A rising number of Greeks in rural areas are swapping goods and services in cashless transactions.
CBI has also named unknown officials of the union environment ministry in the PE.
Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi will start the party's general election campaign in Uttar Pradesh next month from the Congress bastions of Kanpur, Jhansi and Bahraich.
The race to get a New Umbrella Entity (NUE) licence for digital payments may get crowded. As many as six consortiums are said to be in the fray to apply for an NUE licence, which would create a for-profit National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)-like body for retail payments. A consortium led by Financial Software and Systems (FSS), a leading provider of payment products and payment processor, is in talks and may file an application to the RBI for an NUE license, said sources aware of the development. The other constituents of this group include Indian Bank, Central Bank of India, India Post Payments Bank, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard), and a few small finance banks.
The reshuffle had politics at its heart, so the biggest complement of new ministers, both Cabinet rank and below, came from UP, which will see assembly elections in a few months.
If implemented after stakeholder consultations, migrant voters do not need to travel to their home district to exercise their franchise.
The GoM recommended that activities of all religious organisations should not be allowed till May 15 as a precautionary measure to check spread of coronavirus infection, the sources added.
'That is the one headline the world is reading about India this week, and it is a potentially damaging story...' 'I don't think a panic mentality has set in, but this story is one that investors and market watchers are absolutely seized with.'
The highest polling of 72.35 per cent was recorded in Sirmour district followed by 68.48 per cent in Solan and 67.67 per cent in Una and 67.5 per cent in Lahaul and Spiti. The high-altitude district of Lahaul and Spiti had recorded 21.95 per cent, the lowest, till 1 pm, but polling was brisk as the sun came out.
A total of 829 candidates have qualified for civil services, including the Indian Administrative Service and the Indian Police Service, the Union Public Service Commission announced
Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram is Congress nominee from Maharashtra for the biennial elections to Rajya Sabha while senior leaders Kapil Sibal and Jairam Ramesh have been named from Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka respectively.
Events, including press conferences and public programmes, will be held in most of the over 700 districts of the country in this regard.
"I have been given BJP ticket from Mandi and the party has informed me about this," he said.
Migrant workers play a very vital role in building the nation and their rights cannot be ignored at all, the Supreme Court said on Thursday while asking the Centre to devise a mechanism so that they receive food grains without ration cards.
Following the Budget being announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, leaders across the political spectrum provided their views.
Modi has the ideas for a new, hopeful India, and an idiom in which to sell optimism to voters. But he doesn't yet have the team for it, and soon enough, questions will begin to be asked by an impatient, non-ideological, I-don't-owe-anybody-anything generation of Indian voters, says Shekar Gupta.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Saturday allocated portfolios to the twenty-member council of ministers, including 10 of the Shiv Sena, who were inducted into his expanded cabinet.
Congress party will hold a protest rally called Zameen Wapsi Andolan in New Delhi on Wednesday.
The focus is likely to be on consolidation and improvement of existing rural-centric programmes to ensure their completion ahead of the next general elections in 2019, rather than announcement of new schemes. Sanjeeb Mukherjee and Arup Roychoudhury report.
'Wherever in the world there is political instability, those countries are beset with severe crises today. But India is in a much better position than the rest of the world due to the decisions taken by my government in the national interest,' President Droupadi Murmu said in her address to both Houses of Parliament.
The government on Tuesday announced Rs 900-crore allocation in the Budget for the newly set up Ministry of Cooperation for the 2022-23 fiscal, besides slashing Alternate Minimum Tax (AMT) on cooperative societies to 15 per cent and surcharge to 7 per cent, which nodal minister Amit Shah hailed saying it will boost the sector. Of the total allocation for the next fiscal, a significant amount of Rs 350 crore has been provided for digitisation of Primary Agriculture Cooperative Societies (PACs), while Rs 274 crore for an umbrella scheme 'Prosperity through Cooperatives' which would have a number of sub-components with the aim of all-round development of cooperatives in the country. For the first time, a separate budget of Rs 11 crore has been provided to Vaikunth Mehta National Institute of Cooperative Management (VAMNICON).
Congress MP Karti Chidambaram and Communist Party of India-Marxist politburo member Mohammed Salim were among the prominent politicians who tested positive for COVID-19 as a rapid spike in cases took the tally in the country to over 18 lakh on Monday.
Congress on Sunday distanced itself from the comment of Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh, on the controversy sparked by party vice-president Rahul Gandhi's remarks on ISI getting in touch with Muzaffarnagar riot-hit youth.
He said that the government was willing to listen to the complaints and suggestions different parties have over the execution of the demonetisation move.
The new laws aim at fetching fair price for farmers' produce and give them liberty to sell it wherever they wish, the Union minister further said.
'Siddaramaiah was openly taking on the BJP's communal agenda, which very few non-BJP politicians do.'
Pawar has occupied the post since he founded the party in 1999.
The extra borrowing implies Jaitley will have extra spending space in the Union Budget for FY19, the last full one before the 2019 general election
The former Union minister also slammed Shashi Tharoor for his statement that praising the Prime Minister Narendra Modi for doing the right things would lend credibility to the opposition's criticism of him.
150 BJP elected local representatives in Beed resign in protest against Pritam Munde's exclusion from the Union ministry.
Ministers and Congress MLAs from Rayalaseema raised a demand that the new capital of Andhra Pradesh be located in Rayalaseema region, implying Kurnool town.
Commercial banks are also expected to be soft on loan repayments and restructure the loans, if not write them off.
Deepak Parekh says AAP victory is a vote for change.
...for others it would be an incentive to participate more robustly in equities and other tax instruments.
The Congress had moved the motion on Wednesday, targeting the Chouhan government over law and order, unemployment, inflation, corruption, 'discrimination' against the opposition legislators, atrocities against women and tribals, farmers' problems and other issues.
'A delay of two years has happened, but stretching it to 2024 is a bit too far.' 'And we do not know about 2024 also.'
Airports hold pride of place in the government's National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) programme to monetise public assets. Private airport operators, including the Adani group, Fairfax, GMR and Zurich Airport, are expected to evince interest in the next round of public private partnership (PPP) development of state-owned Airport Authority of India (AAI) airports. Industry analysts, however, do not expect bids to be as high as the last round, which saw Adani group gain control of six airports.
In a shake up ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan resigned on Saturday from the Union Council of Ministers and more may be in line for being drafted into party work.
The just-concluded meeting of the Group of Ministers has remained inconclusive and the same team would meet again on Wednesday. The contentious issue was the creation of a Rayal-Telangana and the GoM sought to know if this could be proposed despite it not being part of the Cabinet note.
83% of the CEOS plan to hire more in the new year.