SC: No mutual consent in triple talaq
•Asking whether man can validate a practice considered “sinful” by God, the Supreme Court on Friday said the consequences of invalidating triple talaq, if it comes to that, would be decided later.
•“If triple talaq comes to an end, whatever the consequences are, will be decided later. There is no mutual consent in triple talaq. People debating, reasoning, thinking and interventions by arbitrators with families are present in other forms of talaq, but not in instant triple talaq,” Chief Justice of India J.S. Khehar orally observed.
•The Chief Justice is heading a Bench of five judges hearing a clutch of petitions challenging the constitutionality of the practice of instantaneous triple talaq.
•In the second day of hearing, Justice Kurian orally asked whether a practice considered “sinful in the eyes of God can be validated by the laws of man”.
•Justice Kurian was reacting to senior advocate Salman Khurshid's submissions that all Islamic schools consider triple talaq as “sinful”.
•“Can what is sinful in the eyes of God be made lawful by man? If something is abhorrent in the eyes of God, can it be remedied by legislation? Can something that is Islamically abhorrent, be made valid by the laws of man?” Justice Kurian asked.
•“All schools discourage it as sinful, but the practice (triple talaq) is valid in law. No religious law can validate a sin. Sin cannot be part of the Shariat,” Mr. Khurshid submitted.
•Chief Justice Khehar, at this point, orally remarked that death penalty is considered “abhorrent” by some in the society, but is still permissible in law.
•Senior advocate Ram Jethmalani submitted that no amount of advocacy by man will justify instant triple talaq, pronounced “to get rid of a woman on a whim”. Mr. Jethmalani submitted that the practice was repugnant to the Holy Quran and the Prophet. He said secularism is the subjection of religion to the rule of law. There should be no discrimination against a woman just because she is a woman. Laws can be made only to improve the lot of women and not to cause them distress.
•On this aspect of discrimination against women, both Chief Justice Khehar and Justice Kurian questioned whether a prospective bride could make an advance express condition in the nikah nama to exclude triple talaq, thus extinguishing the possibility of suffering one.
EC ‘challenges’ political parties to crack EVMs
Commission gives detailed presentation on machines’ safety; says VVPATs will be used in future polls
•The Election Commission, following an over seven-hour-long meeting with representatives of 42 political parties on Friday, said it would soon offer to them an opportunity to prove that Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) could be tampered with, given the existing administrative and technical safeguards. The Commission also announced that henceforth, voter verifiable paper audit trails (VVPATs) would be used in all the Assembly and General elections.
EC to invite parties
•Declaring that the “challenge” would indeed be held, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Nasim Zaidi said at the event that the parties would also be invited to demonstrate that the EVMs used during the recent Assembly elections were tampered with.
•At the meeting, the Commission gave a detailed presentation on EVM and VVPAT, explaining their secure design, development and administrative processes. The concerns expressed by political parties on the issue of EVM security would be addressed through the “challenge”, said Dr. Zaidi. However, he did not announce the date.
•Stating that henceforth all the polls would be held using VVPATs, Dr. Zaidi said the Commission had decided that up to a definite percentage, as fixed by the EC, paper trail slips would be counted from now on. He said the views and suggestions of all the political parties on issues of reforms would be considered.
‘No favours’
•The CEC also said there were no favours for the Commission and that it maintained equal distance from all the parties and groups, which had enhanced India’s reputation in the eyes of the global community. While most parties expressed satisfaction with voting machines, particularly because VVPATs will be used for greater transparency, some parties like BSP, Trinamool and PMK demanded re-introduction of the paper ballots. Several parties, including the RJD, suggested that copies of paper trail slips should be saved separately for simultaneous counting.
•AAP MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj, who recently demonstrated machine “tampering” in Delhi Assembly, said the Commission had backed out from organising a “hackathon”, while Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said all the technocrats should have been invited to test EVMs to detect flaws, if any.
Punjab, Haryana ready for talks on SYL canal dispute
Issue should be resolved through dialogue, says Rajnath Singh
•The governments of Punjab and Haryana on Friday agreed to work towards an amicable settlement of the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) dispute even as Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar made it clear that agreements arrived at in the past between the States must be “honoured”.
•Speaking at the Northern Zonal Council (NZC) here, Mr. Khattar said Punjab was not delivering Haryana’s full share of the Ravi-Beas waters.
•“Haryana is a water-stressed State. As against a demand of 36.0 million-acre-foot (MAF) of water, the availability is only 14.7 MAF. We have to give, out of our own share in the Yamuna waters, extra water to Delhi in compliance with the apex court's orders even as Punjab is not delivering Haryana’s full share of the Ravi-Beas waters,” he said.
Citizens’ rights
•“Since our faith in the Constitution is full and unflinching, we would never hesitate in taking legal recourse to safeguard our interests and to protect the rights of the residents of the State,” he added.
•Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who was chairing the meeting, said the two States should hold meetings to find a solution to the problem, failing which the matter should be left to the courts to decide.
•Punjab Chief Minister Capt. Amarinder Singh, meanwhile, called for coordination among the States and the Centre to find a solution to the problem.
•In February, the Supreme Court had made it clear that Punjab would have to comply with its order on the construction of canal. The apex court verdict had been delivered on November 10, 2016, on a presidential reference.
•The Punjab government, however, has always maintained it has no water to spare for Haryana.
•In 2016, the apex court had also termed Punjab’s 2004 Act terminating the canal agreement as unconstitutional, following which Punjab Congress MLAs had resigned enmasse. Mr. Amarinder Singh, the then party president, had also resigned from the Lok Sabha as MP, over the issue.
‘Punjab to go dry’
•At Friday’s meeting, he pointed out that an estimated 10 lakh acres in southern Punjab were likely to go dry following the construction of the canal. He further said that the region, which earlier saw the emergence of Maoism, could again become a hotbed of terrorism, if the project was executed.
•“Though Haryana had less land, it was given more water at the time of Punjab’s reorganisation [in 1966],” said Mr. Amarinder Singh, pointing out that Punjab did not get any share in the Yamuna water.
•The Chief Minister also sought the Centre’s help in supplementing the State’s efforts to check cross-border smuggling of drugs.
India’s first uterus transplants soon
31 more women have lined up for the potentially unviable procedure
•Two medical centres in Pune and Bengaluru are gearing up to perform the country’s first uterus transplants. The medical breakthrough has triggered a strong debate over how far a woman should go to become a mother as 31 more women have lined up for the procedure.
•A uterus transplant is an extremely complex procedure that will enable women with absent or diseased uteruses to carry a pregnancy to termafter a donor uterus is transplanted into them. While there is no debate that womb transplant will be a medical leap for Indian doctors, the question remains about the viability of the procedure.
Congenital absence
•One in every 4,000 women in India is born without a uterus. There are about 4 lakh women with congenital absence of uterus all over the world. “Experiencing pregnancy and motherhood for those who are born without a uterus is a dream come true. While we have received permission to perform the procedure as a research project in two patients, we have 31 couples enrolled for a uterus transplant. They are of the opinion that when a technology is available, why not use it,” says Kamini Rao, medical director of Milann-The Fertility Centre, the Bengaluru-based facility that has received permission to perform uterus transplants from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
•Agra-based gynaecologist and former president of the Federation of Obstetric and Gynaecological Societies of India (FOGSI) Dr. Narendra Malhotra feels that the uterus transplants, if successful, will be a victory for science. “It will go down in medical history by proving Indian doctors are capable of pulling it off. But if you ask me whether the surgeries are practical, the answer is no,” said Dr. Malhotra.
•At first, a donor undergoes a surgery for the removal of her uterus. Unlike other hysterectomies, blood vessels and vascular pedicels around the uterus have to be carefully preserved and then re-attached to the recipient. After the transplant, the recipient is put on immunosuppressants so that her body does not reject the donor’s organ. She waits at least for a year before attempting a pregnancy as an In Vitro Fertility (IVF) procedure.
‘Is that viable?’
•The woman’s eggs are extracted much before the transplant and the embryos formed with her husband’s sperms are frozen. If the IVF cycles are successful, the woman conceives. However, the delivery is carried out through a C-section and the transplanted uterus is removed after the delivery so that she does not have be on immunosuppressants continuously.
•“The success rate of an IVF cycle is merely 40%. The woman also faces a high risk of miscarriage and the babies have to be delivered pre-term. Now, does that look viable?” questions Dr. Malhotra.
•The very first uterine transplant in the world was carried out in 2002 in Saudi Arabia, and the second one in Turkey in 2011. Both were cadaveric transplants wherein the uterus was taken from a brain dead patient. However, both the transplants failed due to rejection of the organ. In 2014, Dr. Mats Brannstrom carried out the first successful live donor uterus transplant in Sweden and till date, he alone holds the record for carrying out successful uterus transplants. “With such high risks and limited results to show, I do not see any practical implementation of this procedure,” says Mumbai-based infertility expert Dr. Hrishikesh Pai, adding that other organ transplants are life-saving procedures but a uterus transplant is simply a “surgical feat”.
•Head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Vikram Hospital, N. Venkatesh, says only time would determine the success of such procedures in an emerging economy like ours.
•“The prospect of uterus transplantationsounds more exciting than promising [against the backdrop of options like adoption and surrogacy], the practicality and cost-effectiveness of such procedures needs to be studied,” says Dr. Venkatesh, who is also former president of the Bangalore Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
SC to hear plea on Aadhaar on May 17
•A two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on May 17 a joint petition filed by Magsaysay award winner Shanta Sinha and feminist researcher Kalyani Sen Menon for a stay of more than 17 government schemes insisting on Aadhaar for availing benefits such as midday meals, disability pension, Bhopal gas tragedy victims etc.
•In an urgent mention by senior advocate Shyam Divan, Chief Justice of India J.S. Khehar agreed to post the petition for hearing before the two-judge vacation bench. Mr. Divan, accompanied by advocates Vipin Nair and P.B. Suresh, had approached the Chief Justice on the basis of a recent order by a Bench of Justices A.K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan to tag the petition with a batch scheduled to be heard by a Constitution Bench.
•The petition argued that mandatory requirement of Aadhaar for these schemes "constricts rights and freedoms, which a citizen has long been enjoying, unless and until they part with their personal biometric information.”
•Accordingly, from July 1 2017, an individual, who is not willing to part with personal biometric information, will be denied social benefits that he or she is entitled to, on the sole basis of non-production of Aadhaar number.
Saving Jadhav
Pakistan’s adherence to international law will be under test in proceedings before the ICJ
•India’s decision to approach the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to stall the possible execution of Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav in Pakistan is an unusual move impelled by the peculiar circumstances of the former naval officer’s case. Sentenced to death by a military court after what was a summary and arguably bogus trial, he is in imminent danger of execution. His case now hinges on an appeal against his conviction on charges of espionage and on petitions for mercy before Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff and President. India’s main contention is that Pakistan had committed “egregious violations” of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations by repeatedly denying consular access to Jadhav for over a year. His family members have not been issued visas to travel to Pakistan and help him pursue appellate remedies. Pakistan had also linked the consular access issue to India’s “assistance” in its investigation into Jadhav’s alleged activities. With India instituting the case, the ICJ President has written to Pakistan to act in such a way that any order passed by the court would have its appropriate effect. While this virtually operates as a stay on Jadhav’s execution, a substantive interim order is expected only when the court hears India’s application for “provisional measures” at its hearing on May 15, pending adjudication of its plea for declaring Pakistan’s actions as violative of international law. New Delhi’s position is that Jadhav is innocent and that he was “kidnapped” by Pakistani agents from Iran.
•On the face of it, India’s decision to move the ICJ may appear somewhat incongruous in the light of its position against internationalising its disputes with Pakistan. However, this is not the first time that it has approached the world court against Pakistan. In 1971, it wanted the ICJ to decide the limited question whether the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organisation had the jurisdiction to question India’s suspension of overflight rights to Pakistani aircraft. India has every claim to approach the ICJ to protect the life and rights of its nationals. One round of focussed legal proceedings does not amount to giving up its stated position on resolving other issues on a bilateral basis. However, it is likely to face a stiff challenge from Pakistan both on merits and by way of preliminary objections. Pakistan is likely to argue that consular access to Indian prisoners on its territory is governed by a bilateral agreement signed in May 2008. It is likely to quote a clause on reciprocal consular facilities that says, “in case of arrest, detention or sentence made on political or security grounds, each side may examine the case on its merit”. While Pakistan is free to cite legal and technical points in its favour, it hardly requires iteration that it should avoid any precipitate move that would frustrate the ongoing proceedings before the ICJ. Pakistan’s adherence to international law will be under test.
The jurisprudence of outrage
Severity in the award of a death sentence invariably flows in the name of society
•There was nothing unexpected about the final verdict of the Supreme Court in the ‘Nirbhaya’ case. Given the public outcry for justice and the inherent brutality of the rape and murder of the physiotherapy student in Delhi in December 2012, the award of the death penalty to those found guilty is unsurprising. The fact that a juvenile offender involved in the heinous offence was let off after the statutory maximum period of confinement in a juvenile home had already given vast sections of the public an impression that at least one of the infamous six had walked free. This factor may have increased the burden of expectation on the court, rendering it even more difficult than it was to award a lesser sentence to any of the four available for trial and sentencing after the suicide of Ram Singh, the apparent ringleader, while in prison. The court’s reasoning for sentencing all the four to death is steeped in the language and jurisprudence of outrage.
A moral dichotomy
•Prosecutions are always in the name of society and the forensic claim that all criminal justice is about the twin objectives of protecting society and deterring crime has a hoary history. While leniency in sentencing is seen as an individual benefit flowing from a judge-centric approach to justice, severity is invariably in the name of society. Thus, in the maze of Supreme Court decisions that set out judicial reasons for awarding or avoiding the death penalty, there is a clear moral dichotomy in approach. Verdicts that spare the lives of the guilty take recourse to norms that have limited social appeal: for instance, that the accused are relatively young, not habitual offenders, that there is scope for reform or that the crime was not premeditated or was a result of a rare lapse. Those that allow capital punishment, on the other hand, not only contain normative reasoning that seeks to slake social thirst for retribution but also use strong descriptive elements to win over a wider audience. They often argue, for instance, that the crime has shocked society and the collective conscience, that it was brutal, depraved or caused extreme and intense indignation.
•In the Nirbhaya case, too, the citations inevitably lead to the main point drawn from Machhi Singh (1983) that capital punishment is to be given in the rarest of rare cases “when its collective conscience is so shocked that it will expect the holders of the judicial power centre to inflict death penalty irrespective of their personal opinion as regards desirability or otherwise of retaining death penalty.” There are repeated references to “collective conscience” and “society’s cry for justice”. There is little doubt that the national outcry that the gruesome incident evoked is at the heart of the ultimate outcome, as the defence lawyers and amicus curiae appointed by the court argued in vain for separate assessment of the mitigating factors in respect of each individual convict rather than a common set of reasons.
•Any critique of the judgment, however, will suffer from the same infirmities inherent in pitting social conscience against individual destiny, a classic contest between the jurisprudence of outrage and the dispassionate dispensation of criminal justice. Unless it is conceded that it is difficult to blame the court for its approach in the face of a social outcry, it is not possible to confront the consequences of two factors that stand out whenever the death penalty is awarded: the apparent inconsistency in applying the ‘rarest of rare cases’ rule and the lack of restraint that the ‘collective conscience’ theory can engender.
‘Atmosphere’ and sentencing
•It is not in every case involving the rape and murder of a minor that the court has sanctioned the death sentence. Similarly, courts have included or excluded bomb blasts, assassinations and incidents of communal carnage without regard to consistency. It was somewhat ironical that the ‘Nirbhaya’ judgment came a day after the Bombay High Court upheld life sentences in the Bilkis Bano case, but declined to enhance them to capital punishment, even though it involved the rape of three women and the massacre of 14 Muslims, including a child. It may be improper to compare an emblematic case of gender violence with one of many incidents that took place as part of a communal pogrom in Gujarat. However, there are similarities in the underlying pathology behind the Nirbhaya and Bilkis Bano cases. Both involved rape and murder, both were opportunistic acts, and there was absence of premeditation and provocation. However, an obvious difference is the atmosphere in which they took place, one on a peaceful night in the national capital, and another in the surcharged backdrop of the Godhra violence and its aftermath. The question may now be academic, but is ‘atmosphere’ an aggravating or a mitigating circumstance when it comes to sentencing policy?
•When the Supreme Court evolved the ‘rarest of rare cases’ doctrine, the idea was to leave only a small window open for a sentence of death, life term being the norm. There is a real danger that yielding to collective clamour may widen this window and throw it open for more frequent resort to the extreme penalty. One of the likely consequences is that it may become easier to cite shock and indignation in society to justify the death penalty in a given case. Articulating the view that the case has shocked the conscience of the court and society does not require elaborate reasoning, but only an impressive choice of words, of which there are plenty, that express outrage. The question of how the judiciary will rise above the collective clamour for retributive justice will loom large in the future.
For consistency and clarity
•One of the foremost requirements in death penalty jurisprudence today is the need for consistency in applying the ‘rarest of rare’ rule, and for clarity on what satisfies the collective conscience. Is a perceived sense of outrage in society the test, or is it the sheer enormity of the offence? On merits and evidence, it is difficult for anyone to argue that the gang rape on a moving bus on a wintry night in Delhi was not marked by unusual brutality and depravity, warranting severe punishment. It is equally difficult to disagree with the court that the aggravating circumstances far outweigh the mitigating factors. The locus of the problem of applying the death penalty whenever there is a sense of intense indignation in society, therefore, does not lie in the facts of the case or in the text of the judgment, but in the wider domain of criminal jurisprudence. As long as imposing death is available as a form of punishment, the moral dilemma that every judge faces is inescapable.
Centre cuts UDAN levy on air tickets
Each passenger will have to bear about Rs. 30 as cess against about Rs. 50 imposed earlier
•In a relief to passengers flying on major domestic routes, the Civil Aviation Ministry has decided to significantly reduce the levy on air tickets imposed to fund the Centre’s new regional connectivity scheme UDAN.
•From June 1, it will only charge a uniform levy of Rs. 5,000 per flight on major routes, down from Rs. 7,500-Rs. 8,500 per flight it had ordered to charge earlier.
•The move will come as a relief to passengers taking flights on major domestic routes as each passenger will have to bear about Rs. 30 as cess against about Rs. 50 as per government’s previous order in November 2016.
•“The Central Government has decided to revise the levy on scheduled flights being operated within India to fund the Regional Air Connectivity Fund at a uniform rate of Rs. 5,000 per flight till further revision. The said levy will now come into effect from June 1, 2017,” said an order sent by the Civil Aviation Ministry to all Secretaries of Central government and chief secretaries of State governments on May 9.
Centre’s circular
•The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has been directed to issue a circular on the revised levy amount.
•The Centre had ordered imposing a levy of Rs. 7,500 for flights up to 1,000 km, Rs. 8,000 for flights between 1,000 and 1,500 km and Rs. 8,500 for flights beyond 1,500 km, except north-eastern states and regional routes, effective from December 1.
•A reduction in levy is also seen as government’s efforts to bring domestic airlines on board its UDAN scheme as most domestic airlines refused to charge a levy on air tickets.
•The Federation of Indian Airlines (FIA), which represents IndiGo, Jet Airways, SpiceJet and GoAir, had dragged the Centre to the courts challenging the levy to finance the regional connectivity scheme. Only AirAsia and Air India had imposed a regional connectivity scheme surcharge on its tickets so far.
•The government’s directive came on the same day when IndiGo, India’s largest airline by market share, announced it will participate in the government’s UDAN scheme for providing regional air connectivity, by inducting 50 ATR 72-600 aircraft, which are smaller planes.
•“We expect the FIA to withdraw their case in Delhi High Court as two of its member airlines will now be participating in UDAN scheme and we have also decided to reduce their burden by lowering the levy substantially,” said a senior civil aviation ministry official, on the condition of anonymity.
Levy relief
•The government also announced relief to existing airlines which had to charge a higher levy due to its previous order.
•“The amount already paid by the airlines in pursuance to order dated November 9, 2016, will be adjusted against them as per this Order,” according to the civil aviation ministry order.
•As per the UDAN scheme, airfares on all flights operating from regional airports will be capped at Rs. 2,500 for an hour’s journey. The Centre will provide subsidy to fund the losses incurred by airlines through a regional connectivity fund.
•While 80% of the fund will be financed by the levy imposed on air tickets, the rest 20% will flow from respective state governments.
GST to herald a new era in federalism: RBI
Easier taxes to boost revenue
•The Goods and Services Tax (GST), which is likely to be introduced from July 2017, is set to usher in a new era of cooperative federalism, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) observed in its report on State finances.
•“GST is likely to set a new course for cooperative federalism in India by strengthening Centre-State partnership,” the RBI said its report.
•The successful implementation of GST would help boost revenue through easier tax administration, supported by user-friendly IT systems, it said.
Tax collection costs
•“GST is expected to reduce administrative costs for collection of tax revenue and improve revenue efficiency. Moreover, uniformity in tax rates and procedures across the country will economise on compliance cost,” it said.
•The RBI also noted that the 25 States, whose data was available, had suffered fiscal slippage in 2016-17, though they had budgeted for an improvement in the period.
•“Relaxations in market borrowings provided by the Fourteenth Finance Commission have allowed many of the States to mobilise additional resources,” it said.
•However, the overall fiscal position was found to be sustainable in the long run, according to the RBI.
•“Based on information pertaining to 25 States, the consolidated gross fiscal deficit to gross State domestic product ratio is budgeted to moderate to 2.6% in 2017-18.”
Revised data shows IIP growing faster, WPI easing
Revision is in line with global standards, says TCA Anant
•Wholesale price inflation eased significantly to 3.85% in April from 5.3% in March 2017, according to a revised Wholesale Price Index released on Friday, even as industrial output growth as measured by the new Index of Industrial Production (IIP)series showed a marginally stronger performance in March at 2.7%, compared with the old data series. However, even that was slower than the 5.5% IIP growth seen in March 2016.
Retail inflation eases
•Meanwhile, consumer price inflation in April eased to 3% from 3.9% in March, a release from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation on Friday showed.
•The main change made to the WPI and IIP is that the base year has been shifted from 2004-05 to 2011-12 in order to make the data more contemporary and reflective of ground realities.
•“The international recommendation is for a revision of these indices every five years, and so we are trying to stick to that,” Statistics and Programme Implementation Secretary TCA Anant said on Friday while announcing the changes. “The complaint also is that the old series, based on an old base, is not representative. We have also created technical committees that will constantly review the IIP.”
Aligning with GDP
•“The purpose of these changes is to align WPI with GDP and IIP, and hence the 2011-12 base year has been taken,” Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion Secretary Ramesh Abhishek said at the press conference. “The other change is that the WPI will no longer incorporate indirect taxes, which means they will be insulated from policy changes.”
•Previously, the WPI was calculated on the basis of the base price plus excise duty minus any trade discount. The new formula, according to Mr. Abhishek, removes the excise duty aspect.
•IIP grew 2.7% in March according to the new series, compared with 2.5% according to the old series. Within this, the mining sector grew 9.7% in March per the new series versus 7.9% as per the old data. The manufacturing sector growth rate was 1.2% compared with 1.3% based on the old series.
•“The new series show higher growth rates as compared to the old series which can be attributed to shifting of base to a more recent period, increase in number of factories in panel for reporting data and exclusion of closed ones and inclusion of new items and exclusion of old ones,” Care Ratings said in a report.
•The WPI rose 3.85% in April according to the new series, compared with 5.3% in March. Primary articles inflation was 0.4% in April, slower than March’s 4%. Inflation in manufactured products was steady at 3%.
Domestic funds set pace as FIIs ease up
MFs seeing huge inflows through SIPs
•Domestic institutional investors (DIIs), which include insurance companies, banks and mutual funds, are playing an active role in the equity markets especially at a time when foreign investors have slowed the pace of their stock purchases.
•In April and May, when the benchmark indices have been repeatedly scaling new highs, DIIs have pumped in almost Rs. 10,500 crore as against Rs. 1,200 crore by FIIs, according to data from the BSE and the National Securities Depository Ltd. (NSDL).
•Market participants said mutual funds (MFs) were seeing a lot of inflows through systematic investment plans (SIPs) that were getting deployed in the market. Incidentally, demonetisation had also played a key role in the inflows, they added.
•Susmit Patodia, Associate Director & Head - Institutional Sales, Motilal Oswal Institutional Equities, said that demonetisation has been a game changer for MFs and equities as inflows touched new highs post the November move.
•“Demonetisation pushed interest rates down and a large section of investors became wary of investing in gold and real estate,” said Mr. Patodia. “That increased the flow towards mutual funds. Rightly so, since there is no reason for equities to be such a small percentage of household savings in the country. FII flows will also rise going ahead though foreign flows depend on a variety of reasons beyond our control.”
•As per Association of Mutual Funds in India data, equity funds saw net inflows of Rs. 11,250 crore in April. That included flows into equity funds, equity-linked savings schemes and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) except those investing in gold. In December, the first full month after demonetisation, net flows were pegged at Rs. 14,452 crore.
•Interestingly, while there was always a perception that DIIs played second fiddle to their overseas counterparts, the last one year has shown that both sets of investors have been almost on par with each other in terms of investments in the stock market.
•DIIs have put in almost Rs. 44,000 crore in equities, just short of the Rs. 48,600 crore invested by FIIs.
•ICICI Securities, in a recent note to clients, said that while FII outflows from Indian equities had been marginal, flows from DIIs had picked up due to money pouring into MFs through SIPs. While there did not appear to be any major risk to emerging market inflows the “pace of inflows could slow down” amid cooling commodity prices and U.S. interest rate increases, the brokerage observed.
