Air India had placed an order for 68 aircraft, including Boeing 737s, 777s and 787s, all valued at $11 billion in Dec 2005.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani on Wednesday pitched for using the USO Fund to subsidise smartphones for select groups to help penetrate the digital revolution and said India should make the rollout of 5G or the fifth-generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks a national priority. As much as 5 per cent of the licence fee paid by telecom operators goes to the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund, which was set up in April 2002 for achieving universal service objectives by providing access to telephone services in rural and remote areas and creation of infrastructure for mobile services and broadband in these areas. However, according to the CAG, less than half of the funds so collected are transferred for the said purpose.
India discard Virender Sehwag scored a breezy 48 off just 20 balls as CAG (Comptroller &Auditor General of India) were involved in a tie with Mumbai Customs, in a concluding Group C league match of the Rs 12 lakh tenth All India Dr D.Y. Patil T20 Cup, organised by the D.Y Patil Sports Academy, under the auspices of the Mumbai Cricket Association, at the D Y Patil Stadium, in Nerul, Mumbai, on Wednesday.
As per norms, sanction for prosecution of government employees accused of corruption has to be given within four months' stipulated time.
The audit is under progress and the report is yet to be finalised. The information cannot be given under Section 8(1)(C) of the RTI Act as the disclosure would cause breach of Parliament, the CAG said.
'All of us tend to believe that they are so well paid, why should we bother about their payments.' 'But who all are well paid? Only a handful, maybe 3-4 of them, who go in for endorsements and things.' 'The others are struggling, playing Ranji Trophy and other matches, so that compensation we made it market-oriented.'
Rahul acting as 'agent' of rival firms, BJP alleges as Congress attacks govt on Rafale deal
Earlier, its attempts to monetise properties, including the 22-storeyed Air India building in Nariman Point, saw lukewarm response.
The Delhi high court on Friday advanced to December 10 the hearing on pleas to declare the Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund a 'State' under the Constitution and a 'public authority' under the Right to Information Act to ensure transparency in its functioning.
The Centre received 5.59 lakh public grievances against various government departments in the first half of this year, with the Department of Financial Services (DFS) getting most of such complaints, according to an official report.
The PM CARES Fund is not a Government of India fund and the amount collected by it does not go to the Consolidated Fund of India, the Delhi High Court has been informed.
It asks banks to take immediate action against officials responsible for lapses.
The opposition party questioned why the government took five years after the liquidation proceedings of ABG Shipyard to lodge an FIR in connection with the alleged duping of 28 banks.
Yashvardhan Kumar Sinha was appointed as the chief information commissioner on Saturday, according to a Rashtrapati Bhavan statement.
'The current budgetary practice of shifting expenditures off-balance sheet in order to be seen to be meeting fiscal targets should be discontinued; additional fiscal stimulus would be imprudent; individual income tax rates should not be cut; GST rates should not be raised now,' advise Arvind Subramanian and Josh Felman.
More than a year after the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) tabled the coal block allocation report in Parliament, indicting the government for a notional loss of Rs 1.86 lakh crore while allocating coal blocks, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed 14 First Information Reports (FIRs) against private sector companies, and more are in the offing.
CAG recommended fixing a definite time frame for rolling out simplified GST return forms.
India's telecom sector has been through dizzying peaks, troughs, policy U-turns, court battles, brutal competition, and daily controversies. India could go back to a private sector duopoly with just Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel surviving the mayhem. The third player, Vodafone Idea, could be history.
In a first, the Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG) officers reached out to several ministries in the last week of April as part of a confidence-boosting measure. The meeting brought the CAG officials and those from the ministries across the table to discuss the pain points in their relations. CAG of India Girish Chandra Murmu took this novel step because of growing tensions between those audited and the auditor.
Vinod Rai, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India till May and probably the most talked-about government official in the last few years, participated in a Live Chat with readers of Rediff.com on Friday.
'There should be total transparency in the system.'
Aadhaar is falling behind on technology, missing out on confidentiality and has gaps in its data archiving policy and preserving confidentiality in delivery of the cards to people, says a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). The performance report, 'Functioning Of Unique Identification Authority Of India', tabled in Parliament on the last day of the budget session notes, assigning a unique identity to all resident Indians was supposed to be the key feature of Aadhaar. But "There were instances of issue of Aadhaar with the same biometric data to different residents indicating flaws in the de-duplication process and issue of Aadhaar on faulty biometrics and documents". It says close to half a million such records had to be cancelled by the Unique Identification Authority of India up to 2016.
Government auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General has found that not all disease outbreaks and chemical accidents taking place in different parts of the country are reported to Central authorities which could effect the response to epidemics.
'Banking is a business of trust.'
Niira Radia had said friends in high places enabled favourable EGoM decision on Sasan coal diversion, a charge staunchly denied by Reliance Power.
The Congress leader is also being probed by ED in two separate money-laundering cases of Aircel-Maxis and INX Media.
Opposing the Centre's stand that the PM CARES Fund was not a government fund, a lawyer told the Delhi High Court Wednesday that there was no factor to show that the fund was private in nature.
The CBI today registered three FIRs and a preliminary enquiry to probe alleged irregularities in Indian Airlines-Air India merger and purchase of 111 aircraft, leasing of planes and giving up of profit-making routes by Air India, causing a loss of thousands of crore of rupees.
With CAG alleging that Mukesh Ambani-run Reliance Industries was delaying furnishing of records for audit, Oil Minister M Veerappa Moily on Friday said there was no problem and "everybody" was cooperating.
Defending the proactive approach of the CAG, Rai emphasised that the job of the public auditor was also to ensure that executive and the government are held financially accountable to legislature.
A fresh public interest litigation was Monday filed in the Supreme Court claiming that the appointment of Shashi Kant Sharma as the Comptroller and Auditor General of India was arbitrary and made without any transparency.
He replaced Vinod Rai, who superannuated on Wednesday after five-and-a-half years of eventful tenure as the head of CAG.
Report says ineligible farmers given benefits.
The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear a PIL challenging appointment of Shashi Kant Sharma as the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.
The telephone subscriber base was 996.49 million at the end of March.
The Comptroller & Auditor General of India has castigated the Maharashtra government for alleged irregularities in the sale and allotment of land in the past eight years, resulting in loss to the exchequer.
An NSSO survey has revealed that some are using the new toilets as store rooms.
The Press Trust of India on Sunday in its report quoted Minister of State in the Prime Minister's office V Narayanasamy as having said that converting the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) into a multi-member body was under consideration of the government. The minister, however, said that he was misquoted.
Disagreements over scope of audit cropped up on the very first day the Comptroller and Auditor General of India began to the second round of audit of spendings on eastern offshore KG-D6 fields with RIL alleging that the auditor was not confirming if the accounts scrutiny would be as per the provisions enshrined in the Production Sharing Contact.
Communist party of India-Marxist leader Brinda Karat on Sunday said the letter from the Prime Minister's Office to Team Anna defending corruption allegations against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh does not give any clarity on the matter.
