Gossip & Tales: NDA Leaders Join Jio Meet, Sebi's Haste and BSE's Declining Currency

NDA Leaders Will Meet At Jio World Centre
Due to Rahul Gandhi's incessant Adani-Ambani jibes, big political leaders avoided socialising publically with country's top businessmen for the past few years. There was always fear that Congress could use such events to maligne image of political leaders and to drum up charges of unholy nexus. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and most top NDA leaders gave a pass to the engagement and pre-wedding bash of Anant Ambani while the UPA allies like Uddhav Thackrey and few Congress leaders coolly attended all the social functions of businessmen. But times change. PM Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Devendra Fadanavis and the entire top brass of NDA including Eknath Shinde, Nitish Kumar, Chandrababu Naidu, Ajit Pawar etc etc will be at the Jio World Center, ensconced at Mumbai's Bandra Kurla Complex, to bless the youngest Ambani scion Anant and the ravishing Radhika on their wedding on July 13. Like the NDA meeting of June 5, which was to select Modi ji as the Prime Minister, July 13 meeting at the Jio Centre would be the second official meeting of the NDA leaders. Only the political agenda this time is unknown. Jio Dandanadan.

How Haste Makes Waste
On June 4, former bureaucrats close to the UPA era finance minister had convinced old friends that the Congress led alliance was coming back to power. The seeds of these rumours were sown by talks in New Delhi that Modi and Shah had decided to sit in the opposition since the BJP alone could not form government due to lack of absolute majority. Grapevine said that the same had been informed to the big NDA alliance partners - it was this reason that no big leader from the BJP came to stake a claim to form the government until the next day which was a deviation from the past when parties rush to announce victory. In an upbeat mood for having bettered its seat tally than in 2019, the Congress held its press conference on June 4. When Sharad Pawar on request from Mallika Arjun Kharge called up Nitish Kumar, the Bihari Babu just asked two questions: How will Congress foot the bill of Rs 8500 per month to 20 crore to 40 crore women voters and who would be the PM? Pawar was surprised, since he was not informed by Kharge that Modi Shah had decided to sit in the opposition. Knowing fully well that there was no answer for his two questions and the UPA government would be short lived, Nitish Kumar reaffirmed his alliance to BJP and almost pleaded the PM to get done with the oath ceremony on June 5 itself. But the backdoor political maneuverings was not as much a juicy story, since these devious games are part and parcel of the political system. The story in the Mumbai headquarters of a regulatory agency was completely different. A former bureaucrat had convinced someone in SEBI that Congress was returning to power. SEBI in haste issued a circular to appoint the wife of a very close aide of the Gandhi family on a committee. This is how haste turned into a waste.

BSE Losing Currency?
The BSE top brass was in London recently. Large investors and clients were convinced that after remaining an underdog for more than two decades, the authorities in India and especially the finance ministry were in mood to boost the BSE's profile to help it compete with NSE. Hence, the exchange that had witnessed a step motherly treatment from SEBI and government in the past, was witnessing a massive revival of fortunes. Some of the officials were even convincing foreign institutional clients to book co-location space at the BSE fast since NSE would be running out of co-locations space and BSE's state of art data centre for co-location users could come in handy. Just days after the London visit of BSE top officials, the exchange on June 17, issued a circular known as "Sunset of BOLTPlus Currency Front End." It simply says that BSE was discontinuing its trading terminal BOLTPlus For The Currency Segment and the proposed sunset of BOLTPlus Currency Front End Terminal was rescheduled to June 28. This usually happens due to lack of traders and volumes.