Three ministers resign ahead of Cabinet rejig

Agencies
September 1, 2017

New Delhi, Sept 1: Three Union ministers submitted their resignations on Thursday ahead of the Cabinet reshuffle.

Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Kalraj Mishra and Minister of State for Water Resources Sanjeev Balyan submitted their resignations.

A source said BJP president Amit Shah had called five more ministers, including Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti, and told them that the prime minister wanted them to resign. The source said that the Cabinet reshuffle may take place either on Saturday or Sunday before Modi leaves for Beijing to attend the BRICS summit.

The prime minister will visit Myanmar for two days beginning September 5. Also, President Ram Nath Kovind will not be in the national capital on Friday.

If reshuffle does not happen in this window, then it may take place after Navaratri, which begins on September 21. The days between September 5 and September 21 is considered inauspicious.

Earlier in the day, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had dropped hints that he won’t be defence minister for long as a reshuffle was on the cards.

When asked to comment about the reshuffle, Jaitley said, “At least I hope not very long” to continue as defence minister.

Modi had held several rounds of consultations with Shah and other top leaders as the Cabinet rejig is also being seen as a performance audit.

Minister of State for Human Resource Development Mahendranath Pandey has offered to resign following the party’s decision to make him the Uttar Pradesh BJP president.

Apart from Jaitley, other ministers who are holding additional charges may have to offload the burden as this is expected to be the large major exercise before Modi seeks a fresh mandate in 2019.

The reshuffle is expected to bring in fresh faces to infuse new energy into the government. The reshuffle will also take into account the BJP’s focus in the poll-bound states of Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka.

Modi will also draft leaders from the JD(U) into his team after the party returned to the NDA fold. The BJP’s Maharashtra ally, the Shiv Sena, is likely to get another berth.

But as per Article 72 of the Constitution, it can go up to 82 since it says that the council of ministers shall not exceed 15% of the number of members in the Lok Sabha.

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News Network
March 19,2024

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Mangaluru: The Mangalore International Airport (MIA) will connect to a new domestic destination with the introduction of a non-stop flight to Tiruchirappalli International Airport in Tamil Nadu. 

The non-stop service, once-a-week, will operate on Wednesday (from TIA) and Thursday (from MIA), starting April 3. Air India Express will operate the flight.

The flight is expected to help those taking up a pilgrimage to Vailankani shrine.

Sources from the AIE said that the airline carrier decided to fly non-stop between the two southern Indian cities as a flight to Jeddah, which will start from April 3, arrives from Tiruchirappalli International Airport. 

“It is a ferry or positional flight from TIA to MIA. Instead of flying empty, the management has decided to run it as a commercial flight. This will help both passengers and the airline. The airline will deploy Boeing 737-800 aircraft with a 186-seater all-economy configuration on this route. 

The same flight, after landing in MIA, will further fly to Jeddah,” a source said. 

The flight IX 1498 will depart every Thursday at 5am from MIA to TIA. The TIA-MIA flight IX 1499 departs at 12.50pm. It is a one-hour nonstop flight. The same flights will also operate nonstop between Jeddah and MIA. 

The non-stop flight IX 499 will depart MIA at 2.50pm and reach King Abdulaziz International Airport, Jeddah at 6.25pm. The IX498, will depart from Jeddah at 7.25pm and reach MIA early at 3.40am.

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News Network
March 29,2024

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The Income Tax department has issued a notice of approximately Rs 1,700 crore to the Congress party, exacerbating its financial concerns ahead of the crucial 2024 Lok Sabha elections, multiple reports revealed on Friday.

The development comes after the Delhi High Court rejected the party's plea challenging reassessment proceedings for four assessment years.

The new demand pertains to assessment years 2017-18 to 2020-21 and includes penalties and interest. The Congress party now awaits reassessment for three other assessment years, expected to conclude by Sunday, the stipulated deadline, said a report.

Congress lawyer and RS MP Vivek Tankha alleged that the fresh notice of nearly Rs 1,700 crore was served on the party on Thursday without key accompanying documents.

"We received the demand notice without assessment orders. The govt appeared keener to serve us with demand rather than issue us reasons for reassessment," a news paper quoted Tankha as saying. He further added, "this is how the main opposition party is being strangled financially, and that too during the Lok Sabha elections".

Delhi HC rejects plea

The Delhi High Court, on Thursday, dismissed petitions filed by the Congress challenging the initiation of tax reassessment proceedings spanning four years by tax authorities. Justices Yashwant Varma and Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav, comprising the bench, stated that the pleas were rejected in line with their earlier decision to abstain from intervening in the reopening of reassessment for an additional year.

The subject matter of the case pertained to assessment years from 2017 to 2021.

In a previous petition dismissed the week before, the Congress party had contested the initiation of reassessment proceedings concerning assessment years 2014-15 to 2016-17.

The High Court dismissed the plea, citing that the tax authority had prima facie gathered "substantial and concrete" evidence warranting further scrutiny. The tax department alleged that approximately Rs 520 crore had evaded assessment during these three years.

Additionally, the department revealed that searches conducted on entities, including some purportedly linked to Karnataka deputy chief minister D K Shivakumar and a company in Surat, had uncovered cash transactions involving Congress. These transactions were cited as violations, disqualifying the party from tax exemption available to political parties.

In the absence of exemption, parties are treated as "association of persons" and are obligated to pay taxes on their reported income. Moreover, the cash transactions are included in their total income.

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News Network
March 27,2024

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The Enforcement Directorate has filed a money laundering case against Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's daughter Veena Vijayan, her IT company and some others to probe a case of alleged illegal payments made by a private mineral firm to her and the company, official sources said Wednesday.

The agency has registered a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and is expected to summon the people involved, the sources said.

The ED case has been booked after taking cognisance of a complaint filed by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), an investigative arm of the Union corporate affairs ministry, they said.

The case stems from an Income Tax Department investigation that alleged that a private company called Cochin Minerals And Rutile Ltd (CMRL), made an illegal payment of Rs 1.72 crore to Veena's company-- Exalogic Solutions-- during 2018 to 2019, even though the IT firm had not provided any service to the company.

The Karnataka High Court had last month dismissed a plea filed by Exalogic Solutions against the probe initiated by the SFIO.

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