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By Amulya Ganguli The Congress has unnecessarily complicated the scene for itself by failing to make a final choice till now on a candidate for the presidential poll. Yet, for once, it was in a position to do so. In fact, by floating the names of Pranab Mukherjee and...
By Praful Bidwai It is profoundly distressing that all political parties without exception joined hands in Parliament to create mayhem over a cartoon published in 1949 about Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’s role in the making of the Constitution of India. The cartoon, reproduced in a Class XI textbook published...
From Pradeep Kapoor LUCKNOW: Two months after the results for Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls were announced, Samajwadi Party and BSP are engaged in bitter fight on the issue of law and order and corruption. At a time when two national parties BJP and Congress have been marginalized, the regional...
MUMBAI: With “profitable growth” replacing “expansion drive” as the buzzword in the sector, the country’s top private life insurers have significantly reduced branches and employees over the last couple of years to cut costs and improve efficiency. ICICI Prudential, the second largest private life insurer in the country, has...
MUMBAI: Having fallen to fresh lows thrice last week, the rupee is expected to get some respite, with dollar inflows from Exchange Earners Foreign Currency (EEFC) accounts and hopes that the central bank would take further steps to arrest the fall. On Friday, the rupee fell to an all-time...
NEW DELHI: After failing to cajole the private sector into loosening its purse strings, the government is now looking at the . 6.6-lakh-crore cash pile of state-run companies to spur growth. The finance ministry has constituted a committee under additional secretary Shaktikanta Das to explore and suggest ways to...
NEW DELHI: The finance ministry has ruled out any more follow-on offers of state-run companies, saying it will instead rely on institutional placement or offer for sale to meet its . 30,000-crore disinvestment target for the current fiscal. The change in the ministry’s stance came after several public sector...
MUMBAI: Bank chiefs will on Monday assemble at the 25-storeyIDBITowersin south Mumbai to draw up guidelines to prevent incompetent and unscrupulous promoters from exploiting the debt restructuring mechanism, which is becoming a drag on the financial system. Following a recent warning by the government, the bank bosses will also...
By S. Sethuraman Take it, between now and 2014 – and a snap poll for the next Lok Sabha cannot be altogether ruled out at this stage- the AIADMK leader Ms. Jayalalithaa wants to ride a non-Congress front to take on the faltering Congress-led UPA, with little to boast...
By Anjan Roy If the beauty of a Grecian urn had inspired John Keats to write his imperial ode to it, the continuing uncertainty of Grecian affairs is driving the global economy to the brink of an economic precipice. Better would have been if the European Union had taken...
From P. Sreekumaran THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The crisis in the Kerala CPI(M) has deepened with the party stalwart V S Achuthanandan demanding a change in the leadership of the state unit of the party and constitution of an ad hoc committee. In a strongly-worded letter to CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat,...
Fifteen new Russian-made MiG-29K fighter jets have been inducted for Indian Navy carrier-borne operations, Indian Defence Minister, A.K. Antony told the country’s Parliament. These aircraft will operate from the aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya, formerly called the Admiral Gorshkov when in Russian service, which is planned for induction in December....
NEW DELHI: Commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma said on Friday that the proposal for allowing foreign carriers to pick up 49% in Indian airlines would be taken up by the Cabinet very soon. “I have discussed it (the proposal) both with the finance minister and the Prime Minister....
NEW DELHI: The rupee’s alarming plunge and the central bank’s limited and depleting armoury to stem the fall have jolted the government into coming up with a comprehensive policy package. According to top government sources who do not wish to be identified, several measures to boost dollar liquidity are...
NEW DELHI: Oil marketing companies — IOC, HPCL and BPCL — have benefited from a fall in crude oil price in global markets since the beginning of the fiscal, although the depreciation in rupee against the dollar has severely restricted their relief from the softening of oil price. The...
By Harihar Swarup It is believed that even dictators, apart from democratic governments, fear the political cartoonist and his strokes. You can thus judge the freedom in a country by judging the freedom of its cartoonist. But what is it about this apparently small sketch that makes it so...
From Pradeep Kapoor LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh State Council of Communist Party of India (CPI) has called upon its rank and file to organise demonstrations & rallies throughout the state at District Headquarters on 30th May against galloping price rise & corruption at high places. CPI has also demanded that...
NEW DELHI: The coal ministry has said captive coal blocks could not be allocated to private companies at the market price of reserves. This is despite the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) recently blaming the government for extending “undue gains” worth a whopping Rs 10.6 lakh crore...