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THE INDIAN EXPRESS February 17, 2020 A day after Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Shaktikanta Das sought to allay fears of the Budget proposal on fiscal slippage causing a spike in inflationary pressure, finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman reiterated on Sunday that the Budget 2020-21 has nOt violated the fiscal discipline. Addressing a gathering of industry representatives here, she said, “We have not really breached the FRBM. We have not gone outlandish on it. We have kept fiscal discipline, which is a USP for both the Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Narendra Modi governments.” Speaking to reporters, alongside Sitharaman, after a meeting of the RBI board in New Delhi on Saturday, Das too had said the government had largely remained within the deficit road map set by the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act. Acknowledging that the FM hadn’t really succumbed to the temptation to launch a fiscal stimulus to pump-prime the economy, former RBI gove...

THE TELEGRAPH February 17, 2020 State-owned Oil India is likely to move the TDSAT this week against the telecom department seeking about Rs 48,500 crore in past dues on the surplus bandwidth capacity it had leased to third parties, its chairman and managing director Sushil Chandra Mishra has said. Other non-telecom firms, which have also been slapped with similar demands, too are likely to move the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT). Those likely to go to the TDSAT include gas utility GAIL India Ltd, from whom Rs 1.83 lakh crore has been sought, PowerGrid Corp that has been slapped with Rs 21,953.65-crore liability and Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilisers & Chemicals Ltd, which faces a payout of Rs 15,019.97 crore. After the Supreme Court ruling of October 24 that non-telecom revenues should be included for considering payments of government dues by firms holding any sort of telecom licence, the department of telecommunicatio...

THE ECONOMIC TIMES February 17, 2020 Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea have assessed their adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues at about half the amount that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has demanded, likely setting the stage for another dispute between the companies and the government, said people with knowledge of the matter.  Initial calculations at Bharti Airtel peg the dues at Rs 15,000-18,000 crore, instead of more than Rs 35,500 crore estimated by DoT. Vodafone Idea’s initial computation puts it at Rs 18,000-23,000 crore against DoT’s Rs 53,000 crore estimate. Cash-strapped Vodafone Idea is likely to pay only a part of the amount in the next few days, said one of the persons. The company had in a statement on Saturday once again warned of the continuing threat to its viability in the absence of judicial relief.  “The reason for the difference in estimates is because even by calculating their AGR according to the Supreme Court verdict of Octobe...

THE ECONOMIC TIMES February 16, 2020 India and Russia have finalized the broad contours of an ambitious government-to-government agreement for long-term import of crude oil by India from Russia's Far East region. The pact is likely to be inked during Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit in October for the annual summit talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, diplomatic sources told PTI. The pact is set to help the two countries achieve their target of taking the volume of annual bilateral trade to USD 25 billion from current USD 11 billion. When asked about it, Russian Deputy Chief of Mission Roman Babushkin told PTI that both India and Russia are adopting a "multi-dimensional" approach in boosting cooperation in oil and gas sector in sync with decisions taken by Putin and Modi in their last annual summit in Vladivostok in September. "We have signed an important contract few days back for supply of two million tones of oil to India...

DECCAN HERALD February 16, 2020       Karnataka, which is fighting a decade-long legal battle with Kerala over the ban on night traffic passing through the Bandipur Tiger Reserve, is also facing a year-old challenge.  God’s Own Country has been illegally dumping its hazardous biomedical waste and animal waste in Karnataka, jeopardizing the lives of locals and polluting the environment in Kodagu, Mysuru and Chamarajanagar districts. In a recent incident, Nanjangud police nabbed two residents of Malappuram who were dumping biomedical waste on the outskirts of the temple town. This has set alarm bells ringing on what has been unleashed clandestinely for over a year. This illegal dumping started on a small note a couple of years ago with vehicles from Kerala shrugging off a few sacks of toxic waste in the Gundlupet and Virajpet forest areas. This has systematically grown to the exten...