(PTI) State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) is keen to acquire India’s third-biggest fuel retailer Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) in a Rs42,254 crore deal after finding Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) too expensive to buy. Following up on finance minister Arun Jaitley’s budget announcement of creating an integrated oil company, ONGC evaluated options of acquiring either HPCL or BPCL—the two downstream oil refining and fuel marketing companies. While acquiring either one of them made a lot of business sense, ONGC found the nation’s second-biggest fuel retailer, BPCL too expensive, people privy to the development said. BPCL has a…
Author: Aruna Sharma
(PTI) The Shiromani Akali Dal and Bhartiya Janta Party combine will hold dharnas at all districts in the state on June 12 against the government on several issues, including farm debt waiver and alleged “impropriety” in sand mining contract. The dharnas will be attended by party leaders and workers of both the parties, besides the common citizens, SAD secretary and spokesman Daljit Singh Cheema said in a statement issued here today. He said SAD President Sukhbir Singh Badal will lead a protest dharna in Ludhiana.Cheema said besides the senior leadership of both the parties, the SAD core committee members, MPs, MLAs,…
(PTI) As many as 10.52 lakh “bogus” PAN cards of individual income tax assesses, which is around 0.4 per cent of the total such documents, cannot be termed a “minuscule” number to harm the country’s economy, the Supreme Court has said. The apex court said that it has come on record that 11.35 lakh duplicate or fraudulent permanent account numbers have been detected and out of these, 10.52 lakh cases pertain to individual assesses. It made the observations in a 157-page judgement while upholding the validity of section 139AA of the Income Tax Act making Aadhaar mandatory for allotment of PAN…
(ET) Retirement fund body EPFO will park about Rs 22,500 crore in the exchange traded funds this fiscal following the approval of its trustees to enhance investments in equity or equity linked schemes last month, a senior official has said. Last month, the Employees Provident Fund Organisation’s (EPFO) apex decision making body had approved the proposal to increase the investments in exchange traded funds from 10 per cent to 15 per cent of the investible deposits. “The investible deposits are estimated at Rs 1.5 lakh crore during the current fiscal. Thus the EPFO investments in ETF in 2016-17 would be…
(PTI) In an apparent bid to pre-empt a Mandsaur-like protest in Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath today ordered that adequate funds be provided to banks for the loan waiver of 86 lakh farmers soon after the passage of the budget. The funds in proportion to the amount of loan waiver should be provided to banks soon after the passage of budget for 2017-2018 fiscal and certificates of waiver should be distributed among 86 lakh beneficiaries, he told a high-level meeting for implementing waiver scheme for small and marginal farmers. “As per the constitutional provisions, the scheme of crop loan…
(PTI) Union minister Piyush Goyal today said state-run Coal India will continue to remain a single entity and will not be allowed to split further. The government’s policy think-tank NITI Aayog has recently recommended breaking up of Coal India into various subsidiaries. “It is not at all advisable and we are not taking up that recommendation at all. Coal India will continue to be one entity,” Goyal said when asked about the Niti Aayog’s recommendation of splitting the ‘Maharatna’ company. Goyal, who is the minister of state for power, coal, new and renewable energy (independent charge) was speaking to reporters on the…
(HT) The Pakistani Army resorted to heavy shelling of India’s forward military posts and civilian areas in Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir on Saturday night. Pakistani troops used mortar bombs and fired with automatic weapons from across the Line of Control (LoC) in Krishna Ghati sector, prompting Indian troops to retaliate, a senior army official said. “Pakistani Army initiated indiscriminate firing of small arms, automatics, 82 mm and 120 mm mortars from 2030 hours along the Line of Control (LC) in Krishana Ghati sector,” the official said.Reports said Pakistani troops also targeted civilian population and hamlets along the LoC in…
(AU) देश भर के पेट्रोल-डीजल डीलरों ने 16 जून को कामकाज बंद रखने का ऐलान किया है। उन्होंने पेट्रोलियम कंपनियों के उस निर्णय के खिलाफ विरोध स्वरूप ये कदम उठाया है, जिसमें कहा गया था कि कंपनियां हर दिन के हिसाब से पेट्रोल-डीजल के दाम तय करेंगी। फेडरेशन ऑफ ऑल इंडिया पेट्रोलियम ट्रेडर्स ने कहा कि कंपनियों का ऐसा फैसला बेतुकी है और विरोध स्वरूप 16 जून को वो न तो कंपनियों से पेट्रोल-डीजल खरीदेंगे और न ही ग्राहकों को पेट्रोल डीजल बेचेंगे। फेडरेशन ऑफ ऑल इंडिया पेट्रोलियम ट्रेडर्स ने कहा कि अगर कंपनियां 16 जून के बाद भी अपने…
Following are the major highlights of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India’s Judgement on Aadhar PAN Linkage: The Hon’ble Supreme Court of India in its Landmark Judgement has upheld Section139AA of the Income Tax Act,1961 as constitutionally valid which required quoting of the Aadhaar number in applying for PAN as well as for filing of income tax returns. The Hon’ble Court also held that the “Parliament was fully competent to enact Section 139AA of the Act and its authority to make this law was not diluted by the orders of this Court.”Therefore, no violation of the earlier Supreme Court orders were found in…
Furthering the agenda for cooperative federalism, NITI Aayog has launched SATH, a program providing ‘Sustainable Action for Transforming Human capital’ with the State Governments. The vision of the program is to initiate transformation in the education and health sectors. The program addresses the need expressed by many states for technical support from NITI . SATH aims to identify and build three future ‘role model’ states for health systems. NITI will work in close collaboration with their state machinery to design a robust roadmap of intervention, develop a program governance structure, set up monitoring and tracking mechanisms, hand-hold state institutions through…