Plan and Policy

The BJP will organise a “tractor rally” in Madhya Pradesh’s Mandsaur on July 1 in an apparent show of strength in the Assembly election year with the district having emerged as a locus of farm politics following the death of five farmers in a protest last year. The state, where the BJP has been in power since 2003, goes to polls later this year.

The Congress, the saffron party’s main rival, has made the alleged farm distress a key plank of its campaign. Congress president Rahul Gandhi was in Mandsaur earlier this month in a show of his party’s solidarity with the farmers.

In his first comments following the break-up of the PDP-BJP alliance on Tuesday, BJP president Amit Shah has blamed “pressure groups” in J&K for stalling his party’s efforts for an equitable growth in all three regions of the state and cited worsening law and order situation in the Valley for walking out of the PDP-led government. He claimed that the decision to withdraw support was not taken keeping in mind the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. “If that was the case, then it would have been done six months later,” Shah told Zee News in an interview.

Jammu and Kashmir was brought under Governor’s rule on Wednesday and the state Assembly put under suspended animation, a day after the PDP-BJP government collapsed with the BJP ending the three-year-old alliance with the regional party.

As Governor NN Vohra  held multiple meetings in Srinagar during which security measures were discussed, Army chief Gen Bipin Rawat said the ongoing military operations in the Valley against terrorists would continue as earlier. Governor’s rule in the state is unlikely to have any impact on ongoing operations, he said in New Delhi.

The government is committed to strategic disinvestment of Air India and a plan is being prepared to run the airline efficiently, the civil aviation ministry said on Wednesday, weeks after the carrier’s strategic stake sale failed to take off.

While asserting that a decision on the future course would be taken in the best interests of A-I, civil av­iation minister Suresh Pr­a­bhu said the airline has be­en suffering from certain le­g­acy issues, including huge debt.

RBI governor Urjit Patel voted for interest rate hike citing inflation risks and related uncertainties whi­le his deputy Viral Acharya felt there was no alternative to it by 25 basis points, as per the minutes of the monetary po­l­icy committee (MPC) meeting released on Wednesday.

After over four years, the Reserve Bank of India raised the short-term le­n­ding rate (repo) to 6.25 per cent on June 6 after MPC headed by Patel unanimously voted for the hike on inflationary concerns.

The Idea-Vodafone merger is set for clearance as the telecom department is expected to demand just unconditional undertaking fr­om Idea, the new owner, on court case of the British company apart from immediate bank guarantee of Rs 2,100 crore for one-time spectrum charges.

The department will ad­opt all procedural safeguards before allowing the merger as monetary issues are involved. But with cases in the court, both government and other parties will have to abide by the judgment unless it’s further challenged.

Commercial lending stood at Rs 54.2 trillion as of March 2018, with micro and SME (small and medium enterprises) segments contributing nearly 23 per cent to overall growth.

“Total on-balance-sheet commercial lending exposure of banks and financial institutions stood at Rs 54.2 trillion, as of March 2018 with micro and SME segments constituting Rs 12.6 trillion, which is nearly 23 per cent of outstanding commercial credit,” a Cibil-Sidbi report said on Wednesday.

A peak tax rate of 28 per cent plus states levying some amount of local sales tax or VAT on petrol and diesel is likely to be the tax structure when the two auto fuels are covered under the GST (goods and services tax) regime, a top government official said.

States would pitch for an assurance from the Centre on compensating them for revenue loss in case it ventures out to include petroleum products under the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

Speaking to Financial Chronicle, Assam finance minister Himanta Biswa Sarma (in pic) said if petroleum products were brought under GST, there would be loss to both central and state governments.

The CPI(M) on Tuesday said there was nothing wrong in Kerala Chief Mi­nister Pinarayi Vijayan joi­ning his West Bengal cou­nterpart Mamata Ban­erjee to rally behind Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and said any “attack on democratic rights” sho­uld be defended at any cost.

The two chief ministers from opposing political camps — the CPI(M) and the TMC — along with their Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka counterparts had on Saturday extended support to Kejriwal’s sit-in at the Lieutenant Governor’s office in Delhi.