[ NATIONAL ]

Amid ‘encouraging statements’, India and China to hold fresh talks on LAC standoff on Mar 11

ANI (Sources)- Amid the continuing border standoff, India and China will hold the 15th round of Corps Commander-level talks on Mar 11 (Fri). The dates have been agreed mutually and the meeting will be held on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control at the Chushul-Moldo Meeting Point. 14 rounds of talks have been held so far since the standoff started in Apr-May 2020. The talks have so far resulted in the resolution of the standoff at the North and South Bank of Pangong Tso, Galwan Valley, and Gogra Hot Spring areas. Both sides will now focus on achieving the resolution of balance friction areas. The recent statements by both sides for an acceptable solution are encouraging. Both sides gradually enhanced their deployment by rushing in tens of thousands of soldiers as well as heavy weaponry. However, India didn’t achieve much in the last 14 rounds of talk, instead, it lost tactically gained Kailash Hights.

Senior Maoist leader ‘Kanchan Da’, 72, arrested in Assam

Superintendent of police of Cachar district Ramandeep Kaur said Bhattacharjee and an accomplice were arrested from a tea garden under Udharbond police station in a joint operation.

NIA raids house of a suspect in Kondhwa over ISKP case

The National investigation agency (NIA) on Mon conducted searches at the residence of a suspect in connection with a case of planning terrorist attacks in India and propagating the ideology of the ISIS terror group as part of the activities of the outlawed Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), officials said. The case was registered by the Special Cell, Lodhi Colony, Delhi Police after the arrest of a Kashmiri couple Jahanzaib Sami Wani and his wife Hina Bashir Beigh from Okhla Vihar, Jamia Nagar in Delhi, the NIA official said. Further, 4 more were arrested by NIA in the case – Abdullah Basith, Sadia Anwar Shaikh, Nabeel Siddick Khatri, and Abdur Rehman alias Dr. Brave, according to NIA. Till now 6 persons have been charge-sheeted in this case for constipating to propagate the ideology of ISIS by garnering the support of like-minded people to carry out terrorist activities in India, establishing cells to work for ISIS, raising funds, collecting weapons, making IEDs, and execute target killings.” NIA.

For foreigners volunteering to fight against Russia, Ukraine offers camaraderie and a cause

According to Ukraine President Zelenskyy, more than 16,000 foreigners have volunteered to fight against Russia alongside the Ukrainians. Ukraine has established an “international” legion for people from abroad and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has publicly urged foreigners to “fight side-by-side with Ukrainians against the Russian war criminals” to show support for his country. Anthony Capone, a wealthy healthcare entrepreneur in New York City, said he is providing funding for hundreds of ex-soldiers and paramedics who want to go to Ukraine. Ukraine Media says volunteers for their International Legion military force have also come from India. Indian Navy veterans sign up to join Ukrainian Forces against Russia. Application has been personally received by Ukrainian Defence Attache in New Delhi. Earlier a 21-year-old Indian from Tamil Nadu had joined International Legion.

Crude oil price may surge to $300 a barrel, warns Russia

ANI – Ban on imports of Russian petroleum products by the western countries will have catastrophic consequences for the global economy and it will push crude oil price to over $300 per barrel, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak has warned. The crude oil price has soared to a 14-year high. Brent crude oil price in London surged to near $140 a barrel on Mon, the highest level since July 2008. Novak said the ban on Russian oil will lead to a rise in prices for fuel, electricity, and heating in Europe and the US. Amid the speculations that fuel prices may rise owing to soaring crude prices due to the Russia-Ukraine crisis, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri on Tue ruled out that the govt had controlled oil prices due to elections and said the decision will be taken in the best interest of the citizens. Meanwhile, Sensex rebounds 581.34 points to end at 53,424.09; Nifty reclaims 16,000-level

Ukraine crisis: Russian oil companies offer big discounts to India

Bankers said India should be extremely cautious before opening up trade with Russia amid sanctions as it should not be seen as the funding Russian invasion of Ukraine. As stringent sanctions imposed by the European Union and the US  are crippling business and trade, desperate Russian oil companies are offering huge discounts to India, provided a payment mechanism to bypass the SWIFT ban is quickly approved by the government. According to sources familiar with the development, Russian oil firms are offering 25-27% discount to the dated Brent crude prices.

Top court stresses on need to record court proceedings

In the judgment under challenge, the top court had set aside disciplinary inquiry proceedings against an assistant commandant of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) over charges of misconduct. The Supreme Court on Mon underlined the need to have court proceedings recorded after it faced an unusual situation where the Centre sought modification of a judgment, passed almost 3 months ago, claiming that the statements recorded by the judges were not submitted by them in court.

Japanese PM set to visit India on March 19-20

ET- Kishida will be the first global leader to visit India since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. His visit will focus on the Quad summit that Tokyo plans to hold in May-June. The Ukraine situation will be high on the agenda of the summit.

Canada’s trade minister to visit India, hold talks with Piyush Goyal

Canada’s Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development Mary Ng will visit New Delhi later this week, making her the first member of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Cabinet to travel to India in over four years. Mary Ng’s visit is part of the renewed emphasis on completing a pair of trade deals between India and Canada. A release from Canada’s foreign ministry said Ng will hold a Ministerial Dialogue on Trade and Investment. “India offers extensive opportunities for Canadian businesses and entrepreneurs to introduce their innovative and world-class products and services to a dynamic and growing market,” it added. Ng spoke to Goyal on Feb 24 and “discussed advancing bilateral trade between the two countries”. Ng announced her visit while inaugurating the first women-only virtual business mission to India hosted by the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada in partnership with the Canada-India Business Council.

[ NEIGHBORHOOD ]

IC-814 victim Rupin Katyal gets justice, hijacker Ibrahim killed in Karachi

More than 2 decades after the infamous hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814, a family of victim Rupin Katyal finally got justice after hijacker Mistry Zahoor Ibrahim aka Jamali was gunned down in Karachi in Pakistan by unidentified gunmen on Mar 1^st. With the killing of Ibrahim, only 2 out of 5 Jaish-e-Mohammed hijackers are alive in Pakistan including Ibrahim Azhar, elder brother of Masood Azhar, and Rauf Asghar, the 2 king-pins of the globally designated terrorist group. Experts believe that only Ibrahim Azhar and Shahid Akhtar Sayed are alive in Pakistan with the latter moving away from Karachi to the relative protection of the lawless Khyber Pakhtunkhwa area of Pakistan. It is understood that while one of the hijackers died due to natural causes, another was killed by Indian security forces during the Dec 13, 2001, attack on Parliament by the same Sunni jihadist group with Deobandi ideology. (1)

China’s defense budget continues to rebound

ANI – Amidst the gravity of bitter fighting in Ukraine as President Vladimir Putin prosecutes his invasion, China announced its defense budget for 2022 on the opening day of its fifth annual session of the 13^th National People’s Congress (NPC). Usually these annual announcements of Chinese military spending grab headlines, but in 2022 the 7.1% rise in Beijing’s defense expenditure is overshadowed by the war in Europe.

Sri Lanka cardinal seeks UN probe into 2019 Easter massacre, ‘a grand, political plot’

The head of Sri Lanka’s Roman Catholic Church on Monday urged the United Nations to investigate the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed 279 people, calling the massacre a “political plot”. In an address to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith demanded a mechanism to probe the attacks, which have been blamed on local Islamic radicals. “The first impression of this massacre was that it was purely the work of a few Islamic extremists,” Ranjith said. “However, subsequent investigations indicate that this massacre was part of a grand political plot.” The Church has previously suggested that the attacks, which targeted three churches and 3 hotels in Colombo in Apr 2019, helped Gotabaya Rajapaksa win the presidential elections in Nov the same year. The govt has not responded to the accusations. Sri Lanka is on the agenda of the UN’s top rights body at the moment for a separate reason. Last year it set up a mechanism to gather evidence linked to alleged war crimes during the final stages of the island’s Tamil separatist conflict, which ended in May 2009.

Potala Palace self-immolation protester identified as popular Tibetan singer

Tsewang Norbu is the 158^th burning death in protests over harsh Chinese rule since 2009. A Tibetan man who shouted slogans and set himself on fire last week in a protest in front of the iconic Potala Palace in the Tibet regional capital Lhasa has been identified as a popular contemporary Tibetan singer, sources in the region and India told RFA Sat. Tsewang Norbu, 25, died after his Feb 25 self-immolation. Initial accounts said he was thwarted by police, but RFA later confirmed that he was taken away immediately after he had burned himself. With Norbu’s death, 158 Tibetans are confirmed to have set themselves on fire since 2009 to protest Chinese rule in Tibetan areas, and another 8 have taken their lives in Nepal and India.

Xi holds video summit with Macron, Scholz

Chinese President Xi Jinping held the video summit on Tue with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Opposition submits no-trust motion against PM Imran Khan

Pak opposition demands Prime Minster Imran Khan resign in 24 hours. The opposition campaign is spearheaded by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

JKLF has decided for an all-party conference on 14^th March

KashmirDharti -JKLF has decided for an all-party conference on 14^th March against the Pakistan government’s plan to make Gilgit-Baltistan an interim province of Pakistan. It was said that the only solution to the Kashmir issue is the UN resolution and referendum for the right to self-determination. Kashmir is one entity and cannot be divided. Azad Jammu Kashmir former premier Sardar Atiq Ahmad Khan said that making Gilgit-Baltistan an interim province of Pakistan will hurt the issue of the Kashmir dispute. He added that Kashmir is an issue between 3 atomic powers and unless the issue is resolved peace is not possible in South Asia. He said that the federal government should take all political parties of AJK and Gilgit-Baltistan into confidence and consult them before taking any decision on Gilgit-Baltistan. (Siasat)

Senior Maoist leader ‘Kanchan Da’, 72, arrested in Assam

Senior leader of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) and a member of its central committee, Arun Kumar Bhattacharjee, better known by his nom de guerre ‘Kanchan Da’, was arrested in Assam’s Cachar district, a senior police officer said on Mon.

• The police chief of Cachar district said Bhattacharjee and an accomplice were arrested from a tea garden in a joint operation and sent to Guwahati.
• Police officers said that the Maoist central committee member was in the state to set up a state-level Maoist team in Assam.

“Kanchan Da has led Maoist organizations active in areas including Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Andhra, Odisha. We have also arrested a close associate of his, identified as Akash Urang alias Rahul alias Kajal, who is a member of the Assam state organizing committee of the CPI (Maoist),” police said.

“He was here to organize state party congress, recruit local cadres and purchase weapons here. We seized one laptop, a mobile phone, a huge amount of incriminating documents, and ₹3.6 lakh cash from his possession,” Kaur added.

• Guwahati police commissioner Harmeet Singh described Arun Kumar Bhattacharjee’s arrest as a “big catch”, according to news agency PTI.
• Singh stressed that the effort to set up a network of Maoist cadres in Assam was at a “nascent stage” and those had been “nipped in the bud”.

Japanese PM set to visit India on March 19-20

ET -Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is planning to visit India on Mar 19-20 for the annual summit. It would push fresh investments here and would be an opportunity to give momentum to the bilateral partnership and Quad. Kishida will be the first global leader to visit India since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

• His visit will focus on the Quad summit that Tokyo plans to hold in May-June.
• The Ukraine situation will be high on the agenda of the summit.
• An India-Japan annual summit in physical format has been pending as the Japanese PM had to cancel his visit in Dec 2019 due to anti-CAA protests and later due to the Covid.
• Kishida is also likely to visit Cambodia, according to a Japanese govt insider.
• The insider said Kishida hopes to reaffirm with Prime Minister Narendra Modi the pursuit of a free and open Indo-Pacific region as members of the Quad.
• The four leaders met virtually for the Quad summit last week to discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine among other issues.
• India has steered clear of condemning Russia, calling for dialogue and diplomacy.

During the Mar 3 Quad meet, Kishida had said, “Unilateral changes to the status quo by force … are unacceptable in the Indo-Pacific region. It is critically important for us to bring about a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

• Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific region has been a concern for both New Delhi and Tokyo.
• The Japanese PM’s visit will also focus on joint projects in 3^rd countries besides northeast India and the Bay of Bengal.

Indian PM Modi is likely to visit Sri Lanka for the Bimstec summit on 30^th March.

[ NEIGHBORHOOD ]

China’s defense budget continues to rebound

ANI – Amidst the gravity of bitter fighting in Ukraine as President Vladimir Putin prosecutes his invasion, China announced its defense budget for 2022 on the opening day of its 5^th annual session of the 13^th National People’s Congress (NPC).

• In 2022 the 7.1% rise in Beijing’s defense expenditure is overshadowed by the war in Europe.
• In monetary terms, China’s 2022 defense spending is USD229.39 billion.
• Indeed, the budget revealed on 5 Mar confirms a continuing rebound in expenditure.
• Last year, China increased spending by 6.8% to USD209.4 billion.
• The overall increase of approximately USD20 billion this year is the largest ever (the 2^nd largest was USD13.4 billion in 2021, and the largest was USD13.6 billion in 2014).
• Two years ago, China approved just a 6.6% increase in defense spending, which represented a dip due to the onset of COVID-19.
• In preceding years, the budget had risen 7.5% (2019) and 8.1% (2018) annually.
• This is the 7^th year in a row where the defense budget has risen in only single-digit percentages, underscoring that the halcyon days of double-digit growth are long gone.
• The pretty consistent annual gains for defense expenditure also underscore that the PLA is at heart a political entity.
• China continues to prioritize spending on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) no matter what reason it ascribes to the growth.
• Typically it paints a narrative that China is merely reacting to events around it, rather than the fact that Chinese spending is ringing alarm bells across the world.
• Chinese commentators also quoted “provocative” US actions such as sailing warships – entirely legally, it must be added – through the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea.
• The border stand-off with India has not been solved either, even after nearly 2 years, and this requires money to sustain.

Chinese analysts asserted that, despite “military threats posed by the US and others, China is not interested in joining an arms race, and the country’s defense policy is defensive in nature“. However, such an argument is not sustainable.

This year’s USD20 billion lump-sum increase eclipses Taiwan’s total defense budget of USD15.4 billion.

To compare further, current Chinese spending is greater than that of India (USD64.8 billion), Japan (USD55 billion), Russia (USD66.8 billion), South Korea (USD48 billion), and Taiwan combined.

The PLA has plenty of strike aircraft to carry such precision-guided weapons, including nearly 100 J-20, 200 J-16, 250+ J-10B/C, and 300+ J-10A fighters; 200+ JH-7A fighter-bombers; and 120 H-6J/K/N bombers, many with targeting pods.

• Add to this, drones like the WZ-7 and Wing Loong 1/2 family, and one can see that China could deliver a deluge of weapons on Taiwan early on in a future conflict.
• Another surprise for Russia and China is the severity of international opprobrium at an unprovoked war, and how NATO and Europe have closed ranks in support of Ukraine.
• This goes somewhat against the Chinese and Russian narrative that the West is in decline, and that the East is inexorably rising. (2)

Opposition submits no-trust motion against PM Imran Khan

Dawn-With the PTI government on edge, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Shehbaz Sharif, and Asif Ali Zardari to hold a press conference shortly. Thousands of Pakistani opposition party supporters rallied on Tue to demand that Prime Minister Imran Khan step down or face a non-confidence vote in parliament, accusing him of mismanaging the economy and poor governance. The opposition campaign, spearheaded by the Pakistan People’s Party of assassinated former PM Benazir Bhutto, raises the prospect of political turmoil in the nuclear-armed country where the powerful military often determines who rules.

• “Resign in 24 hours and face us in an election,” Bhutto’s son and PPP leader Bilawal Bhutto told the rally just outside the capital, Islamabad, directing his comments at Khan.
• “Or be prepared for a no-confidence motion.”
• Khan became prime minister in 2018 after leading his upstart party to a general election victory with, his critics said, the backing of the military.
• Both Khan and the military denied that.
• Opposition members and political analysts now say that the former cricket star has lost the backing of the military but both Khan and the army deny that.
• Leaders of the opposition say Khan has lost public support as he struggles with high inflation, a rising current account deficit, and depleting foreign reserves.

Khan rejects the accusations and has responded to economic problems with cuts in fuel and electricity prices while rejecting calls to step down and warning the opposition of unspecified consequences if they force a vote of no-confidence.

• Both the opposition and Khan’s party are riven by factions but the opposition says they need to win over 11 members of parliament to their side force a no-confidence vote.
• Khan won a no-confidence vote last year by six votes.
• Pakistan’s next general election is due by 2023.

1. https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/ic814-victim-rupin-katyal-gets-justice-hijacker-ibrahim-killed-in-karachi-101646712210813.html
2. https://aninews.in/news/world/asia/chinas-defence-budget-continues-to-rebound20220308083929/