Voting closes in UK Prime Minister race between Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss
London, Sep 2: The gruelling race to replace Boris Johnson as the Conservative Party leader and the British Prime Minister closed on Friday evening, the deadline for Tory members to register their choice between Indian-origin former Chancellor Rishi Sunak or Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.
Sunak, 42, and Truss, 47, have gone head-to-head in a dozen hustings up and down the UK over the past month to win over the votes of an estimated 160,000 Tory electorate.
With the ballots now closed, the result will be declared at 12.30pm local time (17:00 pm IST) on Monday by returning officer Sir Graham Brady, the Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) said.
This hustings programme has shown the strength of our party across the UK, with sold out events filling Wembley Arena to Perth Concert Hall, said Conservative Party Chairman Andrew Stephenson.
I'd like to thank Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss for participating in what, at times, must have been a gruelling schedule in good spirits and giving our members the opportunity to question them up front and personal, answering over 600 questions and putting themselves under the spotlight Whatever the result come Monday, I know our party is ready to unite around a new Leader and tackle the challenges we face as a country ahead, he said.
The CCHQ said 19,859 attended the 12 hustings events and a total of 2.2 million people viewed them across online platforms.
The contest began in mid-July, when Prime Minister Johnson was forced out by a ministerial revolt over a string of scandals amidst the Covid-19 lockdown.
The original field of 11 contenders was whittled down to two in a series of Tory MP ballots, with the final two going into a run-off to be decided by the membership, which stands at around 160,000.
While the British Indian former minister pegged his campaign on getting a grip on soaring inflation as an immediate priority, the foreign minister has pledged tax cuts from day one in office.
Overall, it is how they plan to tackle the cost-of-living crisis faced by the British public that has dominated the debates even as the duo addressed their final hustings in London on Wednesday night, where they reiterated many of their pledges.
I have put restoring trust at the heart of the campaign, said Sunak, in response to a question about integrity and ethics.
While he was the clear frontrunner in the leadership contest in the first round of voting when Tory MPs voted to select the two finalists in the contest, the Indian-origin finance minister has been on the back foot in the pre-poll surveys of Tory members who have a vote in this election.
Fierce loyalty to outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson is being cited as a key motivating factor in the choice of a majority for Truss, who was not among the ministers who resigned in the days before Johnson's forced exit from 10 Downing Street.
A staunchly low-tax favouring Conservative Party's attraction to Truss' tax cutting promises is the other key factor behind her as the frontrunner to succeed Johnson.
However, Sunak's supporters will be hoping for a repeat of the Brexit referendum result from June 2016 when Britain voted in favour of leaving the European Union (EU) and confounded most forecasts by pre-referendum surveys.
The 2019 general election, which brought Johnson to power with a thumping majority, was also against the forecasts of many poll pundits, who were predicting a less definitive result and anti-incumbency factor going against the Tories.
The winner of the online and postal ballots being cast since voting opened in early August will be announced on Monday, with the new leader heading for Scotland for an audience with the Queen at her summer residence of Balmoral Castle. Either Sunak or Truss will then address their first Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons on Wednesday.
Johnson, who led the Tories to a landslide victory at the 2019 election, will remain in office until the transfer of power is complete.
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Broken relationships don't automatically amount to abetment of suicide: SC
New Delhi (PTI): Broken relationships, while emotionally distressing, do not automatically amount to abetment of suicide in the absence of intention leading to the criminal offence, the Supreme Court on Friday said.
The observations came from a bench of Justices Pankaj Mithal and Ujjal Bhuyan in a judgement, which overturned the conviction of one Kamaruddin Dastagir Sanadi by the Karnataka High Court for the offences of cheating and abetment of suicide under the IPC.
"This is a case of a broken relationship, not criminal conduct," the judgment said.
Sanadi was initially charged under Sections 417 (cheating), 306 (abetment of suicide), and 376 (rape) of the IPC.
While the trial court acquitted him of all the charges, the Karnataka High Court, on the state's appeal, convicted him of cheating and abetment of suicide, sentencing him to five years imprisonment and imposing Rs 25,000 in fine.
According to the FIR registered at the mother's instance, her 21-year-old daughter was in love with the accused for the past eight years and died by suicide in August, 2007, after he refused to keep his promise to marry.
Writing a 17-page judgement, Justice Mithal analysed the two dying declarations of the woman and noted that neither was there any allegation of a physical relationship between the couple nor there was any intentional act leading to the suicide.
The judgement therefore underlined broken relationships were emotionally distressing, but did not automatically amount to criminal offences.
"Even in cases where the victim dies by suicide, which may be as a result of cruelty meted out to her, the courts have always held that discord and differences in domestic life are quite common in society and that the commission of such an offence largely depends upon the mental state of the victim," said the apex court.
The court further said, "Surely, until and unless some guilty intention on the part of the accused is established, it is ordinarily not possible to convict him for an offence under Section 306 IPC.”
The judgement said there was no evidence to suggest that the man instigated or provoked the woman to die by suicide and underscored a mere refusal to marry, even after a long relationship, did not constitute abetment.
