FOLLOW US: @TheStatesmanLtd @thestatesmanltd thestatesman1875 www.thestatesman.com People’s Parliament, Always in Session India’s National Newspaper since 1818 | Pages 14 | ` 5.00 | KOLKATA LC | NEW DELHI | MUMBAI | BHUBANESWAR | LUCKNOW | SILIGURI | Friday, 09 October 2026 SPORTS WORLD EDITORIAL Cost of stability Page 6 Canadian poet Anne Carson wins Nobel Prize in literature T20I: Samson’s lean run in focus as India eye 2-0 lead PERSPECTIVE Drunken driving rules must be data-driven Page 12 Page 14 Page 7 Attacks on ECI not reasoned, can harm democracy: Ex-judges GST reforms: Arrest powers of tax officers scrapped DEEPAK RAZDAN New Delhi, 8 October New Delhi, 8 October Forty-two former judges have attacked the Opposition’s current campaign against the Election Commission as not “reasoned,” and with little regard “for the potentially devastating consequences of destabilising the world’s largest democracy.” In an open letter addressed to the people of India, the former judges stated: “Criticism of institutions is a democratic right. Denigration is not. Constitutional authorities are now branded thieves, puppets and compromised from public platforms.” “Officers who conduct our elections are named, shamed and openly warned of reprisal once power changes hands. No court of law has found any of these charges proven,” they said. The signatories include former judges of the Supreme Court, Chief Justices of high courts, and others. Former Supreme Court Judges Justice Hemant Gupta and Justice Pankaj Mittal are among those who signed. The judges said their concern is grave. “India’s constitutional bodies are under sustained attack. The ECI stands at the centre of this assault. Even the higher judiciary which we hold in high esteem, and statutory agencies have not been spared.” The calculated campaign appears driven by “vested political interests,” they said. “Allegations of vote theft are made at press conferences, not before courts. When the commission seeks a sworn declaration, none is filed. Electronic voting machines are blamed only after defeat. Victories won on the same machines go unquestioned. A party that governed this nation for over five decades now claims that the very system which elected it is rigged,” the open letter said. STATESMAN NEWS SERVICE T he 57th GST Council meeting has approved a wide-ranging set of process and compliance reforms aimed at making the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime easier for businesses and taxpayers, while reducing physical interaction with tax officials. The reforms come a year after the government introduced the two-rate GST structure. The Council has now shifted its attention from tax rates to the functioning of the GST system, covering registration, refunds, input tax credit, litigation, enforcement and e-commerce. Among the key decisions, the GST Council has recommended scrapping the power of arrest for tax officers under GST laws, raising the criminal prosecution threshold from Rs 1 crore to Rs 5 crore, removing the minimum Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman addresses a media briefing after the 57th meeting of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council in New Delhi on Thursday. IANS mandatory punishment and reducing the general penalty from Rs 25,000 to Rs 10,000. Another key decision relates to the GST refund mechanism. The time available for tax authorities to acknowledge a refund application has been reduced from 15 days to 10 days. Also, under the proposed system, the GST portal will sanction 90 per cent of the At Raj Ghat, INDIA bloc steps up ECI protest, Opposition delegation to meet President STATESMAN NEWS SERVICE New Delhi, 8 October Leaders and MPs of the Opposition INDIA bloc on Thursday took their campaign against the Election Commission of India (ECI) to Raj Ghat, paying tribute to Mahatma Gandhi before staging a peaceful sit-in to press their demand for the resignation and removal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged large -scale irregularities in the revision of electoral rolls. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi and Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra were among the leaders who gathered at the memorial along with MPs and senior representatives of several INDIA bloc parties, including Trinamul Congress, Rashtriya Janata Dal and Samajwadi Party. The Raj Ghat protest marked the third consecutive day of the Opposition's intensified street campaign against the ECI and the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The protest came two days after INDIA bloc MPs marched from Parliament towards Nirvachan Sadan, the headquarters of the ECI, where several Opposition leaders were detained after police stopped them near Akashvani Bhawan. On Wednesday, the INDIA bloc staged another de monstration near Jantar Mantar. The atmosphere at Raj Ghat was markedly different from Musk doubles down after govt rejects Starlink charges STATESMAN NEWS SERVICE New Delhi, 8 October Hours after the Ministry of Communications refuted claims by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk that vested interests were targeting his satellite communications company Starlink's plans in India, Mr Musk once again questioned the delay in clearing the launch of commercial operations by his company. In a series of posts on X, Mr Musk said that despite spending five years complying with Indian laws the licence for commercial operations still eluded Starlink. In one post, Mr Musk wrote: "Starlink is licensed in over 165 countries and has spent five years complying with every single law and require- ment of the government of India, so why still no license? Is Ambani the real boss of India?” Earlier on Thursday, the telecom ministry said that the country's authorisation framework for telecom and satellite services was “fair and non-discriminatory” and that any suggestion that it was being applied selectively was “baseless and misconceived”. The government clarified that Starlink, along with two other licensed providers (Reliance Jio’s Jio Satcom and Bharti-backed Eutelsat OneWeb), are at the same regulatory stage and must finish mandatory security assessments and clearance processes with the Ministry of Home Affairs before receiving spectrum assignment and beginning operations. the confrontations witnessed earlier in the week. The Delhi Police permitted the gathering, and the protest passed off peacefully without the detentions and face-offs that had characterised the earlier demonstrations. Security, however, remained heavy, with Delhi Police and Rapid Action Force personnel deployed in strength around the memorial. Before travelling together by buses to Raj Ghat, INDIA bloc MPs held lunch meetings in Connaught Place to coordinate their strategy and discuss the next phase of their campaign. Meanwhile, an INDIA bloc delegation is set to meet President Droupadi Murmu on Friday to formally raise its concerns over the functioning of the ECI, and press its demand for the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Rashtrapati Bhavan agreed to meet a delegation from the Opposition alliance on Friday after the INDIA bloc sought an appointment between 7 and 9 October. The President’s Secretariat asked the Opposition to restrict the size of its proposed delegation to 10 members instead of the 15-member delegation initially sought by the alliance, a condition that the INDIA bloc has agreed to. The delegation is expected to include Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav and Trinamul Congress chairperson Mamata Banerjee, who reached New Delhi today. refund amount based on risk assessment, reducing the need for officer intervention. Once a claim is acknowledged, the refund order will have to be issued within three working days, compared with seven days currently. Refunds of excess money lying in the electronic cash ledger will also be made fully automatic. The changes could provide a significant working-capital benefit to exporters and businesses operating under an inverted duty structure. Around 65 per cent of GST refund claims are linked to exports or inverted rates, while another 19 per cent relate to excess cash ledger balances. The Council has also proposed changes to simplify GST registration. Currently, low-risk applicants can obtain registration through an automated process within three working days. This route accounts for around 61 per cent of registrations. The registration application will be redesigned so that taxpayers see only the fields relevant to their business, along with explanations about why particular documents are required. Several routine amendments, including changes involving trade names, directors or partners and additional places of business, will also be processed automatically. Microsoft, Adobe, top Indian IT firms suspended from US govt’s labour certification programme STATESMAN NEWS SERVICE New Delhi, 8 October US Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced on Thursday that the US government is suspending some of the largest IT outsourcing firms in the world from the Permanent Labor Certification programme. The affected firms include Cognizant, Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini along with US tech majors Microsoft and Adobe. Tieing the suspension to alleged abuse of the H1-B visa programme, US Vice President J D Vance targeted the tech giants at a press conference on Thursday. “The H1-B visa programme is meant to allow companies to bring in really the best of the best from outside the United States of America for positions that are completely impossible to fill with American workers. Unfortunately, the programme has become rife with fraud," he said. Targeting Microsoft, Mr Vance alleged that the company had laid off American workers while benefiting from thousands of H-1B visas and green cards. “If you do the math for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replace that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants," he said. He also said the Trump administration wanted companies operating in the US to expand while prioritising American workers. Mr Sonderling said the department would not accept new applications or process pending permanent labour certification applications involving the companies. He added that the companies named had collectively sought millions of foreign workers and received hundreds of thousands of H-1B visa approvals and permanent labour certifications. CM warns of strict action against forced conversion, ‘love jihad’ and ‘land jihad’ MANAS R BANNERJEE Siliguri, 8 October West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Thursday warned of strict action against forced religious conversion and said that there would be no compromise on maintaining communal harmony and peace in Malda. Addressing a large gathering at Manikchak during a government programme to distribute compensation to flood-affected people, Mr Adhikari asked the people whether they would prevent religious conversion and said that he would become “the strictest Chief Minister” if incidents such as the Kaliachak-Mothabari riot were repeated. “Will you stop religious conversion? If there is a repetition of the Kaliachak-Mothabari riot, there will be no Chief Minister worse than me,” Mr Adhikari said. He also raised the issues of “love jihad” and “land jihad” and asked the people to prevent such activities. The Chief Minister urged the people of Malda to make the district free from drugs and sought an end to the smuggling of ganja, opium and poppy cultivation along the India-Bangladesh border. He also urged people not to marry off girls below 18 years of age. “The situation in Malda is very serious,” he said, referring to reports of girls aged 12 to 14 being married and subsequently becoming pregnant. He said the practice must be stopped. His third appeal was against forced religious conversion. “If anyone forcibly converts people, there will be no Chief Minister worse than me,” he warned. Mr Adhikari also said that there was no longer any problem regarding the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). He said eligible people could apply to the district magistrate for certificates, following which their names could be included in the voters’ list. He added that eligible Scheduled Caste applicants would also be provided with SC certificates. Nana Patekar, the voice of raw India, dies at 75 STATESMAN NEWS SERVICE New Delhi, 8 October Veteran actor, filmmaker and theatre artist Nana Patekar, whose fierce intensity, unforgettable voice and deeply human performances gave Indian cinema some of its most enduring characters, died in Goa on Thursday. He was 75. Patekar suffered a severe cardiac arrest at his residence in Dona Paula and was rushed to Manipal Hospital, where doctors attempted to revive him for nearly 45 minutes. He was declared dead at 5:20 a.m. His son, Malhar Patekar, confirmed the news. The sudden demise sent a wave of grief through Indian cinema. Patekar was an actor who seemed to inhabit the emotional landscape of ordinary Indians ~ angry, wounded, defiant, vulnerable and occasionally absurdly funny. His performances carried a rawness that resisted the polished conventions of mainstream cinema, while his distinctive dialogue delivery made even the simplest words sound charged with consequence. Born Vishwanath Patekar on 1 January 1951, in MurudJanjira in Maharashtra's Raigad district, he rose from a difficult childhood to become one of the most respected actors of his generation. He entered Hindi cinema with Gaman in 1978 and gradually established himself through a succession of challenging roles in both Hindi and Marathi films. His breakthrough came with films that demanded not glamour but presence. In Parinda (1989), his portrayal of the ruthless Anna won him the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actor. He followed it with a string of performances that demonstrated an extraordinary range, from the military drama Prahaar: The Final Attack, which he also directed, to Angaar, Tirangaa, Agni Sakshi and Khamoshi: The Musical. His performance in Krantiveer (1994) earned him the National Film Award for Best Actor, with the National Film Awards citation praising his portrayal of a man who could awaken the “deep, hidden resource of strength” within the common person. Patekar could move effortlessly from the grim world of Ab Tak Chhappan and Apaharan to the irreverent comedy of Welcome, where his portrayal of the blustering gangster Uday Shetty introduced his talent to a new generation of viewers. In Marathi cinema, his performance as the ageing and emotionally shattered stage actor in Natsamrat became another landmark, reaffirming his ability to combine theatrical power with profound vulnerability. Patekar’s career earned him three National Film Awards, several Filmfare honours and, in 2013, the Padma Shri for his contribution to cinema and the arts.