Bowing to demands by several political parties, government on Thursday decided to carry out a caste census next year.
The 10-member GoM headed by external affairs minister and finance minister Pranab Mukherjee will include defence minister A K Antony, Home Minister P Chidambaram, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, communications minister A Raja, railway minister Lalu Prasad, chemical and fertilisers minister Ram Vilas Paswan, law and justice minister H R Bhardwaj, minister of state for external affairs Anand Sharma and planning commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia.
Bowing to demands by several political parties, government on Tuesday said it has decided to include caste in census and the formality of endorsing it is expected at the next Cabinet meeting.
The standoff between the government and the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Lok Sabha appears set to end on Thursday when a discussion on an adjournment motion on the issue of black money takes place following an agreement reached between the two sides on Wednesday night.
'There was trust, but perhaps there was also this apprehension that given the supreme post of prime minister, Sonia Gandhi felt her authority may be a challenged.'
Pranab Mukherjee said India will undertake the civil nuclear cooperation with the US and any other country on the basis of bilateral agreements only and that the government has "no doubt" that Washington will fulfil its "commitments and obligations" specified in the agreement.
A top six-page secret Intelligence Bureau report on the Shashi Tharoor controversy has advised the Centre to arrive at a political decision, pressing the Minister of State for External Affairs to resign, sources have said.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi has held consultations with senior party leaders ahead of Opposition's plans to raise the controversy surrounding Union Minister Shashi Tharoor's alleged murky deals in the Indian Premier League in Parliament on Friday.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in likely to launch the scheme in the first week of July from Rai Bareli, the Lok Sabha constituency of Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
A uniform concessional basic duty of 5 per cent, CVD of 4 per cent with full exemption from special additional duty on all medial equipment are proposed doing away with a very complex import duty regime.
The Union Budget 2010-11 presented by the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in the Lok Sabha on Friday, supports the strategy for the development of agriculture and related sectors.
The Union Budget 2010-11 presented by the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in the Lok Sabha on Friday, provides boost to the research and development (R&D) activity across all sector of economy.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee presents his 5th Budget in Parliament.
With the strain and anxiety of the longest Lok Sabha polls now behind the leaders, governance, with consensus, is the next step.
Rediff.com has reliably learnt that 'Rahul is likely to be appointed as defence minister'.
In an interview with CNN-IBN, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee seemed reluctant to embrace Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee as her party's choice for the post of the President of India.
"The Hyde Act is an enabling provision that is between the executive and the legislative organs of the US government," External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said in a suo motu statement on foreign policy-related developments in the Lok Sabha. "India's rights and obligations regarding civil nuclear cooperation with the US arise only from the bilateral 123 Agreement that we have agreed upon with the US," he said.
Citibank saw 92 cases of cloning of debit/credit cards or use of fake cards.
Ahead of the Budget, the Survey made a case for gradual exit of stimulus provided to the industry.
Putting aside its winter fiasco, Parliament is all set for a smooth budget session from Monday with government telling the Opposition that an announcement on the constitution of a Joint Parliamentary Committee into the 2G spectrum will be made on Tuesday.
Controversial Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen will be provided shelter in India, says the Centre.
Tax payers will be looking forward to some relief from Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee who is expected to raise the income tax exemption limit to at least Rs 2 lakh in his budget proposals.
Following are the highlights of the Economy Survey 2011-12, a report card of the Indian economic scenario.
The retraction was preceded by a shouting match between Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Railway Minister Mamata Banerji, who had threatened to walk out of a Cabinet meeting protesting some provisions in the Bill earlier this month.
Minister of Finance Pranab Mukherjee while pressing the Budget 2009-10 in Lok Sabha on Monday has said that the government has taken several measures to counter the negative fall -out of the global slow down on the Indian economy.
Meeting a long-pending demand of over a crore defence veterans and 12 lakh serving jawans, the government on Monday substantially increased the pension of ex-servicemen.
"To enable students from economically weaker sections to access higher education, it is proposed to introduce a scheme to provide them full interest subsidy during the period of moratorium," he said. However, only those students whose family income is less than Rs 4.5 lakh per annum will be eligible under the scheme. These students will avail the benefit for a moratorium period which is one year from completion of the course or six months from joining a job.
An announcement to this effect could be made in the Budget scheduled to be unveiled by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee in the Lok Sabha on July 6. The decision to permit SEZ developers to raise ECBs, sources said, would promote development of the special economic zones, besides helping the government in arresting decline in the foreign exchange reserves.
The Budget refers to the 'Annual Financial Statement', laid before both the Houses of Parliament.
New Delhi made it clear to the US that only its own national interests will guide its policy.
Denying desisting from their stated position on the Indo-US nuclear deal, the Left parties on Tuesday asserted that they were ready for "any eventuality" even as they continued their engagement with the government to break the impasse over the issue.
The original Nobel medallion, along with some memorabilia of the Tagore family, was stolen from the museum at Rabindra Bhavan on March 25, 2004.
Office of Profit: BJP against diluting spirit of statute
The Trinamul Congress on Sunday night formed an alliance with the Congress in West Bengal to fight the Left Front in the Lok Sabha elections in a significant development that gave the UPA one more ally weaning Mamata Banerjee's party away from the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.
The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has launched many new schemes to provide steady monetary assistance to weak and downtrodden people in the society.
India's foreign direct investment inflow between April and November 2008 was $23.3 billion, a growth of 45 per cent compared with that during the same period in 2007, said union Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is holding additional charge of the finance portfolio while presenting the Interim Budget for 2009-10 on Monday in parliament.
Welcoming Pakistan's response to the Mumbai dossier, India today said it will monitor further actions by Islamabad in ending cross-border terror and underlined that the neighbour has to choose what kind of ties it wants with New Delhi.
Former PM Manmohan Singh and Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi also paid their tributes.
The first sitting of the 16th Lok Sabha on Wednesday will be adjourned for the day after paying tributes to Union minister Gopinath Munde who died in a road mishap on Tuesday.
Private banks are sitting on unclaimed amount of Rs. 195.9 crore.
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