The government on Wednesday said it has been trying to contact Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee since the last four days with even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh making an effort to explain the reasons behind FDI and diesel price hike decisions but without success.
Seeking to reach out to ally Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam which has threatened to pull out of UPA government on Sri Lankan Tamils issue, Finance Minister P Chidambaram has said India should support the US resolution against Lanka in UNHRC if it called for an independent and reliable probe into the alleged war crimes in the island nation in 2009.
Referring to Modi's reported remarks that then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee did not let the value of the rupee fall, he said the exchange of the rupee was 39.49 to a dollar in March 1998 when the National Democratic Alliance government was first formed.
The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government, in power since 2004, will have to seek fresh mandate of the people in the coming months.
The ED had filed the first chargesheet in the case against Chidambaram's son Karti; later, a supplementary chargesheet was also filed against him.
Rajan is an acknowledged academic, author and intellectual. He spoke on issues which are in the public domain, said Chidambaram
Finance Minister Chidambaram has summoned chiefs of public sector banks on May 1. This meeting will be held 2 days after the annual credit policy to review their financial performance in 2007-08. The move is being seen in banking circles as a message from the Centre to ensure that the public sector does not take interest rate cues from the central bank alone. Detailed agenda of the meeting has not been circulated. Bankers are waiting for signals from the RBI's monetary policy
Eminent economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen on Monday described the electoral bonds scheme as a scandal and welcomed the Supreme Court's recent judgment annulling it.
Instead of hiking duties, he plans to introduce inflation-indexed instruments to help curb a record current account deficit.
A 34-year-old man has been taken into custody for questioning after he was seen taking pictures of Finance Minister P Chidambaram at Chennai airport, airport sources said on Wednesday. They said Amir was seen taking pictures of the minister, who left for New Delhi on Tuesday, using his camera. Amir had confirmed first-class tickets to Delhi and from there to Dubai
He said he had achieved a fair measure of success in stablising India's economy and aimed to make it the third-biggest after the US and China.
Chidambaram and his son Karti were named in the chargesheet filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation in the case on July 19.
The United Progressive Alliance government in its robust defence has rubbished Comptroller and Auditor General's charges against the allotment of coal mines and its estimate of losses to the exchequer.
Since his arrest on August 21, he has till Tuesday spent 54 days in custody -- both of the CBI as well as judicial -- in nine spells.
Rejecting Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's contention -- that the National Counter Terrorism Centre is a poorly conceived idea -- the Centre on Wednesday said the country will have to pay a heavy price if the anti-terror hub does not come into existence. Finance Minister P Chidambaram, the architect of the NCTC, said it was "deeply regrettable" that a few chief ministers opposed even the modified version of the NCTC.
The ED told the apex court that during the investigation it found Chidambaram had 11 'immovable properties' and 17 bank accounts abroad and his custodial interrogation was required to unearth the larger conspiracy in the case.
He has also directed a review of tax provisions that have a retrospective effect in order to find a fair and reasonable solutions to pending as well as likely disputes between the tax department and assessees concerned.
Chidambaram said he expected gold imports to touch $40 billion in the current fiscal year to end-March, down 31 percent from the year-ago bill of $58 billion.
Consolidation will help banks derive economies of scale, but integration will not be easy.
It would be an epic waste if India lets go off the opportunities, including the end to nuclear isolation, thrown open by the civil nuclear deal with the US, feels Finance Minister P Chidambaram.
Dubbing Narendra Modi as a "very divisive figure", Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Monday said the Bharatiya Janata Party has "not changed its spots" and people will reject the party in the next Lok Sabha elections as it represents an idea which is against secularism and inclusiveness.
Chidambaram mocked her with a tongue-in-cheek tweet.
'Your relationship with your child is changing every single day, ditto your relationship with your parents.'
"If the government wishes to target me, they should do so directly, not harass friends of my son who carry on their own businesses and have nothing to do with politics," he said in a statement shortly after reports of IT and ED searches on some premises connected with Karti's friends.
Decisions taken at home to counter impact of 2008 economic meltdown were among the reasons for depreciation of the Indian currency.
Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy on Thursday pleaded before a Delhi court that it should bring on record purported new facts that former finance minister P Chidambaram and former telecom minister A Raja had a role in deciding 2G spectrum prices and entry fee. In a fresh application in the court of Special Central Bureau of Investigation judge O P Saini, Swami said he wanted to bring "new facts" on court records through his deposition.
The finance minister was speaking after launching the maiden IDF scheme of IIFCL Mutual Fund in New Delhi on Tuesday.
The Reserve Bank is scheduled to come out with second quarter monetary policy review on October 30.
Kamal Nath has written a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seeking his intervention to resolve over 50 issues which, because of the finance minister's hurdles, have posed many a problem. Nath has stressed that if these issues were resolved in time, "we can achieve growth targets set for industrial production and exports in the remaining months."
Special Judge Ajay Kumar Kuhar said the CBI demand was "justified" that Chidambaram has to be further interrogated in its custody.
The G20 meeting of the finance ministers and central bank governors beginning July 19 will also be attended by Reserve Bank of India Governor D Subbarao and Deputy Governor Urjit Patel.
Growth in 2012-13 slipped to a decade-low of 4.5 per cent. The economy expanded 4.6 per cent in the first half (April-September) of this financial year.
The bench also extended the interim protection from arrest granted to Chidambaram till September 5.
Non-performing assets of banks have been on the rise for past several months due to slowdown in the economy.
He also said the city had a long way to go before it could reach the status of a global city, and said that greater autonomy and better governance of the city would ensure the global city status, says the finance minister.
Ruling out any probe into business dealings between Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra and realty major DLF, Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Monday said the government cannot look into private transactions unless there are specific allegations of corruption.
He said government has taken measures to augment revenues, especially through tightening tax administration.
the limit for investors wanting to invest in RGESS has been raised to Rs 12 lakh from Rs 10 lakh earlier.
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