Government has initiated action against six pharmaceutical companies, including Cadilla, Wockhardt and Lupin, for overpricing medicines and launching unapproved formulations in the market.
"The price cap has been imposed taking into account the sharp increase in prices of raw materials used in making of face masks and hand santiser," Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said.
Janata Dal-United supremo Nitish Kumar is set to be sworn-in as Bihar chief minister for a record 10th time on Thursday, days after the National Democratic Alliance secured a landslide victory in the assembly elections.
The Janata Dal (United), an ally of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has sought an extension in the tenure of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) scrutinising the bills proposing simultaneous elections. The party argued that the committee, which has only met once, requires more time for extensive consultations. Meanwhile, the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), another BJP ally, has demanded a "special industrial package" for Bihar, highlighting the state's low per capita income compared to the national average.
Union Minister and Lok Janshakti Party-Ram Vilas leader Chirag Paswan is planning to convene a meeting of Scheduled Caste MPs of different parties as he works to mobilise support ahead of his party filing a review plea in the Supreme Court against its judgment allowing sub-categorisation of reservation within the community.
The long-standing Bharatiya Janata Party-Janata Dal-United alliance stood the test of time again with the combine scoring a landslide victory in the Bihar assembly polls on the development plank.
Outcome of this assembly election could be even more confused -- in terms of forming a government -- than the February poll, says psephologist.
In a bid to prevent a split in the LJ legislature party in Bihar, party national general secretary Suraj Bhan Singh arrived in Patna on Sunday morning to take back the available party MLAs to Delhi to attend a meeting called by Paswan.
"We want to make it clear that we have no relations (with LJP), and we do not like this politics of spreading confusion," BJP leader and Union minister Prakash Javadekar said.
Ram Vilas Paswan said that the Congress and its allies would again meet on May 25 to give a final shape to the CMP.
Team Anna is reaching out to the members of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Lokpal Bill to ensure that their concerns are addressed in the recommendations they will be sending.
Government on Tuesday warned private steel producers to check prices or be prepared for an intervention, a move that may lead to controlling of prices, which were deregulated almost a decade ago, indirectly.
The Energy Co-ordination Committee, headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, would meet on Tuesday with gas pricing, gas sourcing and gas allocation as the main topics on the agenda, an official source said.
LJP to tie up with Congress in WB, go it alone in TN, Kerala, Pondicherry
The centre on Thursday said a memorandum of understanding with Korean steel major Posco and the Orissa government would be inked by the end of this month.
Government on Friday assured the Rajya Sabha that essential drugs would not come under the new patent regime and companies manufacturing patented drugs would not be closed down.
The poll results give the ruling Janata Dal-United-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance 170 seats in the 243-member house. The Laloo Prasad Yadav-Ram Vilas Paswan alliance is set to be reduced to 34 seats, according to the predictions.
'If the JD-U wants to join hands with LJP, then it will have to break its alliance with BJP and in case Congress and Left Front want to have alliance with LJP, they are warmly welcome,' Paswan said.
A delegation of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Members of Parliament, including some union ministers, on Tuesday met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to demand that an order providing reservation in government jobs be replaced by an Act to bring greater benefits to them. "Members of the SC/ST Parliamentary Forum met the prime minister today to demand that an Act is necessary to provide reservations to SC/ST, which is done through a government order," LJP chief Paswan said.
Union minister Chirag Paswan, who joined politics after a failed Bollywood debut, has no plans to make a comeback in films and also jokes that he is such a 'bad actor' that even his Lok Sabha colleague and first co-star, Kangana Ranaut, will not agree to share the screen space with him again.
With assembly polls due in Bihar later this year, political parties have gone on an offensive to woo different caste and community groups in the state.
Paswan has said that this is not a vote gimmick but a genuine concern of the party.
With 'go solo' being the mantra for Congress after its success in Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh, the party is now set to dump Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal in the Bihar assembly elections scheduled later this year. An indication to this effect came when All Indian Congress Committee in-charge of the state Jagdish Tytler and Pradesh Congress Committee president Anil Sharma recently met party president Sonia Gandhi.
First Goa, now Gujarat!
While politicians and pundits speculate a strong possibility of their coming together, the two young leaders, however, told prying journalists their meeting was a result of "family relations" that went back to ties shared by their fathers.
The Australian government has supported a proposal from Indian steel companies for acquiring equity stakes in coking coal companies and coking coal properties in the country.
Accompanied by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, 72-year-old Pratibha filed the documents before the returning officer and Lok Sabha Secretary General P D T Achary at the Lok Sabha Secretariat.
The Union government has reconstituted the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as its chairman.
'Modi and Shah made it clear that the next government will be led by Nitishji.'
A proposed Rs 9,000 crore (Rs 90 billion) greenfield modernisation and expansion programme is expected to give a fresh lease of life to Iisco Steel Plant, a unit of Steel Authority of India.
As per the new guidelines, the wholesalers will get 15 per cent margin while retailers will 35 per cent over the cost of manufacturing of generic medicines, Minister of Chemicals and Fertiliser Ram Vilas Paswan told reporters.
A delegation of members of Parliament and civil society members, who are on a "fact-finding" tour of Jammu and Kashmir, on Saturday asked the Centre to start a dialogue process for resolution of Kashmir issue and include separatist leaders like Syed Ali Shah Geelani in it.
Roads and bridges that Nitish Kumar built have brought his alliance back to power. They made his journey safer. The mandate is clear.
'The arithmetic of the outcome shows that Nitish is not likely to jettison the BJP, which he might have been tempted to do had he won a majority on his own.'
'Mere communal-secular binary of political rhetoric will hardly help the Congress to attract enough votes to get power.'
The government today said it will look into the matter relating to a ship named SS Oceanic carrying 250 tonnes of asbestos, which is reported to be heading towards the Alang shipbreaking yard in Gujarat.
Another CD on the cash-for-votes episode surfaced on Monday with three United Progressive Alliance parties claiming that the Bharatiya Janata Party had stage managed the entire show for political gains.
Sonia held discussions with Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar, Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Lalu Prasad and Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan in an effort to break the logjam over the issue that has created a face-off between the Congress and the Left parties. The leaders of the UPA constituents conveyed to Sonia that they back the nuclear deal, but do not favour early polls, particularly because of high inflation.
