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First Post September 15, 2019 New Delhi: Auto-makers Maruti Suzuki India and Tata Motors' domestic passenger vehicle market (PV) share declined in April-August this year, while Hyundai Motor India and Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) witnessed gain in the same period, as per data compiled by industry body Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM). The country's largest car-maker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) saw its market share dip by over 2 percentage points during the period under review and slip below 50 percent in the domestic passenger vehicle segment in April-August. The company sold 5,55,064 units this fiscal as compared with 7,57,289 units during April-August previous year. Its market share has come down from 52.16 percent last year to 49.83 percent in the April-August this fiscal. Overall PV sales during the April-August of the current fiscal stands at 11,09,930 units as compared to 14,51,647 units. When contacted MSI executive director (mar...

First Post September 13, 2019 New Delhi:  The government on Friday imposed a minimum onion export price of $850 per tonne to curb its shipments and help bring down spiralling domestic prices. Onion prices have risen to about Rs 40-50 per kg in the national capital from Rs 20-30 per kg a few days back. The Minimum Export Price (MEP) is the rate below which no exports are allowed. "Export of all varieties of onions...will be allowed only on letter of credit subject to a minimum export price of $850 FOB (freight on board) per metric ton till further orders," the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) said in a notification. The Centre last month warned of strict action against hoarding of onion amid supply disruption fears due to floods in parts of major growing states - Maharashtra and Karnataka. Parts of major onion producing states, including Maharashtra and Karnataka, are reeling under floods, raising fears of supply disruption. It had been de...

Zee News September 16, 2019 Tanweer Azam New Delhi had signed a USD 5.43 billion deal with Russia for the purchase of five S-400s during the 19th India-Russia Annual Bilateral Summit in New Delhi on October 5, 2018, last year, which Washington had indicated may trigger Countering America`s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) sanctions. MOSCOW: Moscow is holding talks with New Delhi on starting the production of S-400 Air Defense Systems in India, said Sergey Chemezov, CEO of Russia`s Rostec state corporation on Sunday. "Yes, we are discussing the localization [of S-400 production] with India as well," Chemezov told the RBK broadcaster, adding that India has already acquired the license for the production of a lot of technology, such as the Su-30 fighter jet and the T-90 tank, reported Sputnik.  "We have developed the BrahMos missiles together with them [India], on their territory, together with their scientists," Chemezov pointed out.Last month, E...

Frontline Print Edition September 27, 2019 Anupam Saraph The use of targeted money transfers using Aadhaar is a corrupt practice as defined under Section 123 of the Representation of the People Act. But just 90 days before the 2019 Lok Sabha election, at least 41 million voters received gifts and gratification through direct benefit transfer of at least Rs.623 billion through the PM-KISAN scheme. Aleksandr Kogan, a professor of Cambridge University, sought consent from users to take a psychometric survey using his app, “This Is Your Digital Life”. The app required the users to log into their Facebook accounts. While profiling the user, the app also captured all the news feed, timeline, posts, messages, direct messages and data of the friends of the user. This data were passed on to Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix, who reportedly weaponised them in political campaigns in more than 200 elections across the world. In 2017, Cambridge Analytica was caught on camera confessi...

Observer Research Foundation September 16, 2019 Maya mirchandani The drive from Srinagar to Shopian in South Kashmir on the sixth Friday since the nullification of Article 370 was calm. Barring a few locations, there are very few security personnel in sight. Shops and businesses remain shut, and people — mostly men — mill about. Even though a Friday — typically unpredictable and turbulent, and the area volatile, the uneventful drive makes it easy to believe that the tension we felt was perhaps more imagined than real. However, it is precisely this contra-indication that lies at the heart of the story of Kashmir as it enters this new chapter that began on 5 August 2019. All shades of ideology and opinion in the Valley converge around a simple emotion — betrayal. The Centre’s decision and the manner of its execution to nullify Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that gave special status and privileges to the people of Jammu and Kashmir, as well as to split the sta...

Live Mint September 16, 2019 NEW DELHI  : In its bid to create "NextGen banks", the finance ministry has decided to merge 10 public sector banks into four. The merger of United Bank of India (UBI) and Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC) with Punjab National Bank (PNB) will give birth to India's second largest public sector bank after the State Bank of India (SBI). The PNB merger, which will make the bank bigger than Bank of Baroda (BoB), will come into effect from April 1 next year, according to a recent PTI report. Hit by a $2 billion fraud and money laundering case centering around fugitive diamond merchant Nirav Modi, the merged PNB's deposit market share will jump to 8% as compared to its standalone market share of 5.2% as of March 2019. 10 things to know about PNB merger: 1)  PNB's total business after the merger will increase to  ₹ 17.95 lakh crore. Together, the merged entity will have 11,437 branches. Amongst all public sector banks, PNB will be sm...

The Hindu  Business Line September 14,2019 KS Badri Narayanan  Some Securities Appellate Tribunal orders draw clear boundaries on the jurisdiction and responsibilities of the regulator. The quashing of SEBI’s order against Price Waterhouse in the infamous Satyam Computer Services scam case by the Securities Appellate Tribunal might have left many market participants puzzled. Given the magnitude of the scam, the general belief among market participants was that the tribunal might uphold SEBI’s order that had barred Price Waterhouse from undertaking any fresh audit or issuing any certificate of audit to listed companies. However, the SAT bench of Justice Tarun Agarwala and CKG Nair, in a scathing attack, questioned SEBI’s authority to regulate auditing firms and said that a fraud cannot be proved on the basis of recklessness or negligence in audit. All audit firms in the country are regulated by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. “SEBI has no a...

Business Standard September 15,2019 Pakistan has assured Turkmenistan that rising tensions with India will have no effect on TAPI gas pipeline project, a media report said on Sunday after doubts were raised over the future of the $10 billion trans-national project in the wake of fresh tension between New Delhi and Islamabad over Kashmir. Some Pakistani experts raised doubts about the future of the the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) and other offshore gas pipeline projects following tensions between India and Pakistan after India scrapped Jammu and Kashmir's special status. "However, Pakistan has assured Turkmenistan that rising tensions with India will have no effect on the mega project, a government official was quoted as saying by the Express Tribune. The TAPI pipeline project seeks to build connectivity in the South and Central Asian regions through gas pipelines and will help ease energy shortages in South Asia. ...

Dawn September 15, 2019 Adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance Hafeez Shaikh on Sunday said that the government is expecting to see "more than Rs1,000bn in non-tax revenue" in the coming year. "In the coming year, we are expecting great leaps and bounds when it comes to non-tax revenue: the government's earnings through means other than collecting taxes," said the finance adviser during a press conference in Islamabad. Shaikh then proceeded to provide a break up of how he had arrived at the figure. He said that the government had recently received a big injection: Rs70bn for the renewal of cellular licences from Jazz and Telenor. "We expect to get Rs70bn more from both companies, and expect the equivalent of Rs70bn from Zong as well. So this will amount to Rs200bn." Shaikh said that through Re-Gasified Liquefied Natural Gas (RLNG) plants — whose privatisation is expected by December this year — an income of Rs300bn is expected. "I...

Dawn September 15,2019 Mubarak Zeb Khan ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday reviewed progress on the targets set for the first quarter of the current fiscal year and directed his economic team to evolve a clear timeline for achievement of quarterly economic targets. At the second meeting held with a gap of two weeks at his Banigala residence to assess the health of economy and its direction, the premier was informed that economic policies were giving results citing almost 38 per cent reduction in trade deficit during the first two months of this fiscal year owing to sharp drop in imports. A senior official, who is privy to the meeting, told Dawn that the premier had convened the meeting to assess the overall economic activities especially to see the progress on extending the outreach of social safety nets to real beneficiaries. The prime minister directed the departments concerned to work out a clear and time-based roadmap to examine the achievements of the qua...

Live Mint September 15,2019 Sandipan Deb On 7 September, US President Donald Trump tweeted that he had cancelled meetings planned for the next day with Taliban leaders and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, and “called off peace negotiations" on Afghanistan. The immediate reason he cited was a Taliban attack in Kabul that had killed 12 people, including an American soldier. Later, he said that the talks were “dead". This is good news for Afghanistan, India and the world. The 11-month-long US-Taliban negotiations had deeply disturbing implications right from the start. Trump’s goal was to end an 18-year-long war, the longest the US has ever fought, and get the 14,000 US troops still stationed there back home. The US negotiator was Pashtun-origin diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad. Pakistan, which has financed, armed and provided a safe haven for the Taliban for decades, acted as facilitator to bring the Taliban to the table. The key condition the Islamist group laid down, which t...