Apart from recruiting 18,000 women in state's police force, Thackeray said all female police stations will also be established in Maharashtra.
These are the highlights of the Union Budget 2025-26 presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Parliament on Saturday.
The unemployment rate shot up to a record 10.9 per cent in the week that ended on December 18, points out Mahesh Vyas.
The list of drought-hit taluks will be notified, following Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's approval.
Few finance ministers announce any taxation measure that could upset the stock market. Ms Sitharaman decided to take that risk, observes A K Bhattacharya.
We need real laws to protect whistle-blowers, and even more than that real action should be taken against perpetrators, says Sandip Sukhtankar.
The need for a manufacturing policy, reining in food inflation and raising investment in the country were among key suggestions given by economists who met Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and senior ministry officials in the first round of pre-Budget consultations on Friday.
But the government will present a second tranche of Supplementary Demands for Grants during the Budget session of Parliament in February, when it can seek additional spending.
Market reaction to the Union Budget was overall neutral. The income tax "gift" wasn't enough to move the needle. There was some apparent rationalisation of Customs duty structure as well as cuts on import duties of some key components for the telecom and IT industry and duty cuts on vehicle imports. Other proposals related to development of agriculture and rural economy and renewables seem to be generally positive.
The government has revised the wages for unskilled manual workers under the national rural employment guarantee scheme by indexing it to inflation, Rural Development Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said.
India remains the largest growing economy in the world, a senior official from the International Monetary Fund said, observing that the country's macroeconomic fundamentals are good. "India is said to remain the largest growing economy in the world. We project growth at seven per cent in FY24-25, supported by recovery in rural consumption, as there have been favourable harvests.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Wednesday directed officials to take strict action against illegal occupants of any land, be it government or private, without discrimination.
Latest GDP growth numbers a one-off development and not the beginning of a trend, says CEA V Anantha Nageswaran.
'MGNREGA is definitely like a lifeline and is the employer of the last resort'
Watched by AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi who is in the forefront to ensure that United Progressive Alliance's National Rural Employment Guarantee Act is a success, Rural Development Minister C P Joshi said, "Everywhere, including in Parliament, there are doubts in everybody's mind that the way in which NREGA should function, is not happening."
Following are comments from economists at leading financial institutions, banks and rating agencies on the interim Budget:
Member of Parliament can now allocate funds from their local area development scheme kitty for rural employment guarantee programmes. The move that comes just ahead of Budget is aimed at providing the much-needed fiscal cushion to operate the UPA's most ambitious social security programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA).
On October 1, Union Cabinet cleared the proposal of the rural development ministry for naming National Rural Employment Guarantee Act after Mahatma Gandhi.
The government on Friday renamed its flagship rural job guarantee programme - National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) - after Mahatma Gandhi.
The time is ideal for a 'Dream Budget' akin to the 1991 reforms that sparked high growth and unlocked significant gains in productivity, points out Rajeswari Sengupta.
The government is committed to provide Rs 100 a day as wages under National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, said finance minister Pranab Mukherjee.
Scheme faces pincer attack with a proposed higher proportion of expenditure on material, reducing the budget available to pay wages and focus on implementing it only in 2,500 blocks.
Despite declining by three percentage points in 2022-23 (FY23) compared to FY19, Odisha's unemployment rate remains higher than the average in India.
The government on Friday admitted certain flaws in its flagship rural employment programme like irregularities in payment of wages and said steps were being taken to set them right.
As the Union Budget 2025-2026 (FY26) inches closer, the Indian real estate industry is seeking stamp duty cuts, revised home loan limits and updated affordable housing norms through Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna (PMAY), single-window clearance and eco-friendly policies, among others. Industry leaders and consultancy firms, including Anarock, Raheja, Gaurs, Kanodia Group, Reach, Urban Space, Justo and Eros Group, have shared their expectations.
Enclosing the money with a letter, the workers affiliated to the Gram Swaraj Mazdoor Sangh "expressed concern" at the "meagre" hike as they felt that the central government was facing "paucity of funds", otherwise the wages would have definitely increased in tune with Jharkhand's minimum daily wage which is Rs 212.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the actual spending under the scheme in the fiscal year ending March 31 "would be highest".
The government's ambitious rural employment project MGNREGA has come under the scrutiny of the Supreme Court which today said money was not reaching real beneficiaries and in many cases going to wrong hands.
Sources in the Rural Development Ministry said the actual expenditure incurred in 2020-21 will be higher than the allocated funds and it will at least be at par with this year's total estimated expenditure of MGNREGS.
'Binary fission will happen -- startups will lead to more startups.'
Overall market reaction to the Budget was neutral. Investors absorbed the changes to the tax rates (positive for salaried class) and capital gains taxes (CGTs, negative due to the removal of indexation and increases. Other proposals largely pertain to supporting rural development, buybacks taxed as dividends, Custom duty changes that impact multiple sectors, higher outlays for clean energy, etc. There's some moderation in the growth of capex outlay across defence, fer
'Last Saturday, the largest number of people travelled by air on a single day!' 'There is a kind of hunger among consumers to spend as they have been confined to their homes and not spending for almost 2 years.'
The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday came down heavily on the Congress government in Karnataka for flaunting their 'rich fortunes and luxury lifestyles' following a viral video on social media showing Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his cabinet colleague B Z Zameer Ahmed Khan in a private jet.
Senior Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee on Friday said he will participate in the party's protest programme in New Delhi on October 3, a day after he was summoned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for questioning in connection with the school jobs scam in Kolkata on the same day.
The Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, (IIT-KGP) has lined up four courses for rural development this year to facilitate skill development among the rural youth as well as create self-employment opportunities.
As more companies ask their employees to return to office after the pandemic, the share of women employed in regular salaried jobs in urban India decreased from 54 per cent in the first quarter to 52.8 per cent in the second quarter of the current financial year, according to the quarterly Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data. The slump in the share is the lowest in wage employment in any quarter in the last six years when the National Statistical Office started releasing the quarterly PLFS surveys in Q3 of FY19. The share of women in wage work was highest in Q1 of FY21 at 61.2 per cent.
Of these 8.5 million additional people employed in September, 6.5 million were in rural India, reveals Mahesh Vyas.
Trinamool Congress general secretary Abhishek Banerjee along with party leaders and workers sat on a dharna at the Rajghat in New Delhi on Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary on Monday demanding the release of funds for West Bengal by the Centre.
The United Kingdom extracted USD 64.82 trillion from India over a century of colonialism between 1765 and 1900 and USD 33.8 trillion of this went to the richest 10 per cent -- enough money to carpet London in notes of 50 British pound almost four times over.
