Millennium Post

SC ruling on powers of Speaker will change country's political scenario: Congress

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RPF busts e-ticket racket with suspected LINKS to terror FINANCING

NEW DELHI: In one of its "For the last 10 days, the IB, biggest crackdown on illegal Special Bureau, ED, NIA, Karnataka ticketing in the railways, the Police have interrogat­ed RPF has arrested a madrassaed­ucated, Mustafa. self-taught software "Dimensions of money laundering developer from Jharkhand in a and terror financing are racket which has links to Paki- suspected," Railway Protection stan, Bangladesh and Dubai Force (RPF) Director General with suspected involvemen­t in Arun Kumar said at a press terror financing, a senior official briefing. said on Tuesday. Kumar said Mustafa has 563

Ghulam Mustafa (28), who personal IRCTC user IDS, and was arrested from Bhubaneswa­r, a list of 2,400 SBI branches and has a team of programmer­s 600 regional rural banks where working for him. He started his he is suspected to have accounts. career in 2015 touting counter He also said Mustafa used tickets in Bengaluru and then software to access darknet, and graduated to e-tickets and illegal Linux-based hacking systems software, the RPF official said. were found on his laptop. AGENCIES

NEW DELHI: The Congress on Tuesday welcomed the Supreme Court verdict on the powers of the Speaker of a House, saying it will change the political scenario of India.

In a path-breaking ruling, the apex court on Tuesday said Parliament should "rethink" whether the Speaker of a House should continue to have powers to disqualify lawmakers as such a functionar­y "belongs to a particular political party".

Senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal said the Supreme Court judgement says that no Speaker can now delay deciding a matter and the delay cannot be more than three months as they have directed the Manipur Assembly

Speaker to decide a matter pertaining to disqualifi­cation of a Congress MLA in three months.

He said the SC judgement says that Parliament must now frame a law to have an independen­t tribunal, take away the power from Speaker (on deciding disqualifi­cation petitions).

The Congress leader said the Congress bagged 28 seats in Manipur, the BJP got 21, but the saffron party aligned with NPP and took one Congress MLA and the next day of him being elected, he became a minister.

The Congress had then filed an applicatio­n of disqualifi­cation against him but the Speaker did not take any action, after which a writ petition was filed,

Sibal said.

"No Speaker can delay deciding a matter and the delay cannot be more than three months. Every disqualifi­cation applicatio­n has to be decided within three months.

"If there are some peculiar circumstan­ces which do not permit him to decide within three months, he must give reasons as to why he cannot decide within three months and they have directed the Manipur Speaker to decide the matter within three months and he says that judge said if he does not decide the matter, we are free to come back to Supreme Court for seeking appropriat­e directions," Sibal said.

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