chennai l saturday l may 18, 2024 l `9.00 l PAGES 12 l vellore EDITION Relief for Spicejet over refund to Sun group’s Kalanithi Maran Delhi HC on Friday set aside a single bench order that upheld an arbitral award asking SpiceJet to refund `270 cr to its ex-promoter Dispute dates back to January 2015 The dispute between Maran and SpiceJet dates back to January 2015 when Ajay Singh, who used to own SpiceJet before Maran, bought it back from him. Maran reportedly transferred his 58.46% stake to Singh in return for redeemable warrants, which were allegedly not issued to him. Maran then approached Delhi HC for payout, which referred the matter to arbitration 5.46% Tribunal had set 18% interest to be paid ■ The arbitral tribunal gave its order in July 2018 and ordered SpiceJet to refund `270 crore to Maran. The tribunal also asked the airline to pay interest of 12% per annum on the amounts paid towards warrants and 18% per annum on the sums awarded to Maran if the money is not paid on time ■ SpiceJet then moved the Delhi HC to challenge the arbitral order Spicejet stock closed at `63 a share on bse on Friday, up from Thursday’s `59.74 CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOgGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI Sonia hands Rae Bareli fight to son P r e e t h a N a i r @ New Delhi Congress leader Rahul Gandhi greets his mother Sonia Gandhi during a public meeting in Rae Bareli on Friday, as his sister Priyanka looks on | PTI Rajesh Das Harassment case: SC stays arrest of ex-DGP S u c h it r a K a lya n M o h a nty @ New Delhi In a relief for former special Director General of Police (DGP) Rajesh Das, the Supreme Court on Friday ordered an interim stay of his arrest and exempted him from surrendering before a trial court in a sexual harassment case. A bench of Justices Bela M Trivedi and Pankaj Mithal passed the order on a petition filed by the IPS officer who claimed that the Madras High Court had erred in not going through the records and other testimonials while rejecting his petition against the trial court order. In June 2023, a trial court in Villupuram convicted Das on the charge of sexually harassing a woman IPS officer and sentenced him to undergo three years of rigorous imprisonment. Later, in February 2024, the sentence was upheld by the Villupuram principal district court. In December 2023, a month before his superannuation, he was given compulsory retirement from service by the Tamil Nadu government.  P5 express read EB bills can be paid via UPI link on WhatsApp Chennai: To facilitate online payment of power bills, Tangedco has started sending UPI payment links through WhatsApp for consumers who use more than 500 units bimonthly. UPI link will be sent on WhatsApp from verified number 94987 94987 | P2 Striking an emotional chord with the voters in Rae Bareli, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi said on Friday that she is handing over her son to the people of Rae Bareli with the promise that her son won’t disappoint them. Addressing a joint election rally at the meeting at ITI ground in Rae Bareli, the former Congress chief asked the people to consider her son as their own. “Rahul will not disappoint you,” said Sonia, flanked by her son Rahul and daughter Priyanka on the stage. “Everything I have is given by you. So, brothers and Supplementary ED chargesheet names Kejri, AAP Eighth chargesheet in the money laundering case linked to the excise policy scam so far Court, the ED had said it was contemplating to make AAP an The Enforcement Directorate accused and invoke Section 70 on Friday filed a supplementary of the PMLA to probe the aschargesheet in the money laun- pect of “vicarious liability”. dering case linked to the Delhi Last month, the Delhi High excise policy scam in which it Court had suggested while named Delhi Chief Minister hearing the case that a political Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam party could be brought within Aadmi Party as accused. the purview of the PMLA. It The chargesheet said a political party was filed before a spemeans “an associacial court here under tion” or “a body of invarious provisions of dividuals”, which falls the Prevention of within the ambit of Money Laundering Section 70 of the Act (PMLA). Special PMLA. Subsequently, Judge Kaveri Baweja the ED had likened the is likely to take it up AAP to a company and Accused in 2 for cognisance in the Kejriwal its director. capacities coming days. The federal agency Arvind Kejriwal This is the eighth had arrested Kejriwal, has been made chargesheet filed by 55, also the AAP’s nathe probe agency in the an accused in the tional convenor, from case in his case in which it has arhis official residence rested 18 people so far. personal capacity here on March 21. He as well as the Last week, a similar is currently out of jail national complaint was filed by on interim bail. convenor of his the ED against BRS The ED had labeled leader and former Tel- Aam Aadmi Party Kejriwal as the “kingunder various angana chief minister pin and key conspirasections of Chandrashekar Rao’s tor” of the Delhi exthe PMLA daughter K Kavitha cise scam. It alleged and four others. that he acted in colluOn Tuesday, the ED had in- sion with his ministerial colformed the Delhi High Court leagues, party leaders and oththat it will name the AAP as an er persons. accused in the case. ED’s lawThe case pertains to alleged yer had said there were con- corruption and money laundercerted efforts by the accused to ing in formulating and executdelay the process of framing of ing the Delhi government’s excharges in the case. cise policy for 2021-22, which Even before the Supreme was later scrapped. U J W AL JALAL I @ New Delhi sisters, I am giving you my son. Consider him yours,” she said. Sonia said she has taugh her children the values that her mother-in-law and former PM late Indira Gandhi and the Rae Bareli had taught her: To respect all, protect the weak, fight against injustice for the rights of people. “Don’t be afraid, because your roots of struggle and traditions are very Amethi pitch Rahul Gandhi said if he wins, he would treat Amethi and Rae Bareli equally on development. “If `10 is spent in Rae Bareli it would be the same for Amethi too,” he said deep,” she added. Sonia said the Gandhi family roots are deeply connected to Rae Bareli. “This relationship as sacred as Mother Ganga is with the farmers of Awadh and Rae Bareli. It started with a movement and continues till today she said. ,” Sonia said Indira Gandhi, who was an MP from Rae Bareli, had a special place for the constituency in her heart. “I saw her closely while working. She had immense affection for you,” she said. Sonia was first elected as an MP from Rae Bareli in 2004 and represented the seat till she vacated it early this after getting elected as a member of the Rajya Sabha. SC seeks EC’s response on booth-wise turnout Data S u c h it r a K a lya n M o h a nty @ New Delhi The Supreme Court on Friday sought the Election Commission of India’s response on a plea seeking directions to the poll body to upload polling stationwise voter turnout data on its website within 48 hours of polling for each phase of the ongoing Lok Sabha polls. It gave the poll body a week to file its affidavit. The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), the petitioner, had sought the uploading of scanned copies of Form 17-C (record of the number of votes polled in a booth). A three-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra asked ECI counsel Amit Sharma what was the difficulty in putting up the voter turnout details on the website. Sharma replied that it was time consuming. “But every polling officer submits data on the app by evening? So returning officer has data of full constituency by the end of the day,” the bench asked Sharma. He replied, “No, not immediately .” In the morning, the ADR moved the application as part of its plea to tally Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips with votes cast through Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). Fight gets nasty Swati Maliwal leaves Kejriwal’s house. She had earlier recorded her statement on the assault by Kejriwal’s aide Bibhav | PTI | P7 Clash of surprise picks in Mumbai North Central S U D H I R S U R YA W A N S H I @ Mumbai MUMBAI North Central Lok Sabha constituency, home to several celebrities and spread across many posh areas including Bandra and Vile Parle, is witnessing a close contest between renowned lawyer Ujjwal Nikam of the BJP and Mumbai Congress president Varsha Gaikwad. Interestingly, neither Nikam nor Gaikwad was the first choice of their respective parties. The BJP denied ticket to sitting MP Poonam Mahajan and wanted to field its Mumbai city president Ashish Shelar, who declined to contest saying he is not ready to enter national politics. Then Nikam was picked at the last moment. As for the Congress, it was considering former Maharashtra minister Naseem Khan, who was very keen to contest from the constituency. That Mumbai North Central has around 4 lakh Muslim voters was also a factor favouring his candidacy. However, alliance partner Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) proposed the name of Varsha Gaikwad as the joint candidate saying Muslim votes alone won’t be enough to win the election. “If Marathi candidate Varsha Gaikawad is fielded, then Shiv Sena (UBT) will easily transfer its votes to Gaikwad in the fiercely contested battle. The calculation is that there are over 4 lakh Muslims, 1 lakh Christians, 1 lakh Dalits, and a considerable number of Marathi and non-Marathi voters. The BJP won the last two elections because of Boy swept away by flash floods at Courtallam falls support from the Shiv Sena. But the BJP does not have it this time; so, it will face an uphill task even though it has a high-profile lawyer as its candidate,” said a senior Shiv Sena (UBT) leader, who did not wish to be named. According to reports, Gaikwad herself was not expecting to fight from Mumbai North Central: her first preference was Mumbai South Central, the constituency of her late father Eknath Gaikwad. However, Uddhav successfully pushed his party’s candidate Anil Desai for the Mumbai South Central seat. Nikam is Ujjwal Nikam and Varsha Gaikwad Illustration: Mandar Pardikar a well known lawyer, having appeared for several high-profile cases including the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist case, 1993 Bombay bomb blast case, Gulshan Kumar case, and the sensational Pramod Mahajan murder case. The BJP hopes his popularity will help, on top of the Modi factor. “To win, the BJP needs to get Marathi votes in significant numbers. Otherwise, history will repeat like in 2009, when Congress candidate Priya Dutt trounced senior lawyer Mahesh Jethmalani of the BJP in the Mumbai North Central seat by nearly 1,75,00 votes,” said a political observer. Towards this strategy, the BJP is trying to breach the Sena’s traditional Marathi vote bank by arranging rallies by MNS chief Raj Thackeray . Also, Mumbai BJP president Ashish Shelar, who is spearheading the campaign for Nikam at the ground level, has held several meetings with prominent leaders of the Christian community to secure minority votes. Police and rescue service personnel at Courtallam falls on Friday| Express Don’t visit Ooty from May 18-20 The Nilgiris district administration on Friday requested people to “avoid” visiting the tourist town as very heavy rains have been forecast for Ooty from May 18 to 20 E X P RE S S N E W S S ERV I CE @ Tenkasi A 16-year-old boy from Tirunelveli was swept away by flash floods triggered by heavy rain at the Old Courtallam Falls in Tenkasi on Friday. His body was later recovered by the fire and rescue services personnel and sent to Government District Headquarters Hospital for postmortem. Bathing in the waterfalls has been banned till further orders. Police identified the deceased as K Aswin, a resident of NGO colony in Tirunelveli. Aswin recently cleared his SSLC examination. He visited his relative’s house located at Melagaram in the district on Friday. To enjoy bathing in the afternoon, Aswin and his relatives visited the waterfall which was calm in the morning. According to sources, when Aswin and a group of tourists were taking bath in the waterfall, there was a sudden surge in the flow of water due to the heavy rain in the catchment areas of the Western Ghats over the last few days. Caught unawares by the sudden deluge, tourists hurriedly ran away from the spot. But Aswin got trapped in the torrent of water and was swept away by its force. Informed by his relatives, fire and rescue services personnel led by district officer Banu Priya rushed to the spot.  P5  More reports: P5