Mukesh Ambani keeps salary capped at Rs 15-cr for 11th year in a row

Agencies
July 20, 2019

New Delhi, Jul 20: Richest Indian Mukesh Ambani has kept his annual salary from his flagship firm Reliance Industries capped at Rs 15 crore for the eleventh year on the trot.

Ambani has kept salary, perquisites, allowances and commission together at Rs 15 crore since 2008-09, forgoing over Rs 24 crore per annum.

This is at a time when remunerations of all whole-time directors of the company, including cousins Nikhil and Hital Meswani, saw a handsome increase in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2019.

"Compensation of Shri Mukesh D Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, has been set at Rs 15 crore, reflecting his desire to continue to set a personal example for moderation in managerial compensation levels," RIL said in its latest annual report.

His remuneration for 2018-19 included Rs 4.45 crore as salary and allowances, which is marginally lower than Rs 4.49 crore he got in the previous 2017-18 fiscal. Commission has been unchanged at Rs 9.53 crore while perquisites have risen to Rs 31 lakh from Rs 27 lakh. Retirement benefits were Rs 71 lakh.

Ambani voluntarily capped his compensation at Rs 15 crore in October 2009 amid a debate over right-sizing of CEO salaries. The salary cap continued even as all other executive directors saw their remunerations go up.

Ambani's cousins Nikhil R Meswani and Hital R Meswani saw their compensation rise to Rs 20.57 crore each. They earned Rs 19.99 crore each in 2017-18 and Rs 16.58 crore in 2016-17. In 2015-16, Nikhil had got Rs 14.42 crore while Hital took home Rs 14.41 crore. In 2014-15, they had got Rs 12.03 crore each.

Also, one of his key executives, Executive Director P M S Prasad saw his remuneration go up to Rs 10.01 crore from Rs 8.99 crore in the previous year. He too has seen his remuneration rise steadily -- from Rs 6.03 crore in 2014-15, to Rs 7.23 crore in the next fiscal and Rs 7.87 crore in 2016-17.

Refinery chief Pawan Kumar Kapil saw his compensation rise to Rs 4.17 crore from Rs 3.47 crore in 2017-18. In the previous fiscal, his remuneration had fallen to Rs 2.54 crore, from Rs 2.94 crore in 2015-16. He had earned Rs 2.41 crore in 2014-15. The two however did not get any commission in 2018-19.

"Performance criteria for two Executive Directors, entitled for Performance Linked Incentive (PLI), are determined by the Human Resources, Nomination and Remuneration Committee," RIL said in the annual report.

RIL's non-executive directors, including Nita Ambani, also got Rs 1.65 crore each as commission, besides sitting fees. The commission was Rs 1.5 crore in 2017-18 and Rs 1.3 crore in the previous year.

Former State Bank of India (SBI) chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya got only Rs 75 lakh as commission as she was appointed to the board of RIL only with effect from October 17, 2018. Ambani's wife Nita Ambani, a non-executive director on the company's board, earned Rs 7 lakh as sitting fee, up from Rs 6 lakh in the previous year.

Apart from Ambani, the RIL board has Meswani brothers, Prasad and Kapil as wholetime directors. Besides Nita Ambani, other non-executive directors include Mansingh L Bhakta, Yogendra P Trivedi, Dipak C Jain, Raghunath A Mashelkar, Adil Zainulbhai, Raminder Singh Gujral, Shumeet Banerji and Aruundhati Bhattacharya.

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Agencies
August 2,2020

New Delhi, Aug 2: BCCI president Sourav Ganguly on Sunday said the Women's IPL or the Challenger series, as it is better known, is "very much on", ending speculation about the parent body not having a plan for Harmanpreet Kaur and her team.

The men's IPL will be held between September 19 and November 8 or 10 (final date yet to be locked in) in the UAE due to the surge in Covid-19 cases in India. The women's IPL will also be fit in to the schedule, according to the BCCI chief.

"I can confirm to you that the women's IPL is very much on and we do have a plan in place for the national team also," Ganguly told PTI ahead of the IPL Governing Council meeting later on Sunday.

The BCCI president, who is awaiting a Supreme Court verdict on waiver of the cooling-off period to continue in the position, did not divulge details but another senior official privy to the development said that women's Challenger will be held during the last phase of IPL like last year.

"The women's Challenger series is likely to be held between November 1-10 and there could be a camp before that," the source said.

The former India captain also said that the centrally contracted women players will have a camp which has been delayed due to the prevailing situation in the country.

"We couldn't have exposed any of our cricketers -- be it male or female to health risk. It would have been dangerous," Ganguly said.

"The NCA also remained shut because of Covid-19. But we have a plan in place and we will have a camp for women, I can tell you that," he added.

The BCCI's cricket operations team is chalking up a schedule where Indian women are likely to have two full-fledged white-ball series against South Africa and the West Indies before playing the ODI World Cup in New Zealand. 

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News Network
May 9,2020

New Delhi, May 9: The Trinamool Congress on Saturday responded to Union home minister Amit Shah’s charge that the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government is not facilitating the movement of stranded migrant workers.

Amit Shah has written to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, saying her government is doing “injustice” to migrant workers by not allowing the special Shramik trains to reach the state.

“Union home minister Amit Shah speaks after weeks of silence only to mislead people with lies,” the TMC’s Abhishek Banerjee was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.

“The Centre is lying… West Bengal is running 711 camps for migrants in the state. We are taking good care of them,” Abhishek Banerjee, who is also the chief minister’s nephew, said.

Amit Shah had pointed out in his letter that the Centre was not receiving the “expected support” from the state government in helping stranded migrant workers from West Bengal.

“West Bengal government is not allowing trains with migrants reaching the state. This is injustice with WB migrant labourers. This will create further hardship for them,” Amit Shah had said in his letter to Mamata Banerjee.

The issue of migrant workers is the latest flashpoint between the Centre and the West Bengal government amid a row over the state’s efforts to control the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).

The Centre and the state have exchanged allegations over the criteria for reporting deaths from the infection, and while While Bengal says the Centre is trying to politicise a public health crisis, the Union government maintains that state officials are ignoring repeated warnings to step up the fight against the disease.

Federal officials have said that the region has not conducted adequate tests and that there has been mismanagement over identifying hotspots and containing them.

Union home secretary Ajay Bhalla also slammed the state government for a very low rate of testing and high rate of mortality, 13.2%, by far the highest for any state.

The Centre has also accused the state government of not allowing cross-border movement of goods trucks to Bangladesh.

There are 1,678 Covid-19 cases and 160 deaths in West Bengal until Saturday morning.

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Agencies
June 30,2020

Washington, Jun 30: Researchers in China have discovered a new type of swine flu that is capable of triggering a pandemic, according to a study published Monday in the US science journal PNAS.

Named G4, it is genetically descended from the H1N1 strain that caused a pandemic in 2009.

It possesses "all the essential hallmarks of being highly adapted to infect humans," say the authors, scientists at Chinese universities and China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The researchers then carried out various experiments including on ferrets, which are widely used in flu studies because they experience similar symptoms to humans -- principally fever, coughing and sneezing. 

G4 was observed to be highly infectious, replicating in human cells and causing more serious symptoms in ferrets than other viruses.

Tests also showed that any immunity humans gain from exposure to seasonal flu does not provide protection from G4.

According to blood tests which showed up antibodies created by exposure to the virus, 10.4 percent of swine workers had already been infected.

The tests showed that as many as 4.4 percent of the general population also appeared to have been exposed.

The virus has therefore already passed from animals to humans but there is no evidence yet that it can be passed from human to human -- the scientists' main worry.

"It is of concern that human infection of G4 virus will further human adaptation and increase the risk of a human pandemic," the researchers wrote.

The authors called for urgent measures to monitor people working with pigs.

"The work comes as a salutary reminder that we are constantly at risk of new emergence of zoonotic pathogens and that farmed animals, with which humans have greater contact than with wildlife, may act as the source for important pandemic viruses," said James Wood, head of the department of veterinary medicine at Cambridge University.

A zoonotic infection is caused by a pathogen that has jumped from a non-human animal into a human.

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