The Joint Parliamentary Committee has squarely blamed the finance ministry and the Securities and Exchange Board of India for last year's multi-crore securities scam.
Let there be a rule that if the Budget is not passed and funds cannot be drawn from the Consolidated Fund of India, there will be a government shutdown as it happens in the United States, says A K Bhattacharya.
In a bid to end the confrontation in the Joint Parliamentary Committee, its chairman P C Chacko, under opposition fire, on Friday expressed willingness to consider amendments to the controversial draft report on 2G spectrum scam which gave clean a chit to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram.
The Reserve Bank of India may go in for further tightening of money supply as there is no likelihood of inflation coming to single digit in the next six months, according to indications given by the central bank governor to a parliamentary panel.
Former Union minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Murli Manohar Joshi is likely to become the next chairman of the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee while Yashwant Sinha will replace him as head of the Standing Committee on Finance, BJP sources said.
The early tabling of the financial Budget ends a 70-year tradition.
Notwithstanding strong demand by Bharatiya Janata Party members for calling Finance Minister P Chidambaram, the Joint Parliamentary Committee examining 2G spectrum allocation scam is unlikely to call him or any other minister as witnesses.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has rejected Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha's demand that he depose before the Joint Parliamentary Committee in the 2G spectrum scam.
Describing the functioning of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on 2G as "scandalous", Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha on Tuesday demanded that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram appear before it for the truth to come out.
RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan on Tuesday said the Finance Ministry's decision to provide more capital to PSU banks will lower the borrowing cost and increase their capacity to lend, besides promoting investments.
Bharatiya Janata Party members of the Joint Parliamentary Committee examining the 2G spectrum issue on Thursday boycotted the meeting of the panel in protest against Chairman P C Chacko's refusal to accede to their demand to summon the prime minister and the finance minister.
The government will cut the central sales tax rate to 3 per cent from 4 per cent from April 1 through a notification, as announced by Finance Minister P Chidambaram in his Budget speech.
The Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress were on Wednesday locked in a confrontation in the Joint Parliamentary Committee on 2G scam with members of the main opposition storming out of its meeting over the issue of calling Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram and threatening to quit from it.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sumitra Mahajan will be appointed Speaker of the 16th Lok Sabha on Friday. Other key parliamentary posts like that of Leader of Opposition, deputy Speaker, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee and head of the all-important standing committee on finance will be keenly contested.
Chidambaram said he feels that Dassault 'is laughing all the way to the bank', as the NDA government gave a 'gift'.
An all-party meeting on Monday failed to hammer out a consensus over the controversial Insurance Bill, which was scheduled to be taken up in Rajya Sabha.
The Lakhimpur Kheri violence, in which four farmers were killed, is "absolutely condemnable," Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said, emphasising that there are issues of such nature happening in other parts of India equally which should be raised "when they happen and not when it suits others" because there is a Bharatiya Janata Party government in Uttar Pradesh.
An "exhaustive" list of witnesses, which includes former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram, was on Tuesday placed before the JPC probing the 2G spectrum allocation scam, but a decision whether to call them was deferred.
Ending its nearly two-month-old boycott, Bharatiya Janata Party members on Thursday attended the meeting of Joint Parliamentary Committee on the 2G scam and said they would continue to press for summoning of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram as witnesses.
Amid demands for calling Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram as witnesses before the Joint Parliamentary Committee on 2G, Bharatiya Janata Party members in the panel on Thursday once again abstained from its proceedings. During the last meeting of the JPC on October 11, the BJP members had stayed away after accusing JPC Chairman P Chacko of failing to finalise the list of witnesses and include the prime minister and Chidambaram in it.
Dubbing the new income tax return Form 2F as "kathin" (difficult), a parliamentary committee has asked the government to withdraw the Form, including the controversial cash flow statement that salaried assessees have to file.
A parliamentary committee on Friday hauled up the finance ministry for fall in Tax:GDP ratio to 9.2 per cent in 2003-04 from 10.1 per cent in 1990-91
His likable boy-next-door face and casual approach to public speaking have a unique appeal for the younger generation, but it stops there, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Bharatiya Janata Party members on Tuesday walked out of the proceedings of a Joint Parliamentary Committee on 2G scam, claiming that they were not allowed to raise the issue of finalising the list of witnesses.
On August 22 also, BJP members had walked out of the JPC meeting alleging that Congress members had used foul language when they sought inclusion of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram in the finalised list of witnesses to be called before the JPC.
The executive committee of Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) is mulluing various disciplinary measures, including issuing show cause notice to former India cricketers Kirti Azad and Bishan Singh Bedi, for making corruption allegations against its former president Arun Jaitley.
The Joint Parliamentary Committee on the 2G scam will resume its proceedings next week when former Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar appears before it as one of the 'essential witnesses' before the panel starts writing the draft report.
The JPC has completed the process of questioning most of the bureaucrats in the 2G scam investigation
Civil society groups welcome the submission of a memorandum opposing Aadhaar and other anti-people policies to the prime minister along with a big truckload of signatures numbering 3.57 crore on March 14, says Gopal Krishna
The Standing Committee on Finance, which met under the chairmanship of senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha, has decided to finalise its report by March 2, enabling Parliament to consider the ambitious reforms in direct tax regime.
In the midst of the stock market turbulence, the government has sounded a word of caution to investors, with the pre-budget Economic Survey asking them to resist the 'herd mentality.'
The Bill suggests an insolvency regulator.
The Reserve Bank of India has told parliamentarians that it is concerned over the stock market exposure of various non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) promoted by leading banks in the country.
The Budget session of the Parliament is likely to begin from February 25 with the Presidential Address to a joint sitting of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha followed by presentation of rail budget and general budget on February 26 and 28.
Jaitley's concerns are unlikely to cut much ice with the Congress.
The Union Budget may be presented around the middle of March in view of the ongoing Assembly elections, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee indicated on Wednesday.
All India Congress Committee General Secretary Rahul Gandhi today said that he was concerned over the logjam in the wake of Anna Hazare's agitation against corruption.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was aware of the contents of the controversial 2G note which was issued as an office memorandum at the insistence of the Prime Minister's Office, a top official told the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Thursday.
The Companies Bill 2009, which seeks to replace a half-a-century-old Act, will be presented in Parliament in the ongoing Budget session, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said on Monday.
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