AWAKENINGS

Scam happened at PNB’s mid corporate branch at Brady House, Mumbai. The fraud was being continuously perpetuated for a period of 7 years without being detected from the year 2011 till January 2018. The main instruments of fraud were LOUs (Letter of Undertakings) and FLCs (Foreign Letter of Credits).  LOU is being termed as Letter of Understanding or Letter of Undertaking by various sources reporting this scam – even here for such important financial document, the financial pundit does not want to stick to one specific terminology! Even LC is termed as Letter of Comfort and Letter of Credit, but, term - Letter of Credit is popular. This scam is not a single banking transaction confined to one Branch though originated from one Branch – but, many financial documents, many transactions, many foreign banks – at different periods spread over 7 long years at present mainly two foreign Indian Branches viz. Allahabad Bank at Hong Kong (Main chosen Indian Bank to avail for...

Anush Prakash was asked to attend a Meeting at Arvind Kejriwal’s residence at midnight – 12 pm on 19 th February where there were already around 11 Delhi MLAs assembled. Prakash was asked to sit at the centre of a 3 seater sofa along with   AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan and another Delhi MLA on either side.   Prakash’s pleas to have a meeting tomorrow in the Morning was refused and due to frequent calls from V.K.Jain, Advisor to CM Delhi and also from Manish Sisodia, Dy.CM, Prakash attended the meeting. It is highly objectionable to call officials at such odd hours, unless there were emergent matters. But, Praksh had revealed that the matter for the meeting was about the release of funds for TV campaign for the party. Even if the issue to be discussed was about the faulty implementation of aadhar depriving about 2.5 lac families of ration as alleged by AAP, there was no necessity for this mid-night meet at CM’s residence – as the Chief Secretary had to have his files...

Budget had focused on the distressed sections of the economy – mainly farmers, informal workers and the rural sector thereby a pro-farm budget. As Agriculture was the distressed section for quite long time, the present budget had concentrated on long term and sustained measures instead of free-bees like farm loan waivers which are poor substitute for lasting solution, but, vote catch mechanism. Arun Jaitley , the Finance Minister, in his 105-minute budget speech at the Parliament House while presenting his budget, used the words like ‘ agri ’ in 38 times, ‘farm’ in 39 times and ‘rural’ in 35 times. That is enough to call this budget as ‘Pro-Farm’. Staying true to government’s electoral promise of doubling farmers’ income by 2022, the minimum support price – MSP – of kharif crops and all rabi crops was fixed at 1 ½ times the production cost of the crops. • Linking Gramin Agricultural Markets ( GrAMs ) to the electronic National Agriculture Market ...