National

Aircel-Maxis deal: P Chidambaram re-appears before ED

Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for the second time for a fresh round of questioning pertaining to the Aircel-Maxis money laundering case. Earlier, on 5th June, he had appeared before the country’s premier law enforcement agency to provide justification for decisions taken by him in 2006 while serving as the country’s Finance Minister under the UPA.

An ED official said Chidambaram appeared for questioning at the ED’s office around 11 am. He was summoned to appear on 6 June, a day after the agency questioned him for over five hours. Earlier, a Delhi court had extended the interim protection to him from arrest till 10 July in connection with the case, after directing him to join the probe whenever required. It was the second time when the Congress leader joined the probe.

In 2006, the FIPB gave clearance to M/S Global Communication Holding Services Ltd. to make investments in Aircel to the tune of Rs. 3,500 crore. The ED alleges that Chidambaram was competent to grant approval to projects only up to Rs. 600 crore. Any project exceeding the said monetary limit required the approval of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), which was not taken by the then Finance Minister.

The ED, in September 2017, had attached Rs 1.16 crore worth of assets of Karti Chidambaram , who is being probed for allegedly receiving kickbacks in lieu of the FIPB clearance. While Chidambaram claims that the ED’s action in this case is a “crazy mixture of falsehoods and conjectures”; the agency maintains that the court is taking cognizance of the FIR filed by the CBI.

Dear Readers,
As an independent media platform, we do not take advertisements from governments and corporate houses. It is you, our readers, who have supported us on our journey to do honest and unbiased journalism. Please contribute, so that we can continue to do the same in future.
Some error occurred

Related posts

National

TCA Anant to head government panel for transparency in jobs data calculation

TestHostEntry

New Delhi | Union Labour ministry today formed a committee under chief statistician TCA Anant to ensure transparency in jobs data calculation and presentation. The Labour Bureau had earlier conducted two surveys on employment — Annual Employment-Unemployment Survey (EUS) and Quarterly Employment Survey (QES).

The bureau has so far conducted five annual EUS and the reports on all the five surveys have been released. The field work of the sixth annual EUS (2016-17) has been completed and data entry validation work is going on, the ministry said.

The report on the sixth survey will be completed by September, the labour ministry said in a statement.

The annual EUS has been replaced by the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) being conducted by the statistics and programme implementation ministry. It was done on the recommendation of a task force on employment, chaired by Arvind Panagariya, the then vice chairman of the government think-tank NITI Aayog.

The labour ministry said the PLFS would not only have annual data on employment-unemployment in the rural sector, but will also have quarterly data on employment-unemployment in the urban sector based on larger sample size.

So the corresponding data set would be comparable, the ministry said. The Quarterly Employment Survey (new series) is an enterprise-based survey, carried out with an objective to measure relative change in employment over successive quarters for firms having 10 or more workers.

The QES has limitations, such as it takes into account those firms having more than 10 workers and does not cover employment in establishments having less than 10 workers. So, the QES, effectively, captures employment size of 2.40 crore workers only as against the total workforce of 47 crore.

The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) has also started releasing payroll data every month.

Acknowledging that unemployment is a major challenge that India is facing currently, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in March had said it was confident that the reforms in India in the last few years would end up creating new jobs in the country.

“Clearly India faces a challenge in terms of providing sufficient employment for a number of people looking for work and particularly young people. But yes, the measures and the reforms that India is undertaking will over medium term create jobs,” International Monetary Fund spokesperson Gerry Rice had said.

Related posts