Treasure hunt

Diamantiare Nirav Modi is spending a fortune in securing the best legal services in London where he is currently under custody of the UK law-enforcement authorities. Whispers in the corridors of the Westminster Magistrates Court were that Modi is paying through his nose, at least £50,000 or over ₹45 lakh per appearance, to his attorney Clare Montgomery QC, a top barrister in London, best known for her work on legally and factually complex cases.

Considering Montgomery has asked the judge to consider Modi’s offer to accept a security amount of a million pounds as a surety for bail, one wonders where all his money is parked, which is helping him defend his case.

Tale of two Mehtas

You must give it to Punjab National Bank’s two Sunil Mehtas (both Chairman as well as MD and CEO) for stonewalling all queries from hacks around the failing Jet Airways and whether the lenders are planning any interim funding to take the airline’s grounded aircraft back to the skies.

When a bunch of hacks sought to confront the two Mehtas on this issue at a PNB event on Friday, Sunil Mehta, MD and CEO, patiently urged reporters in chaste Hindi to confine their queries around the 125th foundation day celebrations of the bank — main reason for which they were invited.

When pointed out that the Jet Airways crisis was a very important issue for the nation, the other Mehta, Chairman, went a step ahead, saying: “Bank achhi tarah ud raha hai ” (the bank is flying well). Can't agree with him more is how many hacks felt after this brief interaction. PNB is standing tall in the Indian banking scene even after taking a ₹14,000-crore hit from the Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi perpetrated scam. Fair to conclude that PNB is well-positioned to support Jet Airways in its trying times.

VP’s style

It’s now widely known that Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu loves playing around with words. He has an uncanny knack of driving home the message to the audience, using his own staccato style. Sample this: He seemingly wanted to convey that India should aspire for systems where there is minimum personal interface between government authorities and citizenry and that digital medium could act as huge enabler for this.

 

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This is how he conveyed the message, inviting a huge cheer from those assembled at an event in the Capital: “Our focus is more on online. Online is the future so that there is no line. That should be our main line. Nobody should stand in line. That should be our approach. In coming days also for any work, nobody should stand in line and nobody should need to go and meet the other man or woman to meet and greet, shake hands ...and do something in between the hands! ....That should not be there.

“The JAM (Jandhan Aadhaar Mobile) will deliver us the revolutionary change in system. ...We have to understand and see to it that we devise system changes that avoid delays and plug leakages in the package announced by the Government from time to time. For this we have to take advantage of the technology”.

At the end of the day, betterment of the lives of people in all strata of society should be the focus of all policy-making. Can’t agree with him more.

Not a breezy option

Representatives of India’s wind energy sector have been miffed by the Centre’s approach to offer most project development opportunities through the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI). The officials say that this is an exclusionary approach and wind project developers really have no other option but to bank on the next SECI tenders to stay afloat in the domestic market.

As one sector representative said, “One cannot always keep eating at Sarvana Bhavan. There must be some variety.”

Our Delhi Bureau

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