The government has only taken a pause and more measures will be announced in the days to come to help sectors hit by the coronavirus outbreak and also to make India 'Atmanirbhar Bharat', Minister of State for Finance Anurag Thakur said. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the government has taken several steps to mitigate the hardships of the people due to lockdown and support growth, Thakur told PTI in an interview.
"If you have questions on the economy, you should ask those..," he said when media persons kept fielding questions about his alleged hate speech.
"'So ja bete nahi to Gabbar Singh aa jayega'. Mothers, who have seen the jungle raj days in Bihar, please do tell your children, especially youth, on the polling day to cast their votes carefully, otherwise they (the RJD) may return to power... those who ran a regime of terror and fear," he told a press conference.
Noting that the nation got freedom from the British through 'andolans' (protests), he said by that logic Mahatma Gandhi should have been the biggest 'andolanjivi'.
Addressing the meeting in support of BJP candidate from Rithala, Manish Chaudhary, Singh raised the pitch of nationalism as he linked opposition parties with anti-CAA protests in Shaheen Bagh and with alleged anti-India slogans, and then asked the crowd to raise the controversial slogan.
Listing of LIC will help bring in greater transparency, public participation and also deepen the equity market.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Vishal Pahuja rejected the application saying requisite sanction from the competent authority, the central government, was not obtained which was required under the law.
The 46-year-old MP from Hamirpur in Himachal Pradesh was among the 15 new Cabinet ministers who took oath in the first major rejig and expansion of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi government after it returned to power for a second term in May 2019.
'The main reason for having neutral venues for the Ranji Trophy is to make it more competitive and less affected by doctoring of wickets.' 'There is no reason why people shouldn't be able to see Virat Kohli playing a Ranji Trophy match at any location.'
The government has approved the 'Terms of Reference' for the 16 Finance Commission, which makes recommendations on sharing of tax revenues between the Centre and states. The recommendations would cover a five-year period commencing April 1, 2026, Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur said on Wednesday, giving details about the decisions taken at the Cabinet meeting last evening. The commission would submit its report by October 31, 2025, Thakur said.
On Monday, Thakur egged on participants of an election rally to raise an incendiary slogan that 'traitors should be shot', after he lashed out at anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protesters.
'Karur could still impact Jana Nayagan's box-office success if Vijay and the TVK do not get their act together,' points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
A large number of officials and support staff, who are directly associated with the Budget making and printing process, are now required to stay in the ministry and remain cut off from their families till the presentation of the Budget in the Lok Sabha.
Led by Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar MP Supriya Sule, Group 7 will engage with key countries in Africa -- Egypt, South Africa, Ethiopia -- and Qatar to present India's position on Operation Sindoor, launched in response to the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack.
The Centre on Tuesday permitted 20 states to raise Rs 68,825 crore through open market borrowings to bridge the GST revenue shortfall.
Belligerent Congress members, who were in the Well, shouted slogans against the minister and asked 'Aapka goli kaha hai (where is your bullet?)', an apparent reference to the minister's controversial remarks. Some members also shouted 'Goli maarna band karo (Stop shooting)'. Whenever Thakur was responding to supplementaries during the Question Hour, the members began sloganeering against him.
The government on Friday sought Parliament's nod for an additional Rs 54,000-crore spending mainly to meet its obligation towards GST compensation to states and defence-related expenditure. Minister of State for Finance Anurag Thakur presented the second and final batch of supplementary demands for grants in the Lok Sabha.
IMAGE: BCCI president Anurag Thakur, right, with ICC CEO Shashank Manohar. Photograph: PTI Board of Control for Cricket in India president Anurag Thakur on Monday said in Supreme Court that he had not asked International Cricket Council's CEO Dave Richardson to state that the appointment of Justice Rajendra Mal Lodha committee would "tantamount to government interference" in the functioning of BCCI.
Some of the key faces for various posts will be former India skipper and Hyderabad Cricket Association president Mohammad Azharuddin, former India captain and Cricket Association of Bengal president Sourav Ganguly, former Test player and Karnataka nominee Brijesh Patel.
Former BCCI president Anurag Thakur on Tuesday announced setting up of a cricket and sports academy in Leh to ensure that talented athletes get the required training to become a part of the mainstream.
'In both cases, there is a sneering disregard for the established processes of law while dealing with what the American president and the junior Indian minister regard as unpardonable behaviour,' notes Amulya Ganguli.
The government on Wednesday approved the inclusion of certain communities in the lists of Scheduled Tribes in Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, fulfilling long-pending demands from these states.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget on Tuesday as the Monsoon Session of Parliament gets underway next week with the united opposition set to corner the National Democratic Alliance government on issues ranging from the NEET paper leak case and railway safety.
The government on Tuesday announced a Rs 200 per cylinder cut in prices of domestic cooking gas as it looked to counter the cheaper LPG promise of the Congress in upcoming assembly elections in states like Madhya Pradesh.
Uttam Ghosh offers his take on Union Minister Anurag Thakur's incendiary slogan.
As part of the ritual, ''halwa'' is prepared in a big ''kadhai'' (large frying pot) and served to the entire staff involved in the Budget making exercise of the ministry. Halwa was served while maintaining COVID protocol with all present in mask and those distributing sweets were wearing gloves.
The 'halwa ceremony' marks the beginning of the lockdown of several officials in the finance ministry, who remain cut off from their families until the presentation of the Budget by the finance minister in the Lok Sabha.
The stalemate over compensating states for the shortfall in GST collections continued on Monday with a meeting of the GST Council ending without reaching any consensus. The panel, which is the highest decision-making body on indirect taxes, for the second time in a week failed to reach a consensus on the Centre's proposal of states borrowing against future GST collections to make up for the shortfall.
The International Cricket Council seemed to have mend fences with the Board of Control for Cricket in India as president Anurag Thakur is now officially a part of the powerful Finance and Commercial Affairs after completion of its board meeting, in Cape Town, on Friday.
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.
The impact of economic slump was visible in the Budget's fine print, as this step-by-step explanation show how the Budget math was worked out, reports Abhishek Waghmare.
BCCI President Anurag Thakur on Sunday made it clear that unlike his predecessor Shashank Manohar, he is not "interested" in any ICC post and his sole focus at present is to protect the rights of Indian cricket. Hinting at Manohar, Thakur said, "One who had to go to ICC have already gone long back. I have no interest and I am happy here with BCCI and nothing is more important for me than India. We have to protect the rights of India. If you don't think about India then it will be difficult to think about any other country. "Today there is India, so world cricket is growing," Thakur said.
The only Indian woman to win two Olympic medals, P V Sindhu was accorded a warm welcome after she landed in her home town on Wednesday following her bronze-medal winning feat in Tokyo Games.
Former Union minister and Congress leader Rajeev Shukla was re-appointed chairman of the powerful IPL Governing Council on Monday, ending a month-long suspense over the selection for the top post in the cash-rich Twenty20 league.
The panel will likely play an important role as the Personal Data Protection Bill gets tabled in Parliament.
The protests came after Speaker Om Birla announced the end of Question Hour at noon as the designated time for it is 11 am to noon. While asking the first supplementary, Gandhi said he wanted to know the list of 50 top wilful defaulters, including funds given and the amount written off by banks but did not get a proper answer in the written reply.
The Centre on Thursday placed before the GST Council two options for borrowing by states to meet the shortfall in GST revenues, pegged at Rs 2.35 lakh crore in the current fiscal.
Over 65 Union ministers are likely to take oath, going by the visual of the meeting Modi held with his likely council of ministers.
While Congress and the states ruled by non-NDA parties pushed for the Centre meeting its statutory obligation of covering the deficit, the Union government cited a legal opinion to say it had no such obligation if there was a shortfall in tax collections. The Centre as well as BJP-JD-U-ruled Bihar were of the opinion that the states should borrow to make up for the shortfall in the tax revenues that have been compounded by the COVID-19 crisis, sources said.
Seeking to enhance green mobility, the Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the 'PM-eBus Sewa' scheme under which 10,000 electric buses will be provided to 169 cities under the public-private partnership (PPP) model.