PM's assets around Rs 10.73 crore, cabinet colleagues richer

September 9, 2012

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New Delhi, September 9: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has assets worth around Rs 10.73 crore, double that of last year, but a number of his cabinet colleagues are much richer than him.

Among the richer cabinet ministers are Praful Patel with assets of approximately Rs 52 crore and Sharad Pawar with property worth around Rs 22 crore, according to the updated list of assets of the ministers posted on the PMO website.

Defence Minister A K Antony has assets worth Rs 55 lakh, the lowest in the list of the cabinet Ministers. Manmohan Singh has shown residential properties, bank deposits and a Maruti 800 car as his assets.

While the total worth of Singh's two flats- in Chandigarh and Delhi- is Rs 7.27 crore, Singh has bank deposits and investments worth Rs 3.46 crore approximately in various State Bank of India (ASBI) accounts.

He has declared total assets of worth Rs 10,73,88,730.81 (Rs 10.73 crore approximately). Last year, the Prime Minister had declared total assets worth Rs 5.11 crore approximately. The flats owned by him in Chandigarh and Vasant Kunj here were then valued at a total of Rs 1.78 crore and he owned 150.80 gm of gold jewelery worth Rs 2.75 lakh.

Sources in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) said though the assets with Singh have remained the same, the valuation has gone up as the assessment has been done by a government- approved valuator.

The depreciated value of his Maruti 800 car has been shown as Rs 21,033. Singh also owns 150.80 grams of gold jewellery but its value has not been shown in his declaration of assets and liabilities.

Singh also owns a bank account in Dispur in Assam where he has a deposit of Rs 6,515.78 only.

HRD Minister Kapil Sibal and his wife Promila have total assets of Rs 45.33 crore, including 8.11 crore of his wife. Of the Rs 37.22 crore assets owned by Sibal, he has at least 12 properties worth Rs 29.35 crore and cash and bank deposits along with shares and debentures worth Rs 2.82 crore, 3 kilograms of jewellery worth Rs 35.33 lakh and loans and advances of Rs 4.63 crore.

Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde has a house whose present worth is Rs 50 Lakh, two flats worth Rs 1.99 crore and Rs 1.25 crore, agricultural land worth Rs 19.76 Lakh, guest house worth Rs 8.22 Lakh, land worth Rs 1.11 Crore.

Shinde also owns a Mitsubhishi tractor worth Rs 1.90 lakh He owes a loan of Rs 10 Lakh to one Raj Shroff. His wife Ujjwala Shinde owns a flat worth Rs 2.15 crore, two pieces of land worth Rs 15.38 crore and Rs 84 lakh. She also owes a loan of Rs 27 Lakh to one Raj Shroff.

External Affairs minister S M Krishna has assets worth Rs 1.89 crore, including immovable properties of Rs 31.44 lakh. He owns half share in a residential house at Bangalore and agriculture land in Mandya district and Somanahalli, besides owning a farm house at Somanahalli and a site at Viswapriya Greeneries, Begur. He owns a Sonata and a Lancer car.

Finance Minister P Chidambaram's total assets, including bank accounts and current assets, add upto Rs 11.96 crore approximately. Chidambaram also has assets and liabilities as part of Hindu Undivided Family. His total assets as part of HUF are Rs 94.04 lakh and liabilities worth Rs 75.52 Lakh. Hence, his net assets here add upto Rs 18.52 Lakh approximately.

His wife Nalini has immovable assets worth Rs 4.82 crore and the total assets add upto Rs 17.81 crore approx. Her liabilities are Rs 1.22 lakh which makes her net assets worth about Rs 17.80.

Minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers M K Azhagiri has assets worth Rs 9.50 crore. Petroleum Minister S Jaipal Reddy owns a house in Hyderabad and has 43 acres of agricultural land in Andhra Pradesh. His wife S Laxmi owns property in the form of office space in Secunderabad. She also owns jewellery worth Rs 7.5 lakhs and cash savings of over Rs 9 lakh. She also has a Toyota Qualis registered in her name.

Minister of State for Overseas Indian Affairs Vyalar Ravi has a two-bedroom flat in Ernakulam, Kerala, worth Rs 20 lakh. He declared inherited land worth Rs 90 lakh in Ernakulam district. Ravi also declared a Ford car and 900 grams of gold jewellery.

Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh owns six agricultural lands in Durg (Chhattisgarh) and West Uttar Pradesh having a total worth of nearly Rs 13 crore. His land in Chhattisgarh is worth Rs 5.64 crore. Rest of the pieces of land are in Aligarh, Ghaziabad and other nearby areas. He also owns three flats - two in Delhi and one in Gurgaon--worth Rs 3.75 crore.

Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has assets worth over Rs 56 lakhs. More than a half of its share are jointly owned by Ramesh and his mother. Last year, his wife K R Jayashree had assets worth Rs 14,79148 which included bank balance, fixed deposits, jewellery, silverware and shares.

In the year 2011-12, Ramesh's asset rose to over Rs 4.16 crore after his mother declared him a nominee of her bank deposits worth over Rs 3 crore due to the sale of the house of his parents in Bangalore in September 2011.

New And Renewable Energy Minister Farooq Abdullah has over Rs 98 lakh deposited in bank accounts and has shares in ancestral properties in Jammu and Kashmir. The value of some of the properties within the share and in possession of Abdullah is over Rs 2.25 crore. Abdullah also earned over Rs 26 lakhs from the sale of family land in Srinagar.

Tourism Minister Subodh Kant Sahay and his wife Rekha Sahay have declared assets worth Rs 70.74 lakh and Rs 1.24 crore, respectively. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal has total assets worth Rs 6.65 crore, including Rs 95.15 lakh of his wife Madhu.

While Bansal has cash and bank deposits worth Rs 62.4 lakh, he owns a share in agricultural land in Mehrauli, Delhi worth Rs five lakh and half-share in a two kanal house in Chandigarh valued at Rs five crore. He also owns a Maruti Esteem car and jewellery worth Rs two lakh.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni has declared a flat in Delhi valued at nearly Rs 3.5 crore in addition to jewellery worth Rs 16 lakh and silver utensils worth over Rs 11 lakh in addition to an Optra car. She has also mentioned a farmhouse owned by her husband in Gurgaon.

Railway Minister Mukul Roy has shown Rs 6 lakh as total income in the Income Tax return and Rs 5.08 lakh in his wife Krishna's name. He has declared Rs 20.07 lakh in his name and Rs 14.97 lakh in his wife's name as total movable assets for the last fiscal.

Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has total assets of Rs 68.59 lakh, including land in Maharashtra worth Rs 5.5 lakh and the remaining in cash and bank balances. His wife Shameed Azad owns a house and land in Srinagar worth Rs 55 lakh besides a residential flat in Delhi. She has bank deposits and jewellery worth Rs 2.62 crore.

The net worth of Azad and his family as on July 2012 is Rs 3.42 crore along with a flat in Delhi which is not valued. He has a total net worth of Rs 2.22 crore in cash and deposits alongwith a flat in Delhi.

Power Minister M Veerappa Moily has total assets of Rs 30.47 lakh and liabilities of Rs 12.85 lakh, netting total assets of Rs 17.61 lakh, including two cars (Toyota Etios and Opel Astra). His net assets were Rs 13.34 lakh last year.

His wife Malathi, who is stated to have independent source of income from agriculture, has total assets of Rs 3.71 crore and liabilities of Rs 60 lakh, netting total assets of Rs 3.11 crore. This includes 26 acres of agriculture land, a building in Bangalore and 50 tolas of jewellery and a Honda Accord car. She had total assets of Rs 3 crore last year.

Law and Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid has an agricultural land in the name of his family in Gautam Buddha Nagar of Uttar Pradesh worth over Rs 1.30 crore.

While Khurshid himself has cash worth Rs 74.48 lakh, the combined cash holdings of his family - including bank deposits - stand at over Rs 1.22 crore. He has a flat in Jamia Nagar, Delhi worth Rs 5 lakh, his wife Louie owns two flats in Goa gifted by her father.

The Law Minister also owns an agricultural land worth Rs 32 lakh in Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh and a barren, non-agricultural land worth over Rs 10 lakh in the same place.

Besides a Mahindra jeep and a Toyota Innova, Khurshid owns a "very old" imported car. The total worth of immovable property owned by Minister of Urban Poverty Alleviation and Housing Kumari Selja is Rs 12.25 crore approximately.

She owns agricultural and non-agricultural land as well as a residential house owned in partnership with others. The Minister, who hails from Haryana, also has movable assets worth Rs 9,91,101. She owns a Maruti Esteem car, jewellery (worth Rs 8.61 lakh approximately) and bonds, shares and fixed deposits. Selja's total net worth is Rs 12.34 crore and the total tax and interest paid by her for 2011-12 is Rs 12,04,661.

The net assets of Urban Development Minister Kamal Nath has been declared at Rs 8.85 crore as on March 31 this year while his wife Alka Nath owns assets worth Rs 4.48 crore approximately.

The figure though formidable may seem paltry in comparison to the over Rs 200 crore declaration made by Nath an year earlier. As per the previous year's declarations, Nath was the richest of all Cabinet Ministers.

Nath has also explained the reduction of figures in his declaration. "In the previous year's declaration, the assets of Shri Nakul Nath, Shri Bakul Nath & Smt Simran Nath were shown. Since they are not dependent family members, it is not required to include their assets. They have therefore, been excluded this year," Nath's declaration said.

The declaration also said the assets of a private trust for the benefit of Nakul Nath and Bakul Nath, who are non-dependent family members, had also been excluded this year.

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News Network
March 5,2020

Mumbai, Mar 5: Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal and few others have been booked by the ED in a money laundering case even as the agency is conducting searches at his premises, officials said on Thursday.

They said a criminal case against the former chairman of the airlines has been filed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) after taking cognisance of a recent Mumbai Police FIR filed against him.

The Enforcement Directorate carried out raids at Goyal's premises in Mumbai on Wednesday and also questioned him after filing the case, they said.

The action is continuing, they added.

The Mumbai Police FIR pertains to charges of alleged fraud by Goyal and others against a Mumbai-based travel company.

Goyal has earlier been grilled by the central probe agency in a case filed under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) in September last year.

The agency had carried out similar raids, under the FEMA, in August last year against Goyal, his family and others.

ED has alleged in the past that the businessman's empire had 19 privately-held companies, five of which were registered abroad.

The agency is probing charges that these firms allegedly carried out “doubtful” transactions under the guise of selling, distribution and operating expenses.

The ED suspects that expenses at these companies were allegedly booked at fake and high costs and as a result, they “projected” huge losses.

Alleged shady aircraft lease transactions with non-existent offshore entities are also under the ED scanner and it is suspected that Jet Airways made payments for lease rental to “ghost firms”, which purportedly routed the ill-gotten money in Goyal's companies.

A full-service carrier, Jet Airways shut its operations in April last year after running out of cash.

A month earlier, Goyal had stepped down as the chairman of Jet Airways.

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Agencies
March 1,2020

Kolkata, Mar 1: The Calcutta High Court has ruled that it is not mandatory for foreigners to produce a valid passport and its particulars for processing of application for grant of Indian citizenship if he is able to satisfy the appropriate authorities the reasons for non-availability of the document.

Justice Sabysachi Bhattacharya passed the order while disposing off a petition by granting the petitioner liberty to file an application before the authority "as contemplated in Rule 11 of the Citizenship Rules 2009, upon furnishing explanation as to the non-availability of the passport".

Bismillah Khan had filed the petition saying he was being denied the citizenship of India because of his inability to file an application under Section 5 (1) (c) of the Citizenship Act, 1955, apparently due to the mandatory requirement of furnishing a copy of the passport for such application.

The petitioner's counsel submitted that Khan was a Pakhtoon citizen and due to political turmoil in the said state, which subsequently merged partially into Afghanistan and partially into Pakistan, he, as a five-year old, had to migrate to India with his father in 1973.

Under such circumstances, the petitioner could not have any opportunity of having a valid passport, since they were refugees under distress, the counsel said.

The petitioner had previously approached a coordinate Bench of the court, wherein a single judge, passed an order on July 25, 2018, directing him to comply with the formalities required, as communicated by the secretary to the Government of India to the Secretary to the Government of West Bengal (Home), vide a letter dated December 7, 2017.

The court had then also given liberty to the petitioner to apply afresh before the appropriate authority under Section 5(1)(c) of the 1955 Act, having complied with all the formalities.

The petitioner then moved Bhattacharya's court submitting that a complete application as directed by the Coordinate Bench cannot be possibly filed by his client due to the mandatory requirement of uploading a copy of his passport, which the petitioner does not have due to reasons beyond his control.

The counsel said Khan is married to an Indian citizen, has a daughter and living in India for close to half a century.

The counsel for the union of India submitted that in view of no application having been filed by the petitioner, there is no scope of granting such proposed application at the present juncture for the Union.

The counsel argued that it is mandatory to file an application in Form III for the application of the petitioner under Section 5(1)(c) of the Act to be considered at all.

In view of the petitioner not complying with the mandatory requirement of submitting a copy of his passport, the state government cannot, under the law, forward such application to the union government.

After hearing all sides, Justice Bhattacharya said although the rule "contemplates that an application shall not be entertained unless the application is made in Form III, such provision ipso facto does not make the availability of a passport a mandatory requirement".

"..the Form given with the Rules or the Rules themselves cannot override the provision of the statute itself, under which the said Rules are framed, which does not stipulate such a mandate on the applicants for citizenship under Section 5 (1)(c) of the 1955 Act mandatorily to carry a passport".

The court said although such provision is included in the Form, which has to be complied with by the applicant, "it is nowhere indicated in such Form that all the relevant particulars, including the particulars regarding passport of the petitioner have to be furnished mandatorily, along with a copy of a valid foreign passport, even in the event the petitioner, for valid reasons, is not in a position to produce such passport".

Justice Bhattacharya ruled that under such circumstances, it cannot be held that the provision of producing a passport and its particulars is mandatory in nature and there has to be a relaxation in such requirement "in case the petitioner is able to satisfy the appropriate authorities the reasons for non- availability of such passport".

"Unless such a leeway is given to the applicants, genuine persons who otherwise have all the formal documents indicating that they have been residing in India for a long time and have married a resident of India would also be unable to apply for Indian Citizenship despite having lived their entire lives and contributed to the economy and diverse culture of this country."

He said such a scenario would be contradictory to the spirit of Article 14 of the Constitution of India.

"In such view of the matter, the requirement of having a passport has to be read as optional in Form III of the Citizenship Rules, 2009 and the authorities are deemed to have the power to relax such 6 requirement in the event the applicant satisfied the authorities for genuine reasons why the applicant is not in a position to produce such passport," the February 24 order said.

The court ruled that despite the provision of making applications online, a provision has to be made for persons who do not have all the particulars of their passport, which is read as optional, to file applications manually, which are to be treated as valid applications under Rule 5 of the Citizenship Rules, 2009.

The court also ordered that alternatively the necessary software be amended so that the online applications can be presented with or without passports, in the latter case furnishing detailed reasons as to non-furnishing of passports.

"Sanctioning of such forms, however, will be conditional upon the satisfaction of the relevant authorities about the reasons for the applicant not being able to produce her/his passport," the order said.

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News Network
June 6,2020

New Delhi, Jun 6: Military commanders of India and China are scheduled to meet today at Moldo on the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), to discuss the ongoing dispute along the LAC in Eastern Ladakh.

The Commander of the Leh-based 14 Corps of the Indian Army Commander Lieutenant Gen Harinder Singh will meet his Chinese equivalent Maj Gen Liu Lin, who is the commander of South Xinjiang Military Region of Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) to address the ongoing tussle in Eastern Ladakh between the two countries over the heavy military build-up by the People's Liberation Army along the LAC there.

The two sides have held close to a dozen rounds of talks since the first week of May when the Chinese sent over 5,000 troops to the LAC.

On Friday, officials of India and China interacted through video-conferencing with the two sides agreeing that they should handle "their differences through peaceful discussion" while respecting each other's sensitivities and concerns and not allowing them to become disputes in accordance with the guidance provided by the leadership.

In the last few days, there has not been any major movement of the People's Liberation Army troops at the multiple sites where it has stationed itself along the LAC opposite Indian forces.

India and China have been locked in a dispute over the heavy military build-up by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) where they have brought in more than 5,000 troops along with the Eastern Ladakh sector.

The Chinese Army's intent to carry out deeper incursions was checked by the Indian security forces by quick deployment. The Chinese have also brought in heavy vehicles with artillery guns and infantry combat vehicles in their rear positions close to the Indian territory.

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