rs 800 crore from various government banks in the country.
An embarrassed Congress was forced to expel MLA NA Haris’ son Mohammad Nalapad following a News18 report on an attack by the latter and his friends on a youth in an upscale Bengaluru restaurant. Nalapad, the Bangalore District Youth Congress General Secretary, was expelled from the party hours after he and his supporters were booked for the Saturday night assault. Arrests were, however, yet to be made as Nalapad remained untraceable.
Pakistan has billed India Rs 2.86 lakh as route navigation charges for Indian Air Force aircraft used by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a stopover in Lahore and visits to Russia, Afghanistan, Iran and Qatar, an RTI response shows.
Ahead of the launch of his political party, Kamal Haasan met Rajinikanth at his Poes Garden residence in Chennai. The meeting came amid speculation that the two actors-turned-politicians could join hands and form a star alliance to take on the established political parties in Tamil Nadu.
An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan sentenced to death a serial killer for the brutal rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl that sparked national outrage, the first ever trial in the country's history that concluded in shortest period of four days.
Nearly 1,000 students were expelled for cheating during the Class 12 examinations in Bihar.
Nine years ago, terrorists gunned down Moshe Holtzberg’s parents at Mumbai’s Chabad House during the 26/11 terror attacks. At the age of 11, Moshe finally returned to his ‘father’s house’ for the first time. In a first, Moshe appeared in front of the CNN News18 camera for an exclusive interview. Not yet recovered from the ghastly terror attack in which he lost his parents at the age of one and a half years, he is accompanied by a psychologist at every place he visits. Watch it here.
Agree or disagree?
The day Mehbooba Mufti said she knows she will be labelled anti-national by news anchors for her call to hold dialogue, the government informed the Legislative Council that around 110 persons, including 52 army and BSF jawans, had been martyred. As a state where several lives are lost every year on the borders and the residents get often dislocated due to skirmishes, it is the prime duty of its head to ensure that peace prevails. The chief minister knows that despite her major public initiatives, outreach programmes, and social welfare measures— the present dispensation has failed to win back the confidence of the people. Firdous Tak, a member of Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Council from PDP, writes why the Kashmir situation can only be solved through political outreach.
Did the fraud at Punjab National Bank (PNB) continue even after the "main culprit", named by the bank, retired? It would seem so from the details provided by PNB to the investigative agency on the basis of which the CBI filed two first information reports -- one against three companies of Nirav Modi and the other against the Gitanjali group of three companies of Mehul Choksi, uncle of Nirav.
If at the end of the day, the Tamil Nadu voter were to feel that ‘promising’ politicians in actors Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan have not said enough on the Supreme Court’s Friday verdict in the ‘Cauvery water dispute’ with neighbouring Karnataka, there is a reason. Cauvery is no more an irrigation-related issue in the eyes of the average Tamil, nor it any more pertains to the conventional politics of one-upmanship between the two Dravidian majors, the ruling AIADMK and the parent DMK, alternating in the seat of power ever since the dispute hit the State in 1974. It is not even just a legal issue for constant adjudication in and by the Supreme Court of India. Instead, it has become an emotional issue for every Tamil in the country and outside, independent of whether he is still even an Indian citizen, or a near-permanent resident overseas, or a direct beneficiary of Cauvery irrigation in Tamil Nadu’s delta region.
On reel
Marvel Cinematic Universe's first black superhero film Black Panther has been the talk of the town for quite some time. Is the hype worth your money? Find out here.