Below the line

The BJP and its publicity wing are known for taking meticulous care in designing posters and publicity material, ensuring that each such material inevitably carries photographs of its top leadership, starting from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, party chief JP Nadda and then going down the hierarchy to the State level.

But Gujarat’s political circle recently with into a tizzy, as Modi’s absence in the posters of the BJP’s Gujarat unit chief Chandrakant R Patil was noticed. Patil, who recently replaced Jitu Vaghani as Gujarat BJP chief, is scheduled to visit Patan in North Gujarat as part of his worker-outreach programme, ahead of the Assembly by-polls in the State.

When the ‘miss’ was pointed out, Patil supporters removed all posters and hoardings placed at about a dozen places across Patan and replaced them after inserting Modi’s photo. Notably, in January 2015, ahead of the Delhi Assembly polls, an ‘Abhinandan Rally’ was held at Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi, where the photos of ‘new generation’ leaders Modi and Shah had replaced those of old stalwarts like Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani from the stage posters. Then, political pundits read it as curtains for the old guard. Today, is there a message in Gujarat?

#Supportthemovietheatre and #SaveCinemaSaveJobs are trending all over social media. And here is why. The multiplex industry, which was eagerly waiting for the Home Ministry’s nod to re-open cinema halls, was stumped last week. While the Ministry in Unlock 4 allowed public gatherings with 100 people from September 21, it said cinema halls will remain closed.

The players are now perplexed why the approval didn’t come through even as pubs and the metro have been allowed to function, while airlines have also been allowed to operate at 60 per cent capacity. After nearly six months of zero revenues, industry players and film production companies have joined to begin a campaign on social media platforms such as Twitter.

“You applaud ISRO when it tries and fails in the Chandrayaan mission. You heap praise on PV Sindhu when she fails to clinch a title in the finals of a global event. You encourage them to give their best shot in the forthcoming initiatives/events. But you don’t do the same when a business tries something new and fails,” rued an entrepreneur from coastal Karnataka.

Referring to the recent developments in the cashew processing sector in Vietnam, the entrepreneur said failure isn’t penalised there. That gives the entrepreneur the strength to try again and succeed.

However, in India, all the agencies concerned, including financial institutions, will go after the entrepreneur to recover their investments. He wondered why the country adopts different yardsticks for failures in different areas.

The Supreme Court’s final judgment on the AGR issue, delivered this week by a three-judge Bench had a glaring error. On pages 4, 5, and 6 of the order, there is a table that lists out the total dues to be paid by the telecom companies. However, the table’s heading states “Preliminary Assessments”. But in the same order, on pages 45 and 46, it is stated that there shall not be any reassessment of the dues. In such a situation, should the table not have been titled “Final Assessment”? Did the court officials copy-paste the table from the affidavit filed by the Department of Telecom and then forgot to change the heading?

If the buzz in legal circles are be believed, Justice Arun Mishra, who recently retired from the Supreme Court, is tipped to be the next chief of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal.

The insolvency appellate body has been running headless since March after Justice Sudhansu Jyoti Mukhopadhaya retired. The grapevine says that Justice Mishra will keep the fireworks on as a few AGR-related issues are still pending with the NLCT and appeals will reach the NCLAT.

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