Saturday, January 21, 2012

HEADLINES

• Jaipur literary festival 2012 starts
• Supreme Court throws out PIL on the issue of the army chief's age. Says age cannot be decided by a PIL
• Kalmadi not to represent the Indian Olympic Association for now
• Supreme Court reverses High Court decision to impose over USD4 billion tax on Vodafone

NATIONAL NEWS

• Cabinet to look at merging the databases of the Aadhaar project and the National Population Registry
  • Nandan Nilekani, Chairman, UIDAI has said that the issue of bring synergy between the database of the National Population Registry and the biometric database of the Aadhaar project is now before the Cabinet and a group is looking at the option of merging them.
• National Human Rights Commission says make silicosis notifiable disease
  • Taking a serious note of the increasing silicosis-related deaths in the country, the NHRC has recommended that silicosis be made a notifiable disease. Once notified, all government and private health facilities will have to report confirmed as well as suspected silicosis cases to the government;
  • Silicosis is an incurable lung disease caused by inhaling of dust containing free crystalline silica. The potential victims of silicosis are poor migrant workers employed in quarries, mines, gem cutting and other hazardous occupations such as construction sites, a majority of whom are likely to die for lack of specialised treatment;
  • In a special report — a first of its kind — presented to Parliament, the NHRC has suggested that the government should ensure health facilities to all workers employed at places prone to silica and earmark adequate compensation to the families in case of death;
  • The NHRC said that the Govts attitude in relation to silicosis that it was difficult to tackle the problem as most were migrant workers where not much could be done, would be a violation of human rights.
• Telecom Regulatory Authority of India issues ban on bulk international sms
  • The TRAI on Friday asked telecom companies to block bulk international sms, a move that will give mobile subscribers further relief from pesky messages;
  • The TRAI's last set of directions on blocking commercial smses and pesky calls are being circumvented by operators using international service providers. To curb this menace, the regulator has asked all telecom companies to ensure that no international sms containing an alphabet header or alphanumeric header or +91 as the originating country code is delivered through their networks. Similarly, if any source or number from outside the country generates more than 200 SMSes an hour with a similar ‘signature,' these should not be delivered through the network.
• All-India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) flays move to dilute 498-A of the IPC
  • The All-India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) has expressed serious concern over the Law Commission's suggestion to the Centre to dilute Section 498-A of the Indian Penal Code to make offences under the law bailable and pardonable;
  • Under Section 498-A, husband or relative of husband of a woman shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years and shall also be liable to fine for subjecting the woman to cruelty, they said;
  • There have been many instances of the law being misused, however AIDWA points out that 37% of Indian women are still being subjected to physical cruelty by their husbands.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

• US briefs India on the Afghan reconciliation
  • US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Marc Grossman, top Indian foreign policy officials here on Washington's opening of dialogue with the Taliban and sought greater cooperation from New Delhi in effecting political reconciliation;
  • The two sides also spoke about economic cooperation in the region. US indicated that it wanted India to focus on the New Silk Road Initiative, the plan to connect south and central asia with Europe, with Afghanistan as the central hub. The two sides also discussed the TAPI gas line project which is to benefit Afghanistan greatly.
• Mistrust over Obama's outreach for discussions with Tehran; Iran says that it is ready for talks so long as there are no pre-conditions to the same
• Megaupload.com shutdown invites retaliation
  • One of the world's most popular file sharing websites, megaupload.com, was shutdown and its founder and officials arrested after a US court held the site guilty for facilitating millions of illegal downloads of movies, music, etc and causing loss to copyright holders;
  • In retaliation, the Justice Department of US was attacked by hackers.

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS & COLUMNS

• Read this editorial on the Lokayukta debacle in Gujarat. Just glance through it
• Read this article on the recent issue regarding Salman Rushdie's visit to India and the role of the Govt in religion when it is supposed to be a secular state. Just glance through it if you have time

EMINENT PERSONS IN THE NEWS

• Read this article on Homai Vyarawalla, India's first woman press photographer who passed away a few days ago. She was 98.

ECONOMY & BUSINESS NEWS

• Supreme Court ruling in the Vodafone case, a leg-up for tax planning
  • The Supreme Court's verdict in the Vodafone-Hutchison case shows there is a thin line between tax planning and tax evasion and acknowledges that in the Vodafone-Hutchison case it was not evasion;
  • Hutchison owned a majority stake in the earlier Indian telecom operator Hutch-Essar through a maze of foreign holding companies, and in 2007 it sold its stake to Vodafone directly through overseas companies. Usually such offshore transactions would not attract Indian tax laws as there was no jurisdiction, but the Indian tax authorities claimed that since the underlying business/assets were in India, Vodafone was under an obligation to deduct tax and give it to the Indian tax authorities before paying Hutchison. The tax authorities were claiming over Rs.11,200 cr as the tax which was to be paid by Vodafone;
  • What is significant is that the judgment of the SC now confers acceptability and even respect to genuine deals between offshore entities where the underlying asset is in India. Hitherto, such structuring of deals was viewed largely as an attempt to evade tax. Post-Vodafone case, such transactions will be seen as genuine tax planning rather than evasion. The judgment also is clear that the taxman has no jurisdiction over deals executed abroad;
  • The judgment could give a leg up to cross-border mergers and acquisitions as it clears the air on taxability issues. But the joy is likely to be short-lived as the government could plug the hole in the new Direct Taxes Code to ensure that such deals in future yield revenues;
  • An extremely positive signal that the judgement sends out is that our legal system is independent and fair and is not swayed even where the government is a contesting party. Of course, some of the sheen could come off if the Income-tax Department decides to file a review petition in the Supreme Court on the judgment.