Dispatch of the vaccine is likely to start by early Tuesday morning, sources said. According to the order placed, each dose of the vaccine has been priced at Rs 200 and with GST of Rs 10, it would cost Rs 210.
'The first clear cut call for 'engagement with all stake holders including separatists' came, not from the political class but the men in uniform,' points out Mohammad Sayeed Malik, the distinguished observer on Kashmir.
The CoWIN portal will be made available in Hindi and 14 regional languages by next week, while 17 more laboratories will be added to the INSACOG network to monitor the variants of COVID-19, the health ministry said on Monday.
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
At a pre-Budget meeting, the FM was asked to ensure that NBFCs come out of the liquidity crisis they are facing with the help of RBI. They also spoke about the futility of trying to achieve a 3 per cent fiscal deficit target over the medium term.
'They are starting to move more quickly and we would just like to continue to see bold action being taken.'
There was no law or autonomous body governing digital content in India so far. Now, OTT and other platforms, including digital news websites, are expected to fall within a governmental framework of rules and regulations.
Jaitley is now a minister without portfolio in the Narendra Modi government.
Unlike the regimes of Jayalalitha, Palaniswami and Karunanidhi, ministers are actually getting to make decisions on their own, with the unmentioned rider that they would be held responsible and accountable, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
An official order said that Rao, a 1986-batch Indian Police Service officer from Odisha cadre, has been appointed Director General of Fire Services, Civil Defence and Home Guard by 'temporarily downgrading the post' to the level of additional director general.
Expressing the government's commitment to continue with reforms, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday assured India Inc that it is ready to do everything required to revive and support economic growth hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Stressing that there is a need to promote growth as it helps bring down poverty, she however said it would not be at the cost of inflation. RBI has been mandated to keep inflation at 4 per cent, with tolerance level of 2 per cent on either side.
Venkaiah Naidu said 'let there be a discussion... November 8 is a historic day'.
This year, festive sales are expected to push up the annual gross merchandise value of e-commerce companies to around $38 billion, a 40 per cent growth over the previous year.
The decision was taken at a high-level meeting convened by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), and attended by the Central Public Works Department (CPWD), Border Roads Organisation (BRO) and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) among others.
AIIMS doctors said the BJP stalwart and former external affairs minister died of a cardiac arrest.
Dhankhar, 68, who was Union deputy minister of parliamentary affairs in 1990-91, quit the Congress in 2003 and became a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
'Clearly, Washington has all but given up hope following US Acting Assistant Secretary of State Alice Wells's stormy visit to Colombo last month where she read the riot act to Sri Lankan leaders to sign the pending status of forces agreement allowing American troops to use Sri Lanka as a hub for operations in the Indian Ocean,' points out Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'All political parties have exploited the police. The current government at the Centre is blatant and unapologetic about it.'
Once a Congress-led government is formed at the Centre, the farm laws will be revoked and dumped into the 'dustbin', he said, addressing a gathering in the evening here on the conclusion of his 'Kheti Bachao Yatra' (save the farming march), which began from Punjab's Moga district on Sunday.
MHA said that about 2,000 such Tablighi Jamaat members in Delhi, 1,804 have been shifted to quarantine centres while 334 symptomatic persons have been admitted to hospitals
A day before the start of the Budget session of Parliament, as many as 18 opposition parties, led by the Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party, the Shiv Sena and the Trinamool Congress, decided on Thursday to boycott the President's address to the joint sitting of both Houses in solidarity with the farmers protesting against the new farm laws.
Security of tenure is important for a bureaucrat to work efficiently. There has to be some rationale behind posting a bureaucrat to a particular department, says former cabinet secretary T S R Subramanian
In a strongly-worded reaction on the issue, Spokesperson in the Ministry of External Affairs Anurag Srivastava said India has repeatedly called on Pakistan to give up its 'obfuscation and dilatory tactics' in discharging its international obligations in the trial of Mumbai terror attacks.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on Wednesday approved a five-year-long reform-based result-linked power distribution scheme worth Rs 3.03 lakh crore, for strengthening system of utilities to improve efficiency. Briefing after the CCEA meet here, Power and New & Renewable Energy Minister R K Singh said, "We have done a lot for power distribution reforms. It needs to be strengthened. Today, the Cabinet has approved the new scheme worth Rs 3.03 lakh crore, including Rs 97,000 crore central outlay." He said the funds would be given to power distribution companies (discoms) to strengthen their system.
A 15 per cent corporate tax rate for services companies in SEZs, setting up a fund for deep-tech startups and establishing clusters to demonstrate design-to-manufacturing capabilities of tech firms were some of the key demands made by the IT sector at the pre-Budget consultation on Monday. The participants shared their views and suggestions regarding Big Data, incentives for encouraging setting up of data centres, fiscal incentives for data localisation, incentives for pushing digital penetration in rural areas, and corporate guarantee to startups for competing with other nations.
Government websites -- including those of the Prime Minister's Office, home and petroleum ministries, and the department of telecommunications -- were out of service for many hours on Monday. An official attributed the cause to firewall problems.
'Do not travel to India due to COVID-19. Exercise increased caution in India due to crime and terrorism'
The tumultuous Winter session of Parliament ended on Wednesday a day before schedule with proceedings in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha marred by repeated disruptions by the opposition over which the government and the Congress traded charges and the presiding officers expressed their anguish at the conduct of some MPs.
The main purpose of the meeting is to assess their views on reforms that are required to attract long-term capital into the country.
'But you cannot encroach upon the spaces that belong to the public.' 'For this new Parliament building, we envisage a minimum of 400 trucks, the huge long trailer trucks will be coming in day in and day out right into the heart of the national capital.' 'It will completely destroy Delhi's peace.' 'The beautiful sylvan surroundings of the quiet, beautiful, New Delhi is going to be destroyed for all time to come.'
The second and third positions in the category were grabbed by Surat and Navi Mumbai respectively.
The Walmart case came before the CIC on a plea by activist Subhash Agrawal.
The chief minister still has time to repair the damage but he will have to act all-round, both at the government and party levels, suggests N Sathiya Moorthy.
He underlined that Lok Sabha election results in India show that the Modi government kept alive and strengthened the 'expectation of change' in the country.
The decision "is applicable to 1,797 identified unauthorised colonies" spread over 175 square km inhabited by people from lower income groups.
A massive fire engulfed a private nursing home for senior citizens in central China, killing at least 38 residents who were charred beyond recognition and prompting authorities to order nationwide safety checks of public buildings.
India has flattened its Covid-19 graph and 146 districts have reported no new case of the viral disease in the last seven days, 18 in 14 days, six in 21 days and 21 districts in the last 28 days, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Thursday.
The government is keen to close the sale before March 31, 2021, to help meet a record Rs 2.1 lakh crore target which Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has set from divestment proceeds in the Budget for 2020-21.
Talking to reporters Khatkar Kalan, he also suggested that Pakistan's spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence will use farmers' unrest over the new farm laws and will try to foment trouble in the border state of Punjab.
He underwent a renal transplant on May 14 and on the same day, his ministerial charges were given to Piyush Goyal on an interim basis.
