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News18
2 days ago
- Politics
- News18
Justice Ramaswami, A 1989 Report & An Impeachment Proceeding: Ex-CAG Boss' Book Reveals Rot
As the Modi government looks to impeach Allahabad HC judge Yashwant Varma, a book explains how a 1989 CAG report led to an impeachment motion against Justice V Ramaswami As the Monsoon Session of Parliament begins on Monday, the Narendra Modi government is expected to start proceedings to impeach Allahabad High Court judge Yashwant Varma, from whose Delhi bungalow wads of currency notes were found. The likely proceedings bring back memories of a 1989 CAG report that led to impeachment proceedings against Justice V Ramaswami — a first in Indian Parliament where a judge faced the heat on the basis of a CAG report. Amid the buzz over Varma's impeachment, former Director General of CAG P Sesh Kumar's book throws light on Justice Ramaswami's case in particular. 'The CAG report in 1989 played a pivotal role in the impeachment motion against Justice V Ramaswami, who was then serving at the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The report highlighted instances of financial misconduct and irregularities during Justice Ramaswami's tenure as the Chief Justice (CJ) of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. Specifically, it highlighted extravagant expenditures, unauthorised purchases and violations of financial norms," Kumar wrote in his new book 'CAG: What It Ought to Be Auditing'. In his book, Kumar takes the reader to 1989, recalling the findings of the CAG: 'The CJ allegedly misused public funds on renovations and furnishings of his official residence and office. These included expensive items such as carpets, air conditioners and furniture without proper approvals. The audit revealed that approximately Rs 49 lakh was misused for unauthorised expenditures, including lavish renovations and purchases for his official residence and office. The report flagged the misuse of funds earmarked for judicial and administrative purposes, leading to significant financial impropriety." The former CAG boss stressed in the book that while the top auditor of India 'submits audit reports based on the administrative control of the audited entity", which should have been the Governors of Punjab and Haryana, the findings involved matters of national importance for the attention of the Parliament of India, as they involved matters of judicial accountability. In the case of Justice Ramaswami, the issue gained national attention and was examined at the parliamentary level, leading to the involvement of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Lok Sabha. 'Following the CAG revelations, 108 Lok Sabha MPs submitted a motion for impeachment against Justice Ramaswami, accusing him of 'proved misbehaviour' under Article 124(4) of the Constitution. It was the first-ever impeachment process initiated against a judge of the higher judiciary in India based on a CAG report. A three-member judicial committee was constituted under the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968, to investigate the allegations," he recalls. The committee found Justice Ramaswami guilty of gross misconduct, corroborating the CAG report's findings, he added. 'In 1993, the impeachment motion was debated in the Lok Sabha. Despite the strong evidence presented, the motion failed because the ruling party abstained from voting. As a result, the impeachment motion fell short of the required two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha," laments Kumar. Justice Ramaswami was not impeached but resigned shortly afterwards, marking a controversial end to the episode. 'The case remains a landmark in Indian judicial history, highlighting both the importance of the CAG in exposing financial irregularities in the higher judiciary and the limitations of the impeachment process, particularly the role of political considerations in what is supposed to be a quasi-judicial procedure," he added in the book. The Modi Sarkar has, over the last few weeks, reached out to key opposition leaders over the issue of impeaching Justice Varma and Kumar, without taking any names, made a scathing remark on the issue. 'Contrast this with the situation and sad spectacles of cash allegedly found to have been delivered to one judge at the residence (Haryana) and found burnt in the outhouse (New Delhi) of another judge of high courts—where nothing happened till recently when it appears to be heading towards an impeachment process or resignation." Get breaking news, in-depth analysis, and expert perspectives on everything from politics to crime and society. Stay informed with the latest India news only on News18. Download the News18 App to stay updated! tags : corruption Narendra Modi Yashwant Varma view comments First Published: Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Forbes
02-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Okta Tightens Agent Identities For Machine-To-Machine Connections
Black and white cybernetic robot hands pointing at each other When will full autonomy happen? It's the question tabled at every technology vendor meeting these days. The IT industry is frantically building agentic AI services and everybody wants a stake at the table. With various CEOs (including those from Salesforce and Microsoft) both claiming to now hand over somewhere between 30 to 50 percent of work to AI services, the degree to which agents now start talking to agents is of great importance. Human, Out Of The Loop? Until recently, technology advocates and evangelists were fond of mentioning the human-in-the-loop (and human handoff) element when talking about emerging AI services. It was a sort of appropriate lip service that needed mentioning, just to calm the people who worry about the robots taking over. A lot of that has changed and of course Google underlined the trend this April with the introduction of the A2A agentic communications standard. '[We have launched] a new, open protocol called Agent2Agent, with support and contributions from more than 50 technology partners. The A2A protocol will allow AI agents to communicate with each other, securely exchange information and coordinate actions on top of various enterprise platforms or applications. We believe the A2A framework will add significant value for customers, whose AI agents will now be able to work across their entire enterprise application estates,' noted the Google for Developers blog. But where are humans in the loop now? Speaking at a press gathering in London this week, Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami acknowledged the forthcoming inevitability of agentic intercommunication and said that his firm is working to provide as broad a scope of cloud infrastructure as possible to enable the new (and next) age of AI with simpler (if not pleasingly invisible) cloud services. Acknowledging that the infrastructure comes first… and then agentic identity management comes as a subsequent tier (for which Nutanix itself will look to collaborate with its now significantly expanded partner ecosystem, which has swelled in the wake of VMware's move to Broadcom), Ramaswami called for an understanding into how, when, why and where we weave this new fabric of intelligence. Identity Steps Up If it is time for hardcore identity players to come forward, then identity platform company Okta would arguably rank in the 'usual suspect' lineup in this space. This summer, the company introduced Cross App Access, a new protocol to help secure AI agents. As an extension of the open standard OAuth (technology that provides authorization controls to grant third-party applications access to other resources), Okta says its new services bring control to both agent-driven and app-to-app interactions. In short, it allows developers and data scientists to decide what apps are connecting to what… and what information AI agents can actually access. According to Arnab Bose, chief product officer for Okta platform, more AI tools are using technologes like Model Context Protocol and A2A to connect their AI learning models to relevant data and applications within the enterprise. However, for connections to be established between agents and apps themselves (think about Google Drive or Slack as good examples of applications that an agent might want access to) users need to manually log in and consent to grant the agent access to each integration. Amplified Agentic Explosion Bose says that despite this truth, app-to-app connections occur without oversight, with IT and security teams having to rely on manual and inconsistent processes to gain visibility. This creates a big blind spot in enterprise security and expands an increasingly unmanaged perimeter. This challenge, he says, will be amplified with the explosion of AI agents, which are introducing new, non-deterministic access patterns, crossing system boundaries, triggering actions on their own and interacting with sensitive data. The position at Okta is that 'today's security controls aren't equipped to handle their autonomy, scale and unpredictability' and that existing identity standards are not designed for securing an interconnected web of services and applications in the enterprise. The company says that while MCP improves transparency and communication between agents, it could still benefit from additional identity access management features. 'We're actively working with the MCP and A2A communities to improve AI agents' functionality, their increased access to data and the explosion of app-to-app connections will create new identity security challenges,' said Bose. "With Cross App Access, Okta brings oversight and control to how agents interact across the enterprise. Since protocols are only as powerful as the ecosystem that supports them, we're also committed to collaborating across the software industry to help provide agents with secure, standardized access to all apps.' Where Agents Need Tightening The question now, presumably, is where exactly should we tighten up identity controls for agentic AI services first? The password login box has been a bull's-eye for attackers for a long time. Why? Because it's the primary path to sensitive data. Although most people now realize that "password123" is a bad idea, organizations will now need to gain a new and fundamental understanding of their sprawling human and machine identities. 'Now, take that existing chaos and multiply it by a million. Picture a world where millions of AI agents, autonomous pieces of code acting on behalf of both users and other machines, are interacting with your systems. Suddenly, that messy frontline looks like a wide-open battlefield. We could be in for a world of trouble,' said Shiv Ramji, president, AuthO at Okta. According to PwC's AI Agent Survey, nearly 80% of senior executives said their companies are already adopting AI agents. However, by moving quickly from prototypes to production without adequate governance and access controls, there is a real potential for agentic AI 'shadow IT' and the introduction of systemic risk. The bottom line for developers is all about keeping the IT stack secure, enabling new agent-to-agent intercourse to happen… and still keep the existing operational lights on. But this time, it's not just identity. It extends beyond access to who has permissions to specific resources, such as databases, documents, internal sites, wiki pages, other tools/systems, and other agents. Agentic Weakness Factors Ramji asks us to consider the following risk factors: 'So, how do we tackle these systemic risks at scale? This isn't just about individual application hardening; it's about establishing a standardized, secure way for agents to function in an interconnected world. Open protocols, such as MCP and Google's A2A, will be key to this, enabling interoperability and preventing vendor lock-in. While MCP focuses on an agent's interaction with tools, Google's A2A protocol addresses the equally crucial problem of how AI agents communicate and collaborate with each other. In a complex enterprise environment, you won't have just one agent; you'll have an ecosystem of specialized agents,' said Ramji. 'This is also why you need to build identity security into your AI agents from the ground up. The Way Forward The safest way forward in this space appears to include several factors, such as the need to architect bespoke login flows for AI agents. This means dedicated authentication mechanisms designed for machine-to-machine interaction. Okta's Ramji concludes his commentary in this space by saying that organizations need to use OAuth 2.0 for secure tool integrations i.e. when AI agents integrate with external services like Gmail or Slack, we don't need to reinvent the wheel, we can lean on established, secure authorization frameworks like OAuth 2.0 today. Organizations should also still design for human-in-the-loop approvals, especially for critical or sensitive actions, bake in a mechanism for human oversight. While Okta's key competitor list includes Microsoft Entra ID, Cisco (for Duo Security) ForgeRock, OneLogin, CyberArk, IBM for its Security Verify layer and all three major cloud hyperscalers from AWS to Google Cloud to Microsoft Azure… most of the vendors in this space would largely concur with the general subject matter discussed here. It's all about human management in the first instance and that's why documentation is fundamental in any scenario like this where code annotations have to exist to prove what connects to what. Humans will still be in the loop, even when that loop is humans building an agent-to-agent loop… and that's a large part of of how we keep this tier of software application development working properly.
Time of India
24-06-2025
- Time of India
Senior citizen outwits conmen using fake credit SMS trick
Vadodara: A senior citizen from Alkapuri in Vadodara narrowly avoided falling victim to a cyber scam after receiving fake SMS alerts claiming money had been credited to her bank account. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Devika Ramaswami (62), a retired employee of a multinational company, not only recognised the fraud in time but also alerted the cybercrime helpline to the new trick being employed by scammers. The incident began three days ago when Ramaswami mistakenly transferred Rs 1,500 via UPI to the wrong number. "I called the recipient, and he assured me that he would return the money," she told TOI. On Monday morning, Ramaswami received a call from an unknown person who claimed to be the father of the man she had mistakenly transferred money to. "He told me his son had asked him to return the money and said he would first send Rs 10 to confirm. Within seconds, I received a message saying Rs 10 was credited to my account," she said. Moments later, the caller claimed to have mistakenly transferred Rs 50,000 instead of Rs 1,500 and asked her to send Rs 45,000 back. "That's when I got suspicious," Ramaswami said. "I told him I would first check with my bank. He started pressuring me, and when I refused, he became abusive. I disconnected the call and immediately contacted my bank." To her shock, the bank executive confirmed that no such amounts had been deposited in her account. The credit messages she received were fake. "The fraudster had mimicked official bank SMS formats to make it look like genuine auto-generated messages," she explained. "It's a clever tactic meant to trick unsuspecting people into refunding money they never actually received." Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Ramaswami reported the scam attempt to the cybercrime helpline and urged others to stay alert. "If I hadn't verified the messages, I could've lost Rs 50,000. Always double-check with your bank before acting on any credit message," she advised. Vadodara: A senior citizen from Alkapuri in Vadodara narrowly avoided falling victim to a cyber scam after receiving fake SMS alerts claiming money had been credited to her bank account. Devika Ramaswami (62), a retired employee of a multinational company, not only recognised the fraud in time but also alerted the cybercrime helpline to the new trick being employed by scammers. The incident began three days ago when Ramaswami mistakenly transferred Rs 1,500 via UPI to the wrong number. "I called the recipient, and he assured me that he would return the money," she told TOI. On Monday morning, Ramaswami received a call from an unknown person who claimed to be the father of the man she had mistakenly transferred money to. "He told me his son had asked him to return the money and said he would first send Rs 10 to confirm. Within seconds, I received a message saying Rs 10 was credited to my account," she said. Moments later, the caller claimed to have mistakenly transferred Rs 50,000 instead of Rs 1,500 and asked her to send RS 45,000 back. "That's when I got suspicious," Ramaswami said. "I told him I would first check with my bank. He started pressuring me, and when I refused, he became abusive. I disconnected the call and immediately contacted my bank." To her shock, the bank executive confirmed that no such amounts had been deposited in her account. The credit messages she received were fake. "The fraudster had mimicked official bank SMS formats to make it look like genuine auto-generated messages," she explained. "It's a clever tactic meant to trick unsuspecting people into refunding money they never actually received." Ramaswami reported the scam attempt to the cybercrime helpline and urged others to stay alert. "If I hadn't verified the messages, I could've lost Rs 50,000. Always double-check with your bank before acting on any credit message," she advised.
Indian Express
07-06-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
When judges face impeachment: V Ramaswami to Soumitra Sen, what happened in each of the 5 cases
The Centre is likely to bring in an impeachment motion against Allahabad High Court judge Justice Yashwant Varma in the Monsoon Session of Parliament next month. An impeachment motion against a judge is a rare occurrence. There have been attempts to move the motion against judges of the Supreme Court and various High Courts only five times since Independence, with Parliament debating only two of those motions, while the rest either failed to get the support of the required number of MPs or were rejected. Article 124(4) of the Constitution, which deals with this issue, says, 'A Judge of the Supreme Court shall not be removed from his office except by an order of the President passed after an address by each House of Parliament supported by a majority of the total membership of that House and by a majority of not less than two-thirds of the members of that House present and voting.' Here is a look at the five instances when motions were brought to impeach judges. In 1993, Justice V Ramaswami was the first sitting judge of the Supreme Court to face impeachment for alleged financial misconduct during his tenure as Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The Lok Sabha debate on impeaching him took place on May 10 and 11 that year. CPI(M)'s Bolpur MP Somnath Chatterjee moved the motion in the Lok Sabha. 'This is a constitutional obligation, not a political witch-hunt. We are seeking to maintain the dignity of the highest judiciary. Let it be known to the nation and to the world that this House, this Parliament, can rise to its responsibilities under the Constitution,' he said. Acknowledging that MPs 'were not judges', Chatterjee said the House was called upon to act 'with objectivity and seriousness of judges'. 'If we fail today, we will be failing not only the Constitution but also the hopes of the people of this country who place trust in our institutions. My appeal once again to all my fellow Members is that the time has come when we must stand up for certain values and norms,' he said. Lauding Ramaswami's counsel Kapil Sibal, who defended the Supreme Court judge in Parliament, Chatterjee said he hoped Ramaswami would resign. 'Yesterday, his counsel advocated very strongly that this House should not vote on this particular motion. His plea was: 'Please do not vote on this motion.' After the debate was over, I walked over to him and said: 'You made an excellent suggestion. Why do you not take it one step further and persuade your client to resign?'' Chatterjee concluded, saying, 'If we fail today, we will be failing not only the Constitution but also the hopes of the people of this country who place trust in our institutions.' Supporting the motion, BJP's Chittorgarh MP Jaswant Singh said it was the first exercise where 'legislators were called upon to don a judicial role'. 'What we do or fail to do today will become archival material, to be referred to by successive generations of legislators. The fate of this motion is directly linked with the moral health of the nation … The motion of impeachment is a safeguard of the State. It restrains judicial tyranny without overawing the authority of the courts. I asked myself: Is this, on the findings of the Committee, sufficient to conclude misbehaviour? My answer is yes. Is it proven? Yes. Does it warrant removal? Yes. To reject this motion would be to condone misbehaviour in the judiciary; it would taint and enfeeble the nation,' he said. The Janata Dal MP from Muzaffarpur, George Fernandes, said he hoped that the debate would be the' beginning of a cleansing process, in which we must uphold the rule of law, uphold the basic norms and values — especially if we want to combat the growing violence and corruption in this country'. The Congress opposed the motion, with its MP Mani Shankar Aiyar saying the 108 members who moved the motion 'were not a cross-section of the House'. 'They were drawn from parties that numerically did not constitute a majority … That is perfectly legal, maybe even moral, but this must be borne in mind … At a time when even my eleven-year-old daughter knew that the Ninth Lok Sabha was going to end, they decided to bring this issue forward as their electoral platform,' he said. Claiming that the House was not even being given 16 hours to consider the matter, Aiyar said, 'Whether we pass this motion or reject it, we are doing great damage to our nation. We are paying for the sins of the dying days of the Ninth Lok Sabha.' Another Congress MP, Debi Prasad Pal, questioned the legitimacy and transparency of the committee process. The motion fell through after most Congress MPs abstained and it failed to get a two-thirds majority. Of the 401 MPs in the House, 205 abstained while 196 voted in favour of the motion. The impeachment proceedings against Justice Soumitra Sen of the Calcutta High Court took place in the Rajya Sabha. Sen was accused of misappropriating funds in his role as a court-appointed receiver and of misleading the court even after his elevation to the Bench. The Rajya Sabha took up the motion on August 17–18, 2011, following the findings of an inquiry committee headed by Justice B Sudershan Reddy, Justice Mukul Mudgal, and jurist Fali Nariman. Sitaram Yechury of the CPI(M) moved the motion, saying it was 'not one questioning the integrity of the judiciary but against one judge who has been found to have indulged in conduct that constitutes the definition of misbehaviour'. 'It is a call of duty to correct any aberration that may lead to the undermining of this faith (in the judiciary). Let us convey not only to the people of India but to the people of the world that the Indian Parliament is a sacred temple — the perpetual residence of inviolable justice,' he said. Then Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley, spoke in support of the motion. 'The cheques can't lie; individuals can. This is a fit case for removal, and we must so make a recommendation to the President,' he said. Saying he had come to seek justice on 'not only questions of law but also on questions of facts', Justice Sen defended himself in the House. 'The concept of presumption of innocence has now been reversed into a presumption of guilt … Even if you hold me guilty and remove me, I will still shout from the rooftops that I did not misappropriate the money … This entire matter is being driven by assumptions and political will, not law or facts,' he said. In reply, Jaitley said, 'This misappropriation will hang like an albatross around your neck even when you shout from rooftops that you're innocent … Can we afford to have a judge whose conduct smacks of this kind of proven misconduct?' The Upper House passed the motion and Justice Sen became the first sitting judge to have an impeachment motion against him passed by a House of Parliament. He subsequently resigned and then Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid told the Lok Sabha on September 5, 2011, that further discussion on the matter was not required and the Lower House did not get to discuss or vote on the matter. More than 50 Rajya Sabha MPs signed a motion seeking the removal of Justice S K Gangele of the Madhya Pradesh High Court over charges of sexual harassment by a former district and sessions judge in Gwalior. The motion was dropped after an inquiry committee did not find enough material against the judge. Over 50 Rajya Sabha MPs signed a motion to impeach Justice Reddy of the High Court for Andhra Pradesh and Telangana over charges of physically assaulting a judge of a lower court. However, the motion was dropped after nine MPs withdrew, and it fell short of the minimum 50 MPs required to introduce the motion. Opposition parties in the Rajya Sabha, including the Congress, (then undivided) NCP, SP, BSP, and CPI(M), submitted the motion to impeach Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra in April 2018, alleging 'misbehaviour' and 'incapacity'. On April 23 that year, the then Rajya Sabha chairman, M Venkaiah Naidu, rejected the motion saying that the charges pertained to internal court administration and did not amount to constitutional 'misbehaviour'.
Business Times
14-05-2025
- Business
- Business Times
GXS Bank CEO to retire, GX Bank CEO to take over
[SINGAPORE] GXS Bank has announced that chief executive Muthukrishnan Ramaswami will be retiring on May 31. His successor will be Lai Pei-Si, CEO of GX Bank, the Malaysian arm of GXS, it said on Wednesday (May 14). Lai will take over as GXS CEO on Jun 1, with GX Bank deputy CEO Kaushik Chowdhury taking over her role. Ramaswami will remain as a senior adviser to GXS. Lai has been the CEO of GX Bank since 2022, when it received a digital banking licence in Malaysia. The bank has grown to more than a million customers a year since its launch in November 2023, and processed over 124 million transactions. Both Lai and Ramaswami oversaw the recently announced Validus acquisition. 'As a veteran banker with the unique experience of having launched Malaysia's first digital bank, Pei-Si understands the tremendous impact that digital banks can bring to our communities,' said Hsieh Fu Hua, chairman of GXS.
