Gone with the wind: Vizag's Mega City plan takes a big hit

New Delhi, Feb 11: Cheaper lending rates in the country along with the government's booster via tax cuts seem to have had little effect on vehicle sales in January, with car sales decreasing by over 14,531 units, or slightly over 8 per cent, compared to January last year.

According to Rajan Wadhera, President of industry body Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), which gives out the auto sales numbers, the overall slump in vehicle sales in India was due to the "rising cost of vehicle ownership and slower growth in GDP".

Barring three-wheelers, all other segments showed de-growth.

Vehicle sales across segments have been declining for over a year now. SIAM sales data last month compared with that of January 2019 showed that domestic passenger vehicle sales slipped 6.2 per cent to 262,714 units. The decline in car sales stood at 8.1 per cent, and two-wheelers 16.06 per cent.

Sales of commercial vehicles, an indicator of industrial health in the economy, slipped by 14.04 per cent to 75,289 units last month, while the vehicle sales across categories registered a de-growth of 13.83 per cent to 17,39,975 units from 20,19,253 units in January 2019, SIAM said.

However, Wadhera said, they were hopeful that recent government announcements on infrastructure and rural economy would support growth of vehicle sales, especially in the commercial and two-wheeler segments.

"We are looking forward to the early announcement of an incentive-based scrappage policy in the context of the recent assurances by the government," Wadhera said.

New Delhi, Mar 2: The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a curative petition filed by convict Pawan Kumar Gupta who was sentenced to death in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case.

A five-judge bench headed by Justice N V Ramana said that no case is made out for re-examining the conviction and the punishment of the convict.

Other members of the bench were justices Arun Mishra, R F Nariman, R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan.

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.