Revenue collection under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) crossed the Rs 95,000 crore mark in July for the second month in a row and stood at Rs 96,483 crore, the government said on Wednesday.

The government said the revenue was broadly on expected lines and that Rs 3,899 crore was released to the states as GST compensation for the months of April and May.

The GST revenue collected till July 31 was for the month of June and it was significantly higher than the average monthly collection of Rs 89,885 crore during 2017-18. It was also higher than Rs 95,610 crore collected in June (for the month of May).

The government said in a statement that out of the total GST collection, Rs 15,877 crore was collected as Central-GST (CGST), Rs 22,293 crore as state-GST (SGST), and Rs 49,951 crore as integrated-GST (IGST) which included Rs 24,852 crore collected on imports. Additionally, Rs 8,362 crore was collected as cess.

The total number of GST returns filed till July 31 was 66 lakh compared to 64.69 lakh returns filed in the previous month, it added.

The construction of the 103-km long Kolhapur-Vaibhavwadi link on Konkan Railway in Maharashtra, providing the first connection from the state’s hinterland to the coastal regions, will start soon, an official said on Wednesday.

The railway link would also boost the proposed Nanar refinery complex in Ratnagiri.

The decision on this project, estimated to cost around Rs 3,000 crore, was taken at a review meeting of Koknkan Railway Corporation (KRC) chaired by Union Minister for Industry and Civil Aviation Suresh Prabhu in Delhi on Tuesday. Among those present were the Chairman of Railway Board, the Chairman and Managing Director of KRC, and other officials.

The Minister said that the construction of this section would be a game-changer not only for the KRC, but also for the coastal Konkan and the state’s economy.

It will link the coastal region of Maharashtra with western Maharashtra, boost tourism, lead to development of ports and harbours, including the Jaigarh and Dighi ports and allow flow of goods from the hinterland to the coast.

Additionally, it will facilitate the movement of petroleum from the proposed world’s largest integrated refinery-cum-petrochemicals complexes coming up at Nanar, near Vaibhavwadi in Ratnagiri district, he added.

The $40 billion mega-refinery complex, scheduled for commissioning by 2022, is being built by the Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL).

The refinery complex will have a capacity to process 60 million tonnes per annum and the Kolhapur-Vaibhavwadi rail link will facilitate movement of petroleum and petrochemicals from the refinery to the interiors.

However, currently it is mired in a huge controversy with major political parties including ruling ally Shiv Sena and the opposition Congress, Nationalist Congress Party, local villagers, environmentalists and others strongly opposing the project and the $16 billion Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project also planned in the same district.

Prabhu explained that the future economic growth of Maharashtra hinges on the connectivity of its coastal areas — separated by the tall hills in the Western Ghats — with the rest of the state and the country.

KRC CMD Sanjay Gupta told the minister that in order to improve services of the Konkan Railway (KR) network to cover more villages and towns, 10 new stations are also being constructed en route, with the first slated for inauguration in January 2019.

The Indian Railways had sanctioned the Kolhapur-Vaibhavwadi line in which the Central government will bear 50 per cent of the total cost and the rest will be footed by Maharashtra.

In its bid to curb foreign meddling in US elections, Facebook has removed 32 accounts for suspicious activities and hiding their true identities ahead of the mid-term Congressional polls in November.

“This kind of behaviour is not allowed on Facebook because we don’t want people or organisations creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are, or what they’re doing,” Facebook said in a statement in a statement on Tuesday.

The social network said that these bad actors involved in “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” had connection with protests that are planned in Washington next week.

Among the deleted pages was one called “Resisters,” which had created a Facebook Event – “No Unite the Right 2-DC” – a counterdemonstration to Unite the Right 2-DC rally planned for August 12 in Washington.

“We’re still in the very early stages of our investigation and don’t have all the facts… We are sharing what we know today given the connection between these bad actors and protests that are planned in Washington next week. We will update this post with more details when we have them, or if the facts we have change,” Facebook added.

The social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg found itself at the centre of controversy during the 2016 presidential election for the use of its platform to spread fake news and sowing seeds of discontent among voters.

Referring to the 32 pages and accounts that it removed, Facebook said that “whoever set up these accounts went to much greater lengths to obscure their true identities than the Russian-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) has in the past.”

IRA is accused by Facebook and the US Department of Justice of having played a key role in the campaign of hoaxes and fake news on controversial and divisive issues designed to try to influence the 2016 election in which Donald Trump won the White House, Efe reported.

In the current probe, the tech giant eliminated eight Facebook Pages and 17 profiles, as well as seven Instagram accounts.

“In total, more than 290,000 accounts followed at least one of these Pages, the earliest of which was created in March 2017,” said Facebook.

Caution ahead of the third RBI monetary policy review along with disappointing quarterly results pulled the key indices of the Indian equity market lower during the late-morning trade session on Tuesday.

The Reserve Bank of India is slated to announce its third bi-monthly monetary policy review statement on August 1.

Besides the review, investors were also cautious about the upcoming macroeconomic data points of Eight Core Industries (ECI) and the fiscal deficit figures.

According to market observers, heavy selling was witnessed in banking, oil and gas and metals stocks.

Around 11 a.m., the broader Nifty50 of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) traded at 11,279.25 points — lower by 40.30 points or 0.36 percent — from its previous close.

The barometer 30-scrip Sensitive Index (Sensex), which opened at 37,534.95 points, traded at 37,346.84 points — lower by 147.56 points or 0.39 percent– from its previous session’s close of 37,494.40 points.

Sensex has so far touched a high of 37,534.95 points and a low of 37,298.75 points during the intra-day trade.

On Monday — the last trade session — both the S&P BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty50 touched their new respective intra-day and closing record highs.

Facebook-owned WhatsApp on Tuesday rolled out its group calling feature — for both voice and video options — on iOS and Android devices for its 1.5 billion users.

The group calling feature supports up to four people simultaneously.

“You can make a group call with up to four people total — anytime and anywhere. Just start a one-on-one voice or video call and tap the new “add participant” button in the top right corner to add more contacts to the call,” WhatsApp said in a statement.

WhatsApp users currently spend over two billion minutes on calls per day.

“Group calls are always end-to-end encrypted, and we’ve designed calling to work reliably around the world in different network conditions,” WhatsApp added.

At Facebook’s F8 developer conference in May, WhatsApp had announced to bring group calling support on its platform.

The instant messaging service unveiled video chatting in 2016 and voice calling in 2014.

By increasing productivity and reducing cost, Blockchain technology has the potential to create the value of up to $5 billion in India in the next five years, a top official of IT industry’s apex body Nasscom has stressed.

“The Blockchain ecosystem is evolving in India. Creating awareness on how this technology is simpler and easier to use with the existing social media and Cloud technology can go a long way in helping the country realize its potential,” KS Viswanathan, Vice President (Industry Initiative), Nasscom, told IANS in an interview.

Based on the distributed storage of data, Blockchain technology can enhance the speed of transactions while increasing transparency. It is widely recognized as having the potential to transform several sectors of the economy, including banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) industry, travel, retail, healthcare, and supply chain, among others.

But despite its potential, the response of Indian organizations to adopt this technology has been far from enthusiastic.

The primary factors that are holding back the widespread deployment of this technology in India is lack of awareness, unavailability of adequate skilled persons and insufficient computing infrastructure, Viswanathan, who also head Nasscom’s 10,000 Startups initiative, said.

“There are currently just 20-30 good Blockchain startups in the country,” Viswanathan said, adding that one way to increase investment in Blockchain is to invest in startups.

To create awareness on the importance of the technology and develop skill sets for Blockchain adoption and deployment in India, Nasscom in February tied up with Blockchain Research Institute (BRI), Canada.

The two entities agreed to collaborate on various activities, including joint webinars and knowledge sharing.

The industry body earlier this month also launched a platform, called FutureSkills, for skills development in eight varied technologies — Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), robotic process automation, Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data analytics, 3D printing, Cloud computing, and social and mobile.

This platform was launched with the aim of up-skilling two million technology professions and skilling another two million potential employees and students over the next few years.

While cybersecurity was later added to the list as the 9th skill, Viswanathan said that Blockchain will be added to the list as the 10th skill by October this year.

In collaboration with BRI, Nasscom also started the first Nasscom Industry Partnership Programme (NIPP) Blockchain challenge from June this year.

The shortlisted teams will come together for a 36-hour session in Bangaluru, to be held on July 28-29, to explore new opportunities for co-creating innovative solutions in the areas of Blockchain technology.

For the challenge, eight large corporates including Fidelity Investments, Larsen & Toubro Infotech (LTI), ICICI Bank, Amdocs, SAP Labs, Wipro and IBM (which is also the knowledge partner) have joined the initiative as strategic partners.

“Boosting skill levels, creating awareness on how this technology is simpler and easier to use with the existing social media and Cloud technology, organizing multiple hackathons and getting international research papers on Blockchain published are among the priorities that Nasscom is focusing on to increase deployment of the technology,” Viswanathan said.

He said that time is not yet ripe for India to think about a regulatory framework specifically for Blockchain as it can come under the ambit of regulations on data security and privacy.

Union Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday said the GST has replaced the ‘Congress Legacy Tax’ — which was 31 percent for most goods — with a ‘good and simple tax’, adding that the existing 28 percent slab will be phased out following further improvement in revenue collections.

“It is an opportunity to celebrate the biggest tax reform since Independence, which has replaced ‘Congress Legacy Tax’ with a ‘good and simple tax’,” he said in a Facebook post.

“The pre-GST tariff was a Congress party legacy. The standard rate for central excise plus VAT plus CST (Central Sales Tax) was 12% + 14% + 2%. To this, if the cascading effect of the tax on tax was added, the eventual tax payable on a commodity was 31 percent.

“Items of household use – from mineral water, hair oil, toothpaste, soap, dairy, to construction material and white goods – were all taxed at 31 percent. The total number of goods falling in this category was 235. This 31 percent tax was Congress party’s gift imposed on India. This tax was the ‘Congress Legacy Tax’,” he said.

The Minister added that the day GST was implemented, several items earlier proposed to be put in the 28 percent category (where the 31 percent items were adjusted) were brought down to 18 percent.

“Within a record period of thirteen months, the GST Council has almost phased out the 28 percent category. It is only a matter of time that the final obituary of the ‘Congress Legacy Tax’ is written. Only the luxury-sin tax would remain,” Jaitley said.

Around 177 items were shifted from the 28 percent slab on November 10, 2017, and another 15 items on July 21 this year.

“If the entire category of all the slabs is taken, the past one year has seen a reduction of tax in 384 commodities with no increase on a single product. India has never witnessed such mass tax reduction since Independence. Lesser rates and higher collection is the result,” the Minister said.

He added that bulk of the items remaining in the 28 percent category were luxury items or in goods.

“The other items outside the luxury-sin goods category are cement, air-conditioners, large screen televisions and a handful of others. Hopefully, with further expansion of revenues, these few items may also witness a change of category,” he said.

“Similarly in the services category, which has now become a part of the GST, on four different occasions 68 different categories of services have witnessed their rates reduced. The net revenue loss which the government has suffered on account of the reduction of tax on goods and services is about Rs 70,000 crore,” he added.

Jaitley said the revenue burden was entirely borne from the share of the Central government since state governments had been guaranteed a 14 percent increase over their pre-GST revenues for the first five years.

Fugitive diamond jeweler Mehul Choksi, who is wanted by Indian investigative agencies in the Rs 13,500 crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case, has denied “any truth in the allegations”.

In a statement issued to a Caribbean newspaper ‘Antigua Observer’, Choksi through his attorney David Dorsett said: “I can say categorically, that there is no truth in those allegations.”

On or about July 24, the Citizenship by Investment Unit (CIU) issued a press statement in response to an online story from an Indian media outlet reporting on certain allegations made against Choksi by the Indian authorities and the media.

According to this CIU statement on Wednesday, Choksi was granted citizenship by registration in November 2017 and he swore the Oath of Allegiance in Antigua on January 15, 2018.

The CIU also said that Choksi’s application was granted “after robust due diligence and international investigation by reputable agencies, including the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) and the CARICOM Implementing Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS)”.

The CIU also said that “the 2017 investigation revealed no derogatory information about Choksi”.

The owner of the Gitanjali group firms further said that in January 2018, “I had need to visit the US to receive medical treatment. Having received treatment I am still in a state convalescence.”

“That being the case, I have decided to reside in Antigua and Barbuda, the country of my citizenship, and to abide by the laws of the country,” he said.

His remarks came three days after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said it had written to the Antiguan authorities seeking details of Choksi’s whereabouts in connection with the PNB fraud case.

On Tuesday it was revealed that Choksi had moved to Antigua from the US several weeks ago using an Antiguan passport.

The revelation came from Antiguan authorities in response to a CBI diffusion notice circulated to foreign countries through Interpol.

The CBI came to know of it last week and shared the information with the Enforcement Directorate (ED). Both the CBI and the ED have been probing the multi-crore fraud allegedly committed between 2011-2017 by Choksi and his nephew Nirav Modi.

Choksi also said that “I can, however, state that I lawfully applied to be registered as a citizen of Antigua and Barbuda under the Citizenship by Investment Program.

“During the course of my application I did all that was lawfully required of me to do,” he claimed, adding, “My application for citizenship was in due course approved.”

Choksi also claimed that his application was motivated by his desire to expand his business interest in the Caribbean and to obtain visa free travel access to 130 countries.

“That remains my reason for choosing to become a citizen of Antigua and Barbuda,” he said.

The red corner notice (RCN) request from the CBI to the Interpol against Choksi is still pending.

Earlier in July, the Interpol issued the RCN against fugitive diamond jeweller Nirav Modi, his brother, a Belgian national, Nishal Modi and an executive of his firm Subhash Parab.

The Crime Investigating Department (CID) of the Jharkhand Police has served notice to 88 non-governmental organizations that received funds totaling Rs 265 crore in three years starting 2013, informed sources said on Thursday.

CID sources said the NGOs have been asked to explain whether they are registered under the relevant laws, details of office-bearers, sources of funds, including from abroad, and income and expenditure details of the last five years, among others.

The sources said that these NGOs had received Rs 265 crore between 2013 and 2016, following which the Special (Intelligence) Branch had expressed apprehensions in 2016 that foreign funds were being misused for religious conversions in the state.

The sources said that a probe was initiated following directions from the Home Ministry to the state government.

“The Ministry had received a complaint against these NGOs which were receiving funds from abroad. These NGOs allegedly did not file annual income tax returns and also hid their sources of income and expenditure,” one source added.

The Additional Director General of Police (CID) is monitoring the probe.

The Ranchi police are already investigating the Missionaries of Charity after an uproar over the alleged sale of several newborns at its Ranchi shelter home.

On the other hand, Christian organizations have accused the state’s Bharatiya Janata Party government of “harassing them by leveling false allegations”.

The Jharkhand Police has recommended a CBI probe into the activities and funds received by the Missionaries of Charity and affiliated organizations. The Raghubar Das government is yet to take a decision.

Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar on Thursday said his government would seek the help of Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swaraj to secure the release of Ryan de Souza, who was in April this year sentenced to 517-year imprisonment by a Dubai court for alleged involvement in a $200 million ponzi scam.

“I can’t decide the matter. It depends on facts though I have sympathy for him. The case has been decided by the Dubai Court. I will meet the External Affairs Minister when I visit Delhi either August 7 or 8,” Parrikar told the Goa assembly, in response to a question raised by Thivim MLA Nilkanth Halarnkar.

De Souza is a resident of Siolim village in North Goa and was employed at the Lemos Foundation, run by Sydney Lemos, an alleged mastermind of the ponzi scam, who was similarly sentenced by the Dubai Court. De Souza, 24, was arrested while attempting to leave the Emirate.

Pointing out that India shares warm relations with Dubai, he said the cordiality should help in resolving the matter.

Among other legislators, who urged the Chief Minister to speed up the process were Opposition leader Chandrakant Kavlekar and Nationalist Congress Party MLA Churchill Alemao.

On April 11, De Souza, along with his employer Sydney Lemos, promoter of the Exential Group, were sentenced by the Dubai Misdemeanours Court for their involvement in the ponzi scam probed by the United Arab Emirates authorities.