By Tridib Raman
A controversial order has come in the personal insolvency case of Essel Group founder Subhash Chandra before the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT). It has become a striking example of the unique nexus between power and the privileged. In this bizarre ruling, the NCLT has granted a 99.97 per cent “haircut” on Chandra’s outstanding loans of ₹22,000 crore and directed him to pay a mere ₹6.5 crore. LIC Housing Finance, whose claim stood at ₹1,322 crore, maynow have to content itself with receiving just ₹32 lakh. The original two-member NCLT bench had delivered a split verdict. Technical Member Reena Sinha Puri, an Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer of the 1987 batch, had pointed out procedural lapses and violations of rules and recommended rejection of the proposal. Since it was a split verdict, the matter was referred to a third member, Nilesh Sharma, who approved the nearly 99 per cent haircut, effectively clearing a massive loan waiver. Reena Puri is known as a strict and honest officer. Earlier, while she was serving as Joint Secretary in the Coal Ministry, her tenure was cut short in 2020 and she was sent back to her parent cadre. It may be recalled that there were around 23 creditors in Subhash Chandra’s insolvency case who were seeking to recover their outstanding dues from him. What is surprising is that 80 per cent of the voting in the NCLT proceedings went in Chandra’s favour. Since the two board members, Ashok Kumar Bharadwaj and Reena Sinha Puri, could not agree on the matter, it was referred to the third member, Judicial Member Nilesh Sharma. After the decision triggered a storm on social media, the principal creditors, including LIC Housing Finance, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank, are now reportedly considering approaching the NCLT Appellate Tribunal.
Is This the Power of Influence?
Tridib Raman
Subhash Chandra’s Zee fame and his links with the BJP and the Sangh are hardly a secret. More importantly, in the Committee of Creditors (CoC), Chandra’s relief package, or “haircut plan”, received 80.81 per cent of the votes. But remember that approximately 61.78 per cent of these votes came from just five institutions allegedly linked to Chandra’s Essel Group. For instance, Veena Investments is 77.15 per cent owned by Sushila Devi Goel, who is the wife of SubhashChandra’s brother Jawahar Goel. Similarly, Basant Sharma, a partner at World Crest Advisors, has also served as a director of Essel Corporate. Likewise, companies such as Direct Media Distribution Ventures, Lemonade Capital Advisors and Corpcall Capital Advisors have had direct links with Subhash Chandra’s Essel Group. Then there is Nilesh Sharma. A Mumbai-based insolvency expert, Sharma is the same person who had granted an 85 per cent haircut on a ₹12,400-crore debt owed by Anil Ambani’s company Reliance Naval. This had provided Anil Ambani immediate relief from a massive financial liability and, to a considerable extent, also spared him lengthy legal battles.
Cash for Votes: The Growing Race to Woo Women with Freebies
Tridib Raman
When those in power begin entangling the public in a web of indiscriminate giveaways, you can assume that something is amiss. Ever since the saffron party crossed the electoral river in Bihar, Maharashtra and Bengal riding on the shoulders of women voters, it has turned this strategy into one of its most effective electoral weapons. The latest case concerns the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, which are due in the coming months. The Yogi government is now considering a new assistance scheme under which women in the state could receive up to ₹50,000. You can credit Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav with setting the ball rolling on such populist promises in Uttar Pradesh. He has declared that if the SP comes to power in the state, every woman will be given ₹40,000 a year. That would amount to more than ₹3,000 per month. So far, women receive the highest monthly assistance of ₹2,500 under Jharkhand’s Mukhyamantri Maiya SammanYojana and under Delhi’s Laxmi Yojana. The Delhi government’s scheme, however, was launched only on 26 August, nearly a year and a half after it was announced. In other states, women receive ₹1,500 a month under Maharashtra’s Mukhyamantri Mazi Ladki Bahin Yojana, while under West Bengal’s Lakshmir Bhandar Scheme, women receive between ₹1,500 and ₹1,700 per month. The credit for igniting this trend of such schemes can be given to former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, whose Ladli Behna Yojana proved to be an almost foolproof electoral formula.
Growing Financial Burden on Government
Tridib Raman
A report by the independent agency PRS Legislative Research reveals that such populist schemes aimed at attracting women voters, generally implemented through direct cash transfers into beneficiaries’ bank accounts, are becoming a growing financial burden. In 2025–26, just 12 states spent more than ₹1.68 lakh crore on unconditional cash transfers of this kind. By comparison, the Centre allocated only ₹86,000 crore to MGNREGA — now referred to in the article as the G RAM G scheme — during financial year 2025–26. If we examine the revenue deficits of state governments in the context of these populist schemes, six of these 12 states are struggling to recover from their revenue deficits. According to the Economic Survey, the combined gross fiscal deficit of these 12 states, which stood at 2.6 per cent of GSDP in financial year 2021–22, had risen to 3.2 per cent by 2024–25. State governments are having to spend an additional ₹20,000 crore to ₹35,000 crore on schemes aimed specifically at attracting women voters. Madhya Pradesh, which can be regarded as the originator of this trend, has seen its debt rise from 27 per cent of Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) to nearly 32 per cent. Now that state governments have become heavily indebted because of such schemes, they have begun sharply reducing the number of beneficiaries. Maharashtra was the first to do so, quietly removing lakhsof beneficiaries from the list by using e-KYC and stringent eligibility rules as a shield. According to one estimate, approximately 38 per cent, or between 80 lakh and 92 lakh, women beneficiaries have quietly been removed from the list. Protests have now begun there as well. In Delhi too, the eligibility criteria for women beneficiaries were made so stringent that lakhs of women could not meet the requirements. Procedures involving recommendation letters from local MPs and MLAs, age limits, income criteria, e-KYC and other requirements took so long that although the scheme was announced in January 2025, it finally got underway only on 26 August 2026. In other words, sufficient care was taken during the selection process itself to ensure that the list of beneficiaries did not become too long.
The Prodigals Want to Return Home
Tridib Raman
During the recently concluded Monsoon Session of Parliament, six of the 20 rebel TrinamoolCongress MPs expressed a desire to return to the party fold. The six included three Muslim MPs. They met Abhishek Banerjee and apologised to him, asking to be forgiven and taken back into the Trinamool Congress. It is said that Mamata Banerjee was also willing to accept them back. However, TMC MPs such as Kalyan Banerjee, Kirti Azad, Mahua Moitra, Dola Sen and Derek O’Brien strongly opposed the move. Their case is therefore currently in limbo. Yes, Mamataremains in continuous contact with her rebel legislators. The problem for these 20 rebels is that they are facing strong public opposition across the state and, despite wanting to, are unable to share the stage with the BJP. Their biggest difficulty is that if they lose their membership as a result of a court verdict and then have to contest fresh by-elections on BJP tickets, they could face tremendous public anger. Besides, the BJP can accommodate only some of the rebel candidates. It is unlikely to field the Muslim candidates, leaving the rebels in an increasingly difficult position. The Suvendu Adhikari government has renamed Mamata’s Lakshmir BhandarScheme as the Annapurna Scheme, under which more than 30 lakh women have reportedly been removed from the beneficiary list. This has caused some unease among women in the state.Meanwhile, several prominent lawyers are working on Abhishek Banerjee’s petition in the Supreme Court seeking the disqualification of the 20 rebel members, including Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Menaka Guruswamy.
Kakoli’s Brand-New Political Gambit
Tridib Raman
The frustration and restlessness among the 20 rebel Trinamool MPs can perhaps be gauged from the fact that Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, one of the most prominent architects of the rebellion, has formed a new political party in view of the Supreme Court’s tough stance in the matter. The party has been named the Bahujan Nationalist Citizens Party, or BNCPI. The announcement was made by Kakoli’s son, Baidyanath Ghosh Dastidar, through a social media post. The post appealed to members of the Dalit, Muslim, Adivasi and OBC communities to join the newly formed party.Kakoli has also promised scholarships for Muslim students and ₹50 lakh for the construction of Eidgahs through her new party. The BJP, meanwhile, has neither given a Muslim a ticket to contest the Assembly elections nor fielded a Muslim candidate for Parliament in Bengal. The announcement of Kakoli’s new party has reportedly angered two of her rebel colleagues, SudipBandyopadhyay and Shatabdi Roy. Kakoli, however, is said to have explained to them that her new party is merely a branch of the old NCPI, since Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla has not yet recognised NCPI as a political party. Her argument, therefore, is that they could make this case before the Supreme Court: that they are not members of NCPI but of BNCPI, and that this could potentially help preserve their membership.