(Indian Express) The Rajya Sabha elections for six states covering 58 seats of the 245-member House are scheduled to take place on Friday. Polling will take place between 9 am and 4 pm and counting will begin at 5 pm. The results will be announced later this evening. To secure a win in this election, a candidate needs a certain number of votes which can be calculated on the basis of strength of the Assembly and the number of MPs it sends to Rajya Sabha. While Rajya Sabha members are retiring from 16 states, contest will be held in Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, West…
Author: Aruna Sharma
(PTI) The government may raise domestic natural gas price next week to its highest level in two years, a move that will translate into higher CNG price and increase cost of electricity and urea production. Price paid to most of natural gas produced from domestic fields is likely to be hiked to USD 3.06 per million British thermal unit from April 1, from current USD 2.89, sources privy to the development said. Natural gas prices are set every six months based on average rates in gas-surplus nations like the US, Russia and Canada. India imports half of its gas which costs more…
(Livemint) The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registered a Rs1,394.43 crore bank fraud case against Hyderabad-based Totem Infrastructure Ltd on a complaint by state-run Union Bank of India. “The CBI registered a case today (Thursday) on a complaint by Union Bank of India against Totem Infrastructure and its promoters and directors Tottempudi Salalith and his wife Tottempudi Kavita of Hyderabad,” a person familiar with the developments said. The number of bank fraud cases has been piling up after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) directed banks to file complaints against erring companies. The latest case comes just a day after…
(LiveMint) The income tax (I-T) website still bars taxpayers from filing their returns without an Aadhaar number, in spite of a Supreme Court order that indefinitely extended the deadline for mandatory linking of the unique identity number. With only 10 days left for filing I-T returns for the financial years 2015-16 and 2016-17, individual taxpayers who haven’t filed their returns for the two years and have not enrolled for Aadhaar are unsure whether they can file their returns at all. Income tax rules still maintain that I-T returns cannot be e-filed without quoting an Aadhaar number, despite the 13 March…
(FE) Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday that his company made mistakes in how it handled data belonging to 50 million of its users and promised tougher steps to restrict developers’ access to such information. The world’s largest social media network is facing growing government scrutiny in Europe and the United States about a whistleblower’s allegations that London-based political consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed user information to build profiles on American voters which were later used to help elect U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016. Zuckerberg, in his first public comments since the scandal erupted at the…
(TH) The Krishna-Godavari (KG) Basin, with prognosticated resources of 9.5 billion tonnes of oil equivalent, is poised to be a major pillar for country’s energy security, said Atanu Chakraborty, Director General, Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH). In a media interaction on the sidelines of a programme organised by the Petroleum Ministry in the city on Wednesday, he said 7.5 billion tonnes of oil and oil equivalent gas was yet to be discovered. The KG Basin was one of the prolific basins in the country, he said replying to a query on its current status. Two oil majors, he added, had committed…
(PTI) Legendary British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking will receive a private funeral at a church in Cambridge and the final resting place for his ashes will be next to fellow scientists Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin at Westminster Abbey here, his family said today. One of the world’s most famous scientists, who died peacefully at his home in Cambridge aged 76 on March 14, will receive an “inclusive and traditional” funeral ceremony at Great St Mary’s, the University Church in Cambridge, on Easter Saturday. His ashes will then be “interred” near the grave of Newton, another famous British scientist, during…
(ET) The oil ministry has issued fresh instructions to its officers aimed at ensuring secrecy of documents and preventing any leak, refreshing memory of a three-year-old episode when some mid-level corporate executives were arrested on charges of stealing sensitive papers from the ministry. The ministry has directed its officers to follow instructions on the way they create, receive or transmit information, notes or files so that no information is leaked out to people it’s not meant for, according to a recent circular marked to all senior officers in the ministry. The circular talks about unwanted people roaming the ministry’s corridors to justify…
(LiveMint) Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday accused Prime minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of promoting corruption, showing a lack of concern for farmers and youth, and favouring selected industrialists and fraudsters. Speaking at a public meeting in Mangaluru, Gandhi said that the BJP had offered money to win recent assembly elections in the North-East and other states. The BJP will “kill, burn and bribe” for power, he added.Gandhi and senior Congress leaders are on a two-day tour of coastal and southern Karnataka as part of the party’s Janashirvada Yatre to campaign for assembly elections due later this year.…
(ET) Indian airlines registered a more than 24% increase in passenger traffic in February compared with a year earlier, data from the aviation regulator showed on Monday. Indian carriers flew 10.7 million passengers in the past month, up from 8.6 million in February 2017, as per the DGCA. All key scheduled carriers flew their planes with more than 80% seats full. SpiceJet maintained its pole position in terms of load factor at 96.3%, followed by IndiGo at 91.8% despite problems with its Airbus 320neo aircraft. Vistara was a surprise third, flying its planes with 91.2% seats full, the highest ever for…