Morning Brief: PV Sindhu One Win Away From Gold; Narsingh Banned For 4 Years; SBI Merger Cleared

SHOT AT GOLD

Shutler PV Sindhu booked a shot at gold yesterday by defeating her rival Nozomi Okuhara of Japan 21-19, 21-10 in women’s badminton semifinal. The 21-year-old shuttler from Hyderabad became the first Indian ever to enter the finals of the badminton singles competition at the Olympics.

Sindhu will play against the World No.1 Carolina Marin of Spain in the final today.

SUSPENDED

Wrestler Narsingh Yadav’s Olympic dream came to an abrupt and tragic end on Thursday. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) set aside the clean chit given by the Indian anti-doping body, NADA, and slapped a four-year ban effective immediately.

After NADA’s clearance, the International Olympic Committee and also the Organising Committee of the Rio games had accepted Yadav’s entry. But now the suspension comes as a huge surprise.

Yadav was chosen over two-time Olympic medal winner Sushil Kumar to represent India but now the country will go unrepresented in the 74 Kg segment of freestyle wrestling.

SBI MERGER

The board of State Bank of India (SBI) has cleared the proposed merger of five associate banks and Bharatiya Mahila Bank (BMB) with itself. The proposed merger would create a banking behemoth with a balance sheet size of Rs.37 trillion, according to SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya. That would make SBI more than five times the size of India’s biggest private bank ICICI Bank Ltd. in balance sheet.

However, size alone cannot be the goal of the merger. Profitability should be the objective. For that, should look at more out-of-the-box ideas instead of opting for a plain vanilla, old-style merger. Read this Swarajya article for some of the possibilities.

RED LINES

India has set a five-point agenda for talks with Pakistan on terrorism which signals that the NDA government is hardening its stand.

These are:

• End incitement to violence and terrorism from Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir.
• Stop cross-border terrorism
• Detain and prosecute terrorists like Masood Azhar and Hafiz Saeed.
• Deny a safe haven to fugitives like Mumbai underworld don Dawood Ibrahim
• Close terror camps where terrorists like Bahadur Ali have been trained.

Apart from these, it has also proposed that Islamabad vacates its occupied territories in Jammu and Kashmir and brief India on the progress made in the 26/11 trial and its probe into the Pathankot airbase attack.

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MUST READ OP-EDS

The Art Of War: With the draft bill for the proposed Indian National Defence University now in public domain, this is the right time to start thinking creatively about the proposed institution.

Contest On Two Fronts: Balochistan and Kashmir have become key strategic points in Sino-Pak ties, upsetting India’s traditional engagement with the two countries.​

Making Cities Actually Smart: Developing infrastructure isn’t enough to attract talented people to a city and, thus, make it smart. The presence of talented people is necessary and that takes time, economic freedom and the existence of social institutions.

SWARAJYA SPECIAL

Nagla Fatela Controversy: Documents uploaded on the power ministry website show that the central ministry was misled by the Uttar Pradesh state government.

We hope you enjoyed reading our morning brief. Have a great day ahead!

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