FREAKY FRIDAY Vol. 65 No. 343 | SATURDAY | JUNE 11, 2022 | 17 Pages | INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION GROWTH HITS 8-MONTH HIGH OF 7.1% IN APRIL EDITIONS: MUMBAI*, Pune, Indore, Bhopal, Konkan, E-paper EDIT QS WORLD RANKINGS PARTIAL TO THE WEST TEAM OM: THE BATTLE WITHIN OPENS UP ABOUT IT DURING ITS MEGA TRAILER LAUNCH EVENT 330c. 270c. Sunrise: 06:00 am Sunset : 07:16 pm It was an unusual day. Violence erupted in cities across India after the Friday prayers over the remarks of two suspended BJP functionaries; Sensex crashed over a global sell-off with traders spooked by US inflation data, which is worse than was feared; the Rupee continued to nosedive, touching yet another life-time low; still, for the political class redemption came in the form of Rajya Sabha results, but even these were marred by allegations of procedural irregularity and cross-voting. BJP PREVAILS KANPUR REPLAY Scoops a third RS seat in a major jolt for the MVA; earlier counting started late due to cross-complaints RASHMI SHARMA LUCKNOW In almost a replay of Kanpur eruption, a mob came out on the street after Friday prayers in Prayagraj demanding action against suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma for her derogatory remarks RANCHI TASTES HOWRAH TURNS MOB’S WRATH BATTLEFIELD LAW KUMAR MISHRA PATNA/RANCHI Different towns in Bihar and Jharkhand also faced the wrath of the mob. In what seemed to be organised protests, large scale violence and arson erupted in Ranchi, capital of Jharkhand, immediately after the prayers. The police responded with lathi-charge and later fired on the mob. One person was killed in the firing and 13 were injured. The senior SP of Ranchi was among the dozen policemen injured in stone pelting. A jawan of Jharkhand against the Prophet. The irate Muslim mob clashed with police, pelted them with stones and set ablaze a vehicle of the Provincial Armed Constabulary Similar incidents oc. curred in Moradabad, Deoband Firozabad and Saharanpur. Taking a serious note of the incidents, chief minister Yogi Adityanath has asked officials to take stern action against the guilty ADG Praya. graj Prem Prakash claimed that those associated with AIMIM, Samajwadi Party and Left outfits were among the protestors. Armed Police sustained bullet when someone from within the mob fired. Bihar’s public works department minister, Nitin Navin, who was on an official tour of Ranchi, had a narrow escape when his vehicle was attacked and damaged. It was claimed a temple, Sankat Mochan, was attacked and its priests were assaulted. The FPJ was not able to corroborate the report. Driven to the wall, the administration imposed curfew in Ranchi as violence spread to other areas where shops were damaged. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE THE JHARKHAND HOME SECRETARY HAS ISSUED AN ORDER SUSPENDING ALL INTERNET SERVICES IN RANCHI TILL SATURDAY MORNING. Protests in Aurangabad, Solapur... SANJAY JOG MUMBAI Maharashtra Home Minister Dilip Walse Patil urged people to maintain peace and cooperate with the police in maintaining law and order across the state, on Friday. His appeal came in the Different areas of Howrah turned into a battlefield on Friday after protestors clashed over the alleged inflammatory remarks of BJP leaders. Stones were pelted at men in khaki and a police kiosk was set on fire at Uluberia; several vehicles were also damaged by protestors. A BJP office in Howrah was allegedly ransacked and torched. A party functionary posted a video of the gutted office, demanding action against A day after traffic police fine 3,421 pillion-riders GAUTAM S MENGLE MUMBAI arsonists. Governor the Jagdeep Dhankhar has asked the Chief Secretary to meet him by 10 pm with necessary reports on the violence. The protestors blocked road as well as rail routes. The services of the South Eastern railway have come to a grinding halt. “Since they listen to her and unfailingly vote for her, West Bengal Chief Minister & Home Minister Mamata Banerjee should be able to identify and arrest these rioters and stone-pelters who vandalised and set fire to the BJP office in Howrah. BJP MP Sadhvi Pragya Thakur came out in support of suspended spokesperson Nupur Sharma saying “if telling the truth is rebellion, then I am also a rebel”. wake of protests by a large number of people in Marathwada, especially in Aurangabad, Solapur, Parbhani, Ahmednagar, and Raigad, against the controversial remarks by the now suspended BJP leader Nupur Sharma on Prophet Mohammad. Walse Patil said he had reviewed the TWITTERATI SNAP UP HELMETLESS COPS The recent decision of the Mumbai Traffic Police to make helmets compulsory for pillion-riders has led to a tacit tug-of-war between the police and citizens. Since Thursday, when the police began their crackdown, at least eight pictures of policemen riding pillon on two-wheelers without helmets have been posted on Twitter. From Thursday, police started penalising those riding pillion on two-wheelers without helmets, making them shell out Rs 500 each. The announcement was first made on May 25, and Mumbaikars were given 15 days’ time to buy helmets, after which police went into action on Thursday. In a single day, police had penalised 3,421 pillion-riders for being helmetless. In a perhaps unforeseen side effect of the move, however, citizens have now become extra ARITRA SINGHA KOLKATA situation after the protest in various parts of the state and instructed senior police officers to take due steps to keep the law-and-order situation under control. “Please maintain peace and take care to avoid any law-and-order problems in the state,” he appealed to the citizens. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE T The Sensex nosedived over 1,000 points while the Nifty slumped to the 16,200-level on Friday as investors dashed to take refuge in safer assets as hardening crude oil prices fanned inflation fears and triggered a global sell-off. The broad-based selloff knocked out more than Rs 3.09 lakh crore of investor wealth. The total market cap of BSE-listed companies slipped to Rs 251 lakh crore on Friday. Traders on the stock market are jittery ahead of the US inflation AGENCIES MUMBAI data due later in the day that will decide the course of the Fed’s tightening pace. In anticipation, Wall Street shuddered and stocks tumbled; they were getting hammered by data showing inflation is getting worse, not better, as investors had been CONTD. ON P13 hoping. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, or not? vigilant for the same violation being committed by policemen. Ironically, the first casualty of this online war was a traffic police CONTD. ON NATION PAGE constable. The Bombay High Court has held that income tax cannot be deducted from an amount given by way of compensation for property that the National Hi-Speed Rail Corporation has acquired for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project. A division bench of Justices S V Gangapurwala and M G Sewlikar passed its order on Thursday on a petition filed by one , Seema Patil, who sought a refund of the income tax deducted at the source by the NHSRCL after it acquired her property at Bhiwandi in Thane district for the project. The court in its order noted that the petitioner’s land was acquired for a public project and that acquisition of property BULLET TRAIN through private negotiations and purchases was permitted to expedite the process for implementation of the project. “If the parties would not agree with the negotiations and direct purchase, then compulsory acquisition is resorted to," the bench said. “No income tax can be levied in the Pass-holder, but want to travel by AC train? Both first- and second-class season-ticket holders may soon be able to travel by AC trains, by just paying the fare difference for a single journey, if a proposal to this effect, mooted by the Central and Western Railways, is approved by the Railway Board. This would mean that the commuter must ask for an AC ticket at the ticket counter and show their season HARYANA: CONG JOY IS SHORT-LIVED Compensation for land acquired not taxable LAST WORD SHASHANK RAO MUMBAI Maharashtra’s ruling Shiv Sena has suffered a massive setback with the BJP winning a third seat in the state in a straight fight. With BJP scooping the hotly-contested sixth seat, the results are evenly split — three seats each for the BJP and the MVA. The counting of votes started after an eight-hour delay amid tit-for-tat complaints of cross voting and rules violation by the BJP and the ruling alliance. The BJP took serious objection to MVA Cabinet ministers Jitendra Awhad (NCP), Yashomati Thakur (Congress) and Sena legislator Suhas Kande, claiming they had violated the model code for vothe Congress had a ing; the Shiv Sena and Conshort-lived victory gress, in turn, claimed violacelebration for its leader tion by BJP legislator and forAjay Maken, who the mer finance minister Sudhir party tweeted had won Mungantiwar and Independthe Rajya Sabha election ent legislator Ravi Rana. For in Haryana. However, the six Rajya Sabha seats, the BJP party deleted the tweet has fielded three candidates, minutes later after a the Shiv Sena two and NCP recount was called by the and Congress one each. Election Commission. It is With all the claims and understood that media counter-claims being bandied baron Kartikeya Sharma, about, counting was held up as who contested as an the ECI, the state’s chief elecindependent backed by toral officer, Shrikant Deshthe BJP, has won instead. pande, the election observer and returning officer, Rajendra Bhagwat, held a marathon meeting on the objections raised by both sides and checked the video recording of the proceedings. The BJP had fielded Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, former state minister Anil Bonde and former MP Dhananjay Mahadik. The Sena fielded Sanjay Raut and Sanjay Pawar. The NCP had fielded Praful Patel while the Congress fielded Imran Pratapgarhi. “Cabinet ministers Jitendra Awhad (NCP), Yashomati Thakur (Congress) and Sena legislator Suhas Kande violated CONTD. ON NATION PAGE the model code for voting. Jittery Sensex crashes on US inflation fears FPJ NEWS SERVICE / MUMBAI pass. According to sources in the railways here, a proposal has been sent to Delhi for approval, whereby passengers holding season tickets for non-AC trains, either first- or second-class and wanting to travel by an AC local, can do so by just purchasing a ticket for the difference in fares. “We have proposed a system where the passenger can pay the difference based on the single-journey ticket. A monthly season pass is counted as 50 journeys. Based on the formula used to calculate this, the single journey ticket fare and that of the AC fare on a particular route mentioned on the season pass could be derived. CR, WR proposal to allow season-ticket holders to travel on AC trains by paying difference in fares, pending approval This information could be fed into the ticketing system, which will readily calculate the fare difference and all that our staff sitting behind the ticket counter have to do is collect the difference and issue a ticket for the AC local,” explained a senior railway official. However, this proposal has not been accepted yet. It would certainly benefit a lot of people who want to travel by train and in air-conditioned comfort, as almost 65 per cent of those using suburban local trains in Mumbai are season-ticket holders. The Central Railway has sold 73,619 daily journey CONTD. ON NATION PAGE FROM THE SANJAY JOG MUMBAI present matter on the amount of compensation. Hence, the NHSRCL could not have deducted the TDS amount from the compensation paid to the petitioner. Income received by the petitioner on account of property acquired by the NHSRCL by private negotiations and sale deed is exempted from tax," the bench said. The court directed the NHSRCL to file a correction statement within a month to the effect that the TDS deducted by it while paying the compensation amount to Patil was not liable to be deducted. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE STATES MEDIA BARON BITES THE DUST T MANISH GODHA JAIPUR he political acumen and management of Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot have worked. The party has not only managed to win three seats of Rajya Sabha but also ensnared a BJP vote. The fourth seat went to the BJP as , anticipated. Media baron and independent candidate Subhash Chandra who was backed by the BJP did not even get as many votes as he should have. The winning candidates in Rajasthan had to get 41 votes each and the Congress candidate Mukul Vasnik secured 42, Randeep Singh Surjewala got 43 and Pramod Tiwari 41; BJP candidate Ghanshyam Tiwari got 43 and independent Subhash Chandra just 30. Chandra left Jaipur even before the counting of votes began. CONTD. ON NATION JD(S) HAS EGG ON ITS FACE I SHAKAR RAJ BENGALURU n the backdrop of crossvoting by two Janata Dal (Secular) lawmakers, the BJP on Friday won three out of the four seats in the Rajya Sabha polls in Karnataka while the Congress secured the fourth seat. The JD(S) was left with egg on its face when its lone candidate drew a blank. The JD(S) did not have a chance to win a seat, considering the numbers it had, but the cross-voting came as a major dampener. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, actorpolitician Jaggesh and MLC CONTD. ON NATION PAGE Dear Readers, FPJ is back with its Angels of Mumbai initiative. Do check the page in today’s edition. Trump accused of ‘coup attempt’ LISA MASCARO & TEAM WASHINGTON The House panel investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol Hill laid the blame firmly on Donald Trump, saying the assault was hardly spontaneous but an “attempted coup” and a direct result of the defeated president’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. With a never-before-seen 12-minute video of extremist groups leading the deadly siege and startling testimony from Trump’s most inner cir- cle, the committee provided gripping detail in contending that Trump’s repeated lies about election fraud and his public effort to stop Joe Biden’s victory led to the attack and imperilled American democracy House panel says he wanted to hang onto power at all cost and overturn the 2020 election which Joe Biden had won “Democracy remains in danger,” said Republican Bennie Thompson, chairman of the panel, during the hearing, timed for prime time to reach as many Americans as possible. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE