The BJP may be ready and waiting to pounce on another key state of the Hindi heartland, but it is the Congress's holy trinity that issued them an invitation to the beheading, notes Sunil Sethi.
Brokerage Edelweiss Securities said if the NDA returns to power with a clear majority in line with exit polls, markets would rejoice the policy continuity.
The surge in oil prices has also affected the rupee, which hit a 6-week low of 70.25 on Friday against the dollar.
'The vitriolic campaign now in progress, the underlying threat of violence, and the elevation of Pragya Thakur as a star candidate are key markers in the BJP's obstacle-strewn march back to New Delhi,' says Sunil Sethi.
Rahul has singled out Anil Ambani several times for winning the Rafale defence contract from the Narendra Modi government, alleging favouritism and corruption.
Sitharaman said the government also proposes Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana to address critical infrastructure gap in fisheries sector.
NTPC was the biggest loser in the Sensex pack, tumbling 2.25 per cent, followed by Tata Motors, Bharti Airtel, PowerGrid, HDFC, Reliance Industries, Hero MotoCorp and M&M that shed up to 1.85 per cent.
More people felt optimistic about their economic condition in November than in the same month a year ago, says Mahesh Vyas.
Making a case for an optimal fiscal stance, the Economic Survey on Friday said growth leads to debt sustainability and not necessarily vice-versa. "This is because debt sustainability depends on the 'Interest Rate Growth Rate Differential' (IRGD) i.e. the difference between the interest rate and the growth rate in an economy. "With the Indian context of potential high growth, the interest rate on debt paid by the Indian government has been less than India's growth rate by norm, not by exception," it said.
Sushma Swaraj has nothing to say about NaMo. Neither has Shivraj Chouhan.
Officials say that such a list, to be updated on a real-time basis, will serve as a ready reckoner in identifying those committing multiple economic offences
'Barriers have come across roads marking the end of Noida, the start of Gurgaon, the hard borders allowing no passage -- at least by day,' observes Kishore Singh.
While the PM sees zero tax on long-term capital gains and dividend income as unfair since the beneficiaries are not poor, he is silent on the fact that rich farmers too don't pay taxes, since farm income is tax-free, a loophole exploited by many netas and babus, says Debashis Basu.
India will also play an increasingly important role as one of the Asia-Pacific region's major economic growth engines, helping to drive Asian regional trade and investment flows.
Top gainers in the Sensex pack included Tata Motors, Bajaj Auto, HDFC twins, IndusInd Bank and RIL, rallying up to 3.23 per cent.
The Election Commission has done its homework pretty well on political hashtags, observes ad guru Sandeep Goyal.
Assocham president Niranjan Hiranandani said his talks with government officials showed dues to industry and states were pending in the form of refunds of income tax, value-added tax, and GST, and compensation, payments to discoms in the power sector, fertiliser subsidies, etc.
'I suggest a cut in the GST rates and an infusion of Rs 1.2 trillion into the economy in six months.'
Her calculation goes that Kejriwal, not Rai, can take on Modi better.
The warning by the anti-trust watchdog has come days ahead of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' India visit, about which the Seattle-headquartered company has been tight-lipped. Sources in the know indicated that Bezos, coming on a short trip, has sought a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
While Prime Minister Modi grapples with serious matters of State so very successfully, may I urge that he focus just a bit of attention on the economy, says Manoj Mohanka.
Is blood thicker than party loyalty for Varun Gandhi?
Will the Dwarka Shankaracharya play the Congress game in Varanasi?
This Act had to be excluded from the list of the obsolete laws to be repealed as some of its provisions provide security to the pensioners against attachment of pension
Concerns over economic slowdown, muted earnings, crisis in the auto industry and global trade issues have been weighing on investor sentiment, experts said.
With the farmers' protest against the three new laws and in support of legalising the minimum support price (MSP) going strong, state governments have announced a slew of measures in their annual Budgets to placate farmers. The Centre kicked things off in the Union Budget by assuring farmers that the MSP would continue and coming out with a report card to demonstrate its commitment. However, these efforts don't seem to have yielded tangible results. In their respective Budgets, states chose to go a step further by announcing a variety of measures.
It is just a question of providing an additional facility to the taxpayer that if he is not quoting PAN and only has Aadhaar, his filing and processes do not get affected, said CBDT chief.
Nationalisation has served its purpose. It's time to move ahead, keeping majority ownership of the government in a few banks to serve the people, argues Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
The industry feels two factors have played a role in improving the offtake and reducing trade inventory - one is that the supply chain in pharmaceuticals has more or less stabilised, and secondly, with lockdown curbs easing and OPDs opening, some demand has grown at the consumer end as well.
Analysts caution a non-BJP government is not an impossible scenario. In case of a Modi-led coalition, they advise investors to focus on discretionary consumption, select private banks and financials, RIL, housing, and IT.
Customs sleuths will be posted in London, Hong Kong, Dubai and Brussels in an effort to check trade-based money-laundering among others.
#Budget2018 resulted in over 14 lakh conversations on Twitter.
The duo face a tough challenge to their ministerial aspirations.
But demand has shown signs of pick up in the last 10 days of April after the government allowed resumption of economic activity beyond the urban municipal limit.
'I would like to vote for Kejriwal. He is an aam aadmi like us. He has good middle class values. Corruption is the most important issue of this election. I don't like Modi because of his past.' Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel and photographer Uttam Ghosh travel to Nagpur, Maharashtra's third most populous city, to assess the mood among young voters.
Of the seven surveys presented under Modi govt, predictions of three were quite close to the actual GDP growth rate, one saw the base year change in between, but the last three were way off the mark.
Many associations of urban dwellers across the country are assuming powers they do not possess and behaving like tinpot dictators, says Shuma Raha.
There are tell-tale signs of a slide in the quality of Budgets presented by the current administration, says Parthasarathi Shome.
When almost the entire political class was engrossed in the Bihar polls, the Congress shahzada was holidaying in a hill station. As the Bihar contest and other by-elections have shown, a large number of states have become Congress-mukt, fulfilling the Hindutva brigade's dream, notes Amulya Ganguli.
If the fiscal deficit for the year can be maintained at Rs 7.04 trillion, the deficit as a percentage of GDP will slip to 3.44 per cent
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