The National Advisory Council, headed by United Progressive Alliance Chairman Sonia Gandhi, will also meet on Thursday to look at the Food Security Bill, a crucial component of the second UPA government's promise to provide cheap and plentiful food to the poor.
Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram's reply last week to the debate in Parliament on the Liberhan Commission's report would largely be seen as the United Progressive Alliance government's comprehensive indictment of the role of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its leaders in the demolition of the disputed structure in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992.
The Union home ministry believes the newly-formed National Investigation Agency will have to reinvestigate the 26/11 case if the David Headley-Tahawwur Rana probe produces unexpected links with the Mumbai terror attacks. This will be a serious matter and hit the Mumbai police's credibility.
Now for the first time, the top team in North Block has the predominance of IAS officers.
According to party sources, the Congress' hopes to regain power are pinned on the first and third phases of the election. The first phase (89 assembly segments) will cover the entire southern Karnataka along with Bangalore and Mysore. In the third phase, 69 constituencies of the northern part will go to polls.
Even as experts were debating pros and cons of the waiver, came the first-ever announcement in the history of commodity markets anywhere in the world the introduction of Commodity Transaction Tax and this, coupled with service tax imposed on commodity exchanges, was a blow to the nascent commodity Futures industry in the country.
The finance minister's tax giveaways are what have saved tax-payers from the impact of inflation and higher home loan rates.
Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram's mother Lakshmi Palaniappan died on Friday. She was 92, her family said.
Congress sources have told rediff.com that Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram or External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee will replace Shivraj Patil, who resigned on Sunday, as home minister. The announcement is likely to be made in the next couple of hours after the all-party meeting called to discuss the Mumbai terror attacks.
What stood out in his 15-year journey as a member of the political executive at the Centre was his glowing record as India's most successful and effective finance minister. Both as prime minister and finance minister, he understood the importance of gradualism, except when the economy or the polity was in a crisis.
'Chidambaram, lots of people argue not without justification, is all about bluff and bluster without any concrete achievement on the ground. His record in the finance ministry fully endorses that view,' argues Virendra Kapoor.
Whether it was the MGNREGS or the NFSA or the Aadhaar-based DBT scheme for cash transfer, the Modi government has built on the basic architecture created by the Singh government. Policy makers in the Modi government, instead of discarding them as products of the previous political regime, worked on them, expanded their scope and reach, and used new tools to improve their performance, explains A K Bhattacharya.
The gains will provide a much-needed reprieve after the rupee fell for a fifth week and hit an over two-month low last week in trade.
If convicted, the offences entail a maximum punishment of seven years.
The rupee had gained nine paise to close at nearly one- month high of 61.84 against the dollar in yesterday's trade after the government said in the interim Budget that fiscal deficit this financial year will be capped below target.
The RBI stipulated on Thursday that foreign institutional investors would require a mandate from participatory note holders to hedge on their behalf.
'If on the back of the resentment against the Modi government, on the very outside chance that the Congress emerges as the single largest party in May 2019, will Rahul Gandhi become prime minister?' 'Or will he do a Sonia and appoint someone else?' asks T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
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Policymakers stepped in late Thursday to calm markets.
GST will make it easier for governments to spend more, says T C A Srinivasa Raghavan.
Karti granted interim protection from arrest till July 10 .
In the 2009 election, P Chindambaram the Sivaganga seat by a narrow margin. Then the Congress was in alliance with the ruling DMK. This time his son Karti is battling the seat with the alliance. India abstention at the UNHRC on an anti-Lanka resolution will further fuel Tamil anger against the Congress party. This leaves the finance minster sulking and his son facing an uphill political debut, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
An analysis of the frequency of various watchwords in the finance minister's Budget speech shows that he was perhaps trying to hold on to his ideas without treading on anybody else's toes, says A K Bhattacharya.
Going by the number of changes Mr Jaitley's next Budget is likely to see, he will go down in the history of Budget-making as the finance minister who ushered in the largest number of changes in a single Budget, says A K Bhattacharya.
Forget about interim Budgets, one cannot easily recall even a full Budget of any government in recent times having rolled out benefits of this order to such a large number of people, says A K Bhattacharya.
The obvious temptation for Mr Jaitley would be to achieve a better fiscal deficit figure than what he had promised in July.
Even given politicians' penchant for self-promotion, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa takes it to another level altogether, says A Ganesh Nadar. Nothing wrong with it, provided it's not done at the tax-payer's expense.
Here's everything you need to know about the Goods and Services Tax Bill.
Our income tax department should bring out monthly bulletin as well as annual reports providing insights into the nature of our direct tax segments, points out R Vaidyanathan.
Here's everything you need to know about the Goods and Services Tax Bill.
Are we adopting an idea whose time has come and gone? My feeling is, yes, says ex-banker C Joseph Chacko in the fourth article of the series on inflation targeting.
Vaihayasi Pande Daniel reports from the Sheena Bora murder trial.
'If my understanding is correct, one has to file not less than 37 returns per year for every ordinary business, and that too per state.' 'If you are doing businesses in Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad, you have to file 37x3 returns every year!' 'The consequence of GST will be chaos, confusion and possibly economic crisis.'
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