Author: Balaguru Mamundi

Two-horse race:On the contest in Karnataka and General election 2024

Almost a year since the Siddaramaiah-led Congress rode to power in Karnataka with a thumping majority of 136 seats out of 224 in the State Legislature, the party is banking on the widespread appreciation for implementing its ‘five guarantees’ that it had promised in order to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-Janata Dal (Secular) (JDS) alliance in the general election. While the polls to the Lok Sabha are in the backdrop of the Rameshwaram Cafe blast in Bengaluru on March 1, that left nine people injured, the incident has had little impact on the ground, with even the BJP, which has alleged that it is a case of a ‘law and order’ failure, treading carefully to avoid giving it communal undertones. It is a difficult lesson the BJP is likely to have learnt from its performance in the Assembly elections on May 10, 2023. Its governance was marked by months of communally polarising government orders and issues, beginning with the hijab ban in February 2022 soon after Basavaraj Bommai replaced the hugely popular party veteran B.S. Yediyurappa as Chief Minister. This was followed by the repeal of the 4% reservations for Muslims in State government jobs and educational institutions, and distributing this quota equally between Vokkaligas and Veerashaiva-Lingayats. The repeal, in the form of a government order on March 27, came weeks before the Assembly elections in May. Yet, the Congress bettered its 2018 Assembly poll performance by four percentage points, garnering an impressive 43% vote share, while there was no change in the BJP’s vote share of 36%.

The Congress’s ‘five guarantees’ have resulted in tangible benefits for more than two-thirds of the State’s population, going by government claims. But the party’s attempt to make the ‘denial of Karnataka’s central pool of funds’ a poll issue has had little resonance. The BJP has witnessed steady success in the Lok Sabha polls in Karnataka, bettering its 2014 record of 43% by 8.4 percentage points in the 2019 general election, crossing the half-way mark at 51.4%, and winning 25 of the 28 seats. With the JD(S) steadily losing ground and vote share and being viewed as representing only one community, the Vokkaligas, it has been relegated to being allotted three seats in the BJP-led alliance. This general election would thus be a direct contest between the BJP and the Congress. But it appears unlikely that the BJP, now the principal Opposition in the State, will be able to replicate its performance in 2019.

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Breach of convention:

On the Ecuador-Mexico Tensions:

Ecuador’s raid on April 5 at the Mexico embassy in Quito is a serious violation of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations on which nations operate their missions in foreign lands. The raid was to arrest Jorge David Glas, a former Vice-President in the administration of leftist and former President Rafael Correa, who has been sentenced for corruption. Mr. Correa, now living in Belgium, has also been convicted for corruption. Mr. Glas and Mr. Correa say the cases against them are politically motivated. But for Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa, the cases against the former elites were part of his larger crusade against corruption. Tensions were high between the two countries after Mr. Glas took refuge in the Mexican embassy in Quito in December, a month after Mr. Noboa took office. Last week, Ecuador declared Mexico’s Ambassador Raquel Serur Smeke as persona non grata after Mexico’s leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s comments that were critical of Ecuador’s 2023 elections. Mexico also decided to grant asylum to Mr. Glas, which angered Ecuador. It termed the decision illegal as Mr. Glas was facing cases in the country and, soon after, sent armed police officers to the embassy to arrest him, triggering a major diplomatic crisis. Mexico, which says its sovereignty has been breached, has now moved the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands, demanding the expulsion of Ecuador from the UN.

The embassy raid comes at a time when President Noboa is facing increased criticism at home over rising gang violence. He came to power promising to tackle corruption and gang violence. Last year’s presidential election was marred by deadly violence when presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated during the campaign in Quito. Mr. Noboa says he stays committed to fighting gangs and restoring order in Ecuador’s cities, but his approval rating has sunk amid growing violence, especially in the coastal city of Guayaquil, which was overrun by gangs in January. The situation is so bad in Ecuador that during the Easter weekend, the country of 18 million people saw over 100 murders. Critics say Mr. Noboa is using the diplomatic crisis with Mexico to strengthen his political fortunes. But he has merely triggered a new crisis without addressing the actual one. Ecuadorians are set to vote in a referendum next week that would give the government increased security powers to fight gang violence. The government has to get its act together in the war against organised violence, but it should do that from within the limits of domestic and international laws. Going rogue inside the embassy of a neighbouring country in the name of fighting corruption is not going to help Ecuador in tackling the myriad challenges it is facing.

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Finality and justice: On the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Case:

The Supreme Court of India has used its extraordinary powers to set aside its own judgment of 2021 and relieve the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) of an exorbitant burden of ₹7,687 crores in a dispute with a former concessionare. The verdict vindicates the existence of the Court’s curative jurisdiction on the one hand, and flags, on the other, a possible conflict between finality in litigation and the need for substantive justice. In this case, an arbitral tribunal had ruled in 2017 in favour of Delhi Airport Metro Express Private Ltd. (DAMEPL), which got the contract to construct, maintain and operate the line from New Delhi railway station to Delhi airport. DAMEPL had invoked the termination clause in its agreement in October 2012, citing the DMRC’s alleged failure to cure some defects. While the DMRC invoked the arbitration clause, DAMEPL halted operations in June 2013 and handed over the line to the DMRC. Meanwhile, based on a joint application, the Commissioner of Metro Rail Safety (CMRS) issued a certificate of safety that helped revive the metro’s operations. On appeal, a single judge of the Delhi High Court upheld the arbitration award against DMRC, but a Division Bench set it aside, holding that the award suffered from perversity and patent illegality. In 2021, a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court restored the award, reversing the High Court Bench’s findings in favour of the DMRC. A review petition was also rejected.

A curative petition is an extraordinary remedy, as it is filed after the apex Court refuses to review its judgment. There are only two main grounds for entertaining such a petition: to prevent abuse of process and to prevent gross miscarriage of justice, although it is not possible to enumerate all the circumstances that warrant it. It is founded on the principle that the court’s concern for justice is no less important than the principle of finality. Under India’s arbitration law, an award can be set aside only on limited grounds. It is normally inexpedient for arbitration issues to have many levels of litigation — in this case there was a statutory appeal to the High Court, and appeals to a Bench, the apex Court, a review petition and a curative petition. In the ultimate analysis, the DMRC case appears to have been rightly decided as the earlier two-judge Bench was ruled to have erred in setting aside the Delhi High Court Bench’s view that the CMRS certificate was a vital piece of evidence. The outcome only underscores the importance of arbitrators and judges sitting on appeal over awards getting both fact and law right, lest commercial litigants be discouraged from arbitration due to the constant stretching of the idea of finality. Not all disputants can go up to the level of a curative petition.

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​Pandora’s box: On the electoral bonds scheme, emerging details:

In the last month or so, ever since the State Bank of India was compelled by the Supreme Court of India to release information on donations via electoral bonds to political parties, emerging details have only confirmed the worst fears of naysayers in regulatory and policy-making institutions about the scheme before it was introduced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government in 2018. A joint investigation that included The Hindu found that at least 33 companies that had aggregate losses of over ₹1 lakh crore from 2016-17 to 2022-23 had donated close to ₹582 crore, of which 75% went to the ruling BJP. Loss-making companies were donating substantial sums; profit-making firms were making donations exceeding their aggregate profits; some donor firms were not reporting data on net profits or direct taxes; some newly incorporated firms were making donations before the stipulated three-year period (after being formed) — the list of the rule-breaking and suspect sources of funding is significantly large. The nature of these donations raises several questions. Were these loss-making firms fronts to launder money? Were the firms that did not report profit/losses shell companies? Were donor firms that made significant profits — but did not pay net direct taxes in aggregate for a significantly long period — engaged in tax evasion? These supplement other questions raised earlier — was the fact that a number of firms, under investigation by agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and the Income-Tax Department, were significant donors for the ruling party, an indication that these agencies were being used as a means to ensure quid pro quo?

Reserve Bank of India and Election Commission of India officials were emphatic in their apprehensions that the bonds scheme could be utilised in money laundering and tax evasion. Yet, the Union Finance Ministry went ahead with the scheme. In the five and a half years of its operation, thousands of crores were encashed by political parties via electoral bonds, with the BJP receiving the lion’s share. While the Court must be lauded for ending an opaque scheme with serious issues, the fact that large amounts were donated from dubious sources before every election is an indictment of the nature of campaign financing in place during this period. With the polity in India busy campaigning for the general election, it is up to the electorate to assess the effects of the electoral bonds scheme. But, more importantly, once the election is over and governance takes over, Parliament and the regulatory institutions must conduct a thorough investigation into the nature of donations and whether the donors and recipients broke laws. The judiciary must prod these institutions. A clean-up of campaign and electoral financing is a must for a healthy democracy.

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Title: A distinct right: On climate change and species protection:

In recognising the right to be free of the adverse effects of climate change as a distinct fundamental right, the Supreme Court of India has advanced the case for a healthy environment and sustainable development. The apex court had long ago recognised the right to live in a clean environment as part of the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution. However, the Court has now reasoned that the right to be protected from climate change and the right to a wholesome environment are two sides of the same coin; and given the increasing threat from climate change year after year, the time has come to treat the former as a distinct right. It has explained how the vagaries of climate change have an adverse impact on life through factors ranging from rising temperatures, storms and droughts to food shortages due to crop failure and shifts in vector-borne diseases. If environmental degradation and climate change lead to acute shortage of food and water, the right to equality will also be violated, as the poorer, under-served communities will not be able to cope with the adversity. The Court’s emphasis on climate change came in a case that pitted the concern over multiple deaths of the Great Indian Bustard due to solar power transmission lines against India’s international obligation to meet its emission reduction and increase its energy capacity through non-fossil fuel sources.

The context is a conundrum peculiar to some parts of the country. The Bench was faced with a plea by three Union Ministries — Environment, Power, and New and Renewable Energy — seeking modification of the Court’s April 2021 order that sought to protect the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard from being killed in collisions with power transmission lines put up by solar energy companies in Rajasthan and Gujarat. The earlier order had directed that all low-voltage power lines in both ‘priority’ (where the bird is known to live) and ‘potential’ (where conservation efforts are going on) areas be laid underground and existing overhead lines converted to underground lines. It had also directed that high-voltage lines in identified areas be shifted below the ground. The modification was sought as conversion to underground lines was technically not possible and too expensive and the renewable energy sector was adversely affected by the order, especially because the area had considerable solar and wind energy potential. The Court has now asked an expert committee to decide on the extent of underground and overground lines and recalled its earlier orders. It is unfortunate that the goal of reducing the country’s carbon footprint and the need to protect a critically endangered species are at odds with each other. The sooner a solution is found the better.

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Perverse intent:

On the Citizenship (Amendment) Act:

Offering citizenship to migrants who have fled their countries of origin because of persecution and have stayed a sufficient time in their adopted country, is a humane endeavour by any nation-state and should be generally welcomed. But by limiting this measure only to migrants from an arbitrary group of neighbouring nations and to narrow the definition only to “religious persecution”, and to further constrict this to not include Muslims, atheists, and agnostics among others, would suggest that the reasoning to provide this citizenship has less to do with humanitarianism and more to do with a warped and perverse understanding of Indian citizenship. By its very intent, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, whose rules were notified by the Ministry of Home Affairs last month, over four years since the Act was passed in Parliament, goes against the ethos of the Indian Constitution. It is a short-sighted piece of legislation in its understanding that only religious persecution merits a reason for providing asylum and citizenship. It is fairly evident that persecution can be due to other reasons as well, such as linguistic discrimination in the case of Sri Lanka in recent years, and erstwhile East Pakistan from which Bangladesh was born. Besides, as the case of the Rohingya from Myanmar shows, Muslims have also faced the severest form of discrimination in recent years, with thousands killed, more than a million of them rendered stateless and lakhs fleeing to other countries including India due to deliberate genocidal policies implemented by the ruling regime in the country. Even in Muslim-majority countries and those professing Islam as the state religion, such as Pakistan, minority Islamic sects such as the Ahmadiyyas have been subject to oppression and persecution.

The argument by petitioners against the CAA in the Supreme Court of India that the rules of the Act do not require foreign applicants to effectively renounce citizenship of their native countries, and that this allows for the possibility of dual citizenship which is directly violative of the Citizenship Act is also fair even if it is only a procedural one. While India is not party to the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, they have provisions that require signatories to provide refugee status to those who are subjects of different forms of persecution beyond just due to their religion. Signatories must also apply these provisions “without discrimination as to race, religion or country of origin” and it is clear that the CAA would run afoul of them if India were a signatory. The Court must declare the CAA as unconstitutional and revoke its implementation because of its arbitrary and selective norms for providing citizenship to migrants.

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Wayward elephant:

On the RBI’s rate decision:

The RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has opted to keep the benchmark policy repo rate unchanged at 6.5% for a seventh consecutive meeting citing food price pressures that are impeding its efforts to slow inflation to the 4% target on a durable basis. Explaining the rate decision and the MPC’s resolve to keep the policy stance focused on the withdrawal of accommodation, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das remarked that the ‘elephant in the room – inflation’, which had hit a peak of 7.8% in April 2022, ‘appeared to be returning to the forest after having gone out for a walk’. “We would like the elephant to return to the forest and remain there on a durable basis,” he said, emphasising that in the best interest of the economy, it was essential to ensure that retail inflation continued to moderate and aligned to the target on a durable basis. The monetary authority’s repeated emphasis on ‘a durable basis’ underlines its concern that headline inflation and food price inflation in particular have remained stubbornly unpredictable, with the headline Consumer Price Index-based reading stuck above the RBI’s 4% target for 53 months through February 2024. Nor are the MPC’s projections for price stability in the new fiscal year significantly reassuring in terms of the target: CPI inflation is expected to slow slightly to an average of 4.9% in the current quarter, then stubbornly markedly and dip below target to 3.9% in Q2, before quickening again to 4.6% and 4.5% in Q3 and Q4, respectively.

The MPC is, however, more confident about the outlook for economic growth in the 12 months through March 2025, with the GDP expected to expand by 7% on average this year. For this it cites a multiplicity of factors: from expectations of a normal south-west monsoon, that it posits will boost agricultural activity and rural demand, to sustained momentum in the manufacturing and services sectors. It also points to the RBI’s March round of the consumer confidence survey, which indicates that urban households are less pessimistic about the current situation and anticipate improvements in one year’s time on all five key parameters surveyed. Monetary policymakers assert that improving incomes and a rise in readiness to spend on non-essentials augur well for a strengthening in private consumption, which has been struggling for momentum in recent quarters. It is the expectation of strong growth that gives the RBI the policy space to focus on targeting inflation, Mr. Das said. Only too aware that sticky inflation has not only dampened discretionary spending so far but also led to a sharp surge in personal loans for meeting essential expenditure, the RBI chief’s determination to send the elephant back to the forest or risk seeing growth lose momentum again is well justified. Price stability can and must be non-negotiable.

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Title: Wide open: On the Candidates chess tournament in Toronto:

Candidates is a familiar word in these times of a general election, but over the next three weeks, it will appear regularly on the sports pages of newspapers as well, across the world. The opening move of the Candidates chess tournament was made in Toronto late on Thursday (IST). It is the mind game’s biggest event of the year, and its winners — in the open and the women’s sections — will be eligible to compete for the World championship. China’s Ding Liren and Ju Wenjun are the reigning world champions. They, along with the rest of the chess world, will have their eyes set on the Canadian city to find out who will emerge as the challenger from among the men and women there. The country that will follow the tournament with the keenest interest could well be India. For, five out of the 16 contestants, eight each in either section, are Indians. R. Praggnanandhaa, D. Gukesh and Vidit Gujrathi are fighting it out in the open tournament, while Koneru Humpy and R. Vaishali are competing in the women’s tournament. Remember, only one Indian has played in this prestigious event (open) before — Viswanathan Anand, a five-time world champion, continues to be an inspiration. India’s conspicuous presence is a fair indication of how strong it has become in world chess. More proof is provided by the latest World rankings, in which the highest ranked Indian (No. 9), Arjun Erigaisi, is not even playing at the Candidates.

None of the Indians started as a favourite in the open event of the Candidates, though. Two Americans, Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura, are the strongest players in Toronto. They are ranked second and third, behind Magnus Carlsen, who has opted out of the World championship cycle, citing a lack of motivation. Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi is another major contender, having won the tournament’s last two editions. Alireza Firouzja, the Iranian-born French player, is another player the Indian men have to be wary of. Praggnanandhaa and Gukesh are still in their teens, and this is likely to be only their first Candidates — they are more than capable of surprising the toughest of fields, as they showed at the Chess Olympiad and the World Cup. Koneru Humpy is by far the most experienced Indian in Toronto. A former World Rapid champion, she is one of the main contenders in the women’s tournament. Vaishali, Praggnanandhaa’s elder sister, is one of the world’s fastest improving female players. The women’s tournament, which features the former World Champion Tan Zhongyi of China, looks more open.

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