National Herald building lease: Centre assures HC status quo will be maintained till Nov 22
New Delhi, Nov 15 : The Centre Thursday gave an oral assurance to the Delhi High Court that it will maintain status quo till November 22 in the land lease matter of Associated Journals Ltd (AJL), publisher of the National Herald newspaper.
The assurance by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who was representing the Land and Development Office (L&DO), came after Justice Sunil Gaur said he will hear the matter another day and the Centre shall maintain status quo till then.
The court listed the matter for further hearing on November 22.
The publisher had approached the high court on November 12 challenging the October 30 order of the Urban Development Ministry, ending its 56-year-old lease and asking it to vacate the premises in the press enclave at ITO here by November 15.
Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for AJL, said status quo should mean that possession should not be taken and no proceedings under the Public Premises (Eviction of Unauthorized Occupants) Act, 1971, should be initiated till then.
To this, the court said "obviously" and added, "when the matter is sub-judiced, then that much courtesy they need to show to the court".
On November 13, when the matter had come up for hearing, the court said there is no urgency in the plea and it would hear it on November 15 as it had not received the case file from the registry.
The Centre's counsel had earlier said they were initiating the process and if AJL does not hand over the possession of the premises to them they will re-enter.
The petition, filed through advocates Sunil Fernandes and Priyansha Indra Sharma, sought quashing of the L&DO's order on the grounds that it was "illegal, unconstitutional, arbitrary, tainted with malafide and without authority and jurisdiction".
"The petitioner (AJL) has been in lawful possession of the demised premises for the last 56 years (since 1962) and the respondent (Centre) vide the impugned order, seek to dispossess the petitioner and re-enter the premises...," it said.
It also said the Centre has warned them of action under the PP Act, if they failed to vacate the premises.
One of the grounds mentioned in the L&DO order is that no press has been functioning in the premises for last at least 10 years and that it is being used only for commercial purposes in violation of the lease deed.
This allegation has been refuted by the AJL in the petition filed by the firm and its company secretary.
"The requirement of running a press cannot mean that all press and printing related activities have to necessarily be conducted at the same premises, that is, demised premises. The imperatives of prudent commercial business operations may necessitate that the petitioner company utilise the infrastructure or the premises at some other place as a supplement to their operations in the present demised premises," the plea said.
According to the petition, AJL initially received a show cause notice from L&DO in June this year which was based on an inspection carried out in April.
It claimed that the inspection was not conducted to ascertain whether there was any printing activity at the premises.
The AJL gave a detailed reply to the notice on July 16 and October 9, saying printing activity was carried out by it over the last several decades and also as on the date of issuance of the notice, it said.
As per the petition, the digital versions of English newspaper 'National Herald', Hindi's 'Navjivan' and Urdu's 'Qaumi Awaz' have commenced since 2016-17.
The weekly newspaper 'National Herald on Sunday' resumed from September 24 last year and the place of publication was the ITO premises, the petition claimed, and added that the Hindi weekly newspaper 'Sunday Navjivan' was also being published since October this year from the same premises.
"The necessary licenses and authorisations for the purposes of publication were also placed on record, in particular, the necessary licenses have been obtained by the petitioner (AJL)," it said.
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Rupee falls 9 paise to record low of 90.87 against US dollar in early trade
Mumbai (PTI): The rupee plunged 9 paise to a record low of 90.87 against the US dollar in early trade on Tuesday, weighed down by sustained FII outflows and no breakthrough in the India-US trade deal.
However, a weaker greenback and a decline in global crude oil prices capped further losses in the domestic unit, according to forex traders.
At the interbank foreign exchange, the rupee opened at its all-time low of 90.87 against the US dollar, down 9 paise from its previous close, and traded in a narrow range of 90.77- 90.87 in early trade.
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The rupee on Monday settled at a new all-time low of 90.78 against the US dollar, registering a loss of 29 paise over its previous close, weighed down by uncertainty over an India-US trade deal and persistent foreign fund outflows.
"The US-India trade deal still seems to be off by a distance with the Commerce Secretary saying the first phase will be signed before the end of the year and news that we are closest to the deal being signed. The uncertainty has clouded the recovery on the USD/INR pair as the rupee opened lower with dollar buying happening every day," Anil Kumar Bhansali, Head of Treasury and Executive Director, Finrex Treasury Advisors LLP, said.
Even a reduction in trade deficit on Monday could not bring about a recovery in the rupee with Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) outflows continuing, he added
According to the latest government data released on Monday, India's trade deficit narrowed to a five-month low of USD 24.53 billion in November, as exports rebounded by 19.37 per cent to a six-month high of USD 38.13 billion after contracting in October, driven by higher shipments of engineering and electronics goods.
At the same time, the country's imports dipped by 1.88 per cent to USD 62.66 billion due to a fall in the inbound shipments of gold, crude oil, coal, and coke.
FIIs sold equities worth Rs 1,468.32 crore on Monday, according to exchange data.
Also, wholesale price inflation stayed in the negative for the second consecutive month in November at (-) 0.32 per cent, even though there was an uptick in prices of food articles like pulses and vegetables on a month-on-month basis, government data showed on Monday.
Wholesale Price Index (WPI)-based inflation was at (-) 1.21 per cent in October and 2.16 per cent in November last year.
Meanwhile, the dollar index, which gauges the greenback's strength against a basket of six currencies, was trading 0.03 per cent lower at 98.27.
Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, was trading 0.61 per cent lower at USD 60.19 per barrel in futures trade.
On the domestic equity market front, the 30-share benchmark index, Sensex, declined 363.92 points to 84,849.44 in early trade while the Nifty was down 106.65 points to 25,920.65.
