- After weeks of vacillation, leaders of six Janata Parivar parties announced their decision to merge into one entity on April 15.
- With 30 MPs, the new party will be the third largest bloc behind the Congress (68) and the BJP (47) in the Rajya Sabha, where the Modi government continues to be in a minority. In the Lok Sabha, the party will have 15 MPs, making it the eighth largest in the House.
- Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh — at whose residence the leaders met — will head the party and the parliamentary board, but the name, flag, symbol, policy and party programme will be finalised by a six-member committee later.
- While the SP leader will head the committee, its members will be H.D. Deve Gowda (Janata Dal-S), Sharad Yadav (Janata Dal-United), Om Prakash Chautala (Indian National Lok Dal) , Kamal Morarka (Samajwadi Janata Party) and Ram Gopal Yadav (SP).
- Initially, an understanding had been reached on naming the outfit the Samajwadi Janata Dal, and accepting the SP symbol, the bicycle. But with Jitan Ram Manjhi, the former Bihar CM, who broke away from the JD(U) last month to form his own outfit, saying he would claim the JD(U) flag and symbol, the Sharad Yadav-Nitish Kumar-led party is having second thoughts about giving up its emblems.
India among AIIB’s founder-members
- India and many influential western nations are among the 57 founder members of the $50 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), while the U.S. and Japan stayed away from the China-backed multilateral lender, according to the final list of members released on April 15.
- Though the deadline for founding membership application has expired, the bank will continue to accept new members, China’s Vice Finance Minister Shi Yaobin said.
- Backing the Chinese initiative, India was one of the first countries to have signed up for the bank
Jayant Sinha bats for full convertibility
- India needs to take many policy measures over a period of time, including moving towards full capital account convertibility, to become a leading global economy, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha has said.
- “There are many policy measures and many things that we have to do over a period of time, if indeed India has to become a leading global economy... We have to make it possible for our capital markets to be broader, deeper and for that to happen, capital account convertibility also becomes important,” Sinha told reporters at an event here.
- The Minister’s statement assumes significance as Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan had recently said that the central bank was looking at allowing full capital account convertibility in a few years.
- Stating that the RBI was fairly open to capital inflows, the Governor had said: “The only place today that we have some restrictions is inflows into debt, especially very short-term debt.”
- Full capital convertibility means a foreign investor can repatriate his money into his own local currency at will, which is not allowed in the country as of now.
National Pension System
- Stressing that the old age traditional support system for retired people is increasingly eroding in India, Mr. Sinha highlighted on the need for making National Pension System (NPS) universal.
- “We are going to support retired people. If we will make NPS universal, then we will have a pool of savings, which can finance infrastructure projects,” he said.
- NPS was initially introduced for the central government employees joining on or after January 1, 2004. Later, in order to facilitate organised entities, including public sector organisations, a customised version of NPS, known as NPS-Corporate Sector Model, was introduced in December 2011.
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