Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, BJP chief J P Nadda and new party entrant Ashok Chavan and Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw and L Murugan were among the 41 candidates elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha on Tuesday while Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh will witness polling on February 27.
Sixty-eight Rajya Sabha members, including nine Union ministers, are completing their tenure this year, triggering a race of sorts among leaders across political parties to eye a six-year term in the Upper House of Parliament.
Sources said senior leaders of the party have been told to reach out to other leaders of the alliance and talks with some parties have begun.
This is the first full-scale review of VIP protectees by the Union home ministry after the Modi 2.0 government took charge.
Kumar also asserted that his efforts should reap benefits for the younger generation, "for people like (his deputy) Tejashwi Yadav".
An all out war has broken out after SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav replaced son Akhilesh with his brother Shivpal as the party's state unit chief.
'The consecration of Ram Lalla in Ayodhya has demoralised them.' 'And, now it is reflecting in their individual reactions as they are losing hope to take on the BJP in 2024.'
As BJP leaders went all out to project the event as a moment of national pride, some leaders were directly critical of the ceremony with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, belonging to the Communist Party of India-Marxist, slamming the state's role in the Ram Temple consecration, saying the line that demarcates religion and state seems to be 'getting thinner and thinner'.
The government has set a direct tax collection target of Rs 13.35 trillion, which includes Rs 7.66 trillion from corporation tax and Rs 5.69 trillion from personal income tax.
A meeting of Opposition parties, organised by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, will be held in Patna on June 23, his deputy Tejashwi Yadav said on Wednesday.
The vacancies are learnt to be impacting the I-T department's day-to-day functioning.
Officials said most of the preparations are complete and the counting will start at 8 am on Saturday.
The IAS association has demanded revocation of the order even as the issue of suspension of the lady officer has snowballed into a major controversy.
Leaders of several like-minded opposition parties are likely to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Karnataka chief minister-designate Siddaramaiah and deputy chief minister D K Shivakumar on Saturday in Bengaluru.
A win for SP could provide some consolation for Akhilesh Yadav after the defeat in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections early this year and the loss of Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha seats to the BJP in June bypolls.
The US launched an investigation, focusing on whether the tax in India and other countries discriminated against American companies, were retroactive, and reflected unreasonable tax policy.
In another major shakeup of the state's bureaucracy in four days, the Uttar Pradesh government on Tuesday transferred 36 Indian Administrative Services officers including district magistrates after a review of the law and order situation by Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.
Akhilesh Yadav is now seeking to devote the remaining 18 months of his tenure in casting the state in a new mould.
Top leaders of Opposition parties will brainstorm at a meeting in Patna on Friday to chalk out a roadmap for the formation of an anti-Bharatiya Janata Party front for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, with sources saying that they would look to avoid the prickly leadership question and emphasise on common ground.
The panel has proposed lower rates of 10 per cent for annual income between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh, 20 per cent for income between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 20 lakh. For income of Rs 20 lakh to Rs 2 crore, the suggested rate is 30 per cent.
DTC task force also favoured doing away with Dividend Distribution Tax by suggesting taxing dividends in the hands of shareholders.
The counting began at 8 am to decide the fate of the candidates contesting the polls, among whom all eyes will be on Dimple Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav's elder daughter-in-law and the wife of Akhilesh Yadav, who is contesting from the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat, necessitated by the demise of Samajwadi Party veteran Mulayam Singh Yadav in October.
The opposition on Tuesday termed as an 'election jumla' the women's reservation bill brought by the government with many leaders raising questions over the proposed legislation, contending it doesn't account for reservation for OBC communities and that it will be effective at the earliest by the 2029 Lok Sabha polls.
DDT is levied on dividends that a company pays its shareholders out of its profits. It is currently charged at the rate of 20.55 per cent, including a surcharge and education cess. Government may instead tax the shareholders receiving dividends, in a bid to help improve investor sentiment by addressing the multiplicity of taxes and bring down the effective tax rates for companies.
The ruling BJP in UP, however, lost Khatauli to Samajwadi Party ally Rashtriya Lok Dal.
Govt may tighten presumptive taxation norms and also do away with some deductions.
The US Trade Representative's (USTR) office will also conduct the Section 301 probe against nine others, including Austria, Brazil, Indonesia, Italy, Spain, Turkey, the Czech Republic, the UK, and the EU, for levying or considering digital services taxes "discriminating against US companies".
Both the BJP and Congress understand that coalitions and alliances are not just about numbers, but have symbolic value.
US proposal to raise the global corporate tax rate to 28% from 21% might face resistance from countries unwilling to give up their edge and compete with America on its terms.
Sources said the opposition parties would look to avoid the prickly leadership question as of now and emphasise on building a common ground.
India conceding ground to bring only top 100 digital companies like Google, Facebook, and Netflix into the global taxation pact may have revenue implications. This will mean that New Delhi will have to withdraw the contentious 2 per cent equalisation levy on e-commerce operators by 2023. This may have revenue implications for India, experts pointed out, as the equalisation levy has a much lower annual revenue threshold of Rs 2 crore (euro 0.2 million) as against euro 20 billion agreed by 130 countries at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). India, along with other developing countries, was pitching for at least euro 1 billion threshold to cover at least 5,000 global entities. India collected Rs 2,057 crore from the equalisation levy in 2020-21, an 85 per cent growth over Rs 1,136 crore in the previous fiscal.
Rampur Sadar and Khatauli in Uttar Pradesh, Padampur in Odisha, Sardarshahar in Rajasthan, Kurhani in Bihar and Bhanupratappur in Chhattisgarh are the assembly seats where the bypolls are being held.
Joint Director Ramnish Geer, who led the probe in cases like housing scam allegedly involving the then Union minister Sheila Kaul, Naval war room leak case, kidnapping of an NRI businessman and his release besides other high profile anti-corruption cases, received the coveted President's Police Medal for Distinguished Service.
The Congress on Friday welcomed the statements of opposition leaders condemning Rahul Gandhi's disqualification from the Lok Sabha and said it was now time for the party to take on the job of building the opposition unity in a "systematic way".
Parliament's Budget session has been a washout since the beginning of its second part on March 13, with the BJP demanding an apology from Gandhi.
Several opposition MPs have petitioned President Droupadi Murmu for immediate action over social media trolling of Chief Justice of India Justice D Y Chandrachud while he was deliberating on a case related to the Governor's role in Maharashtra during the last government formation.
Opposition parties on Sunday lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party after Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar and eight others were inducted into the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government, saying the ruling party's 'washing machine' has resumed its operation to clean tainted leaders and it was an 'ED-facilitated power grab'.
Opposition leaders on Saturday lauded the Congress for its victory in Karnataka and thanked the people of the state, saying that this win has showed that 'Modi is not invincible'.
The studies found that sectors with the highest unaccounted income included real estate, mining, pharmaceuticals, pan masala, gutkka and tobacco, bullion and commodity markets, film industry, educational institutes and professionals.
The proposed move to withdraw the DDT would help encourage investments by addressing multiple taxation of income and bringing down the effective tax rate on companies, which is among the highest in the world.
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