Abu Dhabi: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Public Prosecution warned that anyone impersonate a government employees or public servants will face up to five years in jail.
The Public Prosecution Office posted a video on Twitter to illustrate the consequences of impersonating or pretending to have a job and providing a false job description.
Citing Article 299 of the new UAE Penal Code, anyone who impersonates a public figure shall be punished with imprisonment not exceeding five years.
The same penalty shall apply to anyone who interferes in a public position or service, or acts with the aim of achieving an illegitimate purpose, or to gain for himself or for others an advantage of any kind.
A prison sentence of at least one year will be imposed if the individual impersonates a security or police official.
Bengaluru: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address three public meetings and hold a road show in Karnataka on Saturday as he embarks on a two-day visit to the poll-bound state.
Since February this year, this is Modi’s ninth visit to Karnataka where Assembly elections to 224 seats are due on May 10.
According to his itinerary, Modi will fly from Delhi on Saturday at 8.20 am by a special aircraft and reach Bidar airport at 10.20 am from where he will take a helicopter to Humnabad in Bidar district to address a public meeting at 11 am.
After the meeting, he will fly to Vijayapura where he will address another public gathering at 1 pm. He will then fly to Kudachi in Belagavi district where he will address people at about 2.45 pm.
Later, Modi would fly to Bengaluru in the evening to hold a road show in Bengaluru North.
The Prime Minister will stay in Bengaluru on Saturday and will depart from Raj Bhavan on Sunday morning to hold public meetings in the district headquarter town of Kolar, Channapatna in Ramanagara district and Belur in Hassan district.
He will also hold a road show in Mysuru on Sunday before flying back to Delhi.
(Except for the headline, the story has not been edited by Siasat staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
Chris Booth spent much of Tuesday morning supervising the installation of a crown 4.2 metres wide on the stone columns at the front of Nottingham’s Council House.
The crown had been brought out of a council depot (where it is stored alongside a vast goose that appears annually for the Nottingham goose fair), repainted and had had its plastic pearls retrofitted with LED bulbs so they can be lit up at night.
For a while, the team of six men using scaffolding and a cherrypicker lift struggled to reattach the cross and orb to the top of the crown, but by 2pm it was in place and firmly secured with six ratchet straps. “It’s a very nervous time. A lot of stuff can go wrong,” said Booth, an operations manager with John E Wright & Co, a signage company.
In the Old Market Square in front of the building, a few people took out their phones to take pictures but most people walked by, indifferent to the council’s coronation preparations.
Polling suggests the Midlands is the area of Britain where people are least moved by the coronation. When asked in a recent YouGov survey “how much do you care about the forthcoming coronation of King Charles”, 41% of people in the Midlands said they cared “not very much”. In Scotland, 45% of those polled said they cared “not at all”, but attitudes in the Midlands revealed widespread ambivalence.
The city’s muted excitement levels are reflected in the number of applications for street closures so that coronation parties can be held. Nottingham city council has received applications for 10 street parties, about half the number of requests made before the queen’s jubilee last year.
Balloon seller Billy Davy in Nottingham city centre. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian
Billy Davy, who has been selling novelty balloons all over the country on and off for 30 years, sold about 200 during last year’s jubilee celebrations but does not expect to shift so many next week. “I’m not sure this one will be as good – I don’t think it’s as big an event,” he said.
Eddie Hall, busking with his guitar in the square as the crown was installed, said he had little interest in the coronation. “I might have a little glimpse of it but I’m not mad on them,” he said. “I don’t think people should have privilege from their birth – it’s what you do, not your birth, that should matter. I wouldn’t protest about it, but I don’t agree with it, it’s outdated.”
Busker Eddie Hall: ‘I don’t think people should have privilege from their birth.’ Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian
Over the decades, the royal family have visited Nottingham dozens of times. The queen came here on at least 10 occasions. Princess Anne reopened the Theatre Royal after a refurbishment in 1978. On a rainy day in 1985, Charles visited with Diana, waved from the Council House balcony – just below where the fibreglass crown is now hanging – and had a seafood buffet lunch inside. He received a fire officer helmet from the Nottinghamshire fire brigade before returning to London in a plane he flew himself.
In 2009, Charles was in Nottingham again to unveil a plaque at the headquarters of Boots the chemist “to commemorate his visit during our 160th anniversary year”. These trips do not seem to have left an indelible impression, and most people struggle to say what precisely the royal family has done that has had a positive impact on the city.
Joanne Roe, who works for HMRC in customer insights, was walking through the flattened site of the former Broadmarsh shopping centre, a gloomy area of the city where many department stores have closed and a number of homeless people had gathered, some with sleeping bags slung over their shoulders. Black-and-white images of Nottingham from the queen’s 1953 coronation tour show a more vibrant, less desolate city centre. Roe was not sure that the coronation celebrations would act as much of a boost to the local economy. “Will the coronation bring money into the country? If it does, that money won’t come to Nottingham,” she said.
Joanne Roe: ‘I might have it on in the background.’ Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian
She was uncertain about when the coronation was due to take place. “Is it on Saturday? If I’m at home, I might have it on in the background. I’m slightly monarchist, but not massively. I don’t have any negative feelings towards them. They are not a meaningful part of my life,” she said.
The only royal visit that seems to have stuck in people’s minds was the trip made by Prince Harry and Meghan in 2017, their first official appearance after announcing their engagement. Sam Harrison, a visitor services supervisor at Nottingham Contemporary gallery, was working that morning. “People in the streets outside were electrified, craning their necks. It’s not surprising – they were superstars on a global level,” he said.
He was unsure whether the coronation would provoke similar levels of excitement. “My mum really wants to watch it. If I’m off work, I’ll ask her to come over and watch it with me. I am a republican, in principle, but I wouldn’t say the monarchy is a burning issue for me.”
Sam Harrison: ‘I wouldn’t say the monarchy is a burning issue for me.’ Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian
Gauging opinions on the monarchy, as pollsters know, requires the question to be carefully worded. When asked if she supported the monarchy, Samiha Zahin, 20, a microbiology student at Leicester University, said yes. “I think it’s cool to have princes and princesses, but I wish William was going to be king, he’s younger,” she said.
Asked if the cost of the coronation was excessive and if the royal family represented value for money, she, like most people questioned, became more negative in her responses. “£100m? They should just spend £1,000 and have a nice small family gathering, and say: OK, now you are king,” she said.
Samiha Zahin, centre right, in front of the Council House. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian
The council has organised a temporary reopening of Nottingham Castle over the coronation weekend and is selling 1,500 tickets at £1 each so that people can watch the event on a big screen. William Catherall, 78, a retired engineer, said he had no desire to attend.
“I watched the last coronation, I was about five, at a friend’s house. About 20 people, mainly ladies, were all jammed into this front room in front of a tiny television,” he said. “I won’t be watching this time. I was brought up to respect the royal family, but I have lost that respect – all the scandals, particularly Andrew. I’ll be reading a book in the garden, I won’t be glued to the television.”
At a politics class at Bilborough sixth-form college, on the western fringes of the city, student attitudes to the monarchy initially echoed this ambivalence. Of the 20 students there at the start of the class, no one wanted to describe themselves as a monarchist but only two identified themselves as firm republicans. Ten raised their hands to the suggestion that they felt neutral (the remaining seven did not want to commit even to indifference).
Student Axl Nicholls: ‘We’re paying a lot of money for a coronation.’ Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian
But as the conversation progressed (and a few more firmly anti-monarchy pupils turned up late), more students expressed firm opposition to the crown, in line with polling showing that support for the monarchy is lowest among 18- to 24-year-olds.
Axl Nicholls was troubled by the royal family’s ties to a history of colonising other countries, thinly hidden beneath the veneer of the Commonwealth. “I also think with the state of the economy, the fact that people are using food banks and workers are feeling they have to go on strike, we’re paying a lot of money for a coronation. In the last year we’ve had a jubilee celebration, a funeral and now a coronation. There’s a lot of bad media around the family, particularly Prince Andrew. I just feel like it’s not necessary – what’s the point of it?”
Oliver Brown: ‘He’s quite old to be becoming king now.’ Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian
Another student, Oliver Brown, said: “I hate to say it, but the elephant in the room is that he’s quite old to be becoming king now. I can’t say he represents me; I struggle with his age.”
Three-quarters of the A-level students said they would not be watching the coronation, and not all of the four people who said they were going to coronation parties were motivated by patriotism. One student said she would be helping at a Salvation Army street party, which was “more of a celebration of community than the monarchy”.
Rachel Vernon was looking forward to attending a “Fuck the King” anti-monarchy party on the Friday before the coronation. “Some people are doing things with British flags, Vivienne Westwood-style; I’m going to go as the Tiger King, Joe Exotic,” she said.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Buckingham Palace’s picture gallery contains some of the greatest paintings of western civilisation: 16th-century Titians, 17th-century Rembrandts, as well as works by Rubens and Van Dyck, and that rare thing, a Vermeer. Also on display are some of the most spectacular Canaletto vistas of 18th-century Venice.
It is a fine collection to have on the walls if you are member of the royal family. But access is far more limited for the public.
Outside the brief summer season during which it is officially open to the public, an “exclusive guided tour” of the palace provides visitors with about 5-10 minutes in the gallery itself to enjoy the paintings. The cost of a ticket is £90.
Six Canaletto Venice paintings on display at Buckingham Palace during the 2017 Canaletto and the Art of Venice exhibition at The Queen’s Gallery. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA
The accession of King Charles throws a new spotlight on the royal collection.
Acquired by monarchs over generations, it is the last of the European royal art treasure troves to remain more or less intact in the hands of a sovereign. Similar collections in France, Spain, Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark have been largely ceded to state ownership and to palaces open to the public, or to more freely accessible national museums, either by revolution or by mutual agreement.
Charles III is known for his love of the arts. He has now become owner of the royal collection as king, but not as a private individual. The Windsor family does own a valuable private collection of art, composed in part of pieces that were bought by the Queen Mother or Prince Philip. But the royal collection is “held in trust by The King in right of the Crown for his Successors and the Nation” – or so the Royal Collection Trust (RCT), the charitable body set up in 1993 to manage it, says with a liberal sprinkling of Royal Capital Letters on its website.
We do not yet know what Charles’s promise of a slimmed-down modern monarchy will mean for the royal artworks. The director of the collection, who is appointed as a senior member of the royal household, declined to give an interview. But important questions remain about its status.
Canaletto’s Venice: The Punta della Dogana and S. Giorgio Maggiore, part of the royal collection. Photograph: Royal Collection
According to the RCT website, the collection comprises more than 1m works, ranging from paintings and sculpture to furniture, carpets, china and ornaments. Only about a quarter of that number, roughly 280,000, are so far catalogued in the RCT’s online database – the trust said that it had given priority to the most significant artworks in developing the catalogue. Of the quarter that are catalogued, just 4% (10,407) are entered with a location tag that enables the public to find out where they may be seen.
The royal collection contains a vast range of works of varying interest. Leaving aside the pen wipers, branding irons and bonbon dishes listed in the database, the Guardian has analysed the status, whereabouts and accessibility of the indisputable masterpieces of painting that the collection contains.
Just a quarter of the 5,641 paintings it has are given a location tag, meaning they are on show to the public. And many of those that are tagged are in palaces or residences that are open only for a short time each year.
Jerry Brotton, a historian and author of a book about the chequered history of the royal collection called The Sale of the Late King’s Goods: Charles I and his Art Collection, argues that the public should have much greater access to what is in effect national art. “The royal collection is not ‘heritage’, it’s art. If you treat it as heritage and an adjunct of royalty, it is reduced to a bibelot, a load of trinkets. We don’t even know where a lot of the stuff is.”
Tracking down the treasures
It takes a bit of detective work to find the RCT’s untagged treasures. For example, the royal collection includes the world’s largest and finest holding of work by Canaletto. Famous for their brilliant evocations of light and space, and for shifting perspectives that improved the view, Canaletto’s paintings of Venice were the ultimate picture-postcard souvenir for wealthy British aristocratic travellers on their Grand Tour of European culture in the 1700s. George III bought 52 of Canaletto’s best oils and a significant body of his drawings in 1762.
Of the 52 paintings by Canaletto listed in the RCT catalogue, only 24 are at identified locations: 12 luminous views of the Grand Canal are in a small room down a corridor off the Cumberland Gallery in Hampton Court Palace (adult entry fee £26.10), and another 12 are in Buckingham Palace (£90, or £30 in August and September), although not all of those are in the visitable picture gallery. Others are in rooms closed to the general public. The whereabouts of 28 other great paintings by the Venetian master are not revealed in the online catalogue.
However, the Guardian has managed to track down one. It is rare to get a glimpse inside the royals’ private residences but a promotional photograph taken during a BBC 5 interview revealed that one of these Canalettos has been enjoyed by Edward and Sophie, now Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, in the drawing room of their private Bagshot Park home.
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An exhibition mounted at Buckingham Palace to mark Charles’s 70th birthday in 2018 revealed that one his favourite paintings in the royal collection was a breathtaking work by Johan Zoffany that took six years to complete between 1772 and 1777. The Tribuna of the Uffizi is a tour-de-force representation of the domed gallery of that name in the Uffizi museum in Florence. In it, Zoffany reproduced dozens of famous paintings and classical sculptures in the style of their master creators through the ages.
Johan Zoffany’s Tribuna of the Uffizi, understood to be in the Grand Corridor at Windsor Castle. Photograph: Royal Collection
The painting has made appearances in exhibitions in 2009 and 2016 and, given its significance, might be expected to be on permanent public view. But the RCT catalogue is silent on the Tribuna’s whereabouts and the trust declined to say where it was. The Guardian understands it is in the Grand Corridor at Windsor Castle, where the king can enjoy it in his private quarters.
With such a surfeit of masterpieces, it is perhaps no surprise that some should hang in private apartments. Robin Simon, an art historian and editor of The British Art Journal, says the question of who has what, and which pieces the public should be permitted to see, is “deliberately very murky”. “A clear distinction was never made between privately owned works and the royal collection … It definitely happens that a royal would like a particular picture and it would go into private rooms to be enjoyed personally. And why not?”
One answer to that “why not” question came in the form of a controversy that erupted in 2016, when the then Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, William and Catherine, hosted the Obamas in the drawing room of their newly refurbished Kensington Palace apartment.
Barack Obama, Prince William, Michelle Obama, Catherine, the then Duchess of Cambridge, and Prince Harry at Kensington Palace in 2016. Aelbert Cuyp’s painting can be seen in the background. Photograph: Stephen Crowley/AFP/Getty Images
The couple had a valuable work by Marco Ricci, a Canaletto contemporary, adorning one wall. Dominating the room on another wall was a vast equestrian landscape from the royal collection by the 17th Dutch master Aelbert Cuyp, featuring a young black boy holding two noblemen’s horses. The painting is known as “the Negro page” from the label in its gilt frame; a pot plant was said to have been placed judiciously in front of the description, but the couple’s choice led to accusations of racial insensitivity. A spokesperson for the palace said the painting had been removed from the apartment several years ago, but declined to say where it was now.
Prince Andrew, although no longer a working royal, also appears to have had the benefit of various royal collection works, including a 19th-century oil portrait of Eugenie, Empress of the French and wife of Napoleon III, by Édouard Boutibonne, which has hung in his Royal Lodge residence. Andrew himself advertised for a maid in 2011 who, for £16,000 a year, would be expected to make beds and draw baths in the lodge, while also dusting “objets d’art” and looking after “picture frames under advice from the royal collection”.
A 19th-century oil portrait of Eugenie, Empress of the French and wife of Napoleon III, by Édouard Boutibonne, which has hung in Prince Andrew’s Royal Lodge residence. Photograph: Royal Collection
It has been reported that the king is considering opening Buckingham Palace for much longer periods to increase access and revenue. Opening it to the paying public for the first time was driven by a need to raise £40m to restore Windsor Castle after a devastating fire in 1992. This royal fundraiser, managed by the RCT, brought in £16.45m in the financial year 2018-19, before Covid closures drove the trust into deficit.
The paying public may have contributed millions of pounds towards the maintenance of the royal inheritance, but resources still appear to be inadequate . One of the most important series of paintings in the royal collection has been out of view for years thanks to a leaky roof.
A ‘dead’ collection?
The series of giant canvases by Andrea Mantegna, which have been described by experts as “the greatest masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance outside Italy” and a “landmark in western art”, were acquired by Charles I, the first great British connoisseur monarch.
Mantegna painted the Triumphs of Caesar series between 1485 and 1506, depicting imagined scenes from the Roman emperor’s triumphal processions. The Mantegnas were taken to Hampton Court Palace by Charles I and have remained there since.
They were housed in recent years in a gallery created in the Orangery, which had to be closed in 2020 and whose roof is leaking. It is not expected to reopen before 2026. Luckily the paintings were not damaged. Historic Royal Palaces, the charity that runs the unoccupied royal palaces, depends on admissions for most of its funding. “We lost most of our income with Covid, so we have to phase expenditure,” a spokesperson explained. It took HRP 12 years to repair the roof in another part of the Tudor palace.
The RCT is sensitive to criticism that the public has too little access to the collection and has put emphasis on increasing educational and loan programmes in recent years.
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After the Guardian’s inquiries about the Mantegnas, the RCT said last week that the king had just agreed to lend six of the nine paintings in the series to the National Gallery to exhibit for a period from this autumn, although the details were still being discussed. Two others in the series have just been put back on show in a new location in Hampton Court and one is with RCT conservators.
Loans are also made from the print room at Windsor Castle, which is home to the royal collection of prints and drawings, including the world’s most important grouping of Leonardo drawings. The room is not open to the public – the 600 priceless Leonardos, along with hundreds of Holbeins, Hogarths, Canalettos and more, have to be kept in an atmosphere-controlled environment to preserve them – but the trust team host student visits, and are expanding the digital catalogue. They also manage the frequent dispatch of fragile works for external exhibitions.
Martin Clayton, the RCT’s head of prints and drawings, is the leading authority on Leonardo drawings. It would be “irresponsible” to have them on permanent public display, he said, because they would rapidly deteriorate. Instead selected works are lent in rotation to major exhibitions and in manageable groups of 10-12 to galleries around the UK, where they had attracted huge audiences and often served to “revitalise local arts venues”, Clayton added.
A spokesperson for The RCT said: “The aims of the trust are the care and conservation of the royal collection, and the promotion of access and enjoyment through exhibitions, publications, short- and long-term loans, educational programmes and digital initiatives.” Funding of its work comes from admissions and sales rather than government and the collection is a living and working one, “spread among some 15 royal residences and former residences across the UK, most of which are regularly open to the public”, the spokesperson added.
For Brotton, the historian, the effect of the collection being held by the sovereign rather than the nation is the opposite, however. He argues that it has become a “dead” collection. “There’s precious little serious new acquisition and no showing of the collection’s art in context, so that the public and art critics can evaluate it, and debate its merits and significance against other art movements in the way that new exhibitions elsewhere shed new light on key artists.” He would like to see Charles III follow the example of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort, who gave priceless Raphael cartoons for tapestries to the V&A museum on permanent loan for the public to see.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Only three in 10 Britons think the monarchy is “very important”, the lowest proportion on record, a poll shows as the king’s coronation approaches.
A survey by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) shows public support for the monarchy has fallen to a historic low. A total of 45% of respondents said either it should be abolished, was not at all important or not very important.
In 2022, the year of the late queen’s platinum jubilee, 35% of respondents gave one of the same three answers. Overall, answers in 2023 displayed a drop in support for the monarchy to roughly the levels last seen in 2021.
The data, based on 6,638 interviews, builds on 40 years of data collected for the annual British Social Attitudes survey. It shows the number of people who say the monarchy is “very important” has fallen to 29%, from 38% in 2022.
This reflects a long-term trend of declining support for the monarchy, with the new research showing the number of those answering “very important” at the lowest level since data collection began in 1983.
But the return to 2021 levels is in keeping with the bump in popularity the Windsors tend to receive during showpiece events such as jubilees, weddings or births, NatCen noted.
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Guy Goodwin, the chief executive of NatCen, said: “Whilst we are observing a downward trend in support for the monarchy, it is clear from the data that important national events and celebrations, such as jubilees, marriages and births, have a clear and positive effect on society’s views towards the monarchy.
“Throughout the 2010s, we saw an increase in support for Britain to continue to have a monarchy, which coincided with the marriage of HRH the Prince of Wales, and the queen’s diamond jubilee celebrations.”
A total of 26% of people surveyed said the monarchy was “quite important”, up two percentage points on 2021. But 20% said it was “not very important”, also up two points since 2021. A quarter of those questioned said the monarchy was “not at all important/should be abolished”, a proportion that has remained unchanged since 2021.
Goodwin said it was an additional concern that just 12% of 18- to 34-year-olds view the monarchy as “very important”, compared with 42% of those aged 55 and older. He said: “The challenge going forward will be for the monarchy to deliver its relevance and appeal to a younger generation to maintain this support.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Mangaluru: Announcing the fifth poll “guarantee” of the Congress ahead of the May 10 Assembly polls in Karnataka, party leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday promised free travel for women in public transport buses, if the party is voted to power in the state.
Rahul Gandhi is in Udupi and Dakshina Kannada districts, campaigning for the party’s candidates in the upcoming elections. He hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for saying that the Congress would not fulfil its guarantees.
“Narendra Modi says Congress party will not fulfil its guarantees. We have given you (people) four guarantees and they will be implemented on the first day, in the first cabinet meeting. Modi ji, you said four guarantees will not be fulfilled, I’m adding more to it. We will not fulfil four guarantees on the first day, but will fulfil five,” Gandhi said.
Addressing a public meeting here, he said, “We will add another guarantee to four existing guarantees. It will be for women. Modi ji, listen carefully. As soon as Congress comes to power, on the very first day the fifth guarantee will also be implemented — women across Karnataka will travel free in public transport buses.”
“Your (BJP) people looted money from Karnataka’s women with 40 per cent commission, it is your work. While our work is to give Karnataka’s women the state’s money. So immediately after winning the election, whenever you meet a woman in buses, they would not be paying a single rupee to travel in buses,” he added.
Congress has already announced four guarantees’ 200 units of free power to all households (Gruha Jyoti), Rs 2,000 monthly assistance to the woman head of every family (Gruha Lakshmi), 10 kg of rice free to every member of a BPL household (Anna Bhagya), and Rs 3,000 every month for graduate youth and Rs 1,500 for diploma holders (both in the age group of 18-25) for two years (YuvaNidhi), on coming to power in the state.
Asking the voters to limit the BJP to 40 seats in the state, as they were a party that ran a “40 percent commission government”, Gandhi said, “The number is comfortable for them.”
He alleged that the BJP had made “stealing” a habit and were betraying all sections of people including the youth, farmers and fishermen. The BJP could not provide employment to the youth as promised. Inflation increased under the BJP rule and several small-scale industries were closed during the regime, he said.
A decision on all the promises in the Congress guarantee card would be made at the first cabinet meeting of the next government, Gandhi said, adding that the Narendra Modi government had not kept any of its promises including providing two crore jobs for the youth in a year and Rs 15 lakh to every household by rooting out corruption.
“The BJP is not keeping the promises to the poor, youth and farmers and has not done anything for them, whereas they have kept the promises made to Adani,” Gandhi charged.
He said he was disqualified from Parliament for asking questions about the link between the BJP government and Adani. “The ruling party has not given answer to my question yet,” he said.
Congress’ fifth poll promise, interestingly, came on a day, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing Karnataka BJP workers virtually made a strong pitch for ending “revdi culture” (culture of distributing freebies).
Accusing the Congress of engaging in “revdi culture” in Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan, Modi said their poll guarantees have still remained unfulfilled. “Congress means guarantee of corruption, guarantee of nepotism,” he had said.
“Congress has reached a stage where it cannot give true guarantees, you are aware that Congress’s warranty has expired, then what is the meaning of its guarantees,” he added.
Dharwad: Union Minister Smriti Irani on the exit of Jagadish Shettar from the BJP said that those who cannot be of their religion, family or ideology, can never be of the public.
On Tuesday, while addressing a public meeting in Dharwad, Smriti Irani said, “A few days ago one of our men (Jagadish Shettar) backstabbed us and went to the other camp (Congress). The public knows everything. I want to tell the people of Hubli-Dharwad that those who cannot be of their religion, family or ideology, can never be of the public.”
She said that it was BJP who gave him respect but out of his own greed, he left the party.
“He is elder to us. We made him Chief Minister. Now I want to ask who is he playing number two to: Is it Shivakumar or Siddaramaiah? We respected him a lot. We brought him to the top and for his own greed he went to the other side,” she said.
Former Karnataka Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar, who joined the ranks of Congress ahead of the State Assembly polls, last week said he left the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as his self-respect was hurt.
Speaking to ANI, Shettar said, “Earlier whoever contested from this constituency (from BJP) everybody lost. I built the party here in this place. In 1994, I contested for the first time and also got elected. Subsequently, I have been re-elected from the seat. So it is pretty clear that the people have faith in me. I maintained the same relationship with the people of Hubballi.”
“My self-respect was damaged and because of this. I challenged them. After joining Congress, I went across areas in my constituency. People ushered warm welcome,” he added.
Earlier Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday said that Jagdish Shettar, who recently left the BJP, “will lose the election” and asserted that Hubbali has always voted for BJP.
“There’ll be no loss, Jagdish Shettar will himself lose the election, Huballii has always voted for BJP & all workers of BJP are united,” Shah said at a press conference.
The Karnataka Assembly elections will be held in a single phase on May 10, with the counting of votes scheduled on May 13.
(Except for the headline, the story has not been edited by Siasat staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
Abu Dhabi: The Ministry of Finance has announced a new UAE Cabinet decision relating to ‘qualifying public benefit entities’, whereby Public benefit entities are exempted from the corporate tax.
It’s noteworthy that the Corporate Tax Law provides the legislative basis for the introduction and implementation of a Federal Corporate Tax in the UAE and is effective for financial years starting on or after 1 June 2023. The Federal Decree-Law No. (47) of 2022 on the Taxation of Corporations and Businesses was issued by the United Arab Emirates on 09 December 2022.
The exemption is designed to reflect the significant role played by public benefit entities, which often include organisations with a focus on areas of religion, charity, science, education and culture.
These entities must continue to comply with all pertinent local, state, and federal laws and notify the Ministry of Finance of any changes that may affect their status as Qualifying Public Benefit Entities in order to be eligible for UAE Corporate Tax exemption. These entities must also meet the requirements under Article (9) of the Corporate Tax Law.
On the Finance Minister’s recommendation, the Cabinet may change, add, or remove entities from the list of Qualifying Public Benefit Entities.
Any change that affects the business’s ability to continue meeting the requirements outlined in this Decision and the Corporate Tax Law must be reported by an entity that is identified in the schedule attached to the decision.
Qualifying public benefit entities are subject to a number of reporting requirements, mostly to ensure that they continue to meet the requirements for approval.
With regard to their deductible expenses under Article 33 of the Corporate Tax Law, taxpayers now have more clarity and transparency thanks to the Cabinet’s decision, as donations and gifts will be recognised as deductible expenses for corporate tax purposes if they are given to one of a qualifying public benefit entity listed in the Cabinet Decision.
(Except for the headline, the story has not been edited by Siasat staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
SRINAGAR: Family members of a youth, who has gone missing from his home in Benlipora area of Aloosa in north Kashmir’s Bandipora district since April 10, have appealed to the general public to help trace his whereabouts.
Quoting a family member, KNO reported that Bashir Ahmad Cheche son of Jumma Chechi of Benlipora, Aloosa went missing on April 10 and since then there is no trace of him.
He said they searched for him everywhere, but could not find a trace if him. “We are worried about his well being as he is dumb and not able to communicate. We appeal to people if anybody has any information about him please inform us,” he said.
He said that they have also lodged a police report in this regard, but it has been around 12 days and there is no trace of him.
The family members appealed to general public to help trace his whereabouts and if anybody has any information he/she can contact at 9682567408 & 8082192035–(KNO)
