No coercive steps against Kanhaiya till Friday, HC tells JNU
New Delhi, July 18 : The Delhi High Court on Wednesday directed Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) not to take any coercive step against the former students union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar till Friday (July 20).
The former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union president was fined by a panel of the university in connection with a 2016 incident in which anti-India slogans were allegedly raised at an event.
Justice Rekha Palli's order came while hearing Kumar's plea challenging the university's order which has imposed a fine against him.
As the bench of Justice Siddharth Mridul was on leave, Justice Rekha Palli deferred the matter till Friday for further hearing.
Kumar's plea, filed through advocate Tarannum Cheema and Harsh Bora, has sought quashing of notification issued by high level enquiry of university.
A high-level enquiry found student-activist Umar Khalid, along with Kanhaiya Kumar and Anirban Bhattacharya, guilty in the February 2016 episode in which a group of students allegedly raised "anti-national" slogans.
It had also recommended rustication of Umar Khalid in connection with the incident, apart from imposing financial penalty on 13 other students for violation of disciplinary norms.
Kumar, a member of Communist Party of India's student wing, was the president of the varsity's student union that year.
The three student-activists were accused -- though none yet chargesheeted by police -- of raising slogans against the integrity of India during a poetry-reading gathering of students at Sabarmati Dhaba inside the JNU campus on February 9, 2016.
Delhi Police arrested Kumar few days after the incident, invoking the sedition law, while Khalid and Bhattacharya, along with three other students, went into hiding
The event was followed by a chain of student protests across India in solidarity with the students, who decried the acts of fabrication of evidence against them and anachronistic character of the sedition law dating back to 1860.
All three are now out on bail.
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India should create strategic buffers to navigate 'most difficult' energy shock: CEA Nageswaran
New Delhi (PTI): Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran on Saturday said India needs to create strategic buffers in the face of the "most difficult" energy shock that the country is facing amid the West Asia crisis.
Nageswaran also said the rising prices of fertiliser and petroleum products globally due to the crisis will make it challenging to achieve the 4.3 per cent fiscal deficit target for the current fiscal, while below normal monsoon and pass-through of higher energy prices could lead to "potential inflation spike".
He also said India has employment challenge emanating from AI, and there is a need to ensure that IT sector becomes more competitive and not lose jobs to AI, and instead create jobs that use AI within the IT sector or in other services.
Speaking at the ICPP Growth Conference organised by the Ashoka University, Nageswaran said the current account deficit (CAD) in the current fiscal could rise to over 2 per cent of GDP, from less than 1 per cent in FY'26.
"The ... priority for us is to create strategic buffers. This energy shock is the most difficult one compared to any other previous energy shock in terms of energy lost as a percentage of total global energy supply, not just oil, including gas.
"And we also need to use this occasion to think about other areas where we are vulnerable in terms of import dependence, nickel, tin, and copper. We need to build strategic buffers if we have to make a shot at manufacturing and becoming indispensable," Nageswaran said.
Since the beginning of the war in West Asia on February 28, crude oil prices soared to a four-year high of USD 126 per barrel on Thursday, from about USD 73 level before the war.
Stating that geopolitics will compel policymakers to be nimble and flexible and shed old model of thinking, Nageswaran said India is better prepared than many other countries to deal with the crisis because of the fiscal leeway that the country has due to lowering of fiscal deficit ratio to 4.4 per cent of GDP in FY'26.
Nageswaran said the West Asia conflict is more of a price shock than supply shock for India as the government is managing the supply side deftly.
"This particular conflict, which is going to be on a low simmer or a high flame situation, whatever it is, it is going to be there with us in some form or the other because the military conflict may be over, but the strategic conflict is well and truly alive. It will be so for some time," Nageswaran said.
He said the conflict has four channels of shock: price and supply shock, trade impact, sticky logistics costs and remittance shock.
India imports 60 per cent of its LPG usage and of that, 90 per cent flows through the now closed Strait of Hormuz.
Nageswaran said the pass-through of high global energy prices would have to be a "balancing act". He said some pass-through is already happening in commercial LPG, and the levy of export duty on diesel and ATF.
The government has cut excise duty on petrol and diesel to shield customers from the impact of the rise in petroleum prices. "We are coming around to arriving at a certain modus vivendi with respect to burden-sharing between the fiscal policy side, inflation, households and the oil marketing companies. So it has to be a balancing act," Nageswaran said.
