State-owned Indian Oil Corporation has begun stockpiling 15 days' supply of domestic cooking gas to meet contingencies like disruption in crude oil supplies in the event of war in Iraq.\n\n\n\n
A fierce competition among parties to offer freebies and guarantees, a scramble for tribal, OBC, women votes and a touch of Hindutva -- all have combined to make the Madhya Pradesh assembly polls a high-stakes battle with main rivals BJP and the Congress pulling out all the stops to gain power.
Whether it was the MGNREGS or the NFSA or the Aadhaar-based DBT scheme for cash transfer, the Modi government has built on the basic architecture created by the Singh government. Policy makers in the Modi government, instead of discarding them as products of the previous political regime, worked on them, expanded their scope and reach, and used new tools to improve their performance, explains A K Bhattacharya.
The retail prices of petroleum products have moved broadly in line with, or somewhat more than, the rupee cost of oil imports.
As some BJP pollsters concede, the Modi leadership's sweeping success in elections 2019, especially across central India, owed not to Hindutva ideology, but to welfare schemes, all of them borrowed from Tamil Nadu, reveals N Sathiya Moorthy.
State-owned Indian Oil Corp (IOC) on Friday said international oil prices have been range-bound in the last few weeks, warranting no revision in retail petrol and diesel rates. While petrol price hasn't changed since September 22, diesel rates have been static from October 2.
The Rajya Sabha proceeding washed out completely on Wednesday and was adjourned for the day amid continued protest by the Opposition parties led by the Congress over price rise and levy of Goods and Services Tax (GST) on daily essentials.
Everyone must sample these tiny pan-fried idlis stuffed with onions or vegetables once before they die.
He also stressed that whether we look from the world point of view or from the national viewpoint, the responsibilities of each member of the BJP are constantly growing. "Each and every worker of the BJP is a representative of the country's dreams," added PM Modi.
India's petrol and diesel sales fell by about 17 per cent in May from a month ago as restrictions clamped to curb the world's worst outbreak of coronavirus infections stifled demand. Sales of petrol -- used in cars and motorcycles -- fell to 1.79 million tonne in May, the lowest in a year, according to the preliminary data of state-owned fuel retailers. While the consumption was almost 13 per cent higher than demand in May 2020, it was 28 per cent lower than pre-COVID levels of 2.49 million tonne.
India's fuel sales surged past pre-pandemic levels in March on twin impact of the economy rebounding from the lifting of pandemic-related restrictions and anticipation of price increases leading to stocking. In the first two weeks of March, dealers, as well as the public, topped up their tanks in anticipation of an increase in prices that had been on hold in the run-up to the elections in states like Uttar Pradesh. While daily price revisions restarted on March 22, the increases were calibrated.
Zayn James Doddi loves cooking. As do these other young chefs. Take a look.
What could be more uncertain than Virat Kohli's agonising wait for a century for over two years? Perhaps it's what you will pay tomorrow morning to fill your vehicle's tank. Pump prices have joined cricket scores as the country's favourite discussion topic. Steep increases invite widespread protests, while moderate additions make the government anti-reformist. The ongoing fuel price conundrum is no different.
With the general election campaign less than six months away, the BJP has more to think about than it had on the eve of 2019. It's the states that will be robbing BJP strategists of their sleep at this point, not the Lok Sabha, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
Three recent initiatives kicked off with renewed vigour to improve governance were actually started, perhaps in a different format by the UPA government.
Appealing with "folded hands" for an end to the three-month-long cycle of violence in Manipur, Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday urged the warring Kuki and Meitei communities to hold talks, even as the Lok Sabha adopted a resolution calling for the restoration of peace in the northeastern state.
Modi's BJP has promised more revdis or freebies for these assembly elections than ever before, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Chief Minister M K Stalin on Tuesday launched a Rs 225.86 crore welfare assistance scheme here for Sri Lankan Tamil refugees living in camps in Tamil Nadu and alleged that the previous AIADMK regime was not concerned about them.
Jet fuel prices on Wednesday were hiked by over 18 per cent -- the steepest ever increase -- to all-time high levels after international oil price surged to a multi-year high.
LPG price was increased to Rs 858.50 per 14.2 kg cylinder from Rs 714 previously, according to a price notification from State-owned oil firms. This is the steepest hike in rates since January 2014, when prices had gone up by Rs 220 per cylinder to Rs 1,241.
Indian Oil Corporation on Tuesday said its fourth-quarter profit fell 16 per cent to Rs 1,849.94 crore (Rs 18.49 billion) after the government barred the company from raising prices of cooking gas and auto fuels.
IOC and other oil firms have been paying LPG consumers in 54 districts up to Rs 500 to help them buy a 14.2-kg cooking gas refill at market price, which is more than double of Rs 410 per bottle rate in Delhi.
Union minister and BJP leader Smriti Irani said it was "absolutely shocking" to see the former Haryana chief minister sitting calmly on a tractor while having woman members of his party pulling it physically.
Indian Oil Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation and Bharat Petroleum Corporation are losing Rs 486 crore (Rs 4.86 billion) per day as they are made to sell diesel, domestic LPG and kerosene way below cost to keep inflation under check.
With floods rendering the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway inoperational for 12 consecutive days on Monday, Valley residents are facing an acute shortage of essential commodities even as people in some areas of north and south Kashmir accused the administration of concentrating only on Srinagar city.
Currently, oil companies sell kerosene at a loss of about Rs 18 per litre.
SP leader Akhilesh Yadav has successfully poached a number of OBC leaders from the ruling party, including Swami Prasad Maurya, in his efforts to broaden his party's social base beyond the traditional Muslim and Yadav votebank to take it on this time round.
All households are entitled to get 12 cylinders of LPG or liquefied petroleum gas.
The era when anyone could encroach on India's land has passed and no one can dare to eye its border, Home Minister Amit Shah said in Kibithoo, Arunachal Pradesh, on Monday.
Launching a veiled attack on Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad, who he did not mention by name, Modi said Bihar has come out of an era when rail, road and internet connectivity were made light of and people used to say of what use roads are for those who walk on their feet.
The stellar rise in corporate earnings in financial year 2021-22 (FY21) and FY22 did not result in a corresponding boom in capital expenditure (capex), with listed companies' investment in fixed assets rising just 2.3 per cent year-on-year (YoY) in FY22, growing at the slowest pace in the last six years. In comparison, the firms' combined net profit jumped 63.5 per cent YoY in FY22, while net sales increased 31.1 per cent - the fastest pace in over a decade. The 955 non-financial companies in Business Standard's sample reported combined net profit of Rs 7.18 trillion in FY22, compared with Rs 4.39 trillion in FY21 and Rs 2.59 trillion in FY20.
A major fire on Friday broke out in a three-storeyed residential building near Byculla railway station injuring two persons but 20 other occupants were safely rescued, a Fire Brigade official said.
The government is considering a 3-rupee to 5-rupee hike in the price of diesel, which accounts for more than 40 percent of fuel use, government officials said last week, as the country looks to cut import costs by nearly $20 billion to trim a record current account deficit.
Both prime ministers believed in crafting schemes to help the common man. Modi used quite effectively the instruments Dr Singh introduced. In assessing Modi's success with many schemes, Dr Singh's fundamental work should not be ignored, points out A K Bhattacharya.
Government-controlled oil-marketing companies (OMCs) have held back petrol and diesel price revisions for a week and are expected to continue doing so, ostensibly owing to political reasons. It appears that the Centre has informally conveyed to the three major OMCs to not revise fuel prices for the time being, two people in the government said. This informal directive follows the talks between the Centre and states on cutting taxes and bringing the auto fuels under the good service tax regime not fetching the desired results, so far.
Since jobs will remain scarce for the foreseeable future, an unemployment allowance should be the next big social-security initiative, suggests T N Ninan.
The dissidents, led by former president Sirisena's Sri Lanka Freedom Party, would leave the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna coalition with its 14 Members of Parliament, party sources said after their meeting with the President on Monday.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday ruled out a cut in excise duty on petrol and diesel to ease prices, which have touched an all-time high, saying payments in lieu of past subsidised fuel pose limitations. Petrol and diesel as well as cooking gas and kerosene were sold at subsidised rates during the previous Congress-led UPA government. Instead of paying for the subsidy to bring parity between the artificially suppressed retail selling price and the cost that had soared because of international rates crossing $100 per barrel, the then government issued oil bonds totalling Rs 1.34 lakh crore to the state-fuel retailers. These oil bonds and the interest thereon are being paid now.
Heightened geopolitical uncertainties will lead the Reserve Bank's rate-setting panel to opt for a status quo at the next week's meeting, Axis Bank's chief economist Saugata Bhattacharya said on Monday. Bhattacharya said he had earlier expected a tightening action at the policy meet scheduled for April 6-8 but the increased uncertainties on the geopolitical front due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its impact on commodity prices makes him now think that RBI will defer such an action. He said the central bank's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) may hike rates in the second half of FY23 by up to 0.50 per cent.
Petrol price on Friday crossed the Rs 100- per-litre mark in Chennai as well as in some places in Punjab and Kerala after fuel prices were hiked yet again. Petrol is priced at over Rs 99 a litre in Delhi and Kolkata -- the only metro cities which haven't seen the Rs 100 mark yet. Petrol price was hiked by 35 paise per litre on Friday but there was no change in diesel rates, according to a price notification of state-owned fuel retailers.
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