Sunday 24 November 2013

US connection to 2008 Mumbai carnage - was it a false flag attack ...

http://m.timesofindia.com/home/stoi/deep-focus/America-sacrificed-Mumbai-to-keep-Headley-in-play/articleshow/26289166.cms

America sacrificed Mumbai to keep Headley in play

Nov 24, 2013, 05.15AM IST Adrian Levy & Cathy Scott Clark ]

Five years on, this is what we now know. A valued CIA proxy, who infiltrated the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), a banned Pakistani Islamist outfit, planned the Mumbai attacks in which 166 people were killed, and more than 300 injured. David Headley, an American citizen, conceived, scoped and ran supplies for the terrorist 'swarm' operation, so called because several independent units simultaneously hit their enemy in multiple locations, coming out of nowhere, multiplying fear and panic.

Headley selected Mumbai, India's commercial capital, as the theatre of operations while acting as a 'prized counter-terrorism asset' for the United States, according to senior officers in the Joint Terrorism Task Force, who described his covert career as running for eleven years. When the LeT's ten-man suicide squad sailed from a creek in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi, at dawn on 22 November 2008, they navigated towards a landing spot in Mumbai, marked on a GPS provided by the Washington DCborn maverick. Reaching the world's fourth largest metropolis four nights later, LeT's team fanned out, following routes plotted by Headley over an intense two-year period of surveillance . Shortly before 10pm, the gunmen shot dead tourists at the Leopold Cafe, massacred more than 60 Indian commuters at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) railway station, and then laid siege to a Jewish centre and two five-star hotels, including the luxurious Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai's most famous landmark. Ten men would keep the mega-city burning for more than three days.

This month sees the fifth anniversary of the Mumbai attacks, and the most complete survey to date of former and serving intelligence agents, diplomats, police, and survivors from 12 countries, reveals that the CIA repeatedly tipped off their counterparts in India to an imminent attack, using intelligence derived from their prize asset Headley. What they did not reveal was that their source, a public school educated Pakistani-American dilettante and entrepreneur, was allowed to remain in place even as the attack was realized. His continuing proximity to the terrorist outfit would eventually lead to a showdown between Washington and New Delhi.

Researching 'The Siege', we learned that Indian intelligence agents accused their US counterparts of protecting Headley and leaving him in the field, despite the imminent threat to Mumbai. Irate Indian officials claimed that Headley's Mumbai plot was allowed to run on by his US controllers, as to spool it in would have jeopardized his involvement in another critical US operation . Having infiltrated the LeT, Headley also won access to al-Qaida, making him the only US citizen in the field who might be able to reach Osama bin Laden. Three years before America's most wanted terrorist was finally run to ground in Abbottabad, this was an opportunity that some in the US intelligence community were not willing to give up.

Phone and email intercepts seen by us confirm how Headley had become trusted by Ilyas Kashmiri, a former LeT commander and senior al-Qaida operative, who led an al-Qaida military affiliate, known as Brigade 313. Based in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, Ilyas Kashmiri was, at one point, considered as a potential successor to Osama bin Laden until his death in June 2011.

In 2009, several months after the Mumbai atrocity, agents from the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), India's foreign intelligence agency, confronted the CIA with these claims, according to accounts seen by us. India is said to have accused the US of pursuing 'a narrow self-interest' and having some responsibility in the deaths in Mumbai.

However, the CIA stood firm, one senior agent claiming that 'Indian incompetence' was to blame for the attack. In 2006, the US had warned India that the LeT was forming a suicide squad to attack India from the sea. More than 25 increasingly detailed bulletins followed that named Mumbai as the prime objective, and identified several targets, including the Taj hotel. Additional bulletins suggested that a team of highly trained gunmen using AK47s and RDX, military-grade explosives, would seek to prolong the attack by taking hostages and establishing a stronghold, before a final shoot-out that they hoped would be broadcast live around the world on TV.

Some of these bulletins were eventually distilled into notices that reached the police patrolling Mumbai . However, the assessments were 'ignored or downplayed' until July 2008 when a senior police officer, a Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) with responsibility for security in the district of South Mumbai where the Taj was located, took action . On 12 August 2008, DCP Vishwas Nangre Patil spent nine hours with the Taj's security staff, writing a report to his seniors that concluded: 'Overall, the [Taj] management has done very little to adapt the hotel to the changing security environment in the city.' When a truck bomb devastated the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, on 20 September 2008, Patil drew up an urgent list of enhanced security measures for the Taj, including snipers on the roof, blast barriers on the driveway and armed guards on all doors. Although security was tightened as a result, most of these measures were withdrawn again after DCP Patil went on leave in the second week of October 2008.

David Headley was a bizarre mix of Eastern and Western cultures and made for a near-perfect mole. His mother was Serrill Headley, a socialite and adventuress from Maryland, whose great-aunt had funded women's rights and Albert Einstein's research . His father was Syed Gilani, a renowned radio broadcaster and diplomat from Lahore, who had been seconded to Voice of America. When Headley was born in Washington DC in 1960, he was initially named Daood Saleem Gilani. Within a year, the family had relocated to Pakistan, where Gilani was brought up as a Muslim and schooled at an exclusive military academy. After his parents divorced and Serrill returned to the US to open a bar in Philadelphia, named, suitably, the Khyber Pass, Gilani, aged 17, rejoined her. He lived with her in a flat above the Khyber Pass — and soon immersed himself in the American way of life. Later he moved to the Upper West Side in New York, where he opened a video rental shop, Fliks.

By 1984, Gilani was a six-foot-two American boy, with a fair complexion, broad shoulders and an impressive mop of curly blond hair. Only his distinctively mismatched eyes — one blue one brown —hinted at his mixed heritage and muddled ancestry. Dressed in crumpled Armani jeans, a leather jacket slung over his shoulder, and a £10,000 Rolex Submariner poking out of his cuff, he was already looking for more lucrative opportunities than video rental. That year, he used his dual identities to smuggle half a kilogram of heroin from Pakistan's tribal areas to New York, selling it through the video store. When German customs officers caught him four years later at Frankfurt airport en-route to Philadelphia, with two kilograms of heroin, Gilani informed on his co-conspirators to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). While, his accomplices were jailed for between eight and ten years, he became a paid DEA informer, infiltrating Pakistan's drug syndicates . Some US agents warned that Gilani was too volatile to be trusted, and in 1997, he was arrested again in New York for trafficking. He offered another deal, suggesting he infiltrate Islamist radicals who were starting to worry the CIA and FBI.

A letter put before the court reveals prosecutors conceded that while Gilani might have supplied up to fifteen kilograms of heroin worth £947,000, he had also been 'reliable and forthcoming' with the agency about 'a range of issues' . Sentenced to fifteen months in the low-security Fort Dix prison, New Jersey, while his co-conspirator received four years in a high-security jail, he was freed after only nine months. In August 1999, one year after hundreds had been killed in simultaneous Al-Qaeda bomb attacks on American embassies in Africa, he returned to Pakistan, his ticket paid for by the US government.

By 2006, Daood had joined the inner circle of Lashkar-e-Toiba, which had been proscribed by the UN five years earlier. Coming up with the plan to attack Mumbai and launch LeT onto the international stage, he changed his name to David Headley and applied for a new US passport. He would use it to travel incognito to India on seven surveillance trips, selecting targets in Mumbai which he photographed using a camera he borrowed from his mother-in-law .

Headley was chaotic and his Mumbai plan was almost undermined by his private life. By 2008, he was married to three women, none of who knew of the others' existence, two living apart in Pakistan and one in New York. The wife in the US, however, grew suspicious after he championed the 9/11 attackers, reporting him to the authorities. Shortly before the Mumbai operation, his cousin Alex Headley, a soldier in the US Army also considered reporting him after Headley announced that he was naming his newborn son Osama and described him as 'my little terrorist' . His Pakistani half-brother Danyal Gilani, who worked as a press officer for the Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, disowned him.

Eventually, Headley's mother informed on him to the FBI. Her son was only ever interested in himself, she warned, arguing that his selfishness was born out of his lack of a sense of self. None of the complainants heard anything back, with Serrill Headley, who died ten months before Mumbai, confiding in a friend that her son 'must have worked for the US government' .

Five years on, with American officials continuing to remain silent over Headley (and the conflict of interest that enabled him to run amok in the field), and with New Delhi still prevented from accessing him, the full truth about Washington's culpability in 26/11 remains muddied. In India, where no postmortem of any depth has been carried out into Mumbai, the scale of the intelligence failings — the inability of IB and RAW to develop the leads passed them by the CIA and others — will also never be fully exposed.

Levy and Scott-Clark are investigative journalists and authors of 'The Siege'

Saturday 23 November 2013

District Bar Associations court battle against illegal Delhi High Court Bar Association (DHCBA) elections continues

PRESS RELEASE DATED 21 NOVEMBER 2013

District Bar Associations court battle against illegal Delhi High Court Bar Association (DHCBA) elections continues

The appeals filed by all six District Bar Associations and by Advocate and Bar Council of Delhi member Rajiv Khosla were again taken up for hearing today (21 November 2013) by the Delhi High Court Division Bench of Justice Badar Durrez Ahmed and Justice Vibhu Bakhru.

After hearing Mr R K Sharma, counsel for the District Bar Associations and Mr Rajiv Khosla who is appearing in person, the judges were inclined to permit Rajiv Khosla to file his nomination for the post of President of the DHCBA in the forthcoming elections subject to the final outcome of the case. The deadline for nominations ends at 5 pm today. i.e., 21 November 2013.

When Mr A S Chandhiok, appearing for the DHCBA, objected to this suggestion from the judges, Justice Badar Durrez Ahmed and Justice Vibhu Bakhru asked Mr Chandhiok to disclose whether he had convened a General Body Meeting to approve the impugned new amendments. Mr Chandhiok failed to answer this query from the court and the bench directed him to file an affidavit by 26 November 2013 stating whether or not the General Body of the DHCBA had approved the impugned new alleged constitution and rules of the DHCBA.

The Division Bench of Justice Badar Durrez Ahmed and Justice Vibhu Bakhru have clearly indicated during the course of the hearing today that they will finally hear and decide the appeals on 26 November 2013 and will finally dispose off the controversy whether the elections are to be held under the original rules or the impugned new allegedly amended rules. The Bench also observed that if on 26 November 2013, the Bench found that the new rules were unlawful then Mr Rajiv Khosla would be permitted to file his nomination for the post of President.   

The direction from the court to Mr A S Chandhiok to file the affidavit on the issue of the legality of the new rules was made after the court repeatedly enquired from Mr Chandhiok if a General Body Meeting had been convened to approve the new amendments to the rules as required by the constitution of the DHCBA and upon Mr Chandhiok’s failure to answer this question from the Court.

The appeals have now been adjourned to 26 November 2013. Needless to say that thousands of lawyers practicing in the Delhi High Court and in all district courts are closely watching these proceedings as they have been illegally disenfranchised under the impugned amendments. The elections are scheduled for 13 December 2013.



Mr R K Sharma
Senior Vice-President of Delhi Bar Association, Tis Hazari Courts
Mobile 9313340162


PRESS RELEASE DATED 19 NOVEMBER 2013

Packed court-room for 19 November 2013 hearing on District Court Bar Associations’ challenge to the illegal new constitution and election bye-laws of the Delhi High Court Bar Association (DHCBA)

Mr R K Sharma counsel for all six district Bar Associations for Delhi and Senior Vice-President of Delhi Bar Association, Tis Hazari Courts, emphasised before the Delhi High Court that the DHCBA should set an example for maintaining the rule of law rather than the law of the jungle and that it should follow its own constitution, rules and bye-laws.

The elections notified for 13 December 2013 under the new illegal rules will result in debarring several thousands of lawyers from participating and voting in the said elections. The new illegal rules were not circulated or published before 16 September 2013 and therefore the question of these rules coming into effect from October 2012 does not arise. The electoral roll is still not ready and is being modified on a daily basis. Since yesterday, names have been deleted from the voting list and new names arbitrarily added as per pick and choose method. The names of Kapil Sibal and Arun Jaitley have been deleted from the voting list after this issue was raised in court yesterday by the District Bar Associations. However the names of several sitting and former office-bearers of other Bar Associations including Mr P H Parekh and many other ex-office bearers of the Supreme Court Bar Association have been arbitrarily retained on the electoral roll while the names of other similarly placed members have been deleted.

Mr R K Sharma further submitted before the Delhi High Court that according to the new alleged amendments not a single person could remain in the voter list or contest for any post as no member of the DHCBA has deposited Rs. 500 towards the newly created social security fund, despite this having been prescribed as a mandatory requirement. 

Subscriptions from a select few have been accepted after the prescribed cut-off date notified for this purpose. On the other hand several members have been wrongfully omitted from the voting list despite their subscription having been paid and accepted up to 31 March 2014.   

The new alleged rules also include arbitrary and unreasonable restrictions on who can contest for the posts of the executive committee. The election commission constituted by the outgoing Chandhiok led executive committee has been staffed by several sitting executive members who have been party to framing the illegal constitution and rules. Thus the new election commission is not a neutral body as required under election law. Such blatant disregard for propriety and law is unheard of in the elections for any Bar Association as these lawyer bodies are supposed to uphold and maintain the rule of law.

The new alleged rules also illegally take away the supervisory power of the General Body and purport to vest amendment powers in the executive committee itself.

In these circumstances, the conduct of elections under the new rules will result in  grave prejudice to several members and to several potential candidates who will be deprived of their right to vote and contest in their own association.

The outcome of the court proceedings is being eagerly watched and awaited by over 30,000 lawyers who belong to the six district court bar association which are fighting on their behalf for justice and for rule of law in the Delhi High Court.

The new alleged rules suffer from other gross illegalities and are an attempt to concentrate power within a small coterie and which infringe upon the fundamental rights of all lawyers with the right of audience in the Delhi High Court. For example, rule 51 of the new constitution declares that all statements and opinions expressed in DHCBA occupied premises will be private and confidential. This would mean that even lawyers’ conversations in the Delhi High Court canteen would fall within the purview of this new rule and a lawyer could be hauled for misconduct by airing these conversations outside the Delhi High Court. Such draconian measures would not even be countenanced in a school, yet a lawyer body is being sought to be gagged in this manner.   

Mr A S Chandhiok appearing for the DHCBA had no answer to the submissions made on behalf of the District Bar Associations. The matter has now been adjourned to tomorrow (20 November 2013) for further arguments.

Over 30,000 lawyers are waiting to find out whether the rule of law will prevail or not.


Mr R K Sharma
Senior Vice-President of Delhi Bar Association, Tis Hazari Court
Mobile 9313340162

PRESS RELEASE DATED 18 November 2013

All Delhi district court bar associations have challenged the unconstitutional and illegal amendments to the Delhi High Court Bar Association (DHCBA) constitution and election bye-laws in suits and appeals filed in the Delhi High Court on which arguments were addressed in the Delhi High Court today.

Gross illegality by A S Chandhiok led executive committee of DHCBA in unlawfully amending Association constitution/ bye-laws and election rules and in the conduct of proposed elections.

DHCBA is a representative body of lawyer-members in Delhi High Court. Under its constitution, it is required to hold elections every year. Rules for the DHCBA can only be amended in a General Body Meeting.

A S Chandhiok was elected as President of the DHCBA in September 2009. He did not hold elections for two years until the Bar Council of Delhi (a statutory body) compelled him to conduct elections.

A S Chandhiok was again elected president of the DHCBA in December 2011 defeating Rajiv Khosla by a very narrow margin.

The executive committee led by Mr A S Chandhiok has failed to convene the required Annual General Meetings in both 2012 and in 2013.

A S Chandhiok again failed to hold elections in 2012 and has illegally held on to the post of President of the DHCBA for two years.

On 16 September 2013, for the first time, member-lawyers of the DHCBA were informed that the Chandhiok led executive committee (which was staying on in office illegally)  had unilaterally framed a new constitution without convening a General Body Meeting.

These new rules are illegal because: -
  • They have been framed secretly and illegally without convening a General Body Meeting and without informing/ involving members
  • They are malafide, self-serving, and are being implemented in arbitrary and discriminatory manner by debarring all executive members of other Bar Associations
  • The voter list is fabricated and fraudulent
  • The voter list is inaccurate – for example Arun Jaitley and Kapil Sibal are included in the voter list even though their bar licence stands suspended on account of holding office of profit
  • The elections were notified even without the voter list having been finalised.
  • The voter list also violates the new rules by picking and choosing method and by selectively debarring several members including Rajiv Khosla who contested against A S Chandhiok in 2011 and lost by a narrow margin



It is a matter of great disappoinment that A S Chandhiok who is an Additional Solicitor General for the Government of India is not following the rule of law and is promoting dictatorship over democracy and thereby causing irreparable damage to the institution of the DHCBA.

Based upon representations by all district bar associations in Delhi, the Bar Council of Delhi exercised power under the Advocates Act and dissolved the Chandhiok led executive committee on 24 October 2013 and appointed an election committee to hold elections under the old rules.

A S Chandhiok and his team obtained a stay order of the Bar Council of Delhi resolution on a Saturday (26 October 2013) without serving advance notice on the Bar Council even though this is required under Delhi High Court rules.  

Six district court bar associations and some lawyers have filed suits in the Delhi High Court challenging these new illegal rules and seeking orders for elections under the old rules. The orders passed by Justice Vipin Sanghi, Single Judge refusing stay of elections has been challenged in appeals filed by the district Bar associations and by lawyers and these appeals are being heard by a Division Bench of Justice Badar Durrez Ahmed and Justice Vibhu Bakhru.

Arguments were led by Mr Rajiv Khosla (member of Bar Council of Delhi)  and Mr R K Sharma (Senior Vice-President of Delhi Bar Association and Senior Vice-Chairman of the coordination committee of all district bar associations) today (18 November 2013) for the Bar Associations and the matters have been adjourned for tomorrow.



Mr R K Sharma
Senior Vice-President of Delhi Bar Association, Tis Hazari Court
Mobile 9313340162

Friday 22 November 2013

General Electric whistleblower in danger of being poisoned

All,

I am posting this here because I am unable to send an email at this time.

All,

In IIC this morning I asked for a room change. 4 men were in the room ostensibly getting it ready for me.

Why were 4 men in the room?

I moved to a different room.

Later in the day when I was in the room  until around 3 pm, I felt dizzy 2-3 times. It is possible that some substance was introduced into the room to poison me. I am concerned about the possibilty of slow-poisoning. I was coughing later today when I was in the Delhi High Court. I mentioned this concern to ASG Rajiv Mehra.

I am sitting in the IIC lounge. After I ordered a waiter was unnecessarily hovering near me. I could smell some chemical/ substance which made me cough. A group of 4 men sitting on an adjacent table also experienced respiratory discomfort and moved out to the open terrace.

Seema Sapra

On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 6:51 AM, Seema Sapra <seema.sapra@googlemail.com> wrote:
> The room I have been given at the IIC has no hot water in the taps and
> the kettle is also not working.
> Sandip Thakur at reception told me he cld send maintenance or
> housekeeping guys to my room. Why shd I have to deal with these men
> even before 7 AM in the morning.
>
> I am deliberately being targeted here in the IIC.
>
>
>
> On 11/21/13, Seema Sapra <seema.sapra@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> In other places, I was targeted and poisoned with participation of
>> staff including housekeeping staff and security staff.
>>
>> The staff at IIC is already acting strange.
>>
>> I had requested housekeeping for extra pillows.
>>
>> Two men came to my room Das Kumar and Pramod Kumar.
>>
>> Pramod Kumar was unnecessarily entering the room when I was speaking
>> to Das Kumar.
>>
>> Also, Das Kumar on his own switched on the heating.
>>
>> I find this strange.
>>
>> There is a threat to my life and there are court orders for my protection.
>>
>> I am primarily concerned about toxic substances being introduced into my
>> room.
>>
>> Why did Das Kumar switch on the heating?
>>
>> Seema Sapra
>>
>> On 11/21/13, Seema Sapra <seema.sapra@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>> All,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Last night I stayed in the India International Center (IIC) as a guest
>>> of IIC member and ASG Mr A S Chandhiok.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I am again staying at the IIC tonight.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I have been poisoned in other places that I have stayed at over the
>>> last 3 years, including at the India Habitat Center, at Ambassador
>>> hotel and most recently at Ginger hotel- Vivek Vihar in June 2013. Not
>>> only did the police facilitate such poisoning but also participated in
>>> the attempted cover-up afterwards.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Delhi police officials are involved in targeting me and in past
>>> attempts to murder me.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I want Z+ security.  There is an enhanced  threat to my life at this
>>> time from General Electric,  and from Montek Singh Ahluwalia  because
>>> of my whistleblower complaints in WP Civil 1280/ 2012 pending in the
>>> Delhi High Court. The threat also emanates from Soli Sorabjee and
>>> Raian Karanjawala.  I repeat that Delhi police officers are colluding
>>> in targeting me.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I also attach a document served on me by AZB & Partners on 19 November
>>> 2013.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I will be responding to this document as well as to the following
>>> email received by me on 19 November 2013.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> “From: deepak verma [mailto:justicedverma@gmail.com]
>>> Sent: 19 November 2013 13:40
>>> To: seema.sapra@googlemail.com
>>> Cc: nanju.ganpathy@azppartners.com
>>> Subject:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 19-11-2013,
>>>
>>> Dear Sir/Madam,
>>>
>>> SUB: ARBITRATION MATTER BETWEEN G.E. INDIA INDUSTRIAL PVT. LTD. VS.
>>> MS. SEEMA SAPRA BEFORE THE SOLE ARBITRATOR, JUSTICE DEEPAK VERMA,
>>> RETD. JUDGE, SUPREME COURT OF INDIA.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> REF:    My letter dated 16-11-2013.
>>>
>>>                            I have been appointed as a Sole Arbitrator
>>> in the aforesaid matter to resolve the disputes between the parties.
>>> In this regard, I have already sent my consent to act as such.
>>>
>>>                            I now hereby give you Notice to appear
>>> before me on 08-12-2013 Sunday at 11:30 AM at my residence for
>>> Preliminary Hearing.
>>>
>>>                           Please make it convenient to appear on the
>>> aforesaid date at my residence so that Procedural Order could be
>>> passed in your presence.
>>>
>>>                            For appearance of Parties or their
>>> Advocates on DECEMBER, 08’ 2013, SUNDAY AT 11:30 AM, AT MY RESIDENCE,
>>> i.e. B-4, Geetanjali Enclave, (G.F.) Main Shivalik Road, New Delhi
>>> 110017.
>>>
>>>
>>>                   Sole Arbitrator,
>>>
>>> 19-11-2013
>>>     Justice Deepak Verma
>>>
>>> New Delhi
>>>                     (Former Judge)
>>>
>>>
>>>                      Supreme Court Of India
>>>
>>> To,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Ms. Seema Sapra,
>>>
>>> G-4, FF,
>>>
>>> Jangpura Extension
>>>
>>> New Delhi – 110014
>>>
>>> Seema.sapra@googlemail.com
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Mr. N. Ganpathy,
>>>                  M/S G.E.India Industrial Private Ltd.
>>>
>>> For A.Z.B & Partners
>>>    401,402, 4th Floor
>>>
>>> Advocates & Solicitors
>>>     Aggarwal Millennium Tower,
>>>
>>> Plot No. A-8, Sector – 4
>>>     E-1,2,3 Netaji Subhash Palace
>>>
>>> Noida – 201301 [U.P]
>>>    Wazirpur, Delhi.
>>>
>>> Nanju.ganpathy@azbpartners.com”
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I have made complaints of corruption, fraud, forgery, bribery and
>>> other criminal offences against General Electric Company and its
>>> Indian subsidiaries and against several GE management level staff, GE
>>> lawyers and agents.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> These complaints are subjudice before the Delhi High Court in W.P.
>>> Civil 1280/ 2012. These complaints are not arbitrable.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Any attempt to initiate arbitration in this matter or any order passed
>>> by Justice Deepak Verma in this matter will inter alia amount to
>>> contempt of court, interference with and obstruction of the
>>> administration of justice, influencing and intimidation of a protected
>>> witness, and inteference with a whistleblower corruption petition
>>> pending with the Delhi High Court.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I will be sending a detailed reply to the letter from AZB and to the
>>> email received by me on 19 November 2013 setting forth in detail why
>>> this arbitration cannot be intiated and cannot be proceeded with and
>>> elaborating on why Justice Deepak Verma must not give his consent for
>>> any arbitration.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Seema Sapra
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Seema Sapra
>>
>
>
> --
> Seema Sapra


Friday 15 November 2013

Ex Attorney General of India (Soli J Sorabjee) made lecherous passes at french woman during a film festival

This lecherous ex Attorney General of India has to be Soli J Sorabjee 

The comment below was posted by someone using the name krishna on the blog post by Stella James on the website of the NUJS run Journal of Indian Law and Society.

The comment refers to a former Indian ex Attorney General / Solicitor General, who speaks french. The man in question is clearly none other than Soli J Sorabjee, against whom I have made a complaint of sexual harassment. This complaint has been made to the Chief Justice of India as well.

Here is the comment:

krishna says:
Women in Mahabharata reveal to men in general that they are great teachers of life and relationships. A French friend while she was in Delhi once told me that one ex AG/SG had made amorous passes at her in French language at an environmental film festival. She described him as a ‘lech’. Toxic conduct of senior members of bar and bench need to be rigorously documented by their subordinates. This hold true for all the professions…journalism, politics, bureaucracy, corporate sector, NGOs. You seem like a brave women from Mahabharata. May you always remain so. Your choice of words is without malice despite facing having been violated. Bible aptly states, “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned”.

This has been posted on Stella James article about the sexual assault by a retired Supreme Court of India judge at http://jilsblognujs.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/through-my-looking-glass/comment-page-2/#comments

Thursday 14 November 2013

Prashant Bhushan describes Soli Sorabjee as a dishonest lawyer

In an interview given to Outlook magazine, Prashant Bhushan has stated the following about Soli J Sorabjee:

"There are people in the bar, however, who are sympathetic to him. Former attorney-general Soli Sorabjee, for example....

Mr Sorabjee will be sympathetic towards all dishonest lawyers. When he was the attorney-general, he had attended a meeting in London with the Hindujas and their lawyers from the law firm of Clifford Chance. And the minutes of the meeting quoted him advising that the Hindujas should get the ministries to seek an opinion from him, and then he would give an opinion that would suit them. I had then written in Frontline criticising Mr Sorabjee.

What was the then A-G’s reaction?

The same as Mr Vahanvati’s. He came up to me and said, “Prashant, I wish you had checked with me before writing the article; I would have set the record straight.” It is a sign of the times. If tomorrow a video footage shows the A-G accepting money, I don’t think either he or the government would be perturbed. They would laconically say that the footage should be sent for forensic examination and that it was mischievous and mala fide. Nobody blinks an eyelid." 

Monday 11 November 2013

young Indian lawyer blogs about sexual assault by Supreme Court of India judge

Read it here at http://jilsblognujs.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/through-my-looking-glass/

Stella James writes:

"Last December was momentous for the feminist movement in the country – almost an entire population seemed to rise up spontaneously against the violence on women, and the injustices of a seemingly apathetic government. In the strange irony of situations that our world is replete with, the protests were the backdrop of my own experience. In Delhi at that time, interning during the winter vacations of my final year in University, I dodged police barricades and fatigue to go to the assistance of a highly reputed, recently retired Supreme Court judge whom I was working under during my penultimate semester. For my supposed diligence, I was rewarded with sexual assault (not physically injurious, but nevertheless violating) from a man old enough to be my grandfather. I won’t go into the gory details, but suffice it to say that long after I’d left the room, the memory remained, in fact, still remains, with me."

So is the lawyer community going to cover this up as well?

Also read http://www.legallyindia.com/201311114099/Interviews/sexual-harassment-supreme-court-is-common

Stella James' internship at the Supreme Court of India and the name of the judge she worked under is a matter of public record both at the Supreme Court and at NUJS.  So why is no one naming the judge. He is an accused in a criminal offence - sexual assault.

Any person can be the complainant in a criminal offence, even if the victim chooses not to formally complain.

Why is the Bar Council of Delhi silent.

The victim has identified the assailant by position if not by name.

Stella James has stated that she interned under the assailant in her penultimate semester at NUJS. Therefore this would have been between May and October 2012.

She also states that the sexual assault took place on 24 December 2012, and that the assailant was on 24 December 2012, a 'recently retired Supreme Court judge'.

Swatantra Kumar retired on 19 December 2012 and on 24 December 2012, he was a recently retired SC judge.

The recently retired reference is to recently retired as of 24 December 2012, the date of the sexual assault.

Also, even though the CJI has constituted a three judge committee to look into the issue, this is not the correct and appropriate response in accordance with the rule of law.

The victim has stated that a serious criminal offence (sexual assault) was committed against her person by this retired judge. The accused has been identified by position if not by name.

This calls for the registration of an FIR based upon the complaint and a police investigation.

The three judge committee will have secret deliberations and produce a secret report, which might be used to cover up this crime.

Also for those who are questioning if someone forced the lady to enter the hotel room where the assault occurred, I ask them to instead focus on what explanation does the SC judge have for spending time alone in a hotel room with a female 40 years younger than him.

We should ask him this question.

The lady states she was sexually assaulted and I believe her.

Even if a hypothetical lady had hypothetically consented to have sex with the SC judge, how does this excuse and justify the behavior of a 65 year old married SC judge with four children and his decision to have sex with a young lawyer around 24 years old who had interned with him while he was a sitting SC judge?

Monday 4 November 2013

Why Raghuram Rajan should not have been appointed Governor of the Reserve Bank of India

Raghuram Rajan has been forced to clarify whether he retains his Indian citizenship and according to him, he has never applied for citizenship of any other country.

He has declared that he has a United States green card, and that he never became a US citizen.

Nevertheless,  it is very unfortunate that the Government of India has appointed  Raghuram Rajan as the RBI Governor.

Even if Raghuram Rajan is an Indian citizen, he has spent only 11 years of his 50 years in India. He first lived in India as a young child. Then spent the rest of his childhood and teen-aged years overseas. He returned to India to obtain an engineering and a management degree and then moved to the United States where he chose to establish his home and permanent residence after completing a PhD at MIT.

He then spent almost three decades in the United States and established permanent residence in the United States and obtained a Green Card for this purpose.

His children were born in the United States and are US citizens. What is the citizenship status of his wife?

All his investments, property, wealth and that of his family is presumably located in the United States and in dollar denomination.

By choosing the United States as his permanent residence, Raghuram Rajan had effectively cut off his ties to India.

If Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Manmohan Singh (both of whom are fervent enablers of US governmental and US corporate interests in India) had not invited Raghuram Rajan to India, Raghuram Rajan would most likely have applied for US citizenship.

Raghuram Rajan's work, research, and life experience have not concerned India.

Why has he now been appointed as RBI Governor? Surely, there were more qualified, experienced and capable candidates who maintained their ties to India and who have more experience of India's economic and social realities.

It also turns out that Raghuram Rajan's father, R Govindarajan, was not a diplomat, but an intelligence official who was also associated with RAW.

I reproduce below some additional information about Raghuram Rajan.

What is of interest is that towards the late 1980s and early 1990s, Raghuram Rajan's father was a senior intelligence official, and was a part of RAW.

So a RAW official's son leaves India on a scholarship for a PhD at MIT (a major recruiting ground for the CIA), and then settles in the United States for the next 30 odd years.

Such an individual ought to have been on an intelligence black-list of likely CIA indoctrination and recruitment, and instead 25-30 years later, our government rolls out the red carpet for him and invites him back to India, first making him the Chief Economic Advisor and now the Governor of the RBI.

Also, Raghuram Rajan is wrong when he calls his US green card a mere work permit. it is much more than that. It is a document establishing permanent residence and granting residency status in the US.

A wikileaks US embassy cable describes a meeting where Montek Ahluwalia and David Mulford met and discussed as follows:

"Ambassador again stressed the importance of the financial sector in upcoming U.S.-India discussions, noting that a central economic issue for India is the long-term status of its financial markets. He added that India's financial markets today have the makings for a regional financial center, given India's huge hinterland and large and increasing savings rates that mirror the conditions in the U.S. banking sector a generation ago. The Ambassador said that virtually all large U.S. banks were once domestic-centered, before they went global. Ahluwalia agreed, noting that the GOI (with MOF and Prime Minister approval) had just commissioned a High Level Committee on Financial Sector Reforms, composed mostly of private sector individuals, to make recommendations by next March on next steps in financial sector reform. He added that, until India ends the dominance of the State in the banking sector, there will never be a level playing field for private or foreign banks that is necessary if India is to establish itself as a regional financial center. MULFORD"

This is what Raghuram Rajan has been brought in to achieve.

"enter raghuram rajan - 5

By the time Rajan was preparing to leave India, his father had ascended to the top ranks of R&AW.
The agency’s director, SE Joshi, was set to retire in June 1987, and Govindarajan was in line to succeed him.
But according to two published accounts, which were confirmed by a former R&AW chief, his ascent was suddenly derailed earlier that year by an unexpected development: the eruption of the Bofors scandal.

On 16 April, Swedish Radio aired its first report on the kickbacks paid by Bofors to Indian officials and politicians.
Late that same night—after midnight, according to Prashant Bhushan’s book Bofors: The Selling of the Nation—Rajiv Gandhi summoned his IB chief and the acting director of R&AW, Govindarajan, to an urgent meeting at his house: 
They were immediately ushered into the Prime Minister’s office. The Prime Minister was wide awake and quickly asked them what was happening. Govindarajan, who had just returned from out of town the previous night, was taken by surprise. He had no idea what the Prime Minister wanted to know.
As a result, Gandhi superseded Govindarajan and installed a more junior officer, AK Verma, as the R&AW chief. Govindarajan was instead made chairman of the government’s joint intelligence committee, where he remained until his retirement.
(In his memoir of the spy service, The Kaoboys of R&AW, the late B Raman provides a less detailed account of the same episode without naming Govindarajan, referring instead to an “officer of the Tamil Nadu cadre” who was superseded because Gandhi was annoyed that “he was unaware of the Bofors scandal when it broke out in the Swedish electronic media.”)
When I first mentioned his father’s career in R&AW, Rajan was taken aback; it seemed possible nobody had put the question to him before. (“He’s very uncomfortable talking about himself,” one of Rajan’s old friends told me.)
He confirmed that his father had been in line to head the spy agency, but denied that the Bofors story had anything to do with Gandhi’s decision.
“My father’s experience in bureaucracy was a good one,” Rajan said, uncomfortably, when I asked if it had in any way influenced his decision to return to India.
“But that didn’t—I didn’t join the bureaucracy. So it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted to read, write, think.”"

http://ss24.blogspot.in/2013/10/by-time-rajan-was-preparing-to-leave.html



Also See http://defence.pk/threads/bolt-from-the-blue-raghuram-rajans-father-was-a-raw-agent.280152/

"...IN 1966, three years after his third child, Raghuram, was born in Bhopal, R Govindarajan was posted to Indonesia. A failed coup the previous year had sparked off a frenzy of violence, which targeted communist supporters of the Indonesian president Sukarno and claimed more than half a million lives. “I remember the sound of machine guns in the evenings,” Rajan told me. “My mother bore the brunt of the uncertainties. You had soldiers with a lot of authority moving around. It wasn’t clear that they would respect diplomatic immunity.”

Profiles of Rajan invariably describe him as the son of an Indian diplomat, whose further assignments took the family to Sri Lanka and Belgium. Growing up, Rajan assumed his father worked for the Ministry of External Affairs. But Govindarajan, who topped his 1953 Indian Police Service batch, was an officer in the Intelligence Bureau (IB); he would have been dispatched to Indonesia as a spy, not a diplomat.

When the IB was split to create a separate external intelligence agency in 1968, Govindarajan became one of the original “Kaoboys”—the first men to join the new Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) under the legendary spymaster RN Kao, for whom Rajan’s father was officer of staff, according to a former R&AW director..." 

Also see http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/the-demise-of-mr-clean



I reproduce below a Wall Street Journal news story on Raghuram Rajan's unduly curt and dismissive responses to genuine concerns regarding his nationality. Is this the final word on this issue and does this constitute conclusive proof that Raghuram Rajan was never a citizen of the United States?

Wall Street Journal 
October 30, 2013, 4:15 PM IST
Raghuram Rajan Faces Birther-Style Questions
ByNupur Acharya

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Raghuram Rajan at RBI headquarters in Mumbai, Oct. 29.
“I’m an Indian citizen [and] have always been an Indian citizen.” With those words Tuesday, Raghuram Rajan, the governor of India’s central bank, hoped to put to bed lingering questions over his nationality.
Mr. Rajan, a U.S. green card holder, says he’s has been receiving “a mail a day” asking him to confirm that he is in fact an Indian. He didn’t specify where the mails had come from or who sent them.
“It would be a joke if some people weren’t so serious about it,” Mr. Rajan said. When asked the question again by a reporter at a news conference in Mumbai this week, the governor, who has been likened to James Bond by the Indian media, responded in unusually clipped tones. “I’ll answer this question once, and only once, and am not going to answer it again,” he said.
The issue of Mr. Rajan’s citizenship was first raised by Murli Manohar Joshi, a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the main opposition party in India’s Parliament, in August just before Mr. Rajan took office at the Reserve Bank of India. According to a report in The Indian Express newspaper, Mr. Joshi issued a notice asking Parliament how foreigner could be appointed as RBI governor.
Mr. Rajan is a globally renowned economist, who famously foretold the impending global financial collapse at a 2005 gathering in honor of former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. The 50-year-old bank chief graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, one of India’s most highly-regarded schools.
He also holds degrees from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad in Gujarat, and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S.
Mr. Rajan has served as chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and was a professor of economics at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. He returned to India to work as chief economic advisor to the government in 2012. But like Barack Obama he has faced nagging questions about whether he has the correct nationality to do his job.
“I do hold a green card. The green card does not require you to take a pledge of allegiance anywhere. It is simply a work permit which you need to have to work in another country that is the United States,” Mr. Rajan told reporters.
Unfortunately, that permit is about to expire, he added.
“In some sense, it is to me shameful we spend so much time on such issues [of nationality.] There was a time when India was open to the outside. When we didn’t really care where one came from, we sort of incorporated them in what we were doing,” Mr. Rajan said.
His question to those pursuing this line of questioning was, ‘Why do they care?’
“But if they do care, the answer is I’m an Indian citizen and proud of being an Indian citizen,” he concluded.
India takes the citizenship of its leaders very seriously.
Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling Congress party, has often been targeted by he political opponents because of her Italian roots.
A legal case brought by politician Subramanian Swamy recently, questioned whether a non-Indian could edit one of the country’s national newspapers.
Other countries however have drafted in help from abroad to sort out their economic problems. The Bank of England this year appointed Canadian Mark Carney as its governor to help it through the economic recovery.
Follow India Real Time on Twitter @WSJIndia. 

Copyright 2013 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved 

more  information 

naturalized US citizens have to swear allegiance to the United States

see http://www.millenniumpost.in/NewsContent.aspx?NID=35098

and http://www.niticentral.com/2013/08/09/what-will-raghuram-rajan-do-116164.html


How could he even have been appointed as Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India?


This disclosure by Raghuram Rajan on his Chicago Booth Faculty page http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/raghuram.rajan/disclosure.pdf shows that he was engaged in private employment even while he was serving as Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India in 2012.

BDT Capital Partners, is a highly secretive merchant bank that provides advice and capital to family-owned companies. Raghuram Rajan has admitted that he earned income from BDT Capital in 2012 even while he was Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India and was therefore in Indian Government employment. 

Is the Indian Government hiding the American nationality of RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan 

Jan 05, 2014, 03.49 PM IST
  
Nationality details of RBI guv cannot be given: Gov
Government has refused to answer queries on the nationality of Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan citing a provision of the RTI Act which exempts information on cabinet documents to be disclosed.
"The proposal which is a note received from the Finance Minister being 'Cabinet paper' is exempted from disclosure under Section 8(1)(i) of the RTI Act 2005. However, a copy of order No 18(75) EO/13(ACC) dated August 6, 2013 conveying approval of the ACC, in the matter, is enclosed," the Central Public Information Officer of the Cabinet Secretariat said.
However, the cited section mandates that material, on the basis of which the decisions were taken, should be made public after the decision making process is completed.
The reply was sent to activist Subhash Agrawal in response to his RTI application seeking to know whether Rajan has American nationality at present or at some time earlier along with relevant details.
He also sought complete information on nationality of Rajan from his birth till date mentioning dates of change of his nationality and whether rules permit a person with nationality other than Indian to become RBI Governor.
The issue has already been clarified by Rajan in a press conference last year where he said, "I am an Indian citizen, I have always been an Indian citizen. I always held an Indian passport. I held an Indian diplomatic passport when my father was in the foreign service and when I travelled on behalf of the ministry of finance.
"I have never applied for the citizenship of another country, I have never been a citizen of another country and have never taken a pledge of allegiance to another country."

See earlier posts on this topic 


and 




Saturday 2 November 2013

General Electric threatens to downgrade India, while ignoring its own corruption within India

CEO of GE India, Banmali Agrawala – “In a global context, there are other options that are fairly attractive from the GE perspective. The rate at which things happen in India and the pace at which our business is growing doesn’t frankly meet our expectations of a market or country the size of India — by population or economy — and the need for infrastructure that there is. We certainly feel this market should offer us a lot more in terms of infrastructure.”

This interview was published when the Indian Prime Minister was in Russia to interalia negotiate civil nuclear cooperation with Russian firms

General Electric follows a practice of trying to threaten countries like India.

Why should India dilute its nuclear liability law simply to permit General Electric to earn profits from the nuclear business in India?

Sudipto Roy  |  New Delhi   October 21, 2013 Last Updated at 00:49 IST

We are uncomfortable with the nuclear liability clause: Banmali Agrawala

Interview with President & CEO, GE India
Banmali Agrawala, CEO, GE India
Six months after taking charge, GE India President and Chief Executive Banmali Agrawala, a sort of outsider at the helm, having joined GE in December 2011 after stints in Tata Power and Wartsila India, tells Sudipto Dey the iconic US conglomerate is looking at India with a new approach. Edited excerpts:
   
Given the size of GE, do you feel in India you are far from realising the potential?

Yes, and that is not as much about GE but as a country. We need to appreciate this from GE’s perspective. We are a fairly large company and our globalisation strategy is not playing in one, two or three core markets in the world but playing across 150 markets across the world at the same time. Last year, we got business from 164 countries. Nineteen countries gave us more than a billion dollars of business each.

Forty countries gave us more than $400 million. And, when you play the whole world on this scale, there are pockets of opportunity that have come from so many places, be it Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America or East Europe. In a global context, there are other options that are fairly attractive from the GE perspective. The rate at which things happen in India and the pace at which our business is growing doesn’t frankly meet our expectations of a market or country the size of India — by population or economy — and the need for infrastructure that there is. We certainly feel this market should offer us a lot more in terms of infrastructure.

So, has India become less for GE?

I would say, yes. No matter what you say, a country the size of India, with a billion-plus people and a sizeable economy, will always remain attractive. But I would also say there are other markets that are catching up, are doing very well and in the short period, clearly have taken off. And, here you (India) have got to compete for attention and investment. For a global company, it’s wherever the opportunities are.

Have you made up your mind on the nuclear business? Are you not going to play in India, given the current state of nuclear liability laws?

We have made our position pretty clear. We need to see how the whole liability issue is addressed. The way the liability clause currently stands, we are not comfortable. The point we have made even earlier is that there is a global construct of how liabilities are divided among players. That is the way the global nuclear regime works and we would urge that the same practices are followed in India. The global way that GE works, we work on the same practices that are followed in India as well. That’s what we want to see happening.

One recurring theme in GE India in the past four years has been localisation. What is the current level of localisation and how does the road ahead look?

The year 2013 would see the fructification of our localisation drive. Wind, water, measurement and control, and healthcare are our most localised businesses. For us, localisation means how we design products that are suitable for the market here and are also eventually relevant to many other parts of the world. This is what we are practicing in healthcare and a few other businesses. However, we need to appreciate that everything cannot be localised.

For instance, aviation turbine cannot be localised and also, oil and gas. The whole approach, which we call the super value approach, is how you innovate products at disruptive prices without compromising with efficacy. We have gotten into a process of finding the right opportunity, making a product that meets the right price, manufacturing it and taking it to the market. The idea is to come out with a range of products at regular intervals. We see lot of promise in the healthcare business and want to make the most of it.

For the supply chain, we have a facility in Pune, where we assemble wind turbine parts. We do the complete erection of wind turbines in India. It’s a local business for us. We will be expanding and growing this as we set up our new facility at Chakan (Maharashtra).

As far as a multi-modal facility is concerned, we feel this is the right time to step up our efforts in local manufacturing and local sourcing not just for India but also for feeding our global supply chain.

So, is the multi-modal facility at Chakan also a local innovation?

This is the first time GE would be doing something like this in the world and we are eagerly waiting to look at the outcome.

We are waiting for it to fire, because if it succeeds it gives a template for how things can be for GE in other parts of the world. Another dimension of globalisation is almost every country and market around the world would insist on us to set up local manufacturing facilities, create jobs locally.

Our approach toward manufacturing has been different. When we make investments in a machine, say for instance fabrication. The pay back on that machine, if I were to just have one product would be very difficult but if I were to pass five different products through that machine and make sure the utilization is high, I get a payback on that investment. Normally, you would not pass different products through the same machine because you need different settings, fixtures etc. but we challenged ourselves that we want to do it. 

Once Chakan becomes operational do you expect a major drive in exports out of India?

Yes, we expect a major ramp up in exports out of India. Even as we speak we have a fairly good idea of what we will manufacture, how much will go out, where and when. As a matter of speaking let me say whatever we will make in Chakkan in Phase I is kind of sold out. We already have commitments from our global supply chain and we are working towards growing that.

You are one of the few companies in India that shrunk business, then cleaned up, re-focussed with country-specific P&L, rolled-out a localization drive. So do you now have renewed set of targets for India?

We look at different businesses in different manner. In certain businesses we can be completely local and approach the market directly. We have competitive technology.  In those businesses – such as healthcare, wind, water, etc - we will shoot for profitable growth. There is another bunch of businesses that are dependent largely on government policy – such as gas, coal, oil, transportation. Whenever the deals happen we will ensure that our market share is intact. There is different approach to different businesses. What is important for us is to get our due share.   

Profitability is important.  And we kind of keep innovating. We are not just chasing one number we have to get to. We also look at what India can contribute to larger GE. 

General Electric trying to keep Chinese competition away from Indian locomotive factory tenders

Foreign Ministry must green flag bids for Railways’ loco tender
Mamuni Das

Move may impact Chinese bidders
New Delhi, Nov. 1:  
The Railways has raised a ‘red’ flag for bidders for its loco tender, valued at about Rs 35,000 crore.
All bidders will have to get a clearance from the Ministry of External Affairs first, Railway Board Chairman Arunendra Kumar told Business Line.
This move will impact Chinese bidders, who are keen to break into the Indian railway equipment market, one of the world’s largest.
Security issues continue to dog China’s bid to play a bigger role in India’s infrastructure sector. India has till date not permitted Chinese firms to participate in port development projects, and has also been wary of Chinese telecom equipment suppliers.
Kumar declined to comment on the technical bidding process, which is not yet over. But, he had earlier said that the Ministry had decided not to relax the conditions, as requested by one of the Chinese bidders, CSR.
Moreover, the Railway Ministry is yet to get a Cabinet approval for the financial bid documents for the project.
Indian Railways has turned a battleground for US, European and Chinese locomotive manufacturers, all of whom want a share of the loco market pie.
Two Chinese firms, CSR and CNR, have bid for setting up two locomotive factories – electric and diesel – in India to supply about 1,800 locomotives to the Railways over 11 years. American and European firms have traditionally been key suppliers of high-tech products in locomotives for the Railways.
For the proposed electric locomotive factory to be set up at Madhepura, Bihar, bidders include US firm GE Global, and European firms Bombardier, Siemens and Alstom, apart form CSR and CNR.
Similarly, for the diesel locomotive factory in Marhowra, Bihar, bidders include US firms GE, EMD, apart from CSR and CNR.
Industry experts feel that the Chinese participation in bids will lead to strong pricing pressure.
“There will surely be greater pricing competition if the Chinese firms were to participate. Though the company that wins the project will have to operate in India with Indian workers, the back-office costs of Chinese firms are bound to be lower,” Niraj Kumar, former Railway DG, told Business Line.
But, the fate of these two projects, the bidding process for which did not go through in the UPA-I Government regime, remains to be seen, given that they are to be set up in remote locations.
“It is a fact that new projects are sanctioned on verbal orders, even in areas where there is no supporting infrastructure,” said Shubhranshu, General Secretary, Federation of Railway Officers (FROA).
mamuni.das@thehindu.co.in
(This article was published on November 1, 2013)
Printable version | Nov 2, 2013 10:34:34 AM | http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/economy/foreign-ministry-must-green-flag-bids-for-railways-loco-tender/article5305759.ece © The Hindu Business Line