Nasheman NewsTwitter India on Friday launched the second phase of its initiative #PowerOf18, that aims at encouraging the youth to contribute to the public debate and participate in civic engagement, on the occasion of ninth National Voters Day.

National Voters Day was started by the government in 2011 to encourage the young to vote.

The campaign roped in gold medalist boxer Nikhat Zareen to share her journey and message to the youth in an exclusive video on Twitter. 

In her message, Zareen noted that the youth of the country needs to understand the power of their votes, exercise it and be the change that #PowerOf18 can bring in for the country.

“As we move closer to the upcoming Lok Sabha election, Twitter is committed to providing a healthy platform to the youth that fosters civic conversation and democratic debate,” said Mahima Kaul, Head of Public Policy, Twitter India, in a statement. 

“Keeping this objective as core, we are excited to have launched into our second phase for #PowerOf18 today and are looking forward to ignite, enable and empower discussions amongst the youth, who are voters of today and the leaders of tomorrow,” Kaul added.

Twitter will also curate an exclusive digital panel around the theme of #PowerOf18 at the Jaipur Literature Festival 2019 on Friday.

Through the panel discussion, Twitter is aiming to bring together young, dynamic Indians for the world of literature to discuss the transformative power of civic action and the importance of making voice heard on its platform, and beyond, the statement said. 

Nasheman News :  Positive global markets and a strengthening rupee, with its third straight session of gains, aided the key equity indices to trade on a firm note on Friday afternoon.

The Sensex was up over 160 points and the Nifty was trading after noon just short of the 10,900 point mark.

The rupee opened at Rs 70.98 from its previous close of 71.07. It was, however, flat at 1.25 p.m.

All the sectors on the BSE traded in the green except realty, basic materials and consumer discretionary goods and services.

At 1.22 p.m., the S&P BSE Sensex traded 167.79 points up or 0.46 per cent at 36,362.89 after it opened higher.

It touched an intra-day high of 36,474.48 and a low of 36,216.41.

The broader Nifty advanced 41.30 points or 0.38 per cent at 10,891.10. 

However, US-China trade tensions seemed to resurface after reports suggest that US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Washington was “miles and miles” from a trade deal with Beijing.

Financial markets across the globe have been struggling owing to the trade tensions between the world’s largest economies. This was cited as one of the reasons by the International Monetary Fund while revising the global economic growth forecast. 

Stock-wise, the top gainer was Yes Bank, up 6.78 per cent after the appointment of a much-awaited new MD-cum-CEO.

Other top gainers were Bharti Airtel, HCL Tech, Sun Phrama and Axis Bank.

In contrast, Hero MotoCorp, ICICI Bank, Asian Paints, Infosys and Tata Steel were the only losers among the 30 stocks on Sensex. 

Nasheman News : As Facebook turns 15 next month, its Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has once again defended the social media giant, saying the company is not selling its users’ data to anyone.

“We don’t sell people’s data, even though it’s often reported that we do,” he wrote in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

“Clickbait and other junk may drive engagement in the near term, but it would be foolish for us to show this intentionally, because it’s not what people want,” he added.

The 1,000-word defence came after Facebook faced intense scrutiny over how it handled data of over two billion users amid several data scandals in recent years.

“Based on what pages people like, what they click on, and other signals, we create categories and then charge advertisers to show ads in that category,” he said.

“You have control over what information we use to show you ads, and you can block any advertiser from reaching you,” the Facebook CEO added.

In December, the social media giant said it never allowed its partners to access users’ private messages without their permission, after a New York Times report claimed that Facebook allowed large technology companies and popular apps like Netflix or Spotify to access its users’ personal information.

Zuckerberg said people “consistently tell us they don’t want to see this content”.

“Advertisers don’t want their brands anywhere near it. The only reason bad content remains is because the people and artificial-intelligence systems we use to review it are not perfect — and not because we have an incentive to ignore it. Our systems are still evolving and improving,” he added.

On collecting personal data, the CEO said: “There’s no question that we collect some information for ads but that information is generally important for security and operating our services as well.”

Facebook had said it never gave large tech companies access to people’s data without their permission as its integration partners “had to get authorisation from people”.

 Nasheman News : In a significant development, the CBI on Thursday lodged an FIR against former ICICI Bank chief Chanda Kochhar, her husband Deepak Kochhar and industrialist V.N. Dhoot besides four companies, and raided four locations in Maharashtra in connection with a Rs 3,250-crore loan involving the Videocon Group and the ICICI Bank, informed sources said here.

The raids were conducted after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registered an FIR on Tuesday naming former ICICI Bank MD and CEO Chanda Kochhar, her husband and NuPower Renewables Pvt Ltd MD Deepak Kochhar, and Videocon Group MD Dhoot, and others in the case dating back to 2009-2012.

Interestingly, Chanda Kochhar’s role in the alleged irregularities committed has been highlighted in the CBI’s FIR ever since she assumed charge as the ICICI Bank MD and CEO on May 1, 2009.

Besides, four companies have also been named in the CBI FIR: NuPower Renewables Pvt Ltd (NRL), Supreme Energy Pvt Ltd (SEPL), Videocon International Electronics Ltd (VIEL) and Videocon Industries Ltd (VIL).

According to the FIR, they have been booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and Prevention of Corruption Act as the accused allegedly “sanctioned loans to private companies in a criminal conspiracy with other accused to cheat ICICI Bank”.

The FIR comes in the wake of a preliminary enquiry (PE) instituted on March 31, 2018, against Deepak Kochhar, Videocon Group officials and others to determine whether any wrongdoing was involved in the sanctioning of loan by the ICICI Bank as part of a consortium, a senior CBI official said.

The raids were carried out simultaneously at the offices of the four companies in south Mumbai and one location belonging to Videocon in Aurangabad.

The Bureau initiated the PE after news reports raised questions about Videocon’s Dhoot allegedly providing crores to a firm promoted by Deepak Kochhar and a few relatives six months after the former’s Group received the Rs 3,250-crore loan.

The CBI probe said that a complaint was received regarding the Rs 3,250-crore loan to five of Dhoot’s companies by the ICICI Bank violating banking norms and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines.

As part of a quid pro quo, Dhoot invested Rs 64 crore in NRL and SEPL and also transferred SEPL to Deepak Kochhar’s Pinnacle Energy Trust through a circuitous route between 2010 and 2012.

Between June 2009 and October 2011, the ICICI Bank also sanctioned six high-value loans to different Videocon Group companies and on August 28, 2009, Rs 300 crore was sanctioned to VIEL in contravention of various rules, with Chanda Kochhar being part of the loan sanctioning committee.

She has been charged with criminal conspiracy to cheat the ICICI Bank, abusing her position. The loan was disbursed to VIEL on September 7.

The very next day, on September 8, 2009, through SEPL, VIEL transferred Rs 64 crore to Deepak Kochhar’s NRL by which it (NRL) acquired its first power plant.

“Thus, Chanda Kochhar got illegal gratification through her husband from VIL and Dhoot, for sanctioning Rs 300 crore to VIEL,” the CBI complaint said.

The CBI has also detailed the manipulations how the NRL and SEPL’s control was handed over to Deepak Kochhar, where the subsequent alleged frauds were committed.

In violation of several norms, the ICICI Bank also sanctioned various loans to Videocon Group companies which was utilised by them to repay their unsecured loans taken from VIL, while VIL took a loan to refinance its existing loans.

The loan sanction committees had ICICI Bank’s senior officials like Sandeep Bakshi, K. Ramkumar, Sonjoy Chatterjee, N.S. Kannan, Zarin Daruwala, Rajiv Sabharwal, K.V. Kamath and Homi Khusrokhan.

“These loans have turned NPAs resulting in wrongful losses to the ICICI Bank, and wrongful gains to the borrower/ accused persons. The role of these senior officials of the sanctioning committees may also be investigated,” said the CBI FIR.

It added that the ICICI Bank had released the security of Rs 50 crore in the form of FDR available for two of the borrowing (Dhoot) companies “without any justification”.

After Chanda Kochhar took charge at the bank’s helm, the credit limits and loans were sanctioned to Videocon Group companies, with her as part of the sanctioning committees.

Following the controversy over the alleged “conflict of interests” and “non-disclosure” in the loans sanctioned by the ICICI Bank, Chanda Kochhar, 56, quit her post seeking premature retirement on October 4, 2018.

Nasheman News : The government along with the RBI are soon expected to work out some relaxations in the central bank’s Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) framework for banks struggling with huge accumulated non-performing assets (NPAs or bad loans), a senior official said on Monday.

Currently, 11 banks with high bad debts are under the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) PCA framework that prohibits them from further lending and the official said that the relaxation will be available only to those lenders that have shown substantial improvement in dealing with bad loans. 

With the aid of the relaxations, some of the banks with improved performance may be able to exit the PCA framework as early as next month, he added. 

The official pointed to the recapitalisation undertaken last month of state-run banks, ten of whom are under the PCA framework and said some banks have shown improvement both on recoveries as well as on de-risking their portfolios. 

The government last month obtained parliamentary sanction for issuing additional recapitalisation bonds of Rs 41,000 crore.

Tabling the supplementary demand for grants in this regard in the Lok Sabha last month, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the government will infuse Rs 83,000 crore in public sector banks (PSBs) in the remaining part of the fiscal taking the total recapitalisation of banks during the year to Rs 1.06 lakh crore.

Following this, Jaitley had told reporters here that he expected a few PSBs to exit the PCA framework. 

“Providing capital to better performing PCA banks to achieve 9 per cent capital to risk weighted asset ratio; 1.875 per cent Capital Conservation Buffer and the six per cent net NPA threshold, facilitating them to come out of PCA,” Jaitley said. 

Financial Services Secretary Rajeev Kumar told reporters here last month that the capital infusion will help at least four banks meet their regulatory capital norms. 

“We have made provisions to give capital to 4-5 banks depending on performance and on the Q2 and Q3 results. The figures will be decided later but there are chances that we equip at least 3 to 5 banks to meet the norms,” he said.

“The NPAs recognition is complete, recapitalisation is in full swing, it has been enhanced further, recovery is also in full swing, the last H1 (April-September 2018) recovery is to the tune of Rs 60,726 crore,” he had added.

Addressing an investors roundtable at the Vibrant Gujarat Summit in Gandhinagar last week, new RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said that after reaching a peak of 11.5 per cent in March 2018, the gross NPAs ratio of Banks improved to 10.8 per cent in September 2018. 

“As per the current assessment of the Reserve Bank, the ratio may further improve to 10.3 per cent by March 2019,” he added.

Nasheman News : Amid reports of en masse issue of prosecution notices to small companies, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on Monday clarified that there had been no mass harassment by the Income Tax Department as it had filed only 1,400 prosecutions during the current fiscal for various offences under the Income Tax Act.

It said the Mumbai Income Tax TDS (Tax Deduction at Source) office had issued prosecution show-cause notices only in a limited number of big cases where over Rs 5 lakh of tax was collected as TDS from employees and the same was not deposited with the Income Tax Department in time.

The remarks came after Congress leader and former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram alleged that department’s “overzealousness” to prosecute taxpayers for failure to deposit TDS amounted to “tax terrorism”.

The CBDT said that some defaulter companies and vested interests were deliberately misleading the media to thwart action against themselves.

“Having deducted tax from employees and other taxpayers and not depositing the same in time in the government treasury is an offence punishable under the law. It also affects the interest of the employees from whose salary the tax has been deducted by the unscrupulous employers,” it said.

It added that in the last one month, only in 50 big cases prosecution notices had been issued, out of which, in 80 per cent of the cases the TDS tax default was above Rs 10 lakh and in 10 per cent cases, it was between Rs 5 and Rs 10 lakh. 

“In the remaining 10 per cent cases, TDS default is of more than Rs 1 crore… Prosecutions have also recently been launched against four big business houses where more than Rs 50 crore of tax was collected by them from the taxpayers and yet not deposited with the government in time,” it said.

The CBDT said that such “legal and rightful action” was being projected by the vested interests as if the department was going overboard to harass small employers. 

“It would be pertinent to note that in a country of 130 crore people where around six crore returns are filed every year, only a total of 1,400 prosecutions have been filed so far for various offences under the Income Tax Act during this financial year. 

“This, by any stretch of imagination, cannot be termed as mass harassment by the Income Tax Department. Therefore, to say that prosecution notices en masse have been sent to taxpayers for minor defaults is completely incorrect and misleading,” the CBDT added.

Nasheman News :  Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who is in the US for a medical check up, will return home on Friday, well ahead of the Budget presentation on February 1, official sources said.

“The Finance Minister is set to return on the evening of January 25,” said a senior official. “The interim budget will be presented by him for sure,” he said. He added that the process for printing of Budget documents began on Monday. 

Jaitley, 66, left for the US on January 13 for what was believed to be a medical check-up relating to his kidney ailment. He had undergone a renal transplant surgery in May 2018.

However, there has been wide speculation that he may not be able to return early to present the interim budget, which will be his last before the general elections this year.

Jaitley had recently hinted that it may not be a simple interim budget or vote on account, which is generally the tradition in an election year. The full budget is presented by the new government after the elections.

“Ordinarily, there should be no reason why we should move away from that convention but there is a larger interest of the economy that always dictate what goes into that interim budget,” he said on Thursday.

Informed sources said that the government may roll out schemes to help increase farmers’ income, reduce farm input costs and raise credit flow to farmers. 

Ministers of State for Finance Pon Radhakrishnan and Shiv Pratap Shukla on Monday held the annual pre-budget ritual, Halwa Ceremony, to mark the beginning of printing of Budget documents in the North Block, the seat of Ministry of Finance.

NEW DELHI: Several positive and negative examples are being made to secure the Indian economy. According to a study conducted by the International Human Rights Group Oxfam, the wealth of Indian billionaires last year was Rs 2,200 crore. Is over.

The country’s wealthiest wealth grew by 39% last year; But the bottom 50% of the population below the country has seen a mere 3% increase. The Oxfam Study Report is today revealed on Monday.

World billionaire wealth globally is 12 percent higher than last year. That means their fortune is over $ 2.5 billion daily. 

At the same time, the poorest wealth of the world’s population has fallen by 11 percent. 

The Oxfam Report, an international human rights group released before the annual meeting of the five-day World Economic Forum (WEF) in Switzerland’s ski resort town, has pointed out that the economic gap between rich and poor in the world is rising concerns. 

India’s total population The poorest Indians in the 10th, 13.6 crore, have been warned that they have fallen into debt since 2004.

Agencies

NashemanNews : Nepal’s central bank has announced the ban of Indian currency notes with denominations above Rs 100.

The Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) on Sunday issued a circular for the institutions licensed by it notifying them about the ban, reports Xinhua news agency. 

Nepal’s cabinet in December had decided to ban the use of these currency notes. 

The decision to ban these notes has come a time when the NRB has requested the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) arequesting the latter to allow Nepal to use currency notes with all denominations.

Currently, only the notes with a denomination of Rs 100 and below are freely exchangeable in Nepal.

Nasheman News : In an effort to accelerate indigenous production of defence systems, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday inaugurated a Tamil Nadu Defence Industrial Corridor here that is expected to attract Rs 3,123.50 crore worth of investment.

Inaugurating the corridor, Sitharaman said the Centre had decided to have two corridors – in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu – despite the demands from states like Karnataka and Maharashtra.

Tiruchirappalli is about 350 km from Chennai.

The Minister also spoke about the Defence Ministry’s initiatives to ensure that the Indian industry engages with the country’s armed forces to co-create best defence technologies.

According to Sitharaman, the development of these specialised corridors will facilitate a well planned and efficient industrial base.

Several public and private sector organisations announced investment projects worth about Rs 3,100 crore, said the Defence Ministry.

Major players like Lockheed Martin, LMW and others announced their plans to set up units in the corridor.

The Ordinance Factory Board (OFB) announced its plans to invest about Rs 2,305 crore in Tamil Nadu.

The companies that have announced their investments are: BEL (Rs 140.50 crore), BEML (Rs 40 crore), BDL (Rs 150 crore), MDL (Rs 15 crore), TVS (Rs 30 crore), Data Patterns (Rs 75 crore), Alpha Designs (Rs 100 crore), AIDAT (Rs 163 crore) and Aerospace Engineers (Rs 105 crore).

Speaking at the event, Vivek Lall, Vice President, Aeronautics Strategy and Business Development at Lockheed Martin, said the company has identified seven companies as potential manufacturers of components for future F-16 aircraft.

Sitharaman also launched CODISSIA Defence Innovation and Incubation Centre in Coimbatore through video conference.

Recently, a defence industrial corridor in Aligarh was launched.

Later speaking to reporters, Sitharaman said the opposition parties did not hear the government’s responses to the allegations made about the Rafale deal.

She said the opposition parties were flying paper planes, taking photos and shouting when Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was speaking and wondered how the Congress can say that the government’s answers were not satisfactory.