India on Thursday put into orbit its own Hyper Spectral Imaging Satellite (HysIS) — an earth observation satellite — and 30 other foreign satellites in text-book style.
In the process, India has crossed the milestone of lifting and putting into orbit over 250 foreign satellites. India has till date has put into orbit 269 foreign satellites.

The notable aspect of the rocket mission is the placing of the satellites in two different orbits — one at a higher altitude and the others in a lower altitude.

After the successful launch, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman K. Sivan said: “Once again Indian space scientists showed their excellence. The PSLV injected the HysIS first and later the 30 foreign customers satellites.

“The HysIS is a state-of-the-art satellite. The heart of the satellite, the optical imaging chip was designed and fabricated by ISRO.

Sivan also said that the next launch will be of communication satellite GSAT-11 from French Guiana on December 5 which will followed by GSAT-7A by the Indian rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) from here.

At 9.58 a.m., the four staged/engine PSLV-CA rocket, standing 44.4 metres tall and weighing about 230 tonnes, blasted off from the first launch pad.

With the fierce orange flame at its tail, the rocket slowly gained speed and went up enthralling the people at the rocket port while the rocket’s engine noise like a rolling thunder adding to the thrill.

More thrilling aspect came in when rocket’s fourth stage/engine was cut/switched off in just over 16 minutes after the lift off.

A minute later, the Indian satellite HysIS with a mission life of five years was placed in 636 km polar sun synchronous orbit.

Following that the rocket was brought to a lower altitude of 503 km.

Post HysIS ejection, the rocket’s fourth stage was restarted at 59.65 minutes after the lift off.

The primary goal of HysIS is to study the earth’s surface in visible, near infrared and shortwave infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. It will also be used for strategic purposes.

The co-passengers of HysIS include one micro and 29 nano satellites from eight different countries.

Later, the rocket was switched off and on twice before the final foreign passenger was put into orbit about 112.79 minutes after the rocket’s lift off.

All the foreign satellites were placed in a 504 km orbit.

While 23 satellites are from the US, the rest are from Australia, Canada, Columbia, Finland, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Spain.

These satellites have been commercially contracted for launch through Antrix Corporation Limited, the commercial arm of ISRO.

ISRO had earlier carried out a satellite mission spread over two hours in January.

IANS

A forum of researchers, architects, urban planners and lawyers on Tuesday emphasised on the importance of bringing necessary changes in India’s legislative framework to aid sustainable urbanisation and develop smart cities in the country.

The legal experts, gathered at a conference here on sustainable urban development, organised by the Heidelberg University of Germany, and Observer Research Foundation, Delhi, said changes in the law are “absolutely necessary” to make the Union government’s Smart Cities Mission effective and successful.

“The Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) Act in the country has many loopholes in questions of accountability factors which need to be fixed. The act lacks democratic character of our Constitution. Also, it lacks the mechanism for grievance redress system,” Uday Shankar of IIT-Kharagpur said during his adress on the first day of the two-day conference.

The professor, who did a comparative study of the Special Purpose Vehicle Act and the Jharkhand’s Municipal City Act of 2011, felt the municipal act should be better framed to deal with issues of urbanisation than the SPV Act of Smart Cities Mission.

Lawyers Subhadip Biswas and Ranajit Roy said there is a need for a new set of laws to take care of the post-construction period. They said laws should be framed in accordance with Article 13 of the Indian Constitution.

“Respective laws concerning issues regarding smart cities needed to be amended in accordance with the Article 13 to make implementation of smart city policies in accordance with the Smart Cities Mission,” the lawyers said.

The two day conference was co-organised by IIT Kharagpur, Impact and Policy Research Institute (IMPRI), Delhi, University of Calcutta and IGCC with support from Friedrich Naumann Stiftung.

Talking about the issues of mobility in smart cities, ORF Kolkata Director Ashok Dhar said the government should stop thinking about holistic mobility development and focus on local-level comprehensive mobility planning.

He also said lack of clarity among the policy-makers and the ministers would affect investment in the country, especially in the automobile and petroleum sectors and felt “excessive dependence on Electric Vehicles will only replace our dependence from oil to lithium, which also needs to be imported and whose prices are escalating rapidly.”

IANS

 Barely 72 hours after the Centre announced a pre-election bonanza of distributing a staggering 55,649 new petrol pumps in the country, the apex body of their dealers plan to challenge the move in court, a top office-bearer said here on Wednesday.

The All India Petrol Dealers Association (AIPDA) President Ajay Bansal said that the government’s latest move (of November 25) appeared contrary to its own policy and the dealers would question its legal validity.

“On one hand, the Centre has announced the closure of petrol pumps in India replacing them with alternative fuels by 2025. But, now they are publishing advertisements for allotting the second string of new petrol pumps. So what exactly is this policy?” Bansal said.

Presently, India has 56,000 retail petrol bunks of the three government oil marketing companies — Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL), and Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL), besides another 6,000 outlets owned by private companies.

From these fuel stations, the average monthly sales for the three Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) are between 120-130 lilolitre with an average increase in demand on petrol-diesel of around four per cent per annum.

 The benchmark S&P BSE Sensex advanced close to 300 points during the afternoon trade session on Wednesday, extending its third straight session of gains led by strong gains in the IT stocks.

In addition, the markets also took cues from an appreciating rupee and retreating foreign fund inflow as India’s macro-economic conditions improved largely owing to declining crude oil prices.

However, the Brent Crude prices logged a slight increase which comes ahead of the OPEC meeting next week. The benchmark crude price traded at $61 a barrel.

The local currency strengthened to Rs 70.66 against a US dollar from its previous close of 70.76.

IT stocks led the gains on Sensex as it rose over 3 per cent, followed by Teck (technology, entertainment and media).

In contrast, healthcare, oil and gas stocks witnessed selling pressure.

At 12.53 p.m., the Sensex traded 290.40 points higher at 35,803.54 from its previous close of 35,513.14. The benchmark index touched a high of 35,822.16 and a low of 35,605.34 while the NSE’s Nifty50 traded 66.30 points higher at 10,751.90.

On Tuesday, provisional data with the exchanges showed that foreign institutional investors bought stocks worth Rs 811.52 crore.

IANS

Bureaucrat Ranbir Singh has been appointed as the new Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Delhi, officials said Tuesday.

Singh, a 1991-batch IAS officer, succeeds Vijay Kumar Dev.

“Ranbir Singh, who earlier also served as the commissioner of the East Delhi Municipal Corporation, has been appointed the new CEO for Delhi,” a senior official of the Delhi CEO office said.

The Ministry of Home Affairs had last Thursday issued the order appointing the 1987-batch IAS officer of the AGMUT (Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram and Union Territory) cadre.

Dev will succeed Anshu Prakash following his transfer to the department of telecommunications in the central government.

PTI

 The government will pump Rs 42,000 crore into debt-laden public sector banks in the remainder of the current financial year to March to improve their financial health, a senior Finance Ministry official said on Monday.

“We will infuse the next tranche of recapitalisation in public sector banks by mid-December. About Rs 42,000 crore remains to be infused as capital in the banks in the current financial year,” the official said.

The Rs 42,000 crore capital infusion is part of the Rs 2.11 lakh crore, two-year, front-loaded bank recapitalisation plan announced by the government in October 2017 to support credit growth.

While recapitalisation of banks will be based on regulatory capital requirement and also on the need to fuel growth, large banks like State Bank of India (SBI) and PNB are less likely to get any additional infusion this fiscal year to March.

The government is going ahead with the remaining capital infusion plan despite the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) extending the deadline for meeting the Basel III norms by a year.

On November 19, keeping the capital adequacy ratio for banks unchanged at 9 per cent, the RBI extended the deadline to meet Basel III norms from March 2019 to March 2020 in order to increase the current lending capacity of banks.

Further, the official said four to five public sector banks, whose NPAs have gone down and current account-savings account ratios (CASA) have improved, may come out of the RBI’s prompt corrective action (PCA) framework.

Currently, 11 banks with high bad debts are under the PCA framework that prohibit them from further lending. On the insistence of the central government, the RBI’s Board for Financial Supervision is expected to meet soon on the issue.

The government’s Rs 2.11 lakh crore recapitalisation was to be funded through sale of bonds worth Rs 1.35 lakh crore, budgetary provisions of Rs 18,139 crore and Rs 58,000 crore from the market by diluting the government’s equity share.

Of the Rs 1.35 lakh crore, the government has already recapitalised banks with Rs 82,000 crore. In July, it infused Rs 11,336 crore in five banks – Punjab National Bank, Allahabad Bank, Andhra Bank, Indian Overseas Bank and Corporation Bank.

IANS

Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar says his upcoming film ‘2.0’ attempts to convey a global message on climate change.

“There is a moment in the story that emphasizes the other living creatures on planet earth. It says that the planet not only belongs to the human race but also to animals and birds,” said the ‘Padman’ actor during a media interaction on Monday.

“Though animals and plants cannot raise their voice against human beings, they have the right to live. So do not spoil the mother nature,” he said.

The film is a sequel of ‘Enthirana’ released in 2010 and written and directed by S Shankar. It featured Rajnikanth and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.

Akshay is working with Shankar for the first time. “We used to speak in Marathi on the sets and we used to enjoy that. Shankar is a brilliant director to work with and he is a very humble man. It was so interesting to see how he would add a quirk of entertainment in any or every dialogue of our daily conversation.”

“He is a very professional person. He narrated me the whole story, the screenplay and I knew each character of the film from the beginning. I was impressed by the concept and wondered why nobody has explored the subject so far,” said Akshay

The film that reportedly had a budget of Rs 543 crore is considered the most expensive film of India made in 3D.

The actor urges the audience to watch the film in 3D at the theatre.

“This film is not converted into a 3D film after shooting, but originally shot in 3D format and therefore the whole experience was different for us. It will be a unique experience for the audience as well,” said the actor.

The trailer of the film was released on November 3.

Asked if the extensive use of technology would overpower the core story of the film, Akshay said, “I do not think so. I would rather say that the use of technology has enhanced the narration. The global message of the film comes across crystal clear.”

‘2.0’ is releasing on November 29.

IANS

 SBI General Insurance Company Ltd aims to be among the top five non-life insurers by investing in technology and launching new products, and seeks to go public through an initial share sale in 2020, a senior official said on Monday.

The company plans to boost the number of agents and other distribution channels, and focus on health insurance policies.

“We are investing in digital technology and looking at digital strategy. Now there are insurers that are purely into digital technology. The investment is part of our overall budget for information technology,” Lisa Jeffery, Deputy CEO, told reporters.

At a time when the industry is registering a 12 per cent growth, SBI General Insurance is clocking about 30 per cent business growth.

“We hope to log about 35 per cent growth in our gross domestic premium income (GDPI). During the first half of the current fiscal, the GDPI growth was about 30 per cent at Rs 2,067 crore and the net profit was at Rs 270 crore,” Jeffery added.

She said SBI General Insurance was one of the few players to have posted an underwriting profit, or premium income minus claims.

According to Jeffery, the company got 3,289 claims due to Kerala floods for a value of about Rs 168 crore, towards which Rs 64 crore has been paid out.

She said the company officials contacted the policyholders (insured) and told them about the insurance protection and claims procedure.

With respect to cyclone Gaja that devastated several districts in Tamil Nadu, the company has received 128 claims.

The fire premium rates continue to go down with the entry of purely online/digital insurers without the traditional set-up.

To a question, Jeffery said that IAG International was not planning to increase its stake in the company from the current 26 per cent to the maximum permissible 49 per cent.

The non-life insurer is a joint venture between State Bank of India (SBI) and IAG International.

In September, SBI sold a four per cent stake in SBI General at Rs 482 crore to Axis New Opportunities Fund (1.65 per cent) and Premji Invest (2.35 per cent), valuing the company at about Rs 12,000 crore.

After the deal, SBI holds a 70 per cent stake in SBI General Insurance.

IANS

The Reserve Bank has ‘more than adequate’ reserves and that it can transfer over Rs 1 trillion to the government after a specially constituted panel identifies the ‘excess capital’, says a report.

An RBI board meeting had last Monday decided to form a committee, which is likely to be announced later this week.

“We expect the proposed committee on the RBI’s economic capital framework (ECF) to identify Rs 1-3 trillion which is 0.5-1.6 per cent of GDP as excess capital,” analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a note Monday.

The brokerage report said as per its stress tests, the central bank can transfer Rs 1 trillion to the government if the transfer is limited to passing excess contingency reserve and can go up to Rs 3 trillion if the total capital is included.

Giving a break-up, the report said Rs 1.05 trillion can be transferred if the contingency reserve is capped at 3.5 percent of the RBI book. It further said this level will be 75 percent higher than the average of BRICS economies, excluding India.

Additional forms of transfers can include Rs 1.16 trillion from the contingency reserves if one restricts to yield rise of 4.5 percent as against 9 percent at present.

Limiting the appreciation cover in RBI’s currency and gold revaluation account to 25 percent (Rs 53.25 per US Dollar) will release about Rs 72,000 crore to the government, it said.

It also said capping the overall reserves at 20 percent of the RBI’s book as against 28.3 percent now and higher than 18 percent recommended by the Usha Thorat panel will be able to release Rs 3.11 trillion.

The statutes do not prohibit transfer of excess capital to the government, it said, pointing out that the RBI Act places no bar as long as government maintains Rs 5 crore of reserve funds under Sec 46 of the RBI Act.

While Section 47 enjoins the RBI to credit its annual surplus to the national exchequer, after provisions, it does not place any restrictions on further transfers, it added.

The RBI’s contingency reserves at 7 percent are higher than the BRICS (excluding India) average of 2 percent, it said, adding the revaluation reserves are also on the higher side relative to BRICS central banks.

As per a press statement after the nine-hour marathon board meeting, the government and RBI will be jointly deciding on the panel constitution and also its terms of reference.

Following widespread criticism from many quarters, finance minister Arun Jaitley had said over the weekend that government did not need any support from the RBI’s reserves for the next six months.

However, multiple reports had claimed that the government is eyeing the extra cash which will help it in the run-up to the elections.

This comes amidst falling GST collections and little borrowing window left for the government, as it has already used up close to 96 per cent of borrowings as of end October.

By taking the money from the RBI, the government will only increase its fiscal deficit, as it will have to issue bonds to the central bank.

The government for the second year in a row has pegged fiscal deficit at 3.3 per cent of GDP this fiscal year.

Many analysts are expecting government to overshoot this by at least 20-30 bps by March.

PTI