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Everyone is anxious to know which side the electoral camel recline. Politicians as a class as they have a self interest involved, political analysts to testify their ability and commoners for they will directly benefit or not, they want to anticipate the final count of votes in the election 2019. No one can predict with perfect assurance whether any contesting side will emerge with a clear mandate or the country would again relapse into a coalition politics. The Sangh Parivar proclaims its disinterest in political drama as its interest and activities are confined to social services. Yet it was interested to know beforehand how its political wing may perform. It got a private survey of public opinion.

Events unfolded in ways that I didn’t realise when I became an ‘accidental politician.’ I have always been political, but just a few years ago me and my friends would have laughed at any suggestion of contesting an election for parliament.

In the matter of seat sharing Rahul Gandhi has undoubtedly behaved like an astute politician. The manner in which some regional political parties like RJD and Samajwadi party, treated Congress had sent a shock wave in the rank of the party. Even voices of protest were raised by the supporters in some states. In Bihar alone a significant number of party leaders condemned the high handedness of the RJD in denying seats. For a common man this implied the Congress licking the boot of the regional satraps.

Foreign investors (FPIs) in the Indian stock market seem to be heavily betting on the return of a BJP-led political alliance to power. In a surprise move, Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s top investment banking, securities and investment management firm, has changed its India outlook overnight — from “marketweight” in September to “overweight”, now. The change in the India rating by the investment banking giant came after the Election Commission announced the Lok Sabha poll schedule. What changed in the last six months? In September, Goldman Sachs downgraded India amid rising oil prices and a falling Rupee. Goldman Sachs sees a high possibility of a NDA victory due to low inflation, monetary easing by the Reserve Bank and growing FPI inflows, driving Rupee’s exchange valuation to a seven-month high. Fiscal year 2019 will be remembered as the year when FPIs concentrated their buying in blue chips. As a result, the Sensex gained a little over 17 percent during the year and Nifty gained a little over 14 percent.

Weekly Round-Up of Major Decisions of the Courts in India as also Legal Policy Developments

On April 2, 2019, the Supreme Court is set to hear a bunch of petitions challenging the validity of electoral bonds scheme, 2018, which was notified by the Central Government on January 2, 2018. Vide the amendments in the Finance Act, 2017, the Government made many changes in the Reserve Bank of India Act 1934, Representation of Peoples Act 1951, Income Tax Act 1961 and Companies Act, 2013, in order to bring out the scheme. According to the scheme, an electoral bond is like a bearer promissory note, which can be purchased by any buyer from any authorised branch of the State Bank of India, without mentioning the name of the buyer or the payee, and will be known only to the bank.

A recent judgment by the Kerala High Court should provide great relief for bank customers pursuing refund of moneys fraudulently withdrawn from their accounts by third parties, for which the customers are contesting their authorisation.

Two decades back, when on 11th May 1998 India conducted the nuclear test in Pokhran, there was lot of jubilation by the government and the workers of the ruling party. People were made to believe that with this India will become a powerful country to reckon with. Those who raised skepticism about the whole programme were dubbed not standing with national interest. In response, the Pakistan government conducted nuclear tests just after 17 days on 28th May. Whereas India had done 6 explosions, Pakistan did seven. The whole talk of powerful nation with nuclear weapons got subdued. With this, we got into nuclear arms race, spending huge amount on nuclear weapons programme. At present both countries spend exorbitant amount on arms race in comparison to the expenditure on the social needs.

The election season is round the corner in the country with every political party focusing to win maximum number of seats. In order to fulfil the target, the political parties resort to some easy tactics to win seats. Parties use catchy slogans and poll promises to woo the voters in the election season. Apart from that, another strategy is to poach potential leaders from the rival parties and field them as own party candidates. This is mainly done to damage the rival party as the defecting leaders also bring a chunk of supporting voters.

Every political leader has to rely on an outsider or a pointsman to manage his affairs either in Delhi or elsewhere. One such person is Danish Ali, long-time loyalist of former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda. He decided to defect to the BSP with the blessings of Janata Dal (Secular) patriarch H D Kumaraswamy, the Karnataka Chief Minister. Danish Ali, who hails from Uttar Pradesh, left the JD(S) at a time when he was enjoying maximum clout in the party as general secretary. The reason was the lure of Parliament. Thrice Ali failed to get nominated to the Rajya Sabha from Karnataka.