The only fuel that showed growth was LPG as the government dole of free cooking gas cylinders to poor households fired up consumption by 21 per cent during April 1 to 15.
The personnel ministry has taken actions like premature retirement and cut in remuneration.
The imprudent, not to mention immature, attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi by Congress leaders, especially on the election trail, can only be read as a sign of nerves on the eve of an important poll battle.
Is there an understanding between the two parties on critical issues?
'The 2019 election and the run-up to it will certainly see bots being deployed in large numbers on all sides.'
How Swaroop Sampat paved the way for hubby in the BJP.
The Street was following the Karnataka election closely as a test for the Modi-led BJP's prospects in the 2019 Lok Sabha poll. Investors, however, are likely to wait for the next round of state elections to judge whether the momentum is still with it.
'If more than 60 commissioner-level tax officials were compulsorily retired in the span of a few months, surely the malaise is far deeper,' notes A K Bhattacharya.
'What steps have the higher level of political leadership taken to remove corruption from the system and bring in honest governance?'
The proposed policy is increasingly becoming an item of negotiation, as the US pushes hard to change India's stance.
'If any party talks too much about Muslims, it will lose.'
It is also likely to assume a deflator of around 4 per cent. That could take the nominal GDP outlook for FY21 to around 10 per cent. It is this nominal GDP forecast on the basis of which the finance ministry is calculating key Budget targets like the fiscal deficit as a percentage of GDP and tax revenue growth for the coming year.
'Play safe and persist with an ailing Sonia Gandhi as interim chief and wait for an opportune moment to foist the crown prince yet again,' predicts Virendra Kapoor.
Do a straw poll of any business friends and you will laugh and weep at what they go through, points out Rahul Jacob.
'It is a sad day when social activists, environmental campaigners, anti-corruption workers are singled out as anti-nationals and then criminalised.'
A common feature in India is the lag between the occurrence of frauds and the time they are actually reported.
As citizens, here's an opportunity for you to tell Finance Minister Arun Jaitley the reforms you would like to see in various sectors, what needs to be rectified, what needs to be strengthened, what needs to be dumped. So take some time off write a postcard to the finance minister.
If Modi wants to be a man of history, he must make hard choices that will pay off down the road, says T N Ninan.
Facing a deepening slowdown, the auto sector is pinning hopes on the GST Council meeting on September 20 for a rate cut from 28 per cent to 18 per cent. However, states including Bihar, West Bengal, Kerala, and Punjab are of the view that the slowdown in the auto sector is not because of the GST rate but structural issues in the economy.
India has been the single biggest beneficiary of the decades-old US Generalized System of Preferences programme, allowing the country to export $ 5.7 billion worth of duty-free goods in 2017, according to figures from US Congress.
Given Indian corporates's high indebtedness, new credit will be used for servicing loans rather than building factories. This is setting us up for more companies on life support and more zombie banks, warns Rahul Jacob.
'The 2019 election could well become a referendum on Narendra Damodardas Modi, in which case the BJP could prove all its critics wrong,' notes T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
'Some BJP old timers have remarked that the BJP is now driven by its own high command, the way the Congress was under Mrs Gandhi, says Subir Roy.
The government hopes the latest action will lead to banks also lowering the cost of borrowing for corporate and individual borrowers.
'Our government has created 10 million jobs when the Indian unemployment rate is at a 45-year high.'
'From his persistent fuelling of pan-Hindu nationalism to pandering to narrow Gujarati chauvinism, Rambo rides again, using fair means and foul -- and often foul -- to gain the battleground,' says Sunil Sethi.
The jobless armies of youthful India are getting angrier and desperate, warns Shekhar Gupta.
Balyan is AAP's 13th lawmaker to land in Delhi Police's net.
Continue to invest normally unless prices fall drastically in April-May. If prices do fall drastically, invest more than normal, advises Devangshu Datta.
The panel decided to omit the reverse charge mechanism (RCM) clause from the GST law under which registered taxpayers buying from unregistered taxpayers have to deposit the GST.
Apart from Modi, Jaggi Vasudev to address 2-day tax officers' conference
'The deeper problem is big government -- a giant monster with a giant appetite, which requires it to put more and more pressure on tax officials to extort. 'And the monster is getting bigger by the day. But then, Mr Modi too knows this,' says Debashis Basu.
Taxmen have come across instances where global firms - charged a withholding tax of 6 per cent - are underreporting the exact income they earned from an Indian user.
Locals alleged that the road that was closed some time ago over safety issues was reopened at the insistence of TSRTC officials to save on fuel.
Was Ajay Rai put up just to hobble Kejriwal in Varanasi?
'We are not a dictatorship. If the people do not desire some law, it is impossible for any government to implement it,' says BJP leader Chandra Kumar Bose.
'Some semi-literate lunkhead tweeting at Rs 2 per tweet from a dingy basement in Chennai or San Diego accomplishes nothing, but give hundreds of thousands of them a time, date, and talking points, and they can create a wall of sound -- a nonsensical wall, perhaps, but one that is heard, and that can occasionally prevail just because it's there,' says Mitali Saran.
Congress members don't want Rahul Gandhi back as party chief. But the problem is that Sonia Gandhi won't have anyone other than her son to take over the Family Firm, notes Virendra Kapoor.
'It is clear that economic policy and reform under this administration will always be afterthoughts, something to be carried out only when no other political concern intervenes -- when, in other words, the government feels safe and comfortable enough to take a moderate risk,' argues Mihir S Sharma.
It's believed that he wants to strengthen the Bharatiya Janata Party at an all India level. He wants to see that gains made in terms of percentages of votes in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu multiplies.
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