Passage 1
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on Friday concluded India had a “high level of technical compliance” with its standards to counter money laundering and terror financing and said New Delhi’s mechanisms for this are “achieving good results”. The multilateral financial watchdog unveiled its conclusions at its plenary meeting in [1] following a year-long process.
“The intergovernmental organisation, which sets international anti-money laundering standards and counter-terrorist financing measures, has not found any red flags in India’s processes,” said an officer who didn’t want to be named.
The FATF discussed and adopted “mutual evaluation report” of India, which assessed the effectiveness of the country’s measures to combat money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation financing, and their compliance with the watchdog’s recommendations.
“The Plenary concluded that India has reached a high level of technical compliance with the FATF requirements and its AML/CFT/CPF [anti-money laundering/ countering the financing of terrorism/ counter proliferation financing] regime is achieving good results, including in its ML [money laundering] and TF [terrorist financing] risk understanding, international cooperation, access to basic and beneficial ownership information, use of financial intelligence, and depriving criminals of their assets and counter-proliferation financing measures,” the watchdog said in a statement.
A key change since the last review was defining a “politically exposed person” under the PMLA, which was recommended by the FATF. Besides, the Indian government widened the ambit of PMLA to bring non-government organisations and crypto-currencies under it, so that illicit financial transactions through virtual digital assets (VDAs) can be monitored.
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Passage 2
The Bombay High Court on June 26 dismissed a writ petition from a few students of Mumbai’s Chembur Trombay Education Society’s N. G. Acharya and D. K. Marathe College of Art, Science and Commerce, challenging a directive issued by their college, imposing a ban on all headgear, including hijab, burqa, stoles, caps, naqaabs, and badges in the classroom. “For the aforesaid reasons, we are not inclined to interfere in the said decision. Writ petition dismissed,” a Division Bench of Justice A.S. Chandurkar and Justice Rajesh Patil said. The second- and third-year students of the B.Sc. and B.Sc Computer Science programmes at the college had approached the High Court on June 14, challenging a notice-cum-direction instructing them to follow the dress code from the new academic year starting in June. The college students in their plea had claimed the new dress code violated their fundamental rights to privacy, dignity, and religious freedom to choose what to wear. “You shall follow the dress code of college of formal and decent dress which shall not reveal anyone’s religion such as no burqa, no nakab, no hijab, no cap, no badge, no stole, etc. Only full of half shirt and normal trousers for boys and any Indian/ western non-revealing dress for girls on the college campus. Changing room available for girls,” the notice issued by the college said. “In the writ petition, it has been pleaded that the petitioners have been donning a hijab and/or nakab for last few years. The pleadings in the writ petition to support the plea that donning of a hijab or nakab is an essential religious practice however are insufficient. Except for stating that the same constitutes an essential religious practice on the basis of the English translation of Kanz-ul-Iman and Suman Abu Dawud, there is no material placed to uphold the petitioners’ contention that donning of hijab and nakab is an essential religious practice. The contention in that regard therefore fails,” the judgment said.
Source – https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/hc-refuses-to-
