NEW DELHI: In addition to owning a 16.22% equity stake in Pune-based City Corporation, which bid for the Pune IPL franchise in March, NCP supremo and Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar and his family have a small stake in the parent company of Royal Challengers, the IPL team from Bangalore.
With intense scrutiny into every kind of investment of the NCP boss ever since The Times of India reported his link with City Corporation, Pawar on Sunday disclosed this investment in Royal Challengers in the course of an interview with a television channel.
The details of this investment, which have been with TOI for a week now, are as follow: The Pawars own over 51,000 shares - currently valued at about Rs 6 crore in Vijay Mallya's United Spirits Ltd (USL), of which Royal Challengers Sports Private Ltd (RCSPL) is a wholly-owned subsidiary.
The Pawars' shareholding in USL amounts to roughly 0.05% of that company's equity. This holding arose out of the merger in 2006 of Baramati Grape Industries Ltd - in which the Pawars had a significant stake and where his brother was a director - with USL.
These shares are mostly held through Lap Finance and Consultancy Pvt Ltd, a family company of the Pawars.
Lap Finance holds at least 13,950 shares of USL in lieu of its 4.12% stake in Baramati Grape.
Lap Finance is fully owned by Sharad Pawar, his wife Pratibha and daughter Supriya Sule. Each of them holds one-third of the shares in the company.
TOI had reported on Friday that through Lap Finance and Namratta Film Enterprises, the Pawar family owns over 16% of Pune-based City Corp, which was one of the bidders for the second round of IPL franchise auctions. The evidence contradicted the public stand of Pawar family and his daughter that they had nothing do, directly or indirectly, with any IPL team.
There is no illegality involved in owning such shares. However, there is a view in certain quarters that it might have better served the cause of propriety had Pawar disclosed his interest - given that in 2006 he was president of BCCI, which runs cricket in India.
It was in that same year that Baramati Grape was amalgamated with McDowell and Company Ltd. Shareholders of Baramati Grape were allotted 31 USL shares of Rs 10 each for every 20 shares of Rs 100 each of Baramati Grape.
Patil wanted delay on Afzal, hints Sheila
NEW DELHI: The mystery over why it took four years for the Delhi government to clear a file related to Afzal Guru’s mercy petition finally seems to be unravelling. Chief minister Sheila Dikshit has all but admitted during an interview to a television channel that Shivraj Patil, Union home minister at the time, had asked her government to sit on the file.
‘‘May be what you are thinking is true,’’ Dikshit said when asked if Patil had told her to keep the matter pending.
Sources privy to the exchanges between Dikshit and Patil told TOI that soon after the file came to Delhi government in 2006, Patil had made it very clear that there was no hurry. ‘‘He kept saying so throughout 2007 and 2008. Even when the delay in Afzal Guru’s hanging became an issue during the 2008 Assembly elections, there was no change in the position. The direction clearly was that no matter how many reminders went from the ministry, the file should not be cleared,’’ a source revealed.
Asked why he would give such an instruction when his own ministry was sending a reminder every three months (there were 16 of these before the file was sent to the lieutenant governor on May 17), the source said: ‘‘There does not seem to be any other reason beyond the possibility that the home minister may have been reluctant to take the onus of clearing Afzal’s file on himself. That pre-poll pressure built up by BJP did not make any difference shows he was not on the lookout for an electorally beneficial opportunity to dispose of the file.’’
Army acts against Col, Major for J&K killings
SRINAGAR: The Army suspended a major and removed a colonel from command on Sunday for their alleged role in staging the killing of three youths in North Kashmir’s Machil sector along the LoC on April 30 and dubbing them Pakistani infiltrators.
Colonel D K Pathania was commanding the unit 4-Rajput, allegedly responsible for the fake encounter, while J&K police named Major Upender Kumar as the main accused. The Army had last week ordered a probe after a police report named Major Upender for allegedly luring the trio with a job offer and gunning them down for rewards and promotion.
‘‘Colonel Pathania has been asked not to leave the Valley till inquiry is completed,’’ said Army’s Northern Command chief Lt-Gen B S Jaiswal. He was about to join his unit, which has relocated to Meerut.
Pathania is the second officer to be removed from the command after 33 Rashtriya Rifles’ Col Gloria was removed for allegedly killing three boys in Dudipora-Handwara in North Kashmir in February 2006.
Win back confidence: CPM Politburo to Bengal unit
New Delhi: The CPM central leadership has directed its West Bengal unit to redouble its efforts to win back the confidence of the people, making it clear that the state leadership was not doing enough to arrest the party’s downslide in the state as was reflected in the Left’s poor show in the civic elections.
In the light of the setback in the civic polls, the central leadership was of the view that many of the corrective measures identified by it after the 2009 Lok Sabha elections were not fully implemented in Bengal.
“The West Bengal state committee will conduct a review of the elections on the basis of which necessary political and organisational steps can be taken to win back the confidence of those sections of the people who have moved away from the party,” said a CPM statement at the end of the two-day meet.
While preparing the draft political report for the forthcoming extended Central Committee meeting — convened since the Party Congress was postponed — the tactical line taken by the party after the UPA-Left break-up came into question. Some members felt joining hands with unpredictable parties — read BSP and Samajwadi Party — was not beneficial to the party.
Sources said the draft was not finalised and the Politburo — which is scheduled to meet again next month — would continue the deliberations.
The Politburo also demanded that the UPA government should table the Action Taken Report on the recommendations of the Ranganath Mishra Commission.
‘I wanna be world’s worst-known terrorist’
New York: Two New Jersey men bound for Somalia to join a militant group and to kill American troops were arrested at Kennedy International Airport late Saturday, authorities said.
The men, Mohamed Haoud Alessa, 20, and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, 24, were to join Al Shabaab, which claims ideological kinship with al-Qaeda.
The men were taken into custody as they prepared to take separate flights to Egypt and then to Somalia to join Al Shabaab.
They were charged in a criminal complaint with conspiring to kill, maim and kidnap people outside the US and were expected to be arraigned in federal court in Newark on Monday.
The men have been under FBI scrutiny since 2006, after agents received a tip. An undercover officer from the New York Police Department (NYPD) recorded numerous meetings with them, during which they discussed their plans, according to the complaint against them.
The arrests were first reported Sunday in The Star-Ledger. The two men, both US citizens — Almonte lives in Elmwood Park, NJ, and Alessa in North Bergen, NJ—physically conditioned themselves, engaged in paintball and tactical training, saved thousands for their trip and acquired military gear.
They talked about their obligation to wage violent jihad and expressed a willingness to commit acts of violence in the US. On November 29, 2009, for example, the complaint said Alessa told Almonte and the undercover: “They only fear you when you have a gun and when you — when you start killing them, and when you — when you take their head, and you go like this, and you behead it on camera . . . We’ll start doing killing here, if I can’t do it over there.” “I wanna, like, be the world’s worst-known terrorist,” he allegedly said.
On April 25, Almonte said that there would soon be US troops in Somalia — which he called a good development because it would not be as gratifying to kill only Africans.
The men also watched and played for the undercover officer numerous video and audio recordings that promoted violent jihad, including lectures by Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni cleric who uses the Web to incite Muslims in the West to violence.
Al Shabaab was designated as a terrorist organisation in 2008. Last year, the group claimed responsibility for mortar barrages aimed at a US congressman, Donald M Payne,who was visiting Somalia.
Raymond W Kelly, the New York police commissioner, said “Even when individuals plan to support terrorist activity abroad, we remain concerned that once they reach their foreign destinations they may be redirected against targets back home,” he said. A official said Almonte, a naturalised US citizen, was born in the Dominican Republic and Alessa was born here to Palestinian and Jordanian parents.
Almonte and Alessa travelled to Jordan in 2007, and Almonte told the undercover they had sought unsuccessfully to become mujahideen fighters.
A short time after the FBI received the tip about the two men, investigators interviewed Almonte in front of his home. Weeks later, one of his family members said during the interview of Almonte, Alessa was hiding in the house with a large knife and told family he would kill the interviewing agents.
Business News
Sensex plunges on world woes
Mumbai: The BSE benchmark Sensex dropped more than 2 per cent early on Monday, with financials leading the fall, as world stocks slid after weak US jobs data and Hungary's debt woes slammed investors and cut down risk appetite.
At 9:01 a.m., the 30-share BSE index was down 2.4 per cent at 16,706.43 points, with 29 components declining.
Reliance Communications climbed more than 5 per cent after the No. 2 mobile firm said its board had agreed to sell up to 26 per cent of the firm, which could be worth nearly $2 billion at current market levels.
The 50-share NSE index was down 2.3 per cent at 5,018.65.
Pre-Market
Indian shares are set to fall on Monday in tandem with a slide in world equities after weak U.S. job data triggered doubts about a U.S. economic recovery and Hungary's debt problems added to investor worries.
Reliance Communications will be on the radar after the No. 2 mobile firm said its board had agreed to sell up to 26 percent of the firm, which could be worth nearly $2 billion at current market levels.
Investors will also bide their time after the government on Friday set out new rules requiring listed companies to have a public float of at least 25 percent, a move which could prompt tens of billions of dollars in share sales.
Real estate firms DLF, state-run utility NTPC and outsourcer Wipro -- the index firms that do not meet the rule will be in focus.
Metals makers such as Sterlite Industries, Hindalco and Tata Steel will be watched as Shanghai copper slid by its 5 percent daily limit on Monday and London futures slumped to near eight-month lows.
The MSCI's measure of Asian markets other than Japan was down 3.4 percent by 0254 GMT, while Japan's Nikkei was trading 4 percent lower.
The Nifty India stock futures in Singapore were down 2.4 percent.
On Friday, the 30-share BSE index closed 0.6 percent higher at 17,117.69, and logged a 1.5 percent gain for the week.
STOCKS TO WATCH
* Maytas Infra after it won a contract worth 1.85 billion rupees to build part of a metro rail network in the northern Indian city of Gurgaon.
* Forgings maker Bharat Forge and IT firm KPIT Cummins after the two firms signed a joint venture to make hybrid technology solutions for automobiles.
Rupee slips to 47.39 against dollar
Mumbai: The rupee weakened to its lowest level in nearly two weeks on Monday morning tracking a sharp fall in domestic stocks while gains in the dollar against major currencies also weighed on sentiment.
At 9:15 a.m. the partially convertible rupee was at 47.39/40 per dollar, off a low of 47.47, its weakest since May 26 and below its previous close of 46.84/85.
The benchmark Sensex dropped more than 2 per cent early on Monday, with financials leading the fall, as world stocks slid after weak US jobs data and Hungary's debt woes slammed investors and cut down risk appetite.
Most Asian currencies dropped compared to the dollar. See [EMRG/FRX] for a snapshot. The index of the dollar against six major currencies was up 0.4 per cent.
The euro fell to its lowest in more than four years against the dollar and hit an 8-1/2-year low against the yen on Monday as short-term players sold the currency on increasing worries about the region's debt crisis.
Petrol price may rise by Rs 4.50, diesel by Rs 2
New Delhi: Petrol and diesel prices could rise by Rs 4.50 and Rs 2 a litre respectively from this week if the empowered group of ministers (EGoM) approves a proposal freeing fuel rates on Monday. In a bid to tide over the mounting fuel subsidies, the group is also likely to consider an upward revision in kerosene prices by Rs 5.50 a litre besides considering a cap on supply of 5 LPG cylinders per connection at existing prices a year.
The EGoM led by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, which is meeting to decide on these hikes, is concerned about the huge fuel subsidy which has shot up over Rs 70,000 crore and is expected to be around Rs 80,000 crore this fiscal. But the government is hopeful that the backlash against such hikes may not be much as fuel prices have softened by 10 dollars during the past fortnight owing to lower global crude prices.
If the EGoM approves hike in fuel prices, this would be the second such hike this year as Mukherjee had raised taxes on petroleum products in his February budget this year that made petrol costlier by Rs 2.71 and diesel Rs 2.55 a litre.
Petroleum and natural gas minister Murli Deora on Saturday met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and discussed the fuel price issue as well as decontrol of petroleum products.
The key consideration of the EGoM is to convince allies such as the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress, which could object to raising of politically sensitive kerosene and diesel prices.
The move to free auto fuel prices was based on the recommendations of the Kirti Parikh Committee, which was constituted to suggest an all-acceptable mechanism for pricing petroleum products.
The panel recommended ending state’s control over pump prices of petrol and diesel along with raising prices of kerosene and cooking gas.
State-run oil marketing companies currently sell auto and cooking fuels at government-approved prices to help control inflation despite losing nearly Rs 3 in sale of petrol and diesel a litre. However, decontrolled prices, if it actually happens, would most likely come with riders limiting them to a certain level beyond which government would step in.
Deora is concerned over mounting losses of the oil marketing companies and the finance minister’s refusal to continue giving the dole has left little choice but to pass on at least some of the burden to consumers.
Sports News
Post-Zim failure, BCCI blinks
New Delhi: Most of the senior players are set to return to the Indian squad tomorrow when the national selection committee headed by Krishnamachari Srikkanth meet here to pick the team for the Asia cup in Sri lanka.
The selectors picked a virtually second string team for the tour of Zimbabwe were the rookies cut a sorry figure, failing to make it to the finals of the tri-nation series and losing both their matches to Zimbabwe.
It was a double set back for the Indian team which had failed to reach the semifinals in ICC World Cup Twenty20 in West Indies.
Regular captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, bowlers Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra and spinner Harbhajan Singh are certain to return to the squad tomorrow, while poor form and fitness cast a cloud of doubt over Yuvraj Singh.
Hard hitting opener Virender Sehwag is also recovering from a shoulder injury and is going under rehabilitation at the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore.
In absence of both Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir, India's makeshift opening pair of Dinesh Karthik and Murali Vijay too failed to impress in Zimbabwe.
Rohit Sharma, the only Indian to have impressed in Zimbabwe, is likely to be retained in the squad, along with Virat Kohli.
Zaheer and Nehra's comeback is virtually a certainty because the likes of Ashok Dinda and Umesh Yadav looked listless in Zimbabwe while R Vinay Kumar is nursing an injury.
In the slow blowing department also, India looked toothless with neither Amit Mishra nor Pragyan Ojha making an impression.
Offie R Ashwin will fancy his chances after making his contribution both with the bat and ball in the only match he played in Zimbabwe.
Nigeria win friendly match marred by fans' stampede
Johannesburg: Nigeria proved too strong for North Korea in their final World Cup warm-up in a match interrupted because of stampede outside in which at least 14 people were injured.
Ticketless fans pushed down a gate, seriously injuring a policeman, as they attempted to pack into the small stadium in Tembisa, on the outskirts of Johannesburg.
Police asked match officials to halt the game four minutes into the second half but it was resumed a few minutes later, once police had cleared an overcrowded main stand and stopped a crowd of some 500 outside from attempting to enter the ground.
Only 8,000 tickets were available for the game.
Nigeria took a 17th minute lead through Yakubu Aiyegbeni after a series of swift passes through the centre of the Korean defence.
A penalty converted by Victor Obinna on the hour doubled the score but the North Koreans pulled one back within a minute.
Elderson Echiejile's errant back pass was intercepted by Jong Tae-se, who scored from close range.
A sparkling run and cut inside from Kalu Uche three minutes from time saw substitute Obafemi Martins score a third for the Nigerians.
Cha Jong-hyok was sent off with 13 minutes remaining after collecting a second yellow card.
After successive draws against Saudi Arabia and Colombia, it was the first win for the Nigerians under new coach Lars Lagerback.
Losing a Grand Slam final is no fun: Soderling
Paris: Robin Soderling knew what to expect when he faced Rafael Nadal for the French Open title on Sunday — but he just could not cope with the best claycourt player of his generation. For the second year in a row, Soderling came up short in the Roland Garros showpiece.
Soderling did the vast majority of the attacking but the quality of Nadal’s defence meant that the errors inevitably flowed.
“I think in the beginning I was a little bit unlucky, I had a few break chances, he said. I didn’t take them, so then of course it was tough. The margins are very small. Of course I didn’t play as good this year as I did against him last year. I didn’t serve as well. When Rafa is playing like this, you need to have a really good day, which unfortunately I didn’t have today.”
Soderling said losing to Nadal was just as bad as losing to Federer in the final last year, but that the only consolation was that he did not have a sniff of victory in either. “Losing a final in a Grand Slam is not much fun,” he said. But I wasn’t close in any one of them. I lost straight sets last year and the same this year. It’s always tougher if you lose a really, really close match,” he said.
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