Chanda Kochhar 'missing in action' at listing ceremony of ICICI Securities

Missing in action
ICICI Bank MD & CEO Chanda Kochhar was not to be seen at the listing ceremony of broking firm ICICI Securities. A day earlier, Kochhar —facing flak over lending practices at ICICI Bank — had pulled out of a FICCI event. ICICI Securities is the third subsidiary of ICICI Bank to list since September 2016. During the previous two listing ceremonies for ICICI Prudential Life Insurance and ICICI Lombard, Kochhar was present at the bell ringing ceremony. Skipping the trading debut appeared to be a wise decision for ICICI Securities as its shares fell as much as 16 per cent during the trading debut on Wednesday.

 
Up for grabs
As Rajya Sabha deputy chairman PJ Kurien's tenure in Parliament draws to a close — he is set to retire on July 1 — both the Bharatiya Janata Party as well as the Opposition are keen on fielding their candidates for the post. Usually, the deputy speaker of the Lok Sabha and the deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha are elected with consensus. However, the Opposition believes it has the numbers in the Rajya Sabha to turn it into a contest and is also hopeful of winning it. The candidate for the post will likely come from the Congress, which remains the largest Opposition party in the Rajya Sabha. On Wednesday, a leader of one of the regional parties suggested to the Congress that it ought to field Kumari Selja. She is a veteran parliamentarian, has been a union minister and is a Dalit.

 

Past comes haunting
On Wednesday, Lok Sabha member and the Congress' central in-charge of Gujarat, Rajiv Satav, landed in Ahmedabad to attend a function where Amit Chavda took charge as the new chief of the party's state unit. However, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) left the Congress embarrassed when its leadership dug up some of Satav's old tweets supporting Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar. The BJP said the Congress has always worked against Gujarat's interest, and the evidence was Satav's support to activist Patkar. While Gujarat Congress leaders defended Satav, he deleted the tweets from 2017. However, BJP leader Bharat Pandya reproduced the screenshots of the tweets in which Satav had appealed to Patkar to end her fast that she had undertaken in January 2017.