4. What will PM Modi, Xi Jinping and Putin talk about?

Border conflict

• The summit is taking place amid a lingering border row between India and China in eastern Ladakh.
• The armies of the two neighbours had a violent faceoff in the Galwan Valley in June 2020, in which India lost 20 soldiers while the Chinese casualty is believed to be much higher than the officially released figure of five.

The summit

• India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Tuesday that PM Modi will attend the annual summit on June 23 and 24 following an invitation by the Chinese President. China is hosting the summit in its capacity as the chair of the grouping for the current year.
• The BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) brings together five of the largest developing countries, representing 41 per cent of the global population, 24 percent of the global GDP and 16 percent of the global trade.
• The summit will take place in the backdrop of the geopolitical turmoil triggered by the Russian attack on Ukraine. It will be interesting to see whether it will have a discussion on the Ukraine crisis.

• Draupadi Murmu of the BJP will take on ex-BJP leader Yashwant Sinha in the next month’s presidential election. BJP president JP Nadda announced former Jharkhand Governor Murmu’s name on Tuesday night, hours after the opposition parties declared Yashwant Sinha, who hails from the tribal state of Jharkhand, as their joint candidate.
• Murmu, 64, has the opportunity to become the youngest President of India. Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy had become the President at the age of 64 years and two months. Murmu would be a month younger than Reddy if she wins the election next month.
• At 84, Sinha, if elected, will become the oldest person to occupy the Presidency. KR Narayanan holds the record – he was 77 when he was elected as the President in 1997.
• Born in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj, Murmu is a former minister in the BJP-BJD government during 2000-04. She became the first woman governor of Jharkhand, and also the first to complete the five-year tenure.
• Sinha is a career diplomat, who joined politics after 24 years in service in 1984 with the Janata Party. Later, he joined VP Singh’s Janata Dal and Chandra Shekhar’s Samajwadi Janata Dal before joining the BJP, which he quit to join the TMC in 2021. He was the Union finance minister in Chandra Shekhar and Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led governments.
• Election for the next President will be held on July 18 for which nominations could be filed till June 29. Votes will be counted on July 21.
• Equation: The BJP-led NDA has about 48-49% votes of its own from the electoral college comprising the elected MPs and MLAs. It is likely to get support from Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik’s BJD and YSR Congress Party of YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, the Andhra Pradesh CM.

• What: The Shiv Sena-led Maharashtra government of Uddhav Thackeray is in trouble. A group of 22 MLAs (G-22, including one Independent) led by party’s chief whip Eknath Shinde has rebelled, and taken shelter in a resort in Gujarat, a BJP-ruled state. Shinde wants the Sena-BJP alliance afresh.
• Why: The crisis is linked to Monday’s MLC election. Cross voting by the Sena MLAs helped the BJP win five of 10 seats – one more than its number suggested. Frustrated over the loss, also of face soon after the Rajya Sabha polls, Thackeray reportedly reprimanded Shinde over cross voting. This triggered the rebellion.
• Big setback: Shinde, who dropped “Shiv Sena” from his Twitter bio, is a mass leader from Thane and a powerful minister in the Thackeray government. The MLAs supporting Shinde include five ministers – all sheltering in the Gujarat resort. The Sena has 55 MLAs, without G-22, it would have just 34, and the Thackeray government will fall short of majority – from 152 to 130.
• Government change? Maharashtra BJP chief Chandrakant Patil said the party was open to forming a government with Shinde. The BJP has 106 MLAs in 288-member assembly, and needs 37 more MLAs (effective strength at 287) to dislodge the Thackeray government. Former Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis was in Delhi on Tuesday holding meetings with Union minister Amit Shah and BJP president JP Nadda.
• Thackeray cracked the whip, sacking his chief whip and holding a 10-minute telecon with Shinde to hear that the rebel leader wants him to part ways with the NCP and the Congress.
• Meanwhile, Sharad Pawar, whose NCP is a partner in the Thackeray government along with the Congress, called the crisis an “internal matter” of the Sena. More details here

What NSA said

• National Security Advisor Ajit Doval said that the government’s decision was “not a knee-jerk reaction that has come overnight” but has been debated and discussed for over decades.

‘No rollback’

• Lt Gen Anil Puri, additional secretary, Department of Military Affairs, asserted that the recruitment process will remain unchanged and the traditional regimentation system in the military will continue.
• The three services said the Agnipath scheme will not entail any change in the existing system of recruitment for soldiers and that it will not at all impact their operational readiness. More details here

But Oppn unconvinced…

• A day after industry leaders backed the Agnipath scheme, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said they should walk the talk by first employing already retired soldiers.
• On Tuesday, more Indian companies, including GMR Infrastructure and Welspun announced their support for the move.

• Latest: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) questioned Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for over 10 hours on Tuesday in an alleged money-laundering case linked to the National Herald newspaper. It has now questioned Rahul Gandhi for over 50 hours in five days. His mother Sonia Gandhi, the Congress president, has also been summoned in the same case for questioning. She is likely to appear before the ED on June 23.
• The ED is investigating their role in the ownership transfer of the National Herald from Associated Journals Limited) – the company that runs the newspaper – to Young Indian Ltd. It also involves a debt swap, in which the Congress transferred its right to YIL to recover a loan of Rs 90.25 crore from AJL in lieu of a payment of Rs 50 lakh.
• What is ED: It is a multi-dimensional agency that investigates economic offences under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, Foreign Exchange Management Act and Foreign Exchange Regulation Act.
• It was set up in May 1956 as an ‘enforcement unit’ in the Department of Economic Affairs under the Union finance ministry.
• Powers and probe: The ED draws its powers from the PMLA 2002 and probes cases of financial irregularity exceeding Rs 1 crore.
• ED cases come mostly from the police or the CBI. The ED does not register an FIR, rather Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) for its investigation.
• ED can conduct raids, seize money or documents, call a suspect for questioning, demand documents for financial transactions and arrest an accused for alleged money laundering.
• But, after 3,086 raids, 4,964 cases and 993 chargesheets, the ED has been able to secure only 23 convictions, the government told Parliament this year. More here

• Indian equity benchmarks continued their gains for the second consecutive session on Tuesday as all sectors showed a strong rebound. This rally brought a much-needed relief to the Indian indices as BSE Sensex jumped 934 points and NSE Nifty 289 points.
• In percentage terms, the30-share Sensex surged by 1.81% to end the day at 52,532 while the broader index, Nifty, showed a slightly sharper jump of 1.88% to close at 15,639. At one point during the day, Sensex rallied over 1,201 points or 2.32% to 52,799.40.
• The uptick in the Indian markets came on the cues from the global markets. Asian stocks and Wall Street futures shrugged off a recent steep sell-off with S&P 500 e-mini share futures climbing 1.89% and Nasdaq e-mini share futures advancing 1.99% on Monday, when the US markets were closed for a holiday.
• Despite these surges in the share markets, fear that aggressive rate hikes by the American central bank to check inflation may spark a global recession continues to weigh heavy on the minds of the investors.
• Back in India, all the 15 sector gauges – compiled by the NSE – ended in the green. Sub-indices Nifty Oil & Gas, Nifty Consumer Durables, Nifty IT and Nifty Metal performed better than the overall performance of Nifty.
• Overall, 2,497 shares recorded growth while 837 declined on BSE. Adani Total Gas surged almost 20%. Among others, while Titan, Hindalco, Coal India, JSW Steel and Tata Motors were top gainers on Nifty, the shares of Titan, SBI, TCS, HCL Tech, Dr Reddy’s, Tata Steel, Wipro, Infosys, ITC, Tech Mahindra, L&T and NTPC were front-runners on BSE.

The new law

• The US law says firms will have to prove imports from the region are not produced using forced labour.
• UFLPA supersedes a series of individual import bans that were imposed in recent years amid international concern over human rights conditions in Xinjiang, according to the South China Morning Post.

China’s denial

• Washington claims the persecuted minority Uyghur community in the region, who are predominantly Muslim, has been detained and made to work.
• China has repeatedly rejected accusations that it is holding Uyghurs in internment camps in Xinjiang. It said the camps in Xinjiang were “re-education” facilities used to combat terrorism.

Meanwhile…
The Human Rights Watch said the US government should vigorously enforce the new law and companies with operations, suppliers, or sub-suppliers in Xinjiang should relocate their facilities or supply chains elsewhere. More details here

• South Korea’s space programme got a home grown boost when it successfully launched five satellites with its indigenously developed Nuri rocket, which now makes the country the seventh after Russia, US, European Union, Japan, China and India to have its own space launch vehicle that’s capable of putting a satellite weighing more than 1 tonne into orbit.
• The launch, which was done using a three-stage rocket, more than 47 metres (154 feet) long and weighing 200 tonnes, assumes significance as the country’s previous attempt last year on a similar three stage Nuri rocket ended in failure after the launch vehicle could not put the dummy satellite into orbit. Prior to that, South Korea used to rely on Russian made engines for their launch vehicles — one of which exploded two minutes into flight in 2010.
• Interestingly, the South Korean rocket development comes several years after India developed its launch vehicles, the PSLV which was first launched in 1993 and can carry payloads of up to 1.75 tonnes and the GSLV, which was developed in 2001 and can carry payloads of upto 5 tonnes.