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Indian Express Dated 11.09.2020 By Express News Service FORMER HARYANA chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda has expressed outrage over the police’s use of force on farmers who were going to the Kisan rally at Pipli in Kurukshetra on Thursday. Meanwhile, state Congress president Kumari Selja announced protests by Congress members at the district headquarters on September 21 against the three central ordinances on agriculture. Hooda on Thursday said, “In democracy, everyone has the right to raise their voice and go anywhere. I will myself visit Pipli on Friday and will meet farmers, labourers and traders. The farmers are agitating for their legitimate demands. By bringing three anti-farmer ordinances during the  coronavirus   pandemic , the government has forced the farmer to come out on the streets and protest. No ordinance can be in the interest of the farmers unless it guarantees Minimum Support Price (MSP) of crops and there is a discussion in Parliament. If the government w...

The Indian Express Dated 11.09.2020 By George Mathew and Sunny verma The Kamath committee noted that corporate sector debt worth Rs 15.52 lakh crore has come under stress after Covid-19 hit India, while another Rs 22.20 lakh crore was already under stress before the pandemic. A five-member expert committee headed by K V Kamath, former Chairman of ICICI Bank, recently came out with recommendations on the financial parameters required for a one-time loan restructuring window for corporate borrowers under stress due to the  pandemic . It sets the stage for the banking sector’s biggest ever loan restructuring programme.   The Reserve Bank of India set it up last month. While the RBI provided the broad contours of the one-time loan restructuring plan, the committee was tasked to recommend the sector-specific benchmark ranges for financial parameters to be factored into each resolution plan for borrowers with an aggregate exposure of Rs 1,500 crore or above at the time of invoca...

Hindustan Times Dated 10.09.2020 By Prashasti Singh  India is planning to offer incentives worth 1.68 trillion rupees ($23 billion) to attract companies to set up manufacturing in the South Asian nation, people with knowledge of the matter said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government will offer production-linked incentives to automobile manufacturers, solar panel makers, and specialty steel to consumer appliance companies, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg News. Textile units, food processing plants and specialized pharmaceutical product makers are also being considered for the plan. The incentive program, being spearheaded by the country’s policy planning body, uses the template of a scheme implemented earlier this year to draw businesses away from China. About two dozen companies including Samsung Electronics Co., Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., known as Foxconn and Wistron Corp. pledged $1.5 billion of investments to set up mobile-phone factories in the cou...

Hindustan Times Dated 11.09.2020 By Shankhayaneel Sarkar The United States told the UN Security Council on Thursday it would work with allies to hold accountable those responsible for poisoning Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, including “through restricting  funds for  malign activities.” “Russia has used  chemical nerve agents  from the ‘Novichok’ group  in the past.  The Russian people have  a right to express their views  without fear of retribution of any kind,” the deputy US ambassador to the United Nations, Cherith Norman-Chalet, told a council meeting on chemical weapons in Syria. The Kremlin critic is being treated in Berlin’s Charite hospital after falling ill on a Russian domestic flight last month. Germany says he was poisoned with a Soviet-style Novichok nerve agent. Moscow has said it has seen no evidence that Navalny, 44, was poisoned. “We urge Russia to cooperate fully with the international community’s investigation,” Norman-Chalet told the council.   ”Wher...

Hindustan Times Dated 11.09.2020 By The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) have permitted Amazon, Google and Facebook/ WhatsApp to participate in the unified payments interface (UPI) ecosystem without scrutiny and in violation of UPI guidelines and RBI regulations, Member of Parliament (MP) Binoy Viswam said in a petition before the Supreme Court, claiming that this was putting sensitive financial data of Indians at huge risk. Viswam, a Rajya Sabha MP belonging to Communist Party of India (CPI), contended that RBI and NPCI are compromising interests of Indian users by allowing “non-compliant foreign entities” to operate its payment services in India in violation of right to privacy of millions of Indians who use online payment platforms. “Although these entities are based in United States of America and take Indian data abroad, in the absence of any strong scrutiny and responsibility, the data shared on their platform is at very high r...

Hindustan Times Dated 11.09.2020 By Abhinav Sahay The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered two separate cases against two companies for allegedly cheating two public sector banks of several crores of rupees. In the first case, a Mumbai-based private company M/s Spanco Ltd and its directors have been booked by the probe agency on a complaint from the Central Bank of India for causing an alleged loss of Rs 103.27 crore to the bank.   “It was alleged that a fraud was perpetrated in the Central Bank of India, by a Mumbai-based private company and other accused. It was further alleged that the accused entered into a conspiracy with each other and diverted the loan amount to its group company and further transferred to personal accounts of the promoter and his family members. They cheated the Central Bank of India to the tune of Rs 103.27 crore,” said RK Gaur, spokesperson, CBI.   The agency conducted searches at four locations in Mumbai on Thursday, includ...

The Indian Express Dated 11.09.2020 By Deeptiman Tiwary, Krishn Kaushik Indian troops are being deployed in large numbers along the Finger 3 ridgeline on the north bank of Pangong Tso in Ladakh where the PLA build-up has increased significantly in the last 48 hours as the Chinese seek to move further west of Finger 4. The Chinese moves on the north bank — PLA troops have been on the Finger 4 ridgeline ever since May after coming in 8 km west of Finger 8 which India says marks the Line of Actual Control — is seen as an attempt to wrest the advantage after Indian troops occupied dominating heights on the stretch from the south bank of the lake to Rechin La near Rezang La on August 29-30. Sources said the Chinese, who never vacated the Finger 4 ridgeline even after agreeing to total disengagement, massed close to 2,000 soldiers on the upper reaches of the ridge Tuesday night. Observing the Chinese troop movement, India also moved to mirror the deployment, sending almost the same number of...

The Telegraph Dated 11.09.2020 By  There is unlikely to be any good news on the inflation front with prices rising above the Reserve Bank of India’s medium term target in August, a Reuters poll has showed. The poll of nearly 50 economists showed retail inflation to rise 6.85 per cent for the month because of supply disruptions which kept food and fuel prices high. Though this is lower than the 6.93 per cent rise in July, it still means that headline CPI inflation is above the RBI’s target of 2-6 per cent for the fifth straight month. This would disappoint those expecting another round of interest rate cut from the RBI. The central bank has since March brought down the policy repo rate by 115 basis points. However, firm inflation saw the monetary policy committee deciding on a status quo in the August policy. A report from the economic research wing of State Bank of India (SBI) also expects inflation to be well above the 6 per cent mark in August. Attributing the recent surge in ret...

Reuters Dated 11.09.2020 By Reuters staff  NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The foreign ministers of India and China have agreed that troops of the two countries must quickly disengage from a border standoff, they said in a joint statement issued on Friday. Foreign Ministers S. Jaishankar and Wang Yi met in Moscow on Thursday on the sidelines of a conference to try and end the months-long dispute on the undemarcated border, the most serious in decades. “The two Foreign Ministers agreed that the current situation in the border areas is not in the interest of either side. They agreed therefore that the border troops of both sides should continue their dialogue, quickly disengage, maintain proper distance and ease tensions,” they said in the statement. Reference https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-china-statement-idUSKBN26204K

Money Control Dated 09.09.2020 By The Centre on September 9 launched the Aatmanirbhar Bharat ARISE-Atal New India Challenges programme to support MSMEs and start-ups for making India innovative, resilient, tech-driven, and research and development (R&D)-oriented. The Niti Aayog's Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), in collaboration with ISRO and four ministries, will focus on challenges in 15 sectors through the programme. "This support for MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) and start-ups in product development would make India innovative, resilient, tech-driven and R&D-oriented," Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said at the launch of the Aatmanirbhar Bharat ARISE-Atal New India Challenges programme. He added that the programme provides a great opportunity for the government to become the first buyer of indigenous Made in India technology solutions. Also, speaking at the event, Niti Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar said this is a red-letter day for the country, as t...