Sacked BSF jawan moves SC against EC decision to cancel his candidature

Thiruvananthapuram, Mar 29: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Saturday expressed his concern over the ''non-cooperation from the Karnataka Government in removing the roadblocks erected by them in the roads bordering Malapuram district''.

Addressing a press conference at the Government Secretariat, the Chief Minister said, "Karnataka has not heeded to our request to remove the roadblocks. I have been trying to contact their Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa but not able to reach him."

"We have briefed the Union Minister D V Sadananda Gowda and he has offered to resolve the issue. Our Chief Secretary has also briefed the Central Cabinet Secretary and we expect a resolution soon," he added.

Feb 2: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second budget in seven months disappointed investors who were hoping for big-bang stimulus to revive growth in Asia’s third-largest economy.

The fiscal plan -- delivered by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday -- proposed tax cuts for individuals and wider deficit targets but failed to provide specific steps to fix a struggling financial sector, improve infrastructure and create jobs. Stocks slumped as a proposal to scrap the dividend distribution tax for companies failed to impress investors.

"Far from being a game changer, the budget provides little in terms of short-term growth stimulus,” said Priyanka Kishore, head of India and South East Asia economics at Oxford Economics Ltd. in Singapore. “While income tax cuts will provide some relief on the consumption front, the multiplier effect is low and the overall stance of the budget is not expansionary."

India has gone from being the world’s fastest-growing major economy three years ago, expanding at 8%, to posting its weakest performance in more than a decade this fiscal year, estimated at 5%.

While the government has taken a number of steps in recent months to spur growth, they’ve fallen short of spurring demand in the consumption-driven economy. Saturday’s budget just added to the glum sentiment.

Okay Budget

“It’s an okay budget but not firing on all cylinders that the market was hoping for,” said Andrew Holland, chief executive officer at Avendus Capital Alternate Strategies in Mumbai.

The government had limited scope for a large stimulus given a huge shortfall in revenues in the current year. The slippage induced Sitharaman to invoke a never-used provision in fiscal laws, allowing the government to exceed the budget gap by 0.5 percentage points. The result: the deficit for the year ending March was widened to 3.8% of gross domestic product from a planned 3.3%.

On Friday, India’s chief economic adviser Krishnamurthy Subramanian said reviving economic growth was an “urgent priority” and deficit goals could be relaxed to achieve that. The adviser’s Economic Survey estimated growth will rebound to 6%-6.5% in the year starting April.

The fiscal gap will narrow to 3.5% next year, as the government budgeted for gross market borrowing to rise marginally to 7.8 trillion rupees from 7.1 trillion rupees in the current year. A plan to earn 2.1 trillion rupees by selling state-owned assets in the year starting April will also help plug the deficit.

Total spending in the coming fiscal year will increase to 30.4 trillion rupees, representing a 13% increase from the current year’s budget, according to latest data.

Key highlights from the budget:

* Tax on annual income up to 1.25 million rupees pared, with riders

* Dividend distribution tax to be levied on investors, instead of companies

* Farm sector budget raised 28%, transport infrastructure gets 7% more

* Spending on education raised 5%

* Fertilizer subsidy cut 10%

Analysts said the muted spending plan to keep the deficit in check will lead to more downside risks to growth in the coming months.

“It is very doubtful that the increase in expenditure will push demand much,” Chakravarthy Rangarajan, former governor at the Reserve Bank of India told BloombergQuint, adding that achieving next year’s budget deficit goal of 3.5% of GDP was doubtful.

With the government sticking to a conservative fiscal path, the focus will now turn to central bank, which is set to review monetary policy on Feb. 6. Given inflation has surged to a five-year high of 7.35%, the RBI is unlikely to lower interest rates.

What Bloomberg’s Economists Say:

The burden of recovery now falls solely on the Reserve Bank of India. With inflation breaching RBI’s target at present, any rate cuts by the central bank are likely to be delayed and contingent upon inflation falling below the upper end of its 2%-6% target range.

-- Abhishek Gupta, India economist

Governor Shaktikanta Das may instead focus on unconventional policy tools such as the Federal Reserve-style Operation Twist -- buying long-end debt while selling short-tenor bonds -- to keep borrowing costs down.

New Delhi, Feb 16: Just an hour ahead of the swearing-in ceremony, Arvind Kejriwal invited the people of Delhi again for his oath-taking ceremony at Ramlila Maidan today.

Referring himself as "son of Delhi", the AAP convener today tweeted saying, "Delhiites, your son is going to take oath as Delhi chief minister for the third time. You must come to bless your son".

The AAP national convener will be sworn-in as the Chief Minister of Delhi for the third time in a row.

Arvind Kejriwal is scheduled to take oath along with other ministers at Ramlila Maidan.

On Saturday, Kejriwal, through a tweet, has said that autorickshaw drivers, students, teachers, doctors, labourers, etc will be the "chief guests".

The guest list put out by the AAP includes ''Delhi ke Nirmata''- people who contributed to the development of the city during the last five years.

These include Sumit Nagal, a Delhi government school student and an international Tennis player, Laxman Chaudhry an auto driver, Manu Gulati a teacher and "one of the many architects of Delhi Governance Model", Dalbir Singh a farmer, Ratan Jamshed Batliboi - the architect of the famous Signature Bridge among others.

By winning 62 seats by cashing in on the plank of development, his party nearly repeated its 2015 performance, sweeping the Assembly polls in the face of a high-voltage campaign by the BJP, which had fielded a battery of Union Ministers and Chief Ministers in its electioneering, spearheaded by Home Minister Amit Shah.

The BJP marginally improved its tally, managing just eight seats from its 2015''s tally of three seats. The Congress failed to open its account in the second successive election.