Modi leads charge against ‘Rewri politics’; Parliamentary standards in steep fall; Cloud on Hemant Soren
Opinion Watch
The finances of the States are in dire straits. Some have gone overboard on borrowings. There is even a growing risks that some of the States can derail the national economic growth.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought to bring the spotlight on the irresponsible indulgence of the States by hitting out at the politics of freebies.
The Times of India and The Economic Times have come out with Edits on the mounting woes of the power distribution companies.
The States owe a staggering due of Rs 2.5 lakh crore to the discoms and the power generation companies, informed ET, while noting that UDAY (Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojna) has failed, with losses of Discoms exceeding the pre-UDAY level at 0.4 per cent of the GDP.
ET further added that the combined losses of Bihar, Kerala, Punjab, Rajasthan and West Bengal constituted 24.7 per cent of the total losses in 2019-20.
ToI urges the States to follow the examples of Kerala and Himachal Pradesh which are trying to adopt the direct benefit transfer (DBT) model in passing electricity subsidy directly to the consumers.
Both the dailies, however, fail to inform the current status of the Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2021, which is supposed to be brought before the Parliament in the ongoing Monsoon session to address the issues concerning the losses of discoms only.
Parliamentary standards in steep fall
The ongoing Monsoon session of Parliament for the third week remains disrupted. Now, even the treasury benches are disrupting the proceedings of the Parliament.
The Hindu has sharply commented on the disruptions, calling it ‘an alarming fall’.
“Data from the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha secretariats showed that suspensions of MPs went up three times during the BJP’s tenure in power compared to the previous eight years. Clearly, an attempt must be made by parliamentarians to tamp down on this hostility with the onus on doing so being more on the ruling party and its representatives,” argued TH.
Cloud on Hemant Soren
A number of close associates of the Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren have come under the scanner of the investigative agencies, while some of them have landed in judicial custody.
In political circle, it’s being seen that noose is tightening on Soren, who heads a coalition government in Jharkhand in alliance with the Congress.
The Indian Express in its Edit ‘Cloud in Ranchi’ has stated that there is a concern over political stability in Jharkhand in the backdrop of the West Bengal Police nabbing three Congress MLAs with cash, while citing the allegations of the Opposition that the incident was linked to ‘Operation Lotus’ of the BJP.
The daily rightly reminds that political instability has been the hallmark of Jharkhand, and Raghubar Das was the only Chief Minister in the state to complete full term.
This is indeed true given that Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar in the name of tribal identity, while the state has diverse constituencies represented by scores of political parties in the state.
About The Author
