Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday announced hiking the capital expenditure by 33 per cent to Rs 10 lakh crore for infrastructure development for 2023-24 and will be at 3.3 per cent of the GDP. Presenting the Budget for 2023-24, she said the newly established infrastructure finance secretariat will assist in attracting more private investment. "Capital investment outlay is being increased steeply for the third year in a row by 33 per cent to Rs 10 lakh crore, which would be 3.3 per cent of GDP.
By taking the mutual fund route, investors can take exposure to gilts with small amounts. Over a decade or more, returns from these funds tend to be sound.
The reopening of the Ratna Bhandar became a major political issue during the recently held assembly elections in the state.
Twenty-two proposals comprising 16 states and Union Territories and six ministries and departments have been shortlisted for participation in the parade after a series of five meetings.
Lawyers have pointed out that the new laws increase police powers by extending the maximum limit of police custody from 15 days to 60 days or 90 days.
Banking sources said the debt recast is actually 'Plan B' to help the nation's largest retailer stay afloat.
The eight-member committee under Sinha will also examine the factors affecting the timely and adequate availability of finance to the sector.
The SC said journalists' work can be done without coming in contact with people unlike lawyers and asked the Centre to consider the legal fraternity's request for priority in COVID-19 vaccination saying their livelihood depends on direct interaction with their clients.
The pleas are related to reports of alleged snooping by government agencies on eminent citizens, politicians and scribes by using Israeli firm NSO's spyware Pegasus.
Leading South Asia experts, who have interacted closely with Senator John F Kerry, the chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have hailed his appointment as the new secretary of state to succeed Hillary Clinton. Aziz Haniffa reports.
Sisodia was unhappy with the recommendations, so he asked the then excise commissioner Rahul Singh to seek public opinion by placing the Dhawan Committee report on web site, the agency alleged in the chargesheet.
Kerala Finance Minister KN Balagopal on Friday urged the Centre to provide more fiscal powers to the states as well as increase the shareable proportion of the GST collections. Besides, he asked the central government to expedite approval for the semi-high-speed railway line or the Silverline project from Thiruvananthapuram to Kasargod. The project is mired in controversies.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India's (Sebi's) technical advisory committee has been mandated to probe the trading halt at National Stock Exchange (NSE) and fix accountability. The committee after a detailed examination would send its findings and recommendations to whole-time member Madbhi Puri Buch, to decide the future course of action, said two people in the know. The panel, which is currently chaired by Ashok Jhunjhunwala of IIT Madras, is learnt to have sought an explanation over two key issues from NSE: One on the effectiveness of interoperability as it was unable to migrate the trading positions; the other on laxity in switching it to the disaster recovery site.
After reports claimed that filings in patent offices in India, the US, and Europe did not mention ICMR or its scientists, but only BBIL and its scientists, the Hyderabad-based biotechnology (biotech) company clarified that in the "rush" to develop vaccines and file appropriate patents, BBIL had missed adding ICMR's name in the original filings.
'We cannot accept that this incident was not in the knowledge of the home ministry.' 'If they had no knowledge about this incident, then it is a big intelligence failure as the Union home ministry has no idea what is going on in Manipur and what the state police is doing.'
Janardan Choudhary, a key advisor to Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL), was named as one of the seven non-institutional members by the Union Environment Ministry when it reconstituted the Expert Appraisal Committee for hydroelectricity and river valley projects in September.
The group of experts from various disciplines such as radiation safety, reactor safety, oncology, fisheries and nuclear waste management will interact with the local population in and around Kudanakulam where two 1000 MW nuclear power plants built with Russian collaboration are in advanced stages of completion.
An expert committee, whose report is being awaited by the government to decide whether futures trading on essential commodities should be banned, has found no firm evidence that such trading was leading to rise in prices. An expert committee under the chairmanship of Planning Commission member Abhijit Sen to study the impact of futures trading on prices of agricultural commodities. Delisting of tur, urad rice and wheat from the futures market has not affected price movement.
A bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra also took note of the affidavit of the Manipur chief secretary that there was no short supply of basic commodities like food and medicines for people facing economic blockade.
Long queues were seen at outpatient department ticket counters in government hospitals, where senior doctors joined their junior colleagues in the protest.
Pakistan based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba is spreading fast by taking in former Pakistani soldiers as recruits and may make a bid to replace Al Qaeda, post killing of its leader Osama bin Laden, US experts have warned, but said these plans are unlikely "to succeed".
The NTA denied any irregularities and said the changes made in the NCERT textbooks and grace marks for losing time at the examination centres were some of the reasons behind the students scoring higher marks.
The government on Monday failed to give a time-frame to place before the Supreme Court the report of the expert committee examining the feasibility of the controversial Sethusamudram project through Dhanuskodi instead of Rama Sethu.
"A Biden administration will be mostly positive for India," said Rick Rossow from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank. "I expect most positive areas of cooperation -- notably defence -- to be maintained," he said.
The Serum Institute of India (SII) had put in an application to the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) in October for grant of market authorisation of Covovax for restricted use in emergency situations.
Stating that the Centre's focus is on promoting the country's IT sector, he pointed out that this move follows the rising import of electronic as well as IT items, including software and hardware, which is expected to reach $292 billion by 2020.
The DCGI arrived at the conclusion on Wednesday based on the recommendations of an independent expert committee which has also opined that compensation should not be paid to the volunteer, they said.
The central government's ambitious Project Cheetah is facing a major problem, with the animals translocated from South Africa developing a "winter cover", a thick coat of fur, in anticipation of African winter, the Supreme Court was told on Monday.
The Centre on Tuesday said it has accepted the recommendations of an expert committee which has found 44 deemed universities unfit for the status but left it to the Supreme Court for appropriate course of action against them.
As a controversy rages over the draft report by the Public Accounts Committee on the 2G scam, Parliamentary experts are unanimous that recommendations of a Parliamentary committee has to be accepted or at least "taken seriously" by the government.According to constitutional and parliamentary experts, though the PAC is a recommendatory body, reports of which are not legally binding, traditionally the government has accepted most of the reports submitted by it.
Uttam Prakash Agarwal alleged that Citax and Braich offers were incomplete and did not include firm commitment as to the price, size, timings, confirmation from the banks about availability of the funds.
A plea was filed in the Supreme Court on Monday against the Centre's Agnipath scheme alleging that the government has quashed the century-old selection process for the Armed forces which is contrary to the constitutional provisions and without having parliamentary approval.
Desai and members of the Uttarakhand panel met the Law Commission chairman, Justice (retired) Ritu Raj Awasthi, and members KT Sankaran, Anand Paliwal and DP Verma.
The 'World Culture Festival' extravaganza organised by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's Art of Living on Yamuna has "completely destroyed" the riverbed, an expert committee has told by the National Green Tribunal.
If the Personal Data Protection Bill gets passed in its present form, a new class of companies and entities could emerge. The sole job of these new entities would be to manage the consent for data usage of a user.Banks, healthcare firms and fintech companies, among others, fear that sharing non-personal data with the government may hurt business interests. Banks also fear the threat of data misuse.
Confirming a meeting with the top management of the Adani Group, Life Insurance Corporation Chairman M R Kumar said on Sunday that the interaction had gone well. "There's nothing I can state as of now on the outcome of that meeting. "But yeah, we've had the meeting....we are quite happy about this meeting," Kumar said on the sidelines of the 22nd Global Conference of Actuaries in New Delhi.
The DCGI's nod came after the subject expert committee on COVID-19 of the CSDCO last week recommended granting emergency use authorisation to Covovax for the age group of 7 to 11 years.
The National Security Strategy document should flag all major issues concerning security strategy and provide guidelines to concerned departments to work out suitable action plans. Since the global and regional geopolitical canvas is dynamic, the NSS document should be deliberated at length before formulation and should be reviewed periodically, recommends Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
A bench headed by Chief Justice T S Thakur issued notices to the Centre and the Jammu and Kashmir government while seeking their replies on a plea alleging "excessive" use of pellet guns in the state.
The observation assumes significance as the Centre had earlier offered to set up an expert panel on its own to look into the grievances of alleged snooping on phones.
