Rafale row: Reliance Entertainment confirms it paid 1.4 million Euros for film by Hollande’s partner
Anil Ambani’s Reliance Entertainment has confirmed that it financed 15 per cent of the budget of Tout La-Haut, the French film produced by Julie Gayet, the partner of France’s then President Francois Hollande.
Reliance Entertainment had paid 1.48 million Euros through one of its partners, French financing firm Visvires Capital, towards the production of the film, the company said in a statement.
“Reliance Entertainment had paid the aforesaid only EUR 1.48 million to Visvires Capital on 5th December 2017, as customary only about two weeks before the release of the film on 20th December 2017,” the company said in a statement.
Besides films, the Reliance Group has made several other successful co-investments with Visvires Capital, including inter alia in Sula Wines and Grover Vineyards, prior to the film co-financing, the statement said.
VisVires Capital is founded by Ravi Viswanathan, a Singapore-based French businessman of Indian origin who is a longstanding friend of Ambani.
“Reliance Entertainment has not signed any agreement with Ms. Julie Gayet or her company, Rouge International, and nor has any payment ever been made by Reliance Entertainment to either of them in relation to the film, nOmber One,” the company statement quoted a spokesperson while giving these details.
‘nOmber One’ was the title of the film when it was announced; it was released under the title ‘Tout La-Haut’.
Anil Ambani’s company also said that it received EUR 300,000 from the film’s French producer for providing physical production services for extensive location shooting in difficult mountainous terrains in Ladakh. Directed by Serge Hazanavicius and featuring French actor Kev Adams, Tout La-Haut was shot in Nepal and Ladakh, besides France.
Anil Ambani’s Reliance Entertainment entered into a deal to produce a film with Hollande’s partner and actor Julie Gayet. In this photo, Hollande with Gayet. (Reuters)
Last month, The Indian Express reported that Reliance Entertainment had announced on January 24, 2016, that it had entered into an agreement with Gayet’s firm, Rouge International, to jointly produce a French film. Two days later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Hollande signed an MoU in New Delhi for the purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets from France in flyaway condition.
Responding to that report, Hollande had told a French newsportal, Mediapart.fr, on September 21, “We didn’t have a say in that. It was the Indian government that proposed this service group (Reliance), and Dassault who negotiated with Ambani. We didn’t have a choice, we took the interlocutor who was given to us.”
In response to a question by news agency AFP on September 21, Hollande said Reliance Group’s name had appeared as part of a “new formula” in negotiations over the Rafale deal, which was decided by the Modi government after it came to power. Asked if he knew whether India put pressure for the Reliance Group to work with Dassault, Hollande said he was “unaware” and “Dassault alone is capable of answering”, as per AFP.
He had contradicted the Indian government’s claim that the deal between Dassault and Reliance was a commercial pact between two private parties and the government had nothing to do with it.
The deal for 36 jets in a government-to-government agreement was announced by Modi on April 10, 2015 during his visit to Paris, which led to the cancellation of the 126-aircraft deal being negotiated by the previous government. The deal was eventually signed on September 23, 2016 in Delhi between then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and his French counterpart.
Under the offsets clause, France is to invest 50 per cent of the total order cost in local contracts in India, worth Rs 30,000 crore. The offset obligations of the deal are to be discharged from September 2019 to September 2023, as per the contract.
The Rafale offset was the first project of this magnitude won by Reliance Defence, which placed it at the centre of a major political row. Opposition parties, including the Congress, have alleged that undue favours had been granted to Ambani’s firm in this deal, a company without any defence manufacturing experience.
Courtesy: indianexpress.com
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Single higher education regulator bill tabled in LS; Oppn flags ‘centralisation,' JPC likely
New Delhi: A bill to set up a 13-member body to regulate institutions of higher education was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan introduced the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, which seeks to establish an overarching higher education commission along with three councils for regulation, accreditation, and ensuring academic standards for universities and higher education institutions in India.
Meanwhile, the move drew strong opposition, with members warning that it could weaken institutional autonomy and result in excessive centralisation of higher education in India.
The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025, earlier known as the Higher Education Council of India (HECI) Bill, has been introduced in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The proposed legislation seeks to merge three existing regulatory bodies, the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), into a single unified body called the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan.
At present, the UGC regulates non-technical higher education institutions, the AICTE oversees technical education, and the NCTE governs teacher education in India.
Under the proposed framework, the new commission will function through three separate councils responsible for regulation, accreditation, and the maintenance of academic standards across universities and higher education institutions in the country.
According to the Bill, the present challenges faced by higher educational institutions due to the multiplicity of regulators having non-harmonised regulatory approval protocols will be done away with.
The higher education commission, which will be headed by a chairperson appointed by the President of India, will cover all central universities and colleges under it, institutes of national importance functioning under the administrative purview of the Ministry of Education, including IITs, NITs, IISc, IISERs, IIMs, and IIITs.
At present, IITs and IIMs are not regulated by the University Grants Commission (UGC).
Government to refer bill to JPC; Oppn slams it
The government has expressed its willingness to refer it to a joint committee after several members of the Lok Sabha expressed strong opposition to the Bill, stating that they were not given time to study its provisions.
Responding to the opposition, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said the government intends to refer the Bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) for detailed examination.
Congress Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari warned that the Bill could result in “excessive centralisation” of higher education. He argued that the proposed law violates the constitutional division of legislative powers between the Union and the states.
According to him, the Bill goes beyond setting academic standards and intrudes into areas such as administration, affiliation, and the establishment and closure of university campuses. These matters, he said, fall under Entry 25 of the Concurrent List and Entry 32 of the State List, which cover the incorporation and regulation of state universities.
Tewari further stated that the Bill suffers from “excessive delegation of legislative power” to the proposed commission. He pointed out that crucial aspects such as accreditation frameworks, degree-granting powers, penalties, institutional autonomy, and even the supersession of institutions are left to be decided through rules, regulations, and executive directions. He argued that this amounts to a violation of established constitutional principles governing delegated legislation.
Under the Bill, the regulatory council will have the power to impose heavy penalties on higher education institutions for violating provisions of the Act or related rules. Penalties range from ₹10 lakh to ₹75 lakh for repeated violations, while establishing an institution without approval from the commission or the state government could attract a fine of up to ₹2 crore.
Concerns were also raised by members from southern states over the Hindi nomenclature of the Bill. N.K. Premachandran, an MP from the Revolutionary Socialist Party representing Kollam in Kerala, said even the name of the Bill was difficult to pronounce.
He pointed out that under Article 348 of the Constitution, the text of any Bill introduced in Parliament must be in English unless Parliament decides otherwise.
DMK MP T.M. Selvaganapathy also criticised the government for naming laws and schemes only in Hindi. He said the Constitution clearly mandates that the nomenclature of a Bill should be in English so that citizens across the country can understand its intent.
Congress MP S. Jothimani from Tamil Nadu’s Karur constituency described the Bill as another attempt to impose Hindi and termed it “an attack on federalism.”
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