3 MARCH 2016

Ø  In yet another bid to release the seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, the Tamil Nadu government on Wednesday wrote to the Centre, seeking its views on its decision to free them. In a letter to the Union Home Secretary, Chief Secretary K. Gnanadesikan said the State government decided to remit the life sentences of all the seven and release them as they had already served over 24 years in prison. Under Section 435 of the Cr.PC, the State has to consult the Centre before releasing prisoners prosecuted by the CBI or under a Central law. In December last year, the Supreme Court had ruled that the State government had no power to release the convicts without the Centre’s concurrence. In his letter, the Chief Secretary said the communication to the Centre was being sent without prejudice to the State’s right to seek a review of the December 2, 2015, judgment, wherein the Constitution Bench had said the word ‘consultation’ used in Section 435 meant ‘concurrence.’ The seven convicts are A.G. Perarivalan, V. Sriharan alias Murugan, T. Suthendraraja alias Santhan (all three whose death sentences were commuted by the Supreme Court in 2014 owing to the delay in the disposal of their mercy petitions), Nalini (whose death sentence was commuted to life by the State government in 2000), Robert Payas, Jayakumar and Ravichandran, who are serving life terms. Sriharan, Santhan, Jayakumar and Payas are Sri Lankan nationals, while the others are from Tamil Nadu. In 1999, the Supreme Court found the seven guilty of conspiring to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991. The State government’s earlier attempt in 2014 to release the seven failed, as its communication to the Centre gave only three days’ time for a response. The Union government rushed to the SC, questioning the power of the State to release them without its concurrence. The Constitution Bench was asked to answer seven major legal questions, which were settled in the December 2015 judgment. The main petition questioning the legality of the government’s order of release is still pending before a three-judge Bench of the SC. In its latest letter to the Centre, the State said the convicts had again petitioned for their release on the ground that they had spent over 20 years in prison. Of them, Nalini has filed a writ petition in the Madras HC seeking her release. “We hope the State will follow through and release them,” said Saravanan, counsel for Perarivalan. “It is a welcome decision taken by the Tamil Nadu government. While the SC has said they cannot be released without the Centre’s concurrence, it has also made it clear that the State’s constitutional powers will remain untouched.”

Ø  A 75-seater solar-powered passenger ferry, the first of its kind in the country, is quietly taking shape at Aroor in Alappuzha district. The boat is expected to be commissioned within the next three months.

Ø  In the fourth attack since 2007, heavily-armed terrorists, including suicide bombers, struck the Indian consulate in Afghanistan’s Jalalabad city on Wednesday, killing nine persons, including an Afghan security person and causing damage to the chancery. The External Affairs Ministry in New Delhi said all Indians in the mission were safe and six terrorists, who carried out the attack, were dead. While two terrorists blew themselves up, four militants were killed by the Afghan police. Two civilans were also killed in the crossfire. “They are simply attacking India’s presence in Afghanistan, whenever they get the opportunity. The whole spectrum of the India-Afghan relations, the relationship itself, is the target of the attacks”, Mr. Karzai told The Hindu in an exclusive interview in New Delhi hours after the attack in Jalalabad. The area was targeted on January 13 as well when nine persons were killed and 12 injured after a suicide bomber struck the diplomatic area. Since the Pakistani consulate was closest to the site of the attack, officials had said it was unclear which embassy was the target. The attack on Wednesday is also the third such major strike on an Indian mission since May 2014, with the last attack on January 3 this year in Mazar i Sharif. In that incident, the ITBP and Afghan forces had fought off the gunmen after battling them for nearly a day as they launched rocket attacks on the mission. Each of those attacks has originated from Pakistan. That’s where the origin of this trouble is: the Lashkar-e-Taiba is from there, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Jaish-e-Mohammad, all these outfits are from Pakistan. So, the training grounds, the financial factors and the motivating factors are all inside Pakistan, and come from across the border.

Ø  Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel later this year, a first by an Indian Prime Minister, the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) has cleared the purchase of additional surveillance aircraft from the country. The CCS chaired by Mr. Modi on Tuesday cleared the proposal to acquire two more Phalcon Airborne Early Warning and Control Systems (AWACS) at a cost of Rs. 7,500 crore under a tripartite agreement with Israel and Russia. India had procured three Phalcon AWACS, Israeli radars mounted on Russian IL-76 transport aircraft, in 2003 at cost of $1 billion. Indo-Israel ties got a major boost after Mr. Modi came to power.

Ø  China appears set to substantially hike its defence budget — a move that may have been triggered by the growing tensions in the South China Sea with the U.S., and rising cost of end-of-service payments to troops. The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) quoted a source in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) as saying that the defence budget, expected to be announced by the National People’s Congress (NPC) when it convenes for a legislative session on Saturday, could be hiked by as much as 20 per cent. In case that happens, it would be the sharpest military increase since 2007. But scaling down the expectations, the state-run Global Times said, quoting Ni Lexiong, a Shanghai-based military analyst, that the 2016 military budget will see an “appropriate” increase to meet national defence needs without putting other countries on high alert. “I think the budget reported in the SCMPmight be too high,” Analysts cite two factors that may explain the anticipated military spending increase. First, the Chinese armed forces are undergoing a structural change. Nearly 300,000 personnel are expected to leave the armed forces by 2017-end, in tune with the reorganisation of the PLA around newly formed, and leaner, theatre commands. Consequently, considerable amount of funds are required to meet the end-of-service, and retirement payments during this phase. Further, growing tensions with the U.S. and Japan in the East and South China Seas are also significant drivers. In January, a U.S. navy missile destroyer — Curtis Wilbur — sailed within 12 nautical miles of the China-controlled Triton islands in the Paracel island chain of the South China Sea, leading to calls within China for additional military preparedness. The U.S. Navy’s Pacific Command has asserted that it would step up the so-called “freedom of navigation missions” in international waters of the South China Sea — a move that Beijing says is provocative and a challenge to its territorial sovereignty.  Observers say that China can be expected to beef up defensive weaponry in the South China Sea. ImageSat International, a private company, has already taken images showing the deployment of eight missile launchers and a radar system at the China-administered Woody Island, also in the Paracel chain. Tensions with Japan are also expected to trigger additional deployment of Chinese firepower in the East China Sea, where Beijing and Tokyo have a territorial dispute over Diaoyu Islands, known as the Senkaku in Japan. The friction between the two countries is reflected in the record Japanese defence budget of $41.1 billion this year. The possibility of the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system, following the North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile technology tests this year, add another dimension, pushing China to adopt counter-measures.