Our party lost moral high ground due to Amit Shah’s son: BJP leader

News Network
October 11, 2017

BJP veteran and former union minister Yashwant Sinha has said that the saffron party has "lost the moral high ground" due to a corruption scandal involving the son of its chief Amit Shah.

Sinha said that the BJP appears guilty of many lapses: producing senior ministers to defend Mr Shah's son, entrepreneur Jay Shah, and farming out a top government lawyer, Tushar Mehta, to represent Jay Shah in court.

Jay Shah has sued The Wire, a news website, for 100 crores for defamation for reporting his firm's revenues escalated by 16,000 times after the BJP came to power. The report also questioned allegedly unsecured loans given to Jay Shah's firms, including from a state-run firm that reports to the Power Ministry.

"The way the loan  was given to Jai Shah by the Power Ministry and the way (minister) Piyush Goyal defended him, it gives the impression that there's something wrong," said Mr Sinha, whose son, Jayant Sinha, is a minister in the union government. 

"Even Additional Solicitor General (Tushar Mehta) representing a private individual in court is something that never happened before," Mr Sinha, a former finance minister, said in Patna. Mr Mehta said he sought and obtained the clearance of the Law Ministry to advise Jay Shah.

"The government should order an inquiry because too many government departments are involved," said Mr Sinha, backing what the opposition has demanded. "The BJP has lost the high moral ground of zero tolerance on corruption," he added.

Last month, Sinha provoked his party by expounding in detail on the economic slowdown which he attributed to the poor timing and handling of the key reforms of demonetisation and the new national sales tax or GST. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, whom he singled out for sharp criticism, responded by describing the party veteran as "a job applicant at 80."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a lengthy speech last week said that pessimists were misrepresenting the slowdown of one quarter (5.7 percent growth for the last quarter) to  claim an economic failure.

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News Network
May 8,2020

New Delhi, May 8: India's count of COVID-19 cases on Friday rose to 56,342 including 1,886 deaths, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Currently, there are 37,916 active cases while 16,539 COVID-19 positive patients have been cured/discharged and one has migrated.

Maharashtra has the highest number of cases with 18,120 followed by Gujarat with 7,013 cases and Delhi with 5,980 cases.

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News Network
March 9,2020

New Delhi, Mar 9: Petrol and diesel prices registered a drop across the country on Monday as global oil prices plummeted around 30 per cent after Saudi Arabia slashed prices and set plans for a dramatic increase in crude production in April.

In New Delhi, petrol price fell by 24 paise intra-day and stood at Rs 70.59 per litre. Diesel in the national capital was retailed at Rs 63.26 per litre on Monday as against Rs 63.51 on Sunday.

The retail price of petrol in Kolkata saw a drop of 23 paise to Rs 73.28 per litre. The diesel price fell by 25 paise in the eastern metropolitan city to retail at Rs 65.59 per litre.

In Mumbai, petrol price was Rs 76.29 per litre as against Rs 76.53 a day earlier. Diesel was retailed at Rs 66.24 per litre, 26 paise lower than on Sunday.

In Chennai, petrol was retailed at Rs 73.33 per litre, 25 paise lower than a day earlier. Diesel price saw a fall of 26 paise to retail at Rs 66.75 per litre in the southern metropolitan.

Global crude oil prices fell by as much as a third following Saudi Arabia's move to start a price war with Russia amid worries over the spread of coronavirus.

Brent crude futures were down 13.29 dollars or 29 per cent at 31.98 dollars a barrel by 04:33 hrs GMT after earlier dropping to 31.02 dollars, their lowest since February 12, 2016.

Brent futures were on track for their biggest daily decline since January 17, 1991 at the start of the first Gulf War.

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News Network
January 13,2020

New Delhi, Jan 13: Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, has fired around 50 of its India executives as part of its restructuring in the country, three sources with direct knowledge said.

The move underscores the struggles Walmart has faced in expanding its wholesale business in India. The Bentonville, Arkansas based company currently operates 28 wholesale stores where it sells goods to small shopkeepers, and not to retail consumers.

The firings mostly affected executives in the company’s real estate division because the growth in the wholesale model has not been that robust, two of the sources said.

“It’s happening because focus is shifting to e-commerce rather than physical (stores),” said one source, who declined to be identified as the decision is not public.

Walmart did not respond to a request for comment.

Walmart has placed bold bets on India’s e-commerce sector. In 2018, it paid $16 billion to acquire a majority stake in India’s online marketplace Flipkart, in its biggest global acquisition.

The second source added that while Walmart could slow down the pace of opening new wholesale stores, the focus will increasingly be on boosting sales through business-to-business and retail e-commerce.

Some of the executives were sacked last week and more could be let go on Monday, two sources said.

In a statement to India’s Economic Times newspaper, which first reported the news, Walmart said it was always looking for ways to operate more effectively and that “this requires us to review our corporate structure to ensure that we are organized in the right way to best meet the needs of our members.”

Walmart has around 600 staff in its India head office out of a total of around 5,300 nationally, one of the sources said.

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