oppn parties The Small Savings Interest Rates Fiasco

News Snippets

  • Sikh extremists attacked a cinema hall in London that was playing Kangana Ranaut's controversial film 'Emergency'
  • A Delhi court directed the investigating agencies to senstize officers to collect nail clippings, fingernail scrappings or finger swab in order to get DNA profile as direct evidence of sexual attack is often not present and might result in an offender going scot free
  • Uniform Civil Code rules cleared by state cabinet, likely to be implemented in the next 10 days
  • Supreme Court reiterates that there is no point in arresting the accused after the chargesheet has been filed and the investigation is complete
  • Kolkata court sentences Sanjoy Roy, the sole accused in the R G Kar rape-murder case, to life term. West Bengal government and CBI to appeal in HC for the death penalty
  • Supreme Court stays criminal defamation case against Rahul Gandhi for his remarks against home minister Amit Shah in Jharkhand during the AICC plenary session
  • Government reviews import basket to align it with the policies of the Trump administration
  • NCLT orders liquidation of GoAir airlines
  • Archery - Indian archers bagged 2 silver in Nimes Archery tournament in France
  • Stocks make impressive gain on Monday - Sensex adds 454 points to 77073 and Nifty 141 points to 23344
  • D Gukesh draws with Fabiano Caruana in the Tata Steel chess tournament in the Netherlands
  • Women's U-19 T20 WC - In a stunning game, debutants Nigeria beat New Zealand by 2 runs
  • Rohit Sharma to play under Ajinkye Rahane in Mumbai's Ranji match against J&K
  • Virat Kohli to play in Delhi's last group Ranji trophy match against Saurashtra. This will be his first Ranji match in 12 years
  • The toll in the Rajouri mystery illness case rose to 17 even as the Centre sent a team to study the situation
Calling the case not 'rarest of rare', a court in Kolkata sentenced Sanjay Roy, the only accused in the R G Kar rape-murder case to life in prison until death
oppn parties
The Small Savings Interest Rates Fiasco

By A Special Correspondent
First publised on 2021-04-02 07:56:55

In what can be considered as one of the biggest howlers (it cannot be considered a rollback as the government has admitted that it happened by 'oversight') of the NDA government, the Centre withdrew its notification slashing the interest rates on small savings schemes within a day of notifying the same. The government said that the notification was issued through 'oversight'. It is difficult to understand that how such an important notification, the decision on which could be taken only after a series of high-level meetings in the finance ministry and which can only be issued after being vetted by several high ranking officials, could be issued by 'oversight'.

That the notification was drafted clearly shows that meetings must have taken place to decide about slashing the interest rates. It also proves that the government had decided to slash the rates after such meetings. The only thing is that someone in the ministry jumped the gun and issued the notification at an inappropriate time when elections are being held in five key states. There is no doubt that the notification will be issued again, sooner or later. It has been withdrawn now only not to spoil BJP's prospects in the ongoing elections in the states.

But the incident shows the government in very poor light. It must conduct an internal inquiry to find out how this could happen. Today it is a notification about slashing interest rates that got issued by 'oversight', tomorrow it could be some other, more vital, notification that can be issued likewise. The government needs to reexamine the chain of command that is responsible for such decisions and exercise better control over it. Obviously, there are shortcomings in the system and they need to be addressed at the earliest. Care should be taken to ensure that such a blunder does not happen again.