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NEW DELHI: Defence, investment and nuclear energy will dominate the biggest exchange between Indian and Japanese leaders when Japanese foreign minister Koichiro Gemba arrives here on Sunday. Gemba is leading a high-profile delegation including several cabinet ministers and senior officials. The union cabinet is expected to approve a proposal...
A Bangladeshi Air Force cadet, who force-landed his trainer plane on the Indian side of the border in West Bengal due to bad weather, will be returned to Dhaka, an official said here Thursday. The cadet, identified as Rashid Sheikh, had taken off on the PT6 trainer aircraft from...
Early Thursday morning, an Indian rocket successfully launched into orbit a microwave Radar Imaging Satellite (Risat-1) from the spaceport here in Andhra Pradesh, some 80 km from Chennai. With the launch of Risat-1, India has now joined a select group of nations who possess such sophisticated technology. The indigenously...
NEW DELHI: Defence Minister AK Antony today said movement by Army troops in January this year was undertaken for training purpose and was aimed at refining mobilisation drills and preparedness of the force during foggy and wintry conditions. In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Antony said, “The...
NEW DELHI: Anti-corruption activists on Thursday released a set of documents alleging involvement of middlemen in key government deals in defence and telecom sectors. They suspected dubious involvement of Abhishek Verma, an accused in the 2008 Navy war room leak case and a New York-based company Ganton Limited. The...
NEW DELHI: Endemol India, makers of popular reality television shows such as Bigg Boss, Khatron Ke Khiladi and The Great Indian Laughter Challenge, is getting into Bollywood film production. The Indian subsidiary of the Netherlands-based independent television producer is close to signing up two movies involving some of the...
MUMBAI: Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) are increasingly getting edgy as recent policy actions, or the lack of it in several cases, have dampened their enthusiasm to buy Indian shares. Tax uncertainty due to the proposed general anti-avoidance rules (GAAR), policy flip-flop on foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail,...
NEW DELHI: The government plans to kick off the disinvestment programme in 2012-13 with a Rashtriya Ispat Nigam (RINL) initial public offering (IPO) in June. A senior Department of Disinvestment (DoD) official told Business Standard the groundwork for the IPO of the government’s 10 per cent paid up equity...
NEW DELHI: India will likely receive normal monsoon showers for a third straight year in 2012, boosting prospects of farm production and providing relief to an inflation-wary government, which is preparing to widen subsidised grain sales to the poor under the Food Security Act. Rainfall in the June-September season...
NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: In a push to financial sector reforms, the Cabinet on Thursday cleared the much awaited Banking Law (Amendment) Bill. It approved a proposal to cap shareholders’ voting rights in private banks at 26 per cent irrespective of their total holding. To find common ground with the Opposition,...
NEW DELHI: India is likely to take the sting out of a controversial law seeking to crack down on tax avoidance by exempting small firms and individuals and stretching out its implementation over several months, in an attempt to calm jittery foreign and domestic investors. The finance ministry is...
By Nantoo Banerjee A matter-of-fact statement made recently by the chief economic advisor to the union finance ministry, Kaushik Basu, before a learned audience in Washington DC has stirred up a real hornets’ nest among politicians and intelligentsia to the embarrassment of the Congress party leading the ruling United...
By Garga Chatterjee India was supposed to be a democratic federal union. The daily debasing of that compact goes largely unnoticed among our chattering classes and policy makers. The states in India have long been reduced to impoverished alms-seekers – mass leaders from its great provinces prostrating daily in...
NEW DELHI: With two months left for the installation of the new President, the Congress has begun consultations with United Progressive Alliance (UPA) allies in the hope of achieving agreement on a common name. Defence Minister A.K. Antony will be flying down to Chennai shortly to meet Dravida Munnetra...
NEW DELHI: Chinese equity in the new owner of Arrow Energy, that operates five coal bed methane (CBM) blocks in India, has prompted the oil ministry to hold back approval for the company’s request to amend its CBM contracts to reflect the change in ownership, officials said. Arrow, an...
NEW DELHI: Liquified natural gas (LNG) handling terminals in the country, including the proposed ones, will have to offer a little less than a third of their total capacity for third-party use at fair and competitive terms, according to the norms being worked out by the oil ministry. The...
NEW DELHI: The Centre has assured Trinamool Congress that deregulation of diesel prices would not be carried out soon, advertising its lack of resolve for tough reform measures. A Trinamool Congress leader told ET that minister of state in the PMO V Narayansamy has conveyed to the party that...
In the current fiscal year, private sector oil and gas companies witnessed significant challenges largely driven by the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG) audits and a large number of disputes between the contractors and the Government. In the early 90s, when India faced an acute shortage of oil and...