Angela Merkel in Bengaluru, PM Modi to join her

New Delhi, May 23: India will try to restart a good percentage of international passenger flights before August, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Saturday, three days after announcing resumption of domestic flights from May 25.

All scheduled commercial passenger flights have been suspended in India since March 25 when the Modi government imposed a lockdown to contain the novel coronavirus pandemic.

"I am fully hopeful that before August or September, we will try to start a good percentage of international civil aviation operations, if not complete international operations," Puri said during a Facebook live session.

"I can't put a date on it (restarting international flights). But if somebody says can it be done by August or September, my response is why not earlier depending on what is the situation," he said.

New Delhi, Jan 9: Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos will be visiting India next week and is likely to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and officials, besides industry leaders, according to sources.

The top executive will also attend SMBhav – an event focussing on small and medium businesses in India - that is slated for January 15-16 in the capital city.

When contacted, Amazon declined to comment.

Amazon, which has seen significant growth in its business in India, has also witnessed protest from a section of traders in the country who claim that e-commerce giants including Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart offer deep discounts and engage in unfair business practices.

Last year, the government had tightened rules for e-commerce marketplaces with foreign investment. These rules barred such platforms from offering products of sellers in which they hold a stake and banned exclusive marketing arrangements among other clauses. Following this, Amazon restructured its joint ventures to ensure compliance.

Bezos is likely to discuss regulatory issues in his meeting with the government officials.

He is also slated to engage with SMBs during the SMBhav event. The event - which will focus on discussions around how technology adoption can enable SMBs in India - is slated to see participation from industry experts, policymakers, solution providers and Amazon leadership.

Jaipur, Jul 23: Four days after the Special Operation Group (SOG) sent a notice to Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat in connection with the purported audio clips indicating his alleged involvement in horse trading of MLAs in Rajasthan, a city court has directed the Rajasthan police to probe a complaint alleging Shekhawat's role in a credit society scam worth Rs 840 crore.

The additional district judge Pawan Kumar, on Tuesday, directed the additional chief judicial magistrate's court to send the complaint against Shekhawat to the SOG.

Shekhawat, his wife and other partners have been named in the complaint in the Sanjivani Credit Cooperative Society scam in which around 50,000 investors allegedly lost about Rs 840 crore.

The Jaipur unit of the SOG has been probing the scam since last year after an FIR was registered on August 23, 2019.

Now, Jaipur ADJ Court-8 ordered a fresh inquiry in the case against Gajendra Singh accepting the revised application filed by Lagu Singh and Guman Singh and said that "this is a serious matter and hence SOG should investigate this".

Both the applicants had invested a huge amount in Sanjivani credit cooperative society.

It is alleged in the complaint that a multi-storey building has been built with the money instead of a theatre which was proposed earlier and many properties were also bought in Ethiopia with the money.

An SOG investigation also reveals that a large amount of money has been deposited into accounts of Shekhawat and his wife at different time spans, said sources.

Earlier, Shekhawat was not mentioned in the chargesheet filed by the SOG in connection with the case. Later, a magistrate's court also rejected the application to include him in the chargesheet. The applicants then approached the additional district judge's court with a revised application.