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Dedicated party veterans, ex-bureaucrats in Modi's chosen nine

Agencies
September 3, 2017

New Delhi, Sep 3: The nine new members to be inducted in the Union council of ministers include four former senior bureaucrats and also BJP leaders from the states of Karnataka, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh which go to polls in the near future.

Here are their short profiles:

1) Sixty-four-year-old Ashwini Kumar Choubey was a health minister in Bihar. A BJP veteran, he was born at Dariyapur in Bhagalpur and did BSc (Hons) in zoology from the Science College, Patna University.

At present, he represents the Buxar Lok Sabha seat. Married to Neeta Choubey, he has two sons.

He was an active part of the JP Movement in the 1970s and was taken into custody during the Emergency. Chaubey is credited with for having raised the slogan -- "ghar-ghar me hoshouchalaya ka nirman, tabhihogaladlibitiya ka kanyadaan". He has helped in the construction of 11,000 toilets for Mahadalit families.

2) Virendra Kumar, 63, is the Lok Sabha MP from Tikamgarh in Madhya Pradesh. From the convenor of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), District Sagar in 1977-79 to now being set to become a Union minister, it has been a long journey for Kumar, who was elected for a sixth Lok Sabha term in 2014.

Kumar had participated in the JP Movement and was in jail for 16 months during the Emergency. He hails from the Scheduled Caste community and hold a masters degree in economics and a PhD in child labour.

3) Sixty-five-year-old Shiv Pratap Shukla is a Rajya Sabha member from the electorally crucial Uttar Pradesh. The lawyer-social worker was earlier a minister in UP. He was appointed a vice president of UP unit of the BJP in 2012.

He is a law graduate from the Gorakhpur University and was imprisoned for 19 months during the Emergency.

4) Anant Kumar Hegde, 49, has been a member of the 11th, 12th, 14th, 15th and 16th Lok Sabha from Uttara Kannada in Karnataka. He is an agriculturist by profession.

At the young age of 28, he was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time. During his multiple stints in Parliament, he has served as a member of parliamentary standing committees on finance, home affairs, human resource development, commerce, agriculture and external affairs.

He has also been a member of the Spices Board of India for four terms. He is a practitioner of martial art Taekwondo.

5) Satya Pal Singh, 61, is a Lok Sabha MP from Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh. A 1980 batch Maharashtra cadre IPS officer, he retired as the Mumbai Police chief.

He was honoured for his services by the Centre in 2008 with Antrik Suraksha Sewa Padak and a special medal for extraordinary work in naxal hit areas of Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh in 1990. Singh has written books, including on topics like tribal conflict resolution and naxalism.

Born in Basauli village in Baghpat, he has MSc and MPhil degrees in chemistry, an MBA in strategic management from Australia and an MA degree in public administration as well as a PhD on the naxalite movement.

6) Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, 49, is a Lok Sabha member from Jodhpur in Rajasthan. He is also a national general secretary of the farmers' wing of the BJP.

A sports enthusiast, Shekhawat has participated at the national and all-India inter-university level in basketball. He currently is a member of the All India Council of Sports and the president of the Basketball India Players Association. He has MPhil and MA degrees in philosophy from Jai Narain Vyas University, Jodhpur.

7) Hardeep Singh Puri, 65, is a 1974-batch of Indian Foreign Service and served as India's Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013.

Known for his experience and expertise in foreign policy and national security, he is the president and chairman of think-tank Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS) and was the vice president of the International Peace Institute, New York.

His four-decade career in diplomacy included critical roles as India's ambassador to Brazil and the United Kingdom, and Permanent Representative of India to Geneva.

An alumnus of The Hindu College, Delhi University, Puri was a student leader and active during the JP Movement. He briefly taught at St. Stephens College in Delhi before joining the IFS.

8) Raj Kumar Singh, 64, is a former IAS officer of the 1975-batch Bihar cadre and a former Union home secretary. He is a member of the current Lok Sabha representing Arrah in Bihar.

Singh studied English literature at St. Stephens College and is a law graduate. He also studied at the RVB Delft University in the Netherlands.

9) Alphons Kannanthanam is a former 1979-batch Kerala cadre IAS officer. He is also a practicing advocate.

Kannanthanam was known as 'Demolition Man' during his stint at the Delhi Development Authority for having ordered razing of thousands of illegal constructions.

Born in a non-electrified Manimala village in Kottayam district to a World War II veteran, he pioneered the literacy movement in India as district collector of Kottayam by making it the first 100 per cent literate town in India in 1989.

He retired from the IAS and was elected as an Independent member of the Kerala Assembly from Kanjirappally from 2006 to 2011.

Kannanthanam is a member of the committee set up to prepare the final draft of the National Education Policy, 2017. He has authored a book -- Making A Difference.

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News Network
February 29,2020

New Delhi, Feb 29: India’s economy expanded at its slowest pace in more than six years in the last three months of 2019, with analysts predicting further deceleration as the global Covid 19 coronavirus outbreak stifles growth in Asia’s third-largest economy.

The gross domestic product (GDP) data released yesterday showed government spending, private investment and exports slowing down, while there is a slight upturn in consumer spending and improvement in rural demand lent support.

The quarterly figure of 4.7% growth matched the consensus in a Reuters poll of analysts but was below a revised - and greatly increased - 5.1% rate for the previous quarter.

The central bank has warned that downside risks to global growth have increased as a result of the coronavirus epidemic, the full effects of which are still unfolding.

Prime minister Narendra Modi’s government has taken several steps to bolster economic growth, including a privatisation push and increased state spending, after cutting corporate tax rates last September.

In its annual budget presented this month, the government estimated that annual economic growth in the financial year to March 31 would be 5%, its lowest for last 11 years.

Modi’s government is targeting a slight recovery in growth to 6% for 2020/21, still far below the level needed to generate jobs for millions of young Indians entering the labour market each month.

The annual GDP figure for the September quarter was ramped up from an earlier estimate of 4.5%, while the April-June reading was similarly lifted to 5.6% from 5%, data released by the Ministry of Statistics showed on Friday.

Capital Investment Drop

In the December quarter, private investment grew 5.9%, up from 5.6% in the previous quarter, while government spending rose by 11.8%, against 13.2% in the previous three months.

However, corporate capital investment contracted by 5.2% after a 4.1% decline in the previous quarter, indicating that interest rate cuts by the central bank have failed to encourage new investment. Manufacturing, meanwhile, contracted by 0.2%.

“It appears growth slowdown is not just cyclical but more entrenched with consumption secularly joining the slowdown bandwagon even as the investment story continues to languish,” said Madhavi Arora of Edelweiss Securities in Mumbai.

Many economists said that the government stimulus could take four to six quarters of time before lifting the economy and the impact of those efforts could be outweighed by the global fallout from the coronavirus epidemic that began in China.

“The coronavirus remains the critical risk as India depends on China for both demand and supply of inputs,” said Abheek Barua, chief economist at HDFC Bank.

Indian shares sank on Friday for a sixth session running, capping their worst week in more than a decade. The NSE Nifty 50 index shed 7.3% over the week, while the Sensex dropped 6.8%, the worst weekly declines since the 2008-09 financial crisis.

Separately, India’s infrastructure output rose 2.2% year on year in January, data showed on Friday.

A spike in inflation to a more than 5-1/2 year high of 7.59% in January is expected to make the RBI hold off from further cuts to interest rates for now, while keeping its monetary stance accommodative.

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News Network
July 9,2020

New Delhi, Jul 9: India reported the highest single-day spike of 24,879 new positive cases and 487 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of COVID-19 cases in the country to 7,67,296, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Out of the total number of cases, 2,69,789 are active, 4,76,378 have been cured/discharged/migrated and 21,129 have died.

Maharashtra remains the worst-affected state due to COVID-19 with as many as 2,23,724 cases, including 91,084 active, 1,23,192 cured/discharged and 9,448 deaths.

It is followed by Tamil Nadu (1,22,350) and Delhi (1,04,864).

Meanwhile, a total of 1,07,40,832 samples have been tested for COVID-19 till July 8. Of these, 2,67,061 samples were tested yesterday, stated Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

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News Network
June 24,2020

New Delhi, Jun 24: Over 1,500 urban and multi-state cooperative banks will be brought under the supervisory power of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), said Union Minister Prakash Javadekar on Wednesday.

"Government banks, including 1,482 urban cooperative banks and 58 multi-state cooperative banks, are now being brought under supervisory powers of Reserve Bank of India (RBI); RBI's powers as they apply to scheduled banks will apply for cooperative banks as well," Javadekar said at a press conference, through video conferencing.

"The decision to bring 1,540 cooperative banks under RBI's supervision will give an assurance to more than 8.6 crore depositors in these banks that their money amounting to Rs 4.84 lakh crore will stay safe," he added.

The Minister of Information and Broadcasting further said that the Union Cabinet has approved a scheme "for interest subvention of 2 per cent to Shishu loan category borrowers under Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana, outstanding as on March 31, 2020, for one year to eligible borrowers."

The Minister also said that the Union Cabinet has approved the declaration of Kushinagar Airport in Uttar Pradesh as an international airport.

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