"Being A Sikh...": BJP, SAD Slam Amarinder Singh, Congress For 1984 Riots

Patna, Jan 12: Prashant Kishor, national vice-president of the Janata Dal (United), a key ally of the BJP-led NDA, has thanked Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi and former AICC chief Rahul Gandhi for their support in opposing CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) and NRC (National Register of Citizens).

Perceived as one of the closest associates of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who is also the party’s national president, PK (as Prashant is fondly called) also assured the two top Congress leaders that the contentious legislation would not be implemented in Bihar where JD (U) is ruling the State with the support of the BJP.

“I join my voice with all to thank #Congress leadership for their formal and unequivocal rejection of #CAA_NRC. Both @rahulgandhi and @priyankagandhi deserve special thanks for their efforts on this count….also would like to reassure to all – CAA/NRC won’t be implemented in Bihar,” tweeted PK on Sunday.

The development assumes significance as a day back, the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting, chaired by Sonia Gandhi, had strongly opposed CAA/NRC/NPR as it was aimed at “sinister design of the present regime to divide Indian people into religious lines.”

The latest tweet by PK is also being seen as a rebuff to the BJP, which again recently reiterated that “the BJP should project its own chief ministerial candidate during the 2020 Bihar Assembly elections.”

The JD (U) had taken umbrage over such provocative statements by BJP leaders and asked the saffron camp to rein in its ‘loudmouths’ as BJP chief Amit Shah had already made it clear that the next Assembly polls in Bihar would be fought under the leadership of Nitish.

Of late, PK has been quite vocal about his opposition to the Centre’s policies, particularly the contentious issues of NRC and CAA. Besides, he even dubbed senior BJP leader Sushil Modi as the man who became Bihar’s Deputy Chief Minister due to ‘circumstances’ as the BJP was decisively decimated during the 2015 Assembly elections.

Nitish never reprimanded PK for his jibe against Modi, thereby giving rise to speculations whether Bihar was again heading for a political churning ahead of Assembly polls slated for October this year.

Washington, Feb 19: Sri Srinivasan, a prominent Indian-American judge, has created history by becoming the first person of South Asian descent to lead a powerful federal circuit court considered next only to the US Supreme Court.

Srinivasan, 52, became the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.

An Obama appointee who has already been considered for a Supreme Court seat twice, donned the mantle of the chief judge of the DC federal court circuit on February 12.

Srinivasan succeeded Judge Merrick Garland, who has been a member of the DC Circuit since 1997 and Chief Judge since 2013. He will remain on the bench, a press release said.

Notably, Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court by the then president Barack Obama was blocked by Senate Republicans in 2016.

Srinivasan, was appointed to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in May 2013.

He was the first ever Indian-American to be appointed to the second most powerful court of the US.

Neomi Rao, nominated by President Donald Trump, is the second Indian American on this powerful judiciary bench.

History being made on the DC Court of Appeals. Congratulations, Judge Srinivasan! Senator Mark Warner said.

Congratulations to Judge Sri Srinivasan on becoming the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit! A milestone for the Indian-American/Kansan community (and yet another piece of evidence my family can use that I'm underachieving), US Federal Communications Commission Chair Ajit Pai said.

According to The Washington Post, Srinivasan spoke recently about his path to the bench at an event celebrating women in the law, a field where men still dominate leadership positions.

"Everybody doubts their belonging and worthiness in some measure. I definitely did and still do. This is just going to be a part of the thing when you're looking out in the world in which everyone isn't like you. It's natural to doubt whether you belong and whether you're worthy, he said, "but you do belong and you are worthy.

Born in Chandigarh, and raised in Lawrence, Kansas, he received a B.A. from Stanford University, a J.D. from Stanford Law School, and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Following graduation, he served as a law clerk to Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, as a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the US Solicitor General, and as a law clerk to US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

From 2011 until his appointment to the US Court of Appeals, Judge Srinivasan served as the Principal Deputy Solicitor General of the United States.

He has argued 25 cases before the US Supreme Court. He has also taught appellate advocacy at Harvard Law School as well as a seminar on civil rights statutes and the Supreme Court at Georgetown University Law Center.

London, Feb 14: Liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya once again asked the Indian banks to take back 100 per cent of the principal amount owed to them at the end of his three-day British High Court appeal on Thursday against an extradition order to India.

The 64-year-old former Kingfisher Airlines boss, wanted in India on charges of fraud and money laundering amounting to an alleged Rs 9,000 crores in unpaid bank loans, said the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) are fighting over the same assets and not treating him reasonably in the process.

“I request the banks with folded hands, take 100 per cent of your principal back, immediately,” he said outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

“The Enforcement Directorate attached the assets on the complaint by the banks that I was not paying them. I have not committed any offenses under the PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) that the Enforcement Directorate should suo moto attach my assets," he said.

"I am saying, please banks take your money. The ED is saying no, we have a claim over these assets. So, the ED on the one side and the banks on the other are fighting over the same assets,” he added.

Asked about heading back to India, he noted: “I should be where my family is, where my interests are.

"If the CBI and the ED are going to be reasonable, it’s a different story. What all they are doing to me for the last four years is totally unreasonable.”

Lord Justice Stephen Irwin and Justice Elisabeth Laing, the two-member bench presiding over the appeal, concluded hearing the arguments in the case and said they will be handing down their verdict at a later date after considering the oral as well as written submissions in the “very dense” case over the next few weeks.

On a day of heated arguments between Mallya’s barrister, Clare Montgomery, and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) counsel Mark Summers, arguing on behalf of the Indian government, both sides clashed over the prima facie case of fraud and deception against Mallya.

“We submit that he lied to get the loans, then did something with the money he wasn’t supposed to and then refused to give back the money. All this could be perceived by a jury as patently dishonest conduct,” said Summers.

“What they [Kingfisher Airlines] were saying [to the banks] about profitability going forward was knowingly wrong,” he said, as he took the High Court through evidence to counter Mallya’s lawyers’ claims that Westminster Magistrates Court Judge Emma Arbuthnot had fallen into error when she found a case to answer in the Indian courts against Mallya.

Mallya, who remains on bail on an extradition warrant, is not required to attend the hearings but has been in court to observe the proceedings since the three-day appeal opened on Tuesday. A key defence to disprove a prima facie case of fraud and misrepresentation on his part has revolved around the fact that Kingfisher Airlines was the victim of economic misfortune alongside other Indian airlines.

However, the CPS has argued that “there is enough in the 32,000 pages of overall evidence to fulfil the [extradition] treaty obligations that there is a case to answer”. “There is not just a prima facie case but overwhelming evidence of dishonesty… and given the volume and depth of evidence the District Judge [Arbuthnot] had before her, the judgment is comprehensive and detailed with the odd error but nothing that impacts the prima facie case,” said Summers.

At the start of the appeal, Mallya’s counsel claimed Arbuthnot did not look at all of the evidence because if she had, she would not have fallen into the multiple errors that permeate her judgment. The High Court must establish if the magistrates’ court had in fact fallen short on a point of law in its verdict in favour of extradition.

Representatives from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), as well as the Indian High Commission in London, have been present in court to take notes during the course of the appeal hearing.

Mallya had received permission to appeal against his extradition order signed off by former UK home secretary Sajid Javid last February only on one ground, which challenges the Indian government's prima facie case against him of fraudulent intentions in acquiring bank loans.

At the end of a year-long extradition trial at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London in December 2018, Judge Arbuthnot had found “clear evidence of dispersal and misapplication of the loan funds” and accepted a prima facie case of fraud and a conspiracy to launder money against Mallya, as presented by the CPS on behalf of the Indian government.

Mallya remains on bail since his arrest on an extradition warrant in April 2017 involving a bond worth 650,000 pounds and other restrictions on his travel while he contests that ruling.