Indian police uncovered a plot, but Sri Lanka didn’t act

Agencies
April 28, 2019

Colombo, Apr 28: While monitoring the usual channels, Indian police stumbled upon something extraordinary: a detailed plot for what would become the bloodiest attack linked to the Daesh group in South Asia.

Police were investigating suspected sympathizers of the withered caliphate in southern India when a name they had no record of surfaced — National Towheed Jamaat, the Sri Lankan Daesh-backed militant organization that authorities say conducted the coordinated Easter Sunday attacks on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka that killed more than 250 people.

Indian police managed to break into the group’s communications and began tapping into the plot, according to Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi.

“That is why the kind of detailing of the incident they received was very, very specific,” Sahni said. “They knew the group, they knew the targets, they knew the time, they knew the whereabouts of the suicide bombers, and all of this was communicated to the Sri Lankan government.”

Top Sri Lankan officials have acknowledged that some of the island nation’s intelligence units were given advance notice about the attacks — starting weeks ago and up until the morning of the bombings — but that little was done to prevent them.

Both President Maithripala Sirisena, who is also Sri Lanka’s minister of defense and in charge of national police, and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has been kept out of high-level security meetings since Sirisena tried to oust him last fall, said they only learned about the plot after it had been carried out.

“The fact is, it’s very, very specific information and that has been conveyed to everyone in writing. That is the action that was missing in some cases. That’s what we’re investigating,” Wickremesinghe said.

The first intelligence brief from India arrived April 4, more than two weeks before the bombings. It said a suicide terrorist attack was planned against “some important churches” and listed six people likely to be involved.

The deputy inspector of police shared the report with at least four security unit directors, including those responsible for “VIPs” and foreign embassies, along with a memo, urging the directors to pay extra attention to the places and people in their care.

India’s final intelligence warning came just before the Easter morning blasts, Sahni said.

Why the warnings went unheeded is the subject of intense public debate, with some blaming the dismantling of a system built by former strongman President Mahinda Rajapaksa for rapid response to rebel activity during Sri Lanka’s long civil war.

For 26 years, the Tamil Tigers militants from Sri Lanka’s minority Tamil ethnic community fought for independence from the Buddhist, ethnically Sinhalese-majority state. Military forces under Rajapaksa’s brother, then-Secretary of Defense Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, brutally crushed them in 2009.

The current state minister of defense, Ruwan Wijewardene, said “weakness” within Sri Lanka’s security apparatus led to the failure to prevent the Easter bombings.

Sirisena, while campaigning for the 2015 election to defeat Rajapaksa, had stressed the need for fresh investigations of military officials, including intelligence officers accused of abducting and killing civilians, political opponents and journalists during the civil war.

Since then, some military officials have been arrested on charges related to their actions during the war and remanded in detention facilities. Court cases are ongoing.

But on Friday, Sirisena, perhaps with an eye toward the 2020 election, said that arresting military intelligence officials after the civil war had weakened national security. He promised a shake-up, asking for the resignations of both his secretary of defense and inspector general of police.

Some experts believe Sri Lankan security forces may not have given much credence to Indian intelligence because of its controversial role in the civil war.

India’s Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, the country’s external intelligence group, initially supported Tamil separatists, training and arming the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelman in the 1970s. But after the group’s terrorist activities in the 1980s, RAW withdrew its support.

New Delhi made a pact with Colombo in 1987 to send peacekeeping forces to the island on its southern tip, and they ended up fighting the rebels. They were asked to withdraw a few years later amid allegations of abuses against Tamils. In 1991, Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber.

India questioned Sri Lanka’s heavy-handed approach to defeating the Tigers in the final months of the war, when tens of thousands of civilians were reportedly killed by government troops. Thousands more are still missing. Ethnic minority Tamils in the country’s north and east are still reeling from the effects of the war.

Indian security and intelligence agencies lost some of their “moral authority” with the Sri Lankans, said M.K. Narayanan, the former head of India’s external intelligence service.

“What really happened was India lost moral authority. India did not accept the policies that were being followed, so they lost a lot of support in Sri Lanka,” he said.

Genealogical and cultural ties between Sri Lanka and India date back thousands of years. According to folklore, the island’s majority Sinhalese are descendants of an Indian prince banished there 2,000 years ago.

The nation’s minority Tamils, meanwhile, are in part the descendants of more than a million tea and rubber plantation workers brought to Sri Lanka from southern India by British colonial rulers in the 18th and 19th centuries.

And India shares intelligence with its neighbors in part to keep them within its sphere of influence, Narayanan said.

Located just 23 kilometers (14 miles) off its southeast coast, India sees Sri Lanka as a bulwark in its military defenses to ward off potential Chinese incursions. Soon after the Easter attacks, India deployed naval and coast guard ships along the narrow Palk Strait.

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News Network
January 24,2020

Davos, Jan 24: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan claimed that he met with a “brick wall” when he approached Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a peace proposal, soon after assuming office.

In an interview to Foreign Policy magazine on the sidelines of WEF 2020 here, Khan also said he told Modi that Pakistan will act firmly if it was given evidence of any involvement in the Pulwama terror attack, but India instead “bombed” Pakistan.

Tensions have escalated between the two countries, following India withdrawing the special status of Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019. Even since, Khan has been trying to seek global intervention to de-escalate the tensions between the two countries.

On Thursday, India's External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar categorically ruled out any third party role on the Kashmir issue, asserting that any issue between the two countries should be resolved bilaterally.

In the interview, Khan said that he is a firm believer that military means are not a solution to ending conflicts. “After assuming office, I immediately reached out to Prime Minister Modi. I was amazed by the reaction I got, which was quite weird.

The subcontinent hosts the greatest number of poor people in the world, and the best way to fight poverty is to have a trading relationship between the two countries rather than spending money on arms. This is what I said to the Indian Prime Minister. But I was met by brick wall,” Khan said.

Khan took charge as Prime Minister in August 2018. Referring to the suicide attack in Pulwama, Khan said he immediately told Modi ,“if you can give us any actionable intelligence (that Pakistanis were involved), we will act on it. But rather than do so, they bombed us.”

Noting that the both countries are not close to conflict right now, Khan said that it is important that the UN and the US act.

When asked about US President Donald Trump’s close relationship with Modi, Khan said the relationship is understandable because India is a huge market. “My concern is not about the US-India relationship. My concern is the direction in which India is going,” Khan said.

Khan also sought to compare the events in India to what happened in Nazi Germany.

“Between 1930 and 1934, Germany went from a liberal democracy to a fascist, totalitarian, racist state. If you look at what is happening in India under the BJP in the last five years, look where it's heading, you'll see the danger. And you're talking about a huge country of 1.3 billion people that is nuclear-armed,” he said.

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News Network
February 1,2020

When it comes to the economy, dark days do loom large over India. May it be growth (lowest since 2008), inflation (highest in the last six years), or revenue collection (lowest in 10 years), the Indian economy is faltering. Hence, there is little leeway that can be assumed in the incumbent Union Budget 2020 (the first of the decade) if the economy needs to be boosted.

While presenting the decade's first Budget for India, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday in Parliament:

Taxation

•             AADHAR based tax verification introduced

•             Review of customs duty exemptions in September 2020

•             GST refund process simplified

•             Electronic invoice implementation in phases

•             New digital scheme for tax litigation

•             PAN to be instantly allotted online against Aadhar

•             Vivaad se Vishwas Scheme: Defaulter to pay only disputed tax and no penalty or interest by 31 March 2020, post which additional amount can be paid till June 2020

•             Measure to promote affordable housing - tax holiday extended for developers

•             Concession on real estate transactions

•             Turnover threshold for audit raised to Rs 5 crore from 1 crore

•             Company audit requirements eased

•             Taxes on ESOPs (employee stock ownership) in start-ups deferred by 5 years

•             100% per cent tax exemption

•             Corporate Tax at 15%

•             Dividend Distribution Tax removed, dividend taxed only for recipients

•             No tax for 0-5 lakh

•             30% above 15 lakh

•             25% for income between Rs 12.5-15 lakh

•             20% for income between Rs 10-12.5 lakh

•             15% for income between Rs 7.5-10 lakh

•             10% for income between Rs 5-7.5 lakh, against the prevailing 20%

•             A new, optional simplified personal income tax regime for those not seeking exemptions

 

Major steps and initiatives taken by the government in finance

•             3.8 percent fiscal deficit estimated

•             GDP nominal growth expected at 10 per cent

•             Govt to sell part of holding LIC via IPO (initial public offering)- partial LIC disinvestment

•             Partial credit guarantee for NBFCs

•             New law for netting of financial contracts

•             Mechanism to end liquidity crisis

•             NRIs (non resident Indians) can invest in certain govt securities

 

Aspirational India: Caring society

•             App-based invoice financing loans for MSMEs

•             Amendment to Factoring Regulation Act to aid MSMEs

•             Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDI) Act amendments

•             No criminal liabilities for civil acts

•             Auto-enrolment in universal pension scheme

•             5958 cr allocated for Ladakh

•             30757 cr allocated for J&K

•             Insurance for depositors raised to 5 lakh from 1 lakh

•             Robust mechanisms in place to monitor all PSU banks

•             Depositors’ money safe

•             100 cr for hosting G20 in 2022

•             National Recruitment Agency to be set up

•             Tax payers’ charter to be enshrined in statutes

•             Amendments for Companies Act

•             Tax payer charter proposed to free citizens from tax harassment

•             Businesses should have confidence that system is fair

•             4400 crore allocation for clean air and climate change policy

•             Aim to reduce carbon footprint - Warning to old thermal plants

•             Committed to preserve environment, tackle climate change

•             23150 crore for culture ministry

•             2500 crore for tourism sector

•             Institute of Heritage and Conservation to come up soon

•             Aim to set up more museums

•             5 archaeological sites to be made iconic

•             Proposal to end manual scavenging

•             53700 crore for welfare of STs

•             85000 crore for SCs and OBCs for 2021

•             35600 crore for nutritional schemes

•             Gross enrollment ratio of girls higher than boys in elementary level

•             Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao - tremendous results

 

Aspirational India: Infrastructure and economic development

•             Further reforms for transparent price discovery for natural gas

•             22000 crore for power sector

•             8000 crore for quantum technology in next 6 years

•             Two national level science schemes

•             Expand Jan Aushadhi Scheme

•             1 lakh gram panchayats to be connected via Bharat Net

•             6000 crore for Bharat Net

•             Data Centre parks to be set up across the country

•             National Gas Grid to be expanded

•             Reforms to help stressed DISCOMS (distribution companies)

•             Delhi-Mumbai Expressway by 2023

•             100 more airports by 2024

•             Plans to energise economic activity along river banks

•             Need to enhance sea ports

•             High Speed Mumbai-Ahmedabad train

•             More Tejas-type trains

•             4 station redevelopment projects under PP model

•             2000 km of strategic highways to be built, 11000 km of track electrification

•             Accelerated development of highways

•             National Logistics Policy to be released soon

•             Big push on infrastructure - 100 lakh crore

•             National Technical Textiles Mission to be set up

•             1480 crore outlay for textile sector

•             27300 crore for industrial development by 2021

•             Digital refund of duties for exporters

•             Boost domestic manufacturing - electronic equipment, mobile phone, medical devices

•             5 new smart cities in collaboration with states

•             Investment clearance cell to be set up for end to end facilitation

•             Entrepreneurship has been the strength of India

 

Aspirational India: Education and skills

•             High need for medical teachers and paramedics

•             Internships for engineers in panchayats

•             Rs 99300 cr for education sector

•             Large hospitals to be encouraged to start PG courses

•             Attach medical colleges to district hospitals

•             National police university to be set up

•             IND-SAT programme for overseas students for studying in India

•             New courses in 159 universities by 2026

•             Focus on education for jobs

•             Propose a fresh education policy

•             Urban local bodies should give opportunities to new engineers

•             Education needs more finances

 

Aspirational India: Healthcare

•             AI (artificial intelligence) to be used for Ayushman Bharat Scheme

•             69000 crore for health sector

•             Propose to set up more hospitals

•             Holistic vision for national healthcare

 

Aspirational India: Agriculture, Irrigation and rural development

•             Need to liberalise farm markets

•             108 million metric tonne milk production by 2021

•             2.83 lakh cr allocation for agriculture and irrigation

•             Propose raising fish production to 200 lakh tonne

•             Zero budget national farming

•             NABARD refinance scheme to be expanded

•             Village credit card scheme

•             Agriculture credit target for 2020 set at Rs 15 lakh crore

•             Village storage scheme for farmers, zero budget natural farming

•             Dhanya Lakshmi scheme for women in villages

•             Krishi Udaan by civil aviation ministry for air transport of such commodities over longer distances

•             Indian railways to set up 'kisan rail'

•             Govt to provide help to geo-tag warehouses

•             Financial inclusion has helped raise farm incomes

•             Plan for 100 water stressed districts

•             Scheme for 20 lakh farmers to set up solar pumps

•             Doubling farm income - model agricultural land leasing act, balanced use of fertilisers, solar pumps for 20 lakh farmers

 

Budget 2020 and its three focuses

•             Budget's first focus is 'Aspirational India'. Second focus: economic development for all. Third focus: building a caring society.

•             FDI at 284 billion dollars, achieved 7.84% growth

•             GST formalised the economy

•             Efficiency gained in logistics

•             16 lakh new tax payers added

•             Fundamentals of economy hold strong

•             Scaled up implementation of pro-poor schemes

 

Key challenges FM faces

•             India needs to grow by 9 per cent to 10 per cent a year to become the $5 trillion economy by 2024, as projected by the government. The government is now forecasting growth will come in at 5 per cent

•             The IMF, which had originally predicted 6.1 per cent growth for India in 2019, has revised that downwards to 4.8 per cent

•             The government’s likely to miss its fiscal deficit target for the current fiscal year of 3.3 per cent and hike its target to as much as 4 per cent for the next financial year

•             India will struggle to achieve 5 per cent GDP growth in 2020 - Economist Steve Hanke, Johns Hopkins University

•             Investment is forecast to grow at less than 1 per cent -- the lowest since 2004-05

•             India's unemployment rate rose to 7.5 per cent during September-December 2019 quarter, according to data released by think-tank Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy

 

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Agencies
June 24,2020

New Delhi, June 24: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has asked Air India to not carry any passengers aboard the repatriation flights to UAE being operated under the Vande Bharat Mission.

As per the Guidelines issued by the General Civil Aviation Authority of United Arab Emirates (UAE)- Safety Decision 2020-01 (Issue 17) Q and A Guidance For Foreign Operators, on June 23, 2020 - transportation of passengers ( UAE Nationals and Non - UAE Nationals) to the United Arab Emirates on the repatriation flights is not allowed.

In view of the foregoing, all passengers including the Indian Nationals who are holding valid Residency Permit / Work Permit of United Arab Emirates and have procured approval of the UAEs Federal Authority for Identity and Citizenship- UAE (ICA) of United Arab Emirates or an approval from the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA) applicable to Dubai would need to have specific approval from the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates in New Delhi and their UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MOFAIC) to travel from India to United Arab Emirates (UAE) on these repatriation flights.

All passengers need to comply with the quarantine and COVID-19 test requirements as per the preventive and the precautionary measures required by the appropriate health authorities, as notified from time to time.

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