Feature
Mukherjee travelling to Sweden amid row over Bofors remarks
New Delhi: As President Pranab Mukherjee prepares to travel to Sweden on a three-day visit from Sunday, a controversy has been triggered over his telling Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter daily that the Bofors gun issue was not a scandal but rather a “media trial”.
The Indian envoy in Sweden has directed the Swedish daily to edit the references to Bofors in the interview, which Dagens Nyheter refused.
Mukherjee is to visit Sweden on May 31-June 2 in the first ever presidential visit from India “for consolidation of bilateral ties”, said an official statement.
Ahead of the visit, Dagens Nyheter interviewed the president and put up the entire interview on its website.
According to the daily, “during the interview, the president commented on the Bofors affair, an incident that has plagued Swedish-Indian relations for a long time”.
“The president stated then that the Bofors wasn’t a scandal, but rather a media trial.
“‘I am not describing it. You are putting that word. Don’t put that word’, the president said to DN’s editor in chief Peter Wolodarski during the interview in the presidential palace,” the daily says on its website.
On Tuesday, Dagens Nyheter received an official letter from the Indian ambassador in Stockholm, Banashree Bose Harrison, where she conveys the “disappointment” of “authorities in Delhi over the manner in which your interview of the Honorable President has been presented in the Dagens Nyheter of May 24, 2015”.
The Indian envoy complained about the manner in which the Bofors question was represented on its website and said this was “all the more inexplicable since you told me that Bofors is not of interest to your readers”.
The Dagens Nyheter reproduced the ambassador’s complaint on its website.
It also said the envoy called up the paper to make a request to retract “sections of the interview mentioning Bofors” and also warned that the planned presidential visit “was at risk of being cancelled”.
“In a telephone conversation with DN prior to the publication of the article, the ambassador made a direct request that DN was to retract sections of the interview mentioning Bofors. She also warned that the planned state visit was at risk of being cancelled,” the paper says.
“I told the ambassador that we couldn’t accept her demands. The president became engaged and was upset when Bofors was mentioned during a question regarding how we can avoid corruption today. Of course we had to tell our readers about his reaction,” Wolodarski was quoted as saying.
“The reactions in Indian media show that his answers are of public interest, even more so in India than in Sweden.”
“At the end of the interview DN light heartedly mentioned the fact that the president mixed up Sweden and Switzerland several times. This was unprofessional and unethical by the newspaper,” according to the ambassador.
She also claimed that DN, by shortening a video interview from six minutes to three, misled the audience.
“I find the ambassador’s reaction regretful. It is surprising that someone representing the world’s largest democracies is trying to micromanage which questions we should ask a head of state, and which answers should be published,” Wolodarski was quoted as saying.
“DN published four pages in our Sunday edition, containing almost every answer from the Indian president. We have conducted the interview in the same manner as we do whenever we interview other heads of state and government,” it says.
The Bofors scandal, which rocked India in the 1980s, was over allegations that the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors AB paid $640 million as kickbacks to secure a $1.3 billion contract to sell 155 mm field howitzers to the Indian Army.
The State Scores Extra High on Gaming-Friendly Industry Index
Meghalaya scored 92.85 out of 100 possible points in a Gaming Industry Index and proved to be India’s most gaming-friendly state following its recent profound legislation changes over the field allowing land-based and online gaming, including games of chance, under a licensing regime.
The index by the UK India Business Council (UKIBC) uses a scale of 0 to 100 to measure the level of legalisation on gambling and betting achieved by a state based on the scores over a set of seven different games – lottery, horse racing, betting on sports, poker, rummy, casino and fantasy sports
Starting from February last year, Meghalaya became the third state in India’s northeast to legalise gambling and betting after Sikkim and Nagaland. After consultations with the UKIBC, the state proceeded with the adoption of the Meghalaya Regulation of Gaming Act, 2021 and the nullification of the Meghalaya Prevention of Gambling Act, 1970. Subsequently in December, the Meghalaya Regulation of Gaming Rules, 2021 were notified and came into force.
All for the Tourists
The move to legalise and license various forms of offline and online betting and gambling in Meghalaya is aimed at boosting tourism and creating jobs, and altogether raising taxation revenues for the northeastern state. At the same time, the opportunities to bet and gamble legally will be reserved only for tourists and visitors.
“We came out with a Gaming Act and subsequently framed the Regulation of Gaming Rules, 2021. The government will accordingly issue licenses to operate games of skill and chance, both online and offline,” said James P. K. Sangma, Meghalaya State Law and Taxation Minister speaking in the capital city of Shillong. “But the legalized gambling and gaming will only be for tourists and not residents of Meghalaya,” he continued.
To be allowed to play, tourists and people visiting the state for work or business purposes will have to prove their non-resident status by presenting appropriate documents, in a process similar to a bank KYC (Know Your Customer) procedure.
Meghalaya Reaches Out to a Vast Market
With 140 millions of people in India estimated to bet regularly on sports, and a total of 370 million desi bettors around prominent sporting events, as per data from one of the latest reports by Esse N Videri, Meghalaya is set to reach out and take a piece of a vast market.
Estimates on the financial value of India’s sports betting market, combined across all types of offline channels and online sports and cricket predictions and betting platforms, speak about amounts between $130 and $150 billion (roughly between ₹9.7 and ₹11.5 lakh crore).
Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Delhi are shown to deliver the highest number of bettors and Meghalaya can count on substantial tourists flow from their betting circles. The sports betting communities of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana are also not to be underestimated.
Among the sports, cricket is most popular, registering 68 percent of the total bet count analyzed by Esse N Videri. Football takes second position with 11 percent of the bets, followed by betting on FIFA at 7 percent and on eCricket at 5 percent. The last position in the Top 5 of popular sports for betting in India is taken by tennis with 3 percent of the bet count.
Local Citizens will Still have Their Teer Betting
Meghalaya residents will still be permitted to participate in teer betting over arrow-shooting results. Teer is a traditional method of gambling, somewhat similar to a lottery draw, and held under the rules of the Meghalaya Regulation of the Game of Arrow Shooting and the Sale of Teer Tickets Act, 2018.
Teer includes bettors wagering on the number of arrows that reach the target which is placed about 50 meters away from a team of 20 archers positioned in a semicircle.
The archers shoot volleys of arrows at the target for ten minutes, and players place their bets choosing a number between 0 and 99 trying to guess the last two digits of the number of arrows that successfully pierce the target.
If, for example, the number of hits is 256, anyone who has bet on 56 wins an amount eight times bigger than their wager.
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