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August 17, 2017 Pankaj Doval Fearing that phone makers, especially Chinese companies, may be siphoning and compromising data of Indian users, the government has asked them to furnish compliance reports on safety and security aspects. A high-level meeting, chaired by IT and law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, has initiated the move which follows apprehensions that user information such as contact lists, messages and location is being procured illegally and in violation of the country's IT Act. The concern is that the information is being surreptitiously sent to third-party servers in foreign locations, raising security concerns while violating the privacy of individuals, sources said. TOI was the first to report the impending action against Chinese tech companies in its edition dated August 16. The Indian government's move, which is seen by some as the beginning of a trade war between India and China, comes at a time when the two countries are engaged in a bitter sta...

August 16, 2017 Office of the Spokesperson The Department of State has designated Hizbul Mujahideen—also known as Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, also known as HM—as a Foreign Terrorist Organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, and as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) under section 1(b) of Executive Order (E.O.) 13224. These designations seek to deny HM the resources it needs to carry out terrorist attacks. Among other consequences, all of HM’s property and interests in property subject to U.S. jurisdiction are blocked, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in any transactions with the group. Formed in 1989, HM is one of the largest and oldest militant groups operating in Kashmir. Hizbul Mujahideen is led by Specially Designated Global Terrorist Mohammad Yusuf Shah, also known as Syed Salahuddin. Hizbul Mujahideen has claimed responsibility for several attacks, including the April 2014, explosives attack in the state of Jammu ...

August 17, 2017 Jayashree Bhosale Sugar mills in drought-affected Tamil Nadu have demanded tariff-rate quota (TRQ) import of 6 lakh tonne of raw sugar at zero import duty to help minimise losses.  Officials aware of the matter told ET that the government is reviewing the situation and may accept their demand, as it will not only help keep sugar prices in southern India under control but also enable sugar mills clear cane farmers' dues.  India imposes 50 per cent duty on imported sugar in order to maintain domestic prices. Cheap imports have always been seen hitting the profitability of local sugar mills which then delay payments to cane farmers.  The Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA), which allegedly has more representation from mills in Uttar Pradesh, has been opposing imports, claiming that the country has enough stock of the sweetener.  However, South Indian Sugar Mills Association, Tamil Nadu (SISMA-TN) has approached the central gover...

August 17, 2017 FE Bureau The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on Wednesday sought reply from Moser Baer Solar (MBSL) on a petition filed by Central Bank of India seeking initiation of insolvency proceedings against the solar panel manufacturer. The principal bench, led by its chairman MM Kumar, has given the solar panel maker three weeks’ time to reply to the petition filed by the public sector lender under Section 7 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). The next hearing is scheduled on September 6. A subsidiary of Moser Baer India, MBSL’s gross debt stood at Rs 772 crore in FY13 (latest available) and reported a net loss of Rs 207 crore on revenues of R226 crore in the same period, Capitaline data showed. NCLT would appoint an interim resolution professional, who will come up with a resolution plan along with a committee of creditors, once the petition is admitted. If the committee is unable to find a solution within 180 days ? this can be extended to 270 days ? ...

August 17, 2017 FE Bureau Paytm Mall, the e-commerce business of Alibaba backed One97 Communication has launched a ‘retailer inclusion programme’ as it looks to help offline retailers in the areas of technology, besides aiding them in getting access to working capital via loans, etc. Under this programme, the company will invest $5 million. “India does not need one large e-retailer, it needs millions of e-retailers. We support these shopkeepers, hence would be educating them in terms of how to use technology to further drive sales more importantly on Paytm Mall besides other platforms,” said Amit Sinha, COO, Paytm Mall. The e-commerce firm has set up a team of 500 personnel to address the needs of retailers. The team on a regular basis will collect feedback from shopkeepers including the challenges faced by them. It would then provide necessary support to retailers. The team is also organising workshops across the country for the sellers. As part of the programme, Paytm Mall will ...

August 17, 2017 PTI Markets regulator Sebi today imposed a penalty of Rs 17.55 crore on 22 entities for round tripping of funds through fictitious transactions and siphoning off proceeds from the initial share sale of Brooks Laboratories Ltd (BLL). In a 38-page order, the watchdog said the practices adopted by the 22 entities are “serious in nature which have the cascading adverse effect towards the investors/ shareholders” and have inflicted a fraud on them. After observing certain irregularities pertaining to the IPO of BLL, the regulator had passed an order against the company and its directors back in December 2011. Investigations found that certain fraudulent exercise were committed by the promoters of BLL in connivance with other entities resulting in siphoning of Rs 8 crore worth funds. It was also found that BLL’s board had passed certain resolutions to raise funds through short term unsecured loans in the form of Inter Corporate Deposits (ICDs). According to Sebi, ...

August 17, 2017 FE Bureau Asking the Karnataka government to disclose the list of C-category iron ore mines that are no longer economically viable, the Supreme Court on Wednesday said they can be closed down rather than their boundaries redrawn and auctioned. A bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi further clarified that until the list of C-category mines was submitted to it, there would be no further auction of such mines in the state. Senior counsel Raju Ramchandran, appearing for the state government, had sought to amalgamate various C-category mines in order to make them economically and commercially viable. “Twenty out of 51 C-category mines can be closed straightaway as they are not commercially viable for exploitation,” he said. The apex court in 2013 had directed Karnataka to cancel 51 C-category leases for involving in rampant illegal mining and reallot them to end users through a transparent bidding mechanism. The state government had in January last year announced...

August 17, 2017 Saurabh Kumar and Anupam Chatterjee Coal stocks at some private thermal power plants, which receive the fuel from Central Coalfield Ltd (CCL), have reached precarious levels as CCL is said to be supplying more fuel to NTPC power plants. According to industry sources, this is due to the shutdown of Dhanbad-Chandrapura railway line, which has compelled Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL) to shift 8-10 rakes from its supply to CCL. Underground fire at Jharia coal field and unsafe operations of the railway led to the shutdown of Dhanbad-Chandrapura railway line in December, 2016. The railways is working closely with the coal ministry and Coal India Ltd to minimise loss of loading on account of the closure of this line, senior railway officials said. “Out of the 10 BCCL sidings falling on this line, only 3 sidings are now functional and remaining 7 sidings have been closed. BCCL has organised transportation of coal (which was earlier loaded from these closed siding...

August 16, 2017 Palak Shah Insider trading, manipulation and stock price rigging are at their peak in India’s equity markets. In 2016-17, there were nearly 185 fresh cases of market manipulation and price rigging and 34 new cases of insider trading under investigation by market regulator SEBI. This is more than double the number of such cases in the previous year, data gathered by BusinessLine from SEBI revealed.  Targeting tax evaders The rise in numbers is mainly on the back of tip-offs from the Income-Tax Department, which has been closely studying tax evasion via stock markets post demonetisation in November 2016, a SEBI official said. The I-T Department’s main area of study has been the evasion of short-term tax by traders who book fictitious profits and losses. In 2016-17, 76 per cent of cases taken up for investigation pertained to manipulation and price rigging compared with 63 per cent in 2015-16. Such investigations by SEBI were not as high even ...

August 17, 2017, Suhasini Haider, T.C.A. Sharad Raghavan Indian Oil Corporation placed India’s first ever shale oil order two days ago with the U.S., according to company Chairman Sanjiv Singh, who said that the prices from the U.S. were very competitive even when compared with those from Gulf nations. Speaking after his meeting with Turkmenistan Deputy Prime Minister Rashid Meredov in New Delhi on August 14, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said that, regardless of the current tensions between India and China on the border, China was showing keen interest in maintaining business relations between the two countries. Mr. Pradhan added that the increasing oil imports from new sources such as the U.S. was also putting pressure on OPEC countries to reduce the ‘Asian premium’ on oil prices they charge Asian countries, including India. “Two days ago, we gave the first shale oil order, the first time shale oil will come to India,” Mr. Singh said, also speakin...

AUGUST 16, 2017  Peerzada Abrar - The Hindu. India’s tech community, including technology billionaire Nandan Nilekani, who spearheaded Aadhaar, say India quickly needs a “data protection law.” Mr. Nilekani said the country needed a strategic position on data which represented risks such as colonisation, privacy issues and a “winner-takes-all market,” in which the best players are able to seize a very big portion of the rewards, and the remaining contenders are left with very little. “Data is being vacuumed out of the country and going into unaccountable systems that don't come under Indian law, which probably share data with foreign governments,” he said at an event here organised by Carnegie India, a think tank. “How do you protect people's privacy and how do you make companies accountable.” Mr. Nilekani said that the law also has to make it incumbent on the data collector to immediately notify if there is any data breach. Due to the rapid adoption of smartph...

Aug 14, 2017 Brandwire - ET AI is a new scientific infrastructure for research and learning that professionals will need to embrace and lead, failing which, they will become irrelevant and eventually redundant. When applied in science, AI can autonomously create hypotheses, find unanticipated connections, and reduce the cost of gaining insights and the ability to be predictive.  The human mind processes millions of sensory inputs automatically and constantly, making it the most elegant computer in existence. But the human brain only contains about 300 million pattern processors that are responsible for human thought. What if we could bring to existence all the ideas not just with data, but also orders of magnitude more data processing capability?  In the name of AI, what we have now is narrow AI. But the pace at which we are moving towards general AI, which would outperform humans at nearly every cognitive task, cannot be ignored. However, despite being at a na...

Aug 17, 2017 ET Bureau. Malaysia’s state oil firm Petronas has expressed interest in buying stake in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal being developed by Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), chairman of IOCBSE 0.87 % has said.  IOC is setting up a 5 mt LNG terminal at Ennore in Tamil Nadu that would get operational by next financial year. Petronas as well as Petronet LNG, India’s largest LNG importer, have expressed interest in investing in the Ennore LNG terminal but IOC hasn’t yet made up its mind on the stake that can be offered to an investor, chairman Sanjiv Singh said. IOC has stake in a Petronas’ Canadian natural gas project, and the two companies also have a joint venture in India that produces LPG and other oil products. Petronet LNG is partly owned by IOC.  A decision on partnership in the Ennore terminal will also factor in other qualifications such as investor's experience in handling LNG terminal, Singh said. He said it was even ‘possible’ t...

August 16, 2017  K R Srivats - Business Line As many as 4,284 industrial units in the North East and Himalayan States will get GST relief in the form of refund of Central share of CGST and iGST. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on Wednesday gave its nod for a new scheme to refund the Central share of Central GST (CGST) and integratedGST (iGST) to these units in lieu of the excise exemption lost due to the onset of goods and services tax (GST) and scrapping of excise laws from July 1 this year. A budgetary support of ₹27,413 crore for this scheme has been approved for the period from July 1, 2017 till March 31, 2027, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told reporters here after a Cabinet meeting. He said the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) will notify the scheme, including detailed operational guidelines for implementation within six weeks. The 4,284 eligible industrial units were granted excise duty exemption for the first 10 years aft...

Aug 17, 2017 - Gulveen Aulakh -ET Bureau The ministry of electronics and IT has directed 21 smartphone makers, most of which are Chinese, to inform it about the procedures and processes they follow to ensure the security of mobile  phones sold in India, following reports of data leakage and theft.  The smartphone makers, which include global players such as Apple and Samsung, Chinese makers such as Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, Lenovo and Gionee, besides home-bred ones such as  Micromax have been asked to provide details about security practices, architecture, frameworks, guidelines and standards followed for providing secure transmission and storage of data, a  senior official in the ministry said. The details have been sought irrespective of whether the companies make their devices in India.  He added that the government will verify the details provided and warned of action if it is revealed that some have failed to meet security requirements.  Under ...

August 17, 2017, Prabha Raghavan, Divya Rajgopal  After coronary stents, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has wielded its powers of price control on knee implants — devices used to replace parts of the knee joints that are damaged. The difference this time is that the regulator has exercised its own emergency powers to do so, instead of waiting for the government to bring the devices under the National List of Essential Medicines as it did on stents.  The drug pricing watchdog slashed the prices of total knee replacement systems and their individual components by as much as 69%, an NPPA notification issued on Wednesday evening showed.  This decision is expected to lead to a saving of Rs 1,500 crore per year for the people of India, union minister for chemicals and fertilizers Ananth Kumar said. According to him, 1-1.5 lakh orthopaedic knee procedures are done in India annually.  Industry bodies representing manufacturers said the...

August 16, 2017, PTI The Cabinet today decided to set up a high-powered committee of Union ministers, including Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, to expedite strategic disinvestment of state-owned companies. The Cabinet gave its nod for setting up an Alternative Mechanism (AM) consisting of Finance Minister, Road Transport and Highways Minister, and Minister of Administrative Department, to decide on the matters relating to strategic disinvestment, an official statement said after the Cabinet meet which was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The panel will decide on matters relating to terms and conditions of the sale from the stage of inviting of expressions of interest (Eols) till inviting of financial bid, the statement said. Further, the Core Group of Secretaries will be empowered to take policy decisions with regard to procedural issues and to consider deviations as necessary from time to time for effective implementation of decisions of the Cabinet Committe...

August 17, 2017, Teena Thacker Biocon Ltd shares tumbled on Wednesday after the drug maker withdrew applications for approval of two biosimilars used to treat breast cancer, citing European regulatory requirements. Biocon shares closed 5.9% lower at Rs328.80 on the BSE after falling as much as 7.54% in the session. The benchmark Sensex rose 1.02% to close at 31,770.89 points. The Bengaluru-based pharma firm withdrew applications for the biosimilars Trastuzumab and Pegfilgrastim, drugs for breast cancer. “Whilst our drug substance facilities for Trastuzumab and Pegfilgrastim were approved, the European regulatory authorities had informed us of the need for a re-inspection of our drug product facility for these products,” a Biocon spokesperson said. “The request for withdrawal of the dossiers and re-submission is part of the European Medicines Agency procedural requirements linked to this re-inspection and will be considered by the EMA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for H...