The Evening Wrap: Three bills to replace criminal laws, Telecom Act get President's assent

President Droupadi Murmu on December 25 gave assent to the three new criminal justice bills which were cleared by Parliament last week. The three new laws — the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and the Bharatiya Sakshya Act — will replace the colonial era Indian Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Indian Evidence Act of 1872. The legislation aim at completely overhauling the criminal justice system in the country by giving definition of various offences and their punishments. These have given a clear definition of terrorism, abolished sedition as a crime and introduced a new section titled “offenses against the state”. President Murmu also signed the Telecommunications Act, 2023, the Union government’s long-discussed successor to the Telegraph Act of 1885 that has till now governed telecom services in India. Following the presidential assent, rules to enact different Sections of the Act will be required. The Act largely leaves telecommunications law intact, while formalising certain practices like reserving spectrum bands for different purposes and instituting dispute resolution measures for conflicts between licensed service providers and the government. The Act also provides for newer ways for telecom operators to obtain permissions to set up their equipment in different States. Mass suspension of MPs ‘premeditated’, ‘weaponised’ by government: Kharge tells Dhankhar in letter Declining Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar’s invitation to meet him on December 25, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, who is not in New Delhi, in a letter said that the mass suspension of MPs was “premeditated” and “weaponised” by the ruling party to sabotage Parliamentary practices. Kharge was replying to a second letter written by Dhankhar on December 23 invited him for a meeting on December 25 saying that “we need to move ahead”. In the letter, Dhankhar said that the disorder was “deliberate and strategised”. While agreeing with the Chairman on the need to move ahead, Kharge said that a discussion in his chamber won’t resolve the problem “if the government is not keen on running the House”. Responding to Dhankhar’s allegations, Kharge said, the suspensions were executed “without any application of mind” pointing at the instance when a DMK MP who was not even present in Parliament was suspended. “You have also mentioned that disorder was deliberate and strategised and predetermined. I would like to submit that if anything, it is the mass suspension of the Opposition MPs from both Houses of Parliament that seems to be predetermined and premeditated by the Government,” Kharge remarked. Kharge held Dhankhar as the presiding officer responsible for the government “escaping all accountability”. “It would be distressing when history judges the predising officers harshly for Bills passed without debate and not seeking accountability from the government. It is disappointing that the Hon’ble Chairman feels effecting suspensions facilitated legislative business by passing bills without discussion,” he wrote. The Opposition, Kharge argued, had moved multiple notices seeking a statement from Home Minister Amit Shah on the security breach. “I recognise it is well within your powers as Chairman to decide on these notices. However, it was regrettable that the Chair condoned the attitude of the Hon’ble Home Minister and the Government who did not wish to make a statement on the floor of the House,” Kharge said. He pointed out that while Shah did not speak in the house he spoke to a TV channel on the subject while the Parliament was in session. Kharge wondered on why “the Chair did not find that ‘sacrileging the temple of democracy.’” Madhya Pradesh Cabinet expansion | 28 MLAs take oath as Mohan Yadav expands his Cabinet Twenty-eight BJP MLAs on December 25 took oath as Ministers in the Madhya Pradesh government as Chief Minister Mohan Yadav expanded his Cabinet. Of the 28 Ministers, 18 MLAs including former Union Minister Prahlad Singh Patel, BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya and former Lok Sabha member Rakesh Singh took oath as Cabinet Ministers; six as Ministers of State (Independent Charge); and four as Ministers of State. The portfolio distribution to the new Ministers is yet to be done and is expected in the next few days. Patel and Singh were among the seven Lok Sabha MPs who were fielded by the BJP as part of its collective leadership strategy in the Assembly polls held in November. In the results declared on December 3, the BJP had won a massive majority with 163 seats, while the Congress had to settle with 66 seats and one constituency was bagged by the Bharat Adivasi Party (BAP). Other prominent names in the Cabinet include Pradyumna Singh Tomar, Tulsiram Silawat, Aidal Singh Kansana, Govind Singh Rajput (all four who had switched over from the Congress with Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia in 2020); Vishvas Sarang and Sampatia Uikey. The oath to the new Ministers was administered by Governor Mangubhai Patel at a ceremony held at the Raj Bhavan in Bhopal. The Cabinet expansion comes 12 days after Yadav was sworn in as Chief Minister along with his two deputies — Jagdish Devda and Rajendra Shukla — on December 13. The BJP’s strategy of making decisions keeping the 2024 Lok Sabha elections reflected in the Cabinet expansion too as the party inducted at least 11 ministers from the Other Backward Class (OBC) community which forms more than half of Madhya Pradesh’s population. Six MLAs from the Scheduled Caste (SC) and four Scheduled Tribe (ST) also took oath as Ministers, while seven belong to the general category. Five women ministers, including Uikey and Nirmala Bhuria (both Cabinet Ministers and tribal leaders), also featured in the list. Six first-time MLAs have also been inducted into the Cabinet. With the Chief Minister, two Deputy Chief Ministers, the total strength of the Madhya Pradesh Cabinet has now reached 31, against the maximum strength of 35. The BJP’s central leadership, including national president J.P. Nadda and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, held at least four rounds of discussions with Yadav in New Delhi before the names of 28 leaders were finalised. Discussions with other senior leaders from Madhya Pradesh such as former Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Narendra Singh Tomar, Scindia, Patel and Vijayvargiya were also held in the run-up to the Cabinet expansion. Grounded Romanian plane with 275 Indian passengers leaves French airport for India A Romanian aircraft carrying 275 passengers, mostly Indians, on December 25 left for India four days after they were detained by the French authorities at an airport near Paris over suspected “human trafficking.” “The plane, which had been grounded since Thursday, departed shortly after 14:30 p.m (local time),” BFM TV, a French news broadcast television and radio network, reported. The Nicaragua-bound charter flight that took off from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates carrying 303 passengers was grounded at the Vatry airport, 150 km east of Paris, on December 21 over suspected “human trafficking”. On December 24, French authorities allowed the A340 aircraft, operated by Romanian company Legend Airlines, to resume its journey. According to the airline’s lawyer, Me Liliana Bakayoko, the plane contained 275 passengers on board, 26 of whom are still on French soil, in addition to the two who were brought before a judge today, the channel reported. Earlier, the plane was expected to take off around 10 in the morning. However, the departure of the aircraft was delayed as some of the passengers did not want to return to their country of origin, media reports said. It is reported that the plane will first land in the UAE and then proceed to Mumbai. The situation was for a while confusing, according to Bakayoko. Speaking to BFMTV, she said that some passengers did not want to return to their country of origin and that they had refused to board the plane initially on December 25 morning. “Some of the passengers would be unhappy with this return because they wanted to continue their journey to Nicaragua as planned,” the French news broadcast television and radio network reported. According to the Le Monde newspaper, two passengers are not authorised to leave and may face charges. “We are very relieved. We were impatiently waiting for this,” the lawyer for the airline, Liliana Bakayoko, was quoted as saying by the channel. According to some reports, nearly four dozen passengers had filed asylum applications. The lawyer added that the company will continue to be “available to investigators”, and “will seek damages from its client because it has suffered significant harm”. On Sunday, the airport was turned into a makeshift courtroom and four French judges questioned the detained passengers. The hearings were conducted as part of the investigation opened by the Paris prosecutor’s office on suspicion of human trafficking. According to the French media, some of the passengers spoke Hindi and others Tamil. After authorising the plane to leave, the French judges on Sunday chose to cancel the hearings of the passengers due to irregularities in the procedure. The passengers include a 21-month-old child and 11 unaccompanied minors. The police custody measures for two passengers of the flight were lifted on Monday. The two men were taken into custody on Friday on suspicion of having played a role in what could be an illegal immigration ring. Their detention was extended on Saturday for up to 48 hours. The Public Prosecutor’s Office specifies that a judicial investigation has been opened for aiding the illegal entry and stay of foreigners in the territory as part of an organised gang and participation in a criminal association. The airline’s lawyer has denied any involvement in the trafficking. A “partner” company that chartered the plane was responsible for verifying the identity documents of each passenger, and communicated the passengers’ passport information to the airline 48 hours before the flight, Bakayoko said. Human trafficking carries a potential sentence of up to 20 years in France. According to the reports, the travel may have been planned by the Indian passengers to reach Central America from where they can attempt to enter the United States or Canada illegally. But an anonymous tip indicated that passengers were “likely to be victims of human trafficking” in an organised gang. Newsclick case | Portal’s HR head Chakravarty moves Delhi court seeking to turn approver NewsClick’s human resources department head Amit Chakravarty has moved a Delhi court seeking its permission to turn an approver in the case lodged under anti-terror law UAPA over allegations that the news portal received money to spread pro-China propaganda, court sources said. Chakravarty moved the application before Special Judge Hardeep Kaur last week, seeking pardon in the case and claiming he had material information that he was willing to disclose to the Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter. The judge has posted the matter before a magisterial court for recording Chakravarty’s statement. According to police sources, the agency will take a decision on whether to support his application before the court after going through his statement. The Special Cell of Delhi Police had arrested Chakravarty and news portal’s founder and Editor-in-Chief Prabir Purkayastha on October 3. They are currently in judicial custody. According to the FIR, a large amount of funds to the news portal came from China to “disrupt the sovereignty of India” and cause disaffection against the country. It also alleged Purkayastha conspired with a group — People’s Alliance for Democracy and Secularism (PADS) — to sabotage the electoral process during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. First rupee payment for oil to UAE | India looks for more deals, no targets, say officials India’s first-ever payment in rupees for crude oil purchased from the UAE is helping the world’s third largest energy consumer push for taking the local currency global, as it looks for similar deals with other suppliers, officials said, adding internationalisation is a process and there are no targets. With the nation more than 85% dependent on imports for meeting its oil needs, India has been pursuing a three-pronged strategy of buying from the cheapest available source, diversifying sources of supply and not breaching any international obligation like the price cap in case of Russian oil. While the strategy helped save billions of dollars, when it ramped up imports of Russian oil that was shunned by some in West post Ukraine war, it is looking to settle trade in rupees instead of dollars in a bid to cut transaction costs by eliminating dollar conversions. India in July signed an agreement with the UAE for rupee settlement and soon after Indian Oil Corporation made payments for purchase of a million barrels of crude oil from Abu Dhabi National Oil Company in Indian rupees. Some of the Russian oil imports too have been settled in rupee. Officials said the default payment currency for import of crude oil has been the U.S. dollar for several decades and the currency traditionally has liquidity as well as lower hedging cost. But to boost the rupee’s role in cross-border payments, the Reserve Bank of India allowed more than a dozen banks to settle trades in rupees with 18 countries since last year. Since then, India has been encouraging big oil exporters such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia to accept the Indian currency for trade settlements, officials said, adding the first success happened in August this year when IOC made the rupee payment to ADNOC. More such deals may happen in future, they said, insisting there was no target as internationalisation is a process and cannot happen overnight. “We have to be mindful that it (rupee settlement) does not lead to increase in cost and is in no way detrimental to the trade,” an official said. “Settling a trade in rupee where the amount is not big does not pose much problem but when you have each shipload of crude oil costing millions of dollars, there are issues.” India, they said, is navigating the situation keeping overarching national interest in mind. The internationalization of the rupee will help reduce dollar demand and make the Indian economy less vulnerable to global currency shocks. In Christmas Day message, Pope decries Israeli strikes reaping ‘appalling harvest’ of civilian deaths in Gaza Pope Francis said in his Christmas message on December 25 that children dying in wars, including in Gaza, are the “little Jesuses of today” and that Israeli strikes there were reaping an “appalling harvest” of innocent civilians. In his Christmas Day ‘Urbi et Orbi’ (to the city and world) address, Pope Francis also called the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas militants “abominable” and again appealed for the release of around 100 hostages still being held in Gaza. Speaking from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to thousands of people in the square below, he took another swipe at the armaments industry, saying it ultimately controlled the “puppet-strings of war”. The 87-year-old Francis, celebrating the 11th Christmas of his pontificate, called for an end to conflicts, political, social or military, in places including Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and he defended the rights of migrants around the world. “How many innocents are being slaughtered in our world! In their mothers’ wombs, in odysseys undertaken in desperation and in search of hope, in the lives of all those little ones whose childhood has been devastated by war. They are the little Jesuses of today,” he said. He gave particular attention to the Holy Land, including Gaza, where, according to Palestinian health officials, Israeli air strikes killed at least 78 people in one of the besieged enclave’s deadliest nights of Israel’s 11-week-old battle with Hamas. “May it [peace] come in Israel and Palestine, where war is devastating the lives of those peoples. I embrace them all, particularly the Christian communities of Gaza and the entire Holy Land,” Pope Francis said. “I plead for an end to the military operations with their appalling harvest of innocent civilian victims, and call for a solution to the desperate humanitarian situation by an opening to the provision of humanitarian aid,” he said. The Vatican, which has diplomatic relations with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, believes a two-state solution is the only answer to the long-running conflict. Francis called for “persevering dialogue between the parties, sustained by strong political will and the support of the international community”. Dedicating an entire paragraph of his message to the weapons trade, Francis said: “And how can we even speak of peace, when arms production, sales and trade are on the rise?” He called for more investigation of the armaments trade. In Brief: Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has been moved to a penal colony in an Arctic region of northern Russia, his spokeswoman said on December 25 after supporters lost touch with him for more than two weeks. Navalny was tracked down to the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp in the Yamal-Nenets region, about 1,900 km north east of Moscow, spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said. Navalny’s lawyer managed to see him on December 25, Yarmysh said. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. [logo] The Evening Wrap 25 December 2023 [The Hindu logo] Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day’s biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. [[Arrow]Open in browser]( [[Mail icon]More newsletters]( Three bills to replace British-era criminal laws, Telecom Act get President’s assent [President Droupadi Murmu on December 25 gave assent to the three new criminal justice bills which were cleared by Parliament last week.]( The three new laws — the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and the Bharatiya Sakshya Act — will replace the colonial era Indian Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Indian Evidence Act of 1872. The legislation aim at completely overhauling the criminal justice system in the country by giving definition of various offences and their punishments. These have given a clear definition of terrorism, abolished sedition as a crime and introduced a new section titled “offenses against the state”. [President Murmu also signed the Telecommunications Act, 2023]( the Union government’s long-discussed successor to the Telegraph Act of 1885 that has till now governed telecom services in India. Following the presidential assent, rules to enact different Sections of the Act will be required. The Act largely leaves telecommunications law intact, while formalising certain practices like reserving spectrum bands for different purposes and instituting dispute resolution measures for conflicts between licensed service providers and the government. The Act also provides for newer ways for telecom operators to obtain permissions to set up their equipment in different States. Mass suspension of MPs ‘premeditated’, ‘weaponised’ by government: Kharge tells Dhankhar in letter [Declining Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar’s invitation to meet him on December 25, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, who is not in New Delhi, in a letter said that the mass suspension of MPs was “premeditated” and “weaponised” by the ruling party to sabotage Parliamentary practices.]( Kharge was replying to a second letter written by Dhankhar on December 23 invited him for a meeting on December 25 saying that “we need to move ahead”. In the letter, Dhankhar said that the disorder was “deliberate and strategised”. While agreeing with the Chairman on the need to move ahead, Kharge said that a discussion in his chamber won’t resolve the problem “if the government is not keen on running the House”. Responding to Dhankhar’s allegations, Kharge said, the suspensions were executed “without any application of mind” pointing at the instance when a DMK MP who was not even present in Parliament was suspended. “You have also mentioned that disorder was deliberate and strategised and predetermined. I would like to submit that if anything, it is the mass suspension of the Opposition MPs from both Houses of Parliament that seems to be predetermined and premeditated by the Government,” Kharge remarked. Kharge held Dhankhar as the presiding officer responsible for the government “escaping all accountability”. “It would be distressing when history judges the predising officers harshly for Bills passed without debate and not seeking accountability from the government. It is disappointing that the Hon’ble Chairman feels effecting suspensions facilitated legislative business by passing bills without discussion,” he wrote. The Opposition, Kharge argued, had moved multiple notices seeking a statement from Home Minister Amit Shah on the security breach. “I recognise it is well within your powers as Chairman to decide on these notices. However, it was regrettable that the Chair condoned the attitude of the Hon’ble Home Minister and the Government who did not wish to make a statement on the floor of the House,” Kharge said. He pointed out that while Shah did not speak in the house he spoke to a TV channel on the subject while the Parliament was in session. Kharge wondered on why “the Chair did not find that ‘sacrileging the temple of democracy.’” Madhya Pradesh Cabinet expansion | 28 MLAs take oath as Mohan Yadav expands his Cabinet [Twenty-eight BJP MLAs on December 25 took oath as Ministers in the Madhya Pradesh government as Chief Minister Mohan Yadav expanded his Cabinet.]( Of the 28 Ministers, 18 MLAs including former Union Minister Prahlad Singh Patel, BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya and former Lok Sabha member Rakesh Singh took oath as Cabinet Ministers; six as Ministers of State (Independent Charge); and four as Ministers of State. The portfolio distribution to the new Ministers is yet to be done and is expected in the next few days. Patel and Singh were among the seven Lok Sabha MPs who were fielded by the BJP as part of its collective leadership strategy in the Assembly polls held in November. In the results declared on December 3, the BJP had won a massive majority with 163 seats, while the Congress had to settle with 66 seats and one constituency was bagged by the Bharat Adivasi Party (BAP). Other prominent names in the Cabinet include Pradyumna Singh Tomar, Tulsiram Silawat, Aidal Singh Kansana, Govind Singh Rajput (all four who had switched over from the Congress with Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia in 2020); Vishvas Sarang and Sampatia Uikey. The oath to the new Ministers was administered by Governor Mangubhai Patel at a ceremony held at the Raj Bhavan in Bhopal. The Cabinet expansion comes 12 days after Yadav was sworn in as Chief Minister along with his two deputies — Jagdish Devda and Rajendra Shukla — on December 13. The BJP’s strategy of making decisions keeping the 2024 Lok Sabha elections reflected in the Cabinet expansion too as the party inducted at least 11 ministers from the Other Backward Class (OBC) community which forms more than half of Madhya Pradesh’s population. Six MLAs from the Scheduled Caste (SC) and four Scheduled Tribe (ST) also took oath as Ministers, while seven belong to the general category. Five women ministers, including Uikey and Nirmala Bhuria (both Cabinet Ministers and tribal leaders), also featured in the list. Six first-time MLAs have also been inducted into the Cabinet. With the Chief Minister, two Deputy Chief Ministers, the total strength of the Madhya Pradesh Cabinet has now reached 31, against the maximum strength of 35. The BJP’s central leadership, including national president J.P. Nadda and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, held at least four rounds of discussions with Yadav in New Delhi before the names of 28 leaders were finalised. Discussions with other senior leaders from Madhya Pradesh such as former Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Narendra Singh Tomar, Scindia, Patel and Vijayvargiya were also held in the run-up to the Cabinet expansion. Grounded Romanian plane with 275 Indian passengers leaves French airport for India [A Romanian aircraft carrying 275 passengers, mostly Indians, on December 25 left for India four days after they were detained]( by the French authorities at an airport near Paris over suspected “human trafficking.” “The plane, which had been grounded since Thursday, departed shortly after 14:30 p.m (local time),” BFM TV, a French news broadcast television and radio network, reported. The Nicaragua-bound charter flight that took off from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates carrying 303 passengers was grounded at the Vatry airport, 150 km east of Paris, on December 21 over suspected “human trafficking”. On December 24, French authorities allowed the A340 aircraft, operated by Romanian company Legend Airlines, to resume its journey. According to the airline’s lawyer, Me Liliana Bakayoko, the plane contained 275 passengers on board, 26 of whom are still on French soil, in addition to the two who were brought before a judge today, the channel reported. Earlier, the plane was expected to take off around 10 in the morning. However, the departure of the aircraft was delayed as some of the passengers did not want to return to their country of origin, media reports said. It is reported that the plane will first land in the UAE and then proceed to Mumbai. The situation was for a while confusing, according to Bakayoko. Speaking to BFMTV, she said that some passengers did not want to return to their country of origin and that they had refused to board the plane initially on December 25 morning. “Some of the passengers would be unhappy with this return because they wanted to continue their journey to Nicaragua as planned,” the French news broadcast television and radio network reported. According to the Le Monde newspaper, two passengers are not authorised to leave and may face charges. “We are very relieved. We were impatiently waiting for this,” the lawyer for the airline, Liliana Bakayoko, was quoted as saying by the channel. According to some reports, nearly four dozen passengers had filed asylum applications. The lawyer added that the company will continue to be “available to investigators”, and “will seek damages from its client because it has suffered significant harm”. On Sunday, the airport was turned into a makeshift courtroom and four French judges questioned the detained passengers. The hearings were conducted as part of the investigation opened by the Paris prosecutor’s office on suspicion of human trafficking. According to the French media, some of the passengers spoke Hindi and others Tamil. After authorising the plane to leave, the French judges on Sunday chose to cancel the hearings of the passengers due to irregularities in the procedure. The passengers include a 21-month-old child and 11 unaccompanied minors. The police custody measures for two passengers of the flight were lifted on Monday. The two men were taken into custody on Friday on suspicion of having played a role in what could be an illegal immigration ring. Their detention was extended on Saturday for up to 48 hours. The Public Prosecutor’s Office specifies that a judicial investigation has been opened for aiding the illegal entry and stay of foreigners in the territory as part of an organised gang and participation in a criminal association. The airline’s lawyer has denied any involvement in the trafficking. A “partner” company that chartered the plane was responsible for verifying the identity documents of each passenger, and communicated the passengers’ passport information to the airline 48 hours before the flight, Bakayoko said. Human trafficking carries a potential sentence of up to 20 years in France. According to the reports, the travel may have been planned by the Indian passengers to reach Central America from where they can attempt to enter the United States or Canada illegally. But an anonymous tip indicated that passengers were “likely to be victims of human trafficking” in an organised gang. Newsclick case | Portal’s HR head Chakravarty moves Delhi court seeking to turn approver [NewsClick’s human resources department head Amit Chakravarty has moved a Delhi court seeking its permission to turn an approver in the case lodged under anti-terror law UAPA over allegations that the news portal received money to spread pro-China propaganda]( court sources said. Chakravarty moved the application before Special Judge Hardeep Kaur last week, seeking pardon in the case and claiming he had material information that he was willing to disclose to the Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter. The judge has posted the matter before a magisterial court for recording Chakravarty’s statement. According to police sources, the agency will take a decision on whether to support his application before the court after going through his statement. The Special Cell of Delhi Police had arrested Chakravarty and news portal’s founder and Editor-in-Chief Prabir Purkayastha on October 3. They are currently in judicial custody. According to the FIR, a large amount of funds to the news portal came from China to “disrupt the sovereignty of India” and cause disaffection against the country. It also alleged Purkayastha conspired with a group — People’s Alliance for Democracy and Secularism (PADS) — to sabotage the electoral process during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. First rupee payment for oil to UAE | India looks for more deals, no targets, say officials [India’s first-ever payment in rupees for crude oil purchased from the UAE is helping the world’s third largest energy consumer push for taking the local currency global]( as it looks for similar deals with other suppliers, officials said, adding internationalisation is a process and there are no targets. With the nation more than 85% dependent on imports for meeting its oil needs, India has been pursuing a three-pronged strategy of buying from the cheapest available source, diversifying sources of supply and not breaching any international obligation like the price cap in case of Russian oil. While the strategy helped save billions of dollars, when it ramped up imports of Russian oil that was shunned by some in West post Ukraine war, it is looking to settle trade in rupees instead of dollars in a bid to cut transaction costs by eliminating dollar conversions. India in July signed an agreement with the UAE for rupee settlement and soon after Indian Oil Corporation made payments for purchase of a million barrels of crude oil from Abu Dhabi National Oil Company in Indian rupees. Some of the Russian oil imports too have been settled in rupee. Officials said the default payment currency for import of crude oil has been the U.S. dollar for several decades and the currency traditionally has liquidity as well as lower hedging cost. But to boost the rupee’s role in cross-border payments, the Reserve Bank of India allowed more than a dozen banks to settle trades in rupees with 18 countries since last year. Since then, India has been encouraging big oil exporters such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia to accept the Indian currency for trade settlements, officials said, adding the first success happened in August this year when IOC made the rupee payment to ADNOC. More such deals may happen in future, they said, insisting there was no target as internationalisation is a process and cannot happen overnight. “We have to be mindful that it (rupee settlement) does not lead to increase in cost and is in no way detrimental to the trade,” an official said. “Settling a trade in rupee where the amount is not big does not pose much problem but when you have each shipload of crude oil costing millions of dollars, there are issues.” India, they said, is navigating the situation keeping overarching national interest in mind. The internationalization of the rupee will help reduce dollar demand and make the Indian economy less vulnerable to global currency shocks. In Christmas Day message, Pope decries Israeli strikes reaping ‘appalling harvest’ of civilian deaths in Gaza [Pope Francis said in his Christmas message on December 25 that children dying in wars, including in Gaza, are the “little Jesuses of today” and that Israeli strikes there were reaping an “appalling harvest” of innocent civilians.]( In his Christmas Day ‘Urbi et Orbi’ (to the city and world) address, Pope Francis also called the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas militants “abominable” and again appealed for the release of around 100 hostages still being held in Gaza. Speaking from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to thousands of people in the square below, he took another swipe at the armaments industry, saying it ultimately controlled the “puppet-strings of war”. The 87-year-old Francis, celebrating the 11th Christmas of his pontificate, called for an end to conflicts, political, social or military, in places including Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and he defended the rights of migrants around the world. “How many innocents are being slaughtered in our world! In their mothers’ wombs, in odysseys undertaken in desperation and in search of hope, in the lives of all those little ones whose childhood has been devastated by war. They are the little Jesuses of today,” he said. He gave particular attention to the Holy Land, including Gaza, where, according to Palestinian health officials, Israeli air strikes killed at least 78 people in one of the besieged enclave’s deadliest nights of Israel’s 11-week-old battle with Hamas. “May it [peace] come in Israel and Palestine, where war is devastating the lives of those peoples. I embrace them all, particularly the Christian communities of Gaza and the entire Holy Land,” Pope Francis said. “I plead for an end to the military operations with their appalling harvest of innocent civilian victims, and call for a solution to the desperate humanitarian situation by an opening to the provision of humanitarian aid,” he said. The Vatican, which has diplomatic relations with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, believes a two-state solution is the only answer to the long-running conflict. Francis called for “persevering dialogue between the parties, sustained by strong political will and the support of the international community”. Dedicating an entire paragraph of his message to the weapons trade, Francis said: “And how can we even speak of peace, when arms production, sales and trade are on the rise?” He called for more investigation of the armaments trade. In Brief: [Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has been moved to a penal colony in an Arctic region of northern Russia]( his spokeswoman said on December 25 after supporters lost touch with him for more than two weeks. Navalny was tracked down to the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp in the Yamal-Nenets region, about 1,900 km north east of Moscow, spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said. Navalny’s lawyer managed to see him on December 25, Yarmysh said. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. 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