BJP may back PA Sangma as President candidate

New Delhi, May 9: The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to consider a plea raising the issue of mass termination and the illegal salary cut of employees in IT/ITES/BPO/KPI by their employers during the lockdown due to the spread of the coronavirus.

A bench comprising Justices Ashok Bhushan, S.K. Kaul and B.R. Gavai, taking up the matter through video conferencing, agreed to examine the issue and listed it for May 15.

The petition, argued by senior advocate Devadatt Kamat, was filed by National Information Technology Employees Sena (NITES) through advocate-on-record Amit Pai, and sought implementation of directions issued by the Centre on March 29 and similar advisories issued by several other states mandating payment of wages/salaries to the employees and also directed not to terminate them during the period of lockdown.

A directive was issued by the Union Ministry of Labour and Empowerment to all Chief Secretaries of state governments to issue advisories to public and private companies to not lay off employees or implement pay cuts during lockdown.

In the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) report published on April 19, it was noted that "several companies across the country have started to terminate its employees without any reasonable cause and have started withholding their salaries. It is submitted that in such testing times, the rights of the employees ought to be protected by necessary orders/directions to the companies through the Respondents to effectively implement the lockdown and to contain the spread of the virus", said the plea.

On March 29, the Centre issued an order directing all states and Union Territories to issue orders, requiring all the employers in the industrial sector and shops and commercial establishments to pay wages on the due date without any deduction during their closure due to the lockdown.

New Delhi, Jul 23: Riding high on foreign investors buying stakes in Jio Platforms, Reliance Industries Ltd Chairman Mukesh Ambani became the world’s fifth-richest person Wednesday, edging past American investor Warren Buffett on the real-time ranking of billionaires by Forbes. With an estimated wealth of $75 billion, Ambani is only next to Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose wealth is pegged at $89 billion.

Buffet had slipped down the rankings after donating more than $37 billion of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. stock since 2006 to charity. Berkshire Hathaway’s stock performance has also underwhelmed recently.

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos still sits at top in the richest list, with a net worth of $185.8 billion. He is followed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates with net worth of $113.1 billion and luxury group LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton’s chief Bernard Arnault, with a net worth of $112 billion. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is at the fourth position in the Forbes list.

Shares of Ambani’s conglomerate have more than doubled since a low in March as its digital unit got more than $15 billion in investments from companies including Facebook Inc, Silver Lake, Intel, and most recently, Google. The US tech giant has committed a capital infusion of Rs 33,737 crore for a 7.7 per cent stake on Jio Platforms.

The total investment from financial and strategic investors into Jio Platforms stands at Rs 1,52,056 crore. RIL has raised a total of Rs 2,12,809 crore through a rights issue, the combined investments in Jio Platforms and investment by BP.

During the Reliance AGM last week, Ambani had said RIL has made its net-debt free ahead of a March 2021 target due to recent investments. Ambani said Jio has designed and developed a complete 5G solution that’s ready for launch as soon as spectrum is made available next year.

Jio and Google have also entered into a commercial agreement to jointly develop an entry-level affordable smartphone with optimisations to the Android operating system and the Play Store, Ambani said.

RILs market value jumped to Rs 12.7 lakh crore or $170 billion on Monday, making it the 51st most valued company in the world. Between April 1 and July 13, RIL has gained $81 billion in market capitalisation and has climbed 47 places from being the 98th most valued company on April 1 to 51st most value company now.

The share price of RIL has risen by 120 per cent over the last four months for Rs 883 per share on March 23, 2020 to Rs 1,939 on Monday. Since April 22, when Facebook Inc announced an investment of Rs 43,574 crore in Jio Platforms for 9.99 per cent equity stake, Jio Platforms has announced investments by 12 other investors. The total investment by these 13 investors over the last 12-weeks amounted to Rs 118,318 crore.

New Delhi, Feb 19: India will switch to the world's cleanest petrol and diesel from April 1 as it leapfrogs straight to Euro-VI emission compliant fuels from Euro-IV grades now - a feat achieved in just three years and not seen in any of the large economies around the globe.

India will join the select league of nations using petrol and diesel containing just 10 parts per million of sulphur as it looks to cut vehicular emissions that are said to be one of the reasons for the choking pollution in major cities.

Sanjiv Singh, Chairman of Indian Oil Corp (IOC) - the firm that controls roughly half of the country's fuel market, said almost all refineries began producing ultra-low sulphur BS-VI (equivalent to Euro-VI grade) petrol and diesel by the end of 2019 and oil companies have now undertaken the tedious task of replacing every drop of fuel in the country with the new one.

"We are absolutely on track for supplying BS-VI fuel from April 1. Almost all refineries have begun supplying BS-VI fuel and the same has reached storage depots across the country," he said.

From storage depots, the fuel has started travelling to petrol pumps and in the next few weeks all of them will only have BS-VI grade petrol and diesel, he said. "We are 100 per cent confident that fuel that will flow from nozzles at all the petrol pumps in the country on April 1 will be BS-VI emission compliant fuel."

India adopted Euro-III equivalent (or Bharat Stage-III) fuel with a sulphur content of 350 ppm in 2010 and then took seven years to move to BS-IV that had a sulphur content of 50 ppm. From BS-IV to BS-VI it took just three years.

"It was a conscious decision to leapfrog to BS-VI as first upgrading to BS-V and then shifting to BS-VI would have prolonged the journey to 4 to 6 years. Besides, oil refineries, as well as automobile manufacturers, would have had to make investments twice - first to producing BS-V grade fuel and engines and then BS-VI ones," he said.

State-owned oil refineries spent about Rs 35,000 crore to upgrade plants that could produce ultra-low sulphur fuel. This investment is on top of Rs 60,000 crore they spent on refinery upgrades in the previous switchovers.

BS-VI has a sulphur content of just 10 ppm and emission standards are as good as CNG.

Originally, Delhi and its adjoining towns were to have BS-VI fuel supplies by April 2019 and the rest of the country was to get same supplies from April 2020.

But oil marketing companies switched over to supply of BS-VI grade fuels in the national capital territory of Delhi on April 1, 2018.

The supply of BS-VI fuels was further extended to four contiguous districts of Rajasthan and eight of Uttar Pradesh in the National Capital Region (NCR) on April 1, 2019, together with the city of Agra.

BS-VI grade fuels were made available in 7 districts of Haryana from October 1, 2019.

Singh said the new fuel will result in a reduction in NOx in BS-VI compliant vehicles by 25 per cent in petrol cars and by 70 per cent in diesel cars.

The switchover, he said, is a tedious task as every drop of old, higher-sulphur content fuel has to be flushed out in depots, pipelines and tanks before being replaced by BS-VI.

"We are confident of disruption-free switchover to BS-VI supplies across the country," he said. "What we will be supplying is the best quality available anywhere in the world. You don't have any better fuel that is supplied in any part of the world. Perhaps our BS-VI fuel will be better than equivalent fuel in some parts of the US and Europe."

India adopted a fuel upgradation programme in the early 1990s. Low lead gasoline (petrol) was introduced in 1994 in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. On February 1, 2000, unleaded gasoline was mandated nationwide.

Similarly, BS-2000 (Euro-I equivalent, BS-1) vehicle emission norms were introduced for new vehicles from April 2000. BS-II (Euro-II equivalent) emission norms for new cars were introduced in Delhi from 2000 and extended to the other metro cities in 2001.

Benzene limits have been reduced progressively from 5 per cent in 2000 to 1 per cent nationwide. Lead content in gasoline was removed in phases and only unleaded gasoline is being produced and sold from February 1, 2000.

The octane number of gasoline signifies the improved performance of the engine. Loss in octane number due to phasing out of lead was made up by installing new facilities in the refinery and changes in refinery operation. RON (Research Octane Number) of gasoline for BS-2000 spec was increased to 88. This has over time been increased to 91.

Singh said sulphur reduction will reduce Particulate Matter (PM) emissions even in the in-use older generation diesel vehicles.