Srinagar: March 13, 2019: Bharti AXA Life Insurance, a joint venture between Bharti Enterprises, one of India’s leading business groups, and AXA, one of the world’s largest insurance companies, today announced that the company has hired 10,000 insurance advisors and added 50 new branches in the current financial year.

The aggressive expansion drive is part of the company’s overall strategy to strengthen its operation and enhance distribution footprint across the country.The company registered 33 per cent rise in advisor hiring to 38,000 agents during 2018-19 as against 28,638 insurance advisors as on March 31, 2018.It added 50 new branches to take an enhanced distribution network of 236 branches pan-India in the current financial year, up 27 per cent over 186 branches as on March 31, 2018.

‘’We have embarked upon our most aggressive expansion drive in the recent years and added close to 10,000 insurance advisors and 50 new branches during the current financial year. We plan to create a large pool of productive agents, strengthen our existing advisor base and reach out to every nook and corner of the country. This will strengthen our distribution bandwidth and help in new customer acquisition,’’ said Mr. Vikas Seth, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Bharti AXA Life Insurance, here.

He said the company is focusing on Tier II and Tier III for branch expansion and insurance agent hiring and it plans to continue its expansion spree in the next financial year with a focus on profitable growth. With branch expansion and recruitment of insurance agents, Mr. Seth said, the company is aiming to create a stronger presence and enhance the width and depth of its reach in the country.

Bharti AXA Life Insurance recorded 40 per cent growth in its new business premium to Rs 617 crore during the April-December period of 2018-19 from Rs 442 crore in the corresponding period a year ago.The company posted 19 per cent growth in its renewal premium Rs 742 crore in the first three quarters of this fiscal, as compared to Rs 623 crore in the same period during the financial year 2017-18.

The annualized new business premium grew 48 per cent to Rs 422 crore in the first nine months of 2018-19 against Rs 286 crore in the similar period of 2017-18.Its individual claims settlement ratio, which indicates death claims settled by a life insurance company in a financial year, stood at 96.7 per cent as on December 31, 2018.The company has crossed the milestone figure of Rs 5,000 crore in its asset under management during the third quarter of 2018-19.

Mr. Seth said, ‘’We have outgrown the life insurance industry in the first nine months of this fiscal. We are confident of achieving a robust growth by the end of the current financial year.’’

He pointed out that the company continues to focus on traditional products, agent productivity, cost-efficiency and channel and distribution diversification for pursuing its growth aspirations in times to come. ‘’We will further be strengthening our agency model for selling various insurance products and servicing customers efficiently. Our ultimate objective is to reach out to all segments of the society to create a financially secured India,’’ Mr. Seth added.

SRINAGAR, MAR 13 : Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student leader Shehla Rashid Shora, is set to join active politics as a member of fellow Kashmiri and former IAS officer Shah Faesal’s soon.

According to sources, “Shehla Rashid Shora is going to join Shah Faesal, who is launching a new political party”.

Sources added that she may contest elections from Srinagar city.

Shehla Rashid Shora was born in the old city of Srinagar in the Habba Kadal locality. Shehla is one of the few Kashmiri women who are vocal about the human rights situation in Kashmir, particularly for ensuring justice to minor undertrains and has been active since 2010 when she was part of organising a youth leadership programme in Kashmir.

Shora unsuccessfully contested the election for the Gender Sensitisation Committee against Sexual Harassment in 2014. In September 2015, she contested the election for vice-present of the JNU student union, as the nominee of the Left-backed All India Students Association, and won it, beating the ABVP’s candidate Valentina Brahma by over 200 votes. She was the first Kashmiri girl to win a student union election at the JNU and the highest polled candidate of that year. 

 Shehla Rashid Shora is a Ph.D. student at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and was vice-president of the students union (JNUSU) in 2015-16. She was a member of the All India Students Association (AISA).

Shora came into the limelight whilst leading the student agitation calling for the release of Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and others who were arrested on charges of sedition in February 2016.She is vocal about the human rights situation in Kashmir, particularly for ensuring justice to minor undertrials and has been active since 2010 when she was part of organising a youth leadership programme in Kashmir.

She played a leading role in visualising the ‘Occupy UGC movement’ and pioneering the decision to “camp” at UGC for fellowships. She led the protests to Ministry of Human Resources Development to ask for an increase in graduate student stipends.

Shora studied computer engineering at the National Institute of Technology, Srinagar and participated in a ten-week certificate programme in political leadership at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.

After graduating from NIT Srinagar she worked as a software engineer with HCL Technologies. She raised the issues of juvenile justice and acid attacks on women in Kashmir but “the political space there [was] too restricted.” Eventually, she joined the Jawaharlal Nehru University, completing an M.A. in sociology and then studying for an MPhil in Law and Governance. She is currently pursuing her PhD thesis from JNU which is based on “how algorithm based decision-making affects policy making”. (PTK)

Srinagar, Mar 13, :   Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has reacted sharply to the Dr Farooq Abdullah’s anti PDP rants, stating that the NC patriarch is actually destroying any scope of combined resistance to the designs of BJP and their assault on special position in Jammu and Kashmir.

PDP senior leader and Former Minister Naeem Akhtar said that at the national level, Dr Farooq is jumping from one state capital to other to promote a Mahagatbandan against the BJP. “There he will not make any difference to whether Mahagatbandan becomes a reality or not but where he could offer a joint resistance in the state, perhaps  under the pressure of his corruption case currently going on at Srinagar court, he is trying to do what suits the BJP and the Prime Minister Modi the most,” Akhtar said.

He added that PDP is the only party which has offered democratic resistance to the central government consistently about the interests of the state within the constitution of the country. 

Akhtar said that PDP President Mehbooba Mufti has proved that before the 2014 elections and after that when the party had to align with the BJP, it did so on terms which were discussed for two months. “And within the government as head of the coalition government and as chief minister, she resisted every attempt by the central government to take any inroads on the constitutional position of the state, compelling BJP to announce unilateral ceasefire, prevented NIA to arrest those who dissent, freed more than 12 thousand youth who were arrested in stone pelting cases,” Akhtar said and added that such a stand left BJP with no choice but to run away from coalition. 

He said that after the fall of government, Mehbooba Mufti is the only voice who has been consistent in raising voice against the crackdown on innocent people, crackdown on separatists, Jamaat-e-Islami, Mirwaiz  Umar Farooq, on religious bodies and attempts to commit constitutional frauds on the state. “Compared to this, Dr Farooq Abdullah who is the senior most politician in the state has been swinging like a pendulum. Only three months back, he was ready to join a coalition with the PDP and today he is maligning the party, levelling false and fabricated charges against it,” said the PDP leader.

Akhtar said  that the coalition of which PDP was the part was dictated by the numbers by the election results in which both the parties were at par and forming coalition was a brave attempt to engage with the new India which is dominated by the Hindutva forces. “And PDP successfully resisted that for four years.  What havoc it would have caused to the state if left alone is now becoming obvious in every part of the state.  It has now become visible that how the BJP is trying to divide the state, divide communities and disempower the people of the state, launching onslaught on newspapers and other media and with ultimate aim of doing away with the special position,” said Akhtar and added  that compared to this, there was no presence of BJP in 1996 when Dr Farooq Abdullah with sixty MLAs aligned unnecessarily with the BJP.

The PDP leader stated that Dr Farooq’s decision to join BJP was aimed to accommodate his son as a minister.  “To get this done, he gave away whatever was left of state’s economic prospects in the shape of power projects to the centre. It is Dr Farooq Abdullah who consolidated forces of official terror and patronised  and promoted them while  making BJP Halaal in Kashmir politics. And this all flows from the  historic 1947 accession,” said Akhtar, adding that after the state acceded to India, no party or ideology needs a visa or a passport to enter the state as that road was opened with the accession itself.

Akhtar added that PDP believes in fighting those ideologies politically rather than by compromising on the state’s interests as national conference has done right from 1938.