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Ten-day Oct. window saw a spike from the ₹32-cr. worth bonds sold in July tranche, reveals RTI reply More than ₹400 crore worth of electoral bonds were sold by the State Bank of India (SBI) in the 10-day window of October, a sharp rise from the ₹32 crore worth of bonds sold in the July tranche, according to data the bank released under the Right to Information. Assembly poll backdrop The electoral bond data assumes significance against the backdrop of the Assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram. The RTI data, released in response to queries by Factly, also shows that there is next-to-no demand for electoral bonds of smaller denominations and the majority of the bonds sold were in the highest denomination of ₹1 crore. The data shows that ₹401.73 crore worth of bonds were sold by SBI in the October 1-10 window, the fifth tranche in which the bonds were available for sale. Within this, about 37.5% of the bonds (₹150.7 crore worth)...

What is it? The Board of Directors of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) meets every month to discuss inspection reports of banks and systemically important financial entities, and other routine issues of supervision. The Board now has 18 members, inclusive of the Governor and four Deputy Governors and two top bureaucrats from the Finance Ministry. In addition, the government nominates 10 public representatives from different fields of activity to the board. Some of the well-known names nominated by the government to the Board now are N. Chandrasekaran, chairman, Tata Sons, Teamlease founder and chairman Manish Sabharwal, agricultural economist Ashok Gulati, chartered accountant S. Gurumurthy and Bharat Doshi, former CFO of Mahindra & Mahindra. Economic Affairs Secretary Subash C. Garg and Rajiv Kumar, Secretary, Department of Financial Services, represent the government’s interests. How did it come about? The Board meetings are normally boring affairs that go largely un...

To generate about 1.6 MW via rooftop units at 4,300 apartments in Hooghly City-based Eden Realty Group Arya Sumant has launched a roof-top solar project comprising 4,300 dwelling units on a 23-acre plot acquired from the National Textile Corporation. The project, which will come up in the affordable housing segment, will enable occupants not only to have dwelling units at affordable rates, but also save on maintenance charges they would otherwise have to pay in common service areas. “We will generate about 1.6 MW through roof top solar units at this project which will have 4,300 apartments,” said joint managing director of Eden Realty Group Arya Sumant. This would be grid connected power, he said. NTC land The group is developing the project on land acquired from National Textile Corporation years ago, he said. The two-phased project would come up at Serampore in Hooghly district. Former chairman of the erstwhile West Bengal Renewable Energy Development Agency S.P. Gon ...

Punitive action possible now; only warnings allowed earlier As part of the proposed amendments in the Finance Bill 2018, the government has given more power to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to impose monetary penalties on important market intermediaries such as stock exchanges and clearing corporations and also act against newer categories of participants likes investment advisers, research analysts,  real estate investment trusts (REITs) and infrastructure investment trusts (InvITs). The proposed amendments to the SEBI Act and the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act now allow the capital markets regulator to impose a monetary penalty of at least ₹5 crore on stock exchanges, clearing corporations and depositories for non-compliance with regulatory norms. The penalty can go up to ₹25 crore or three times the amount of gains made out of such failure or non-compliance. Hitherto, SEBI only had the power to censure or warn against any form of failure. ...

“We are happy that ties with ASEAN are strong and are contributing to a peaceful and prosperous planet,” Mr. Modi said Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday participated in the ASEAN-India Breakfast Summit in  Singapore  and underlined the need for maritime cooperation and centrality of trade for the prosperity of the strategic Indo-Pacific region. Prime Minister Modi began his two-day visit to Singapore on Wednesday by delivering his keynote address at the prestigious Fintech Festival. He also held separate bilateral meetings with the premiers of Singapore, Australia and Thailand and discussed ways to further strengthen ties, including in areas of trade, defence and security. ALSO READ PM Modi gives awards to winning teams of first India-Singapore Hackathon   “PM Narendra Modi participated at ASEAN-India Breakfast  Summit  in Singapore. Reaffirmed cooperation in maritime domain and centrality of trade and investment towards prosperit...

India are on a roll having convincingly won their first two matches against New Zealand and Pakistan. Eyeing a semifinals berth, overwhelming favourites India will have to guard against complacency when they play Ireland in their third Group B match of the ICC Women’s World T20 here on Thursday. India are on a roll having convincingly won their first two matches, including against arch-rivals Pakistan two days ago. Skipper Harmanpreet Kaur declared open the tournament with her blazing hundred against New Zealand at the Providence, the same venue where India will face Ireland. Ireland, on the other hand, have lost to both Australia and Pakistan. India will enter the game against the Irish as overwhelming favourites but Kaur is aware that her team cannot afford to take things for granted in this mega-event. Ireland cricket is known for its fighting abilities and taking them lightly will not be the way to go for India, with qualification to the last-four knocking on their...

Navakanta Bhat, Kavita Singh, Roop Mallik, Nalini Anantharaman, S.K. Satheesh and Sendhil Mullainathan are the winners out of the 244 nominations received in six categories minent professors have been awarded the Infosys Prize 2018 across different categories of science and  research,  the software major’s science foundation announced on Tuesday. The annual award includes a pure gold medal, a citation and a prize purse worth $100,000 (or its equivalent in Indian rupees), the Infosys Science Foundation (ISF) said in a statement. “India needs to cement its place as a hub for innovations across various fields of science,” said Narayana Murthy, Trustee ISF and Founder, Infosys. “The Infosys Prize seeks to honour the efforts of some of the brightest scientists and researchers and highlight the country’s ongoing quest for science excellence,” Mr. Murthy said. A six-member jury of renowned scientists and professors selected the winners from 244 nominations r...

Around 5 pm Martian time, it will wait for one of NASA's three satellites orbiting the planet to pass overhead. Curiosity will then send several hundred megabytes of scientific data via large ground antennae to its human masters on Earth. A miniature lab On the ground floor of building 34 at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, scientists pore over Curiosity's data every day at 1 pm, in a large windowless room full of scientific instruments and computers. The scientists are looking for any indication of life on Mars. Inside Curiosity lies a "marvel of miniaturization," says Charles Malespin, the deputy principal investigator for Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM), a chemist's lab the size of a microwave oven. "It's the most complicated instrument NASA has ever sent to another planet." SAM analyzes samples of Martian soil by heating them in an oven that reaches 1,000 Celsius. The hot rocks release gas, which is separ...

The image was taken on October 29 as Juno performed its 16th close flyby of Jupiter NASA’s Juno spacecraft has beamed back a stunning image of Jupiter, showing the gas giant’s multitude of colourful, swirling clouds. The image captures a several bright-white ‘pop-up’ clouds as well as an anticyclonic storm, known as a white oval, in Jupiter’s dynamic North Temperate Belt. The image was taken on October 29 as the spacecraft performed its 16th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 7,000 kilometers from the planet’s cloud tops, at a latitude of approximately 40 degrees north. Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstadt and Sean Doran used data from the spacecraft’s JunoCam imager to create a colour-enhanced image of the planet’s cloud, NASA said in a statement. JunoCam’s raw images are available online for the public to peruse and process into image products. Juno’s principal goal is to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter. Underneath its dense cloud cover, ...

For one, Mayawati’s party was asking for a hefty 50 seats; also, in Dalit constituencies, the candidate profile matters a lot Will the Congress’s failure to strike an alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) hurt the grand old party’s prospects in Madhya Pradesh? It’s a question that most political pundits are likely to have in mind. Going by conventional wisdom, the BSP’s 6.3% vote share and four Assembly seats in the 2013 elections would be expected to translate into a sizeable dip in Dalit votes for the Congress in the Chambal belt and the Satna-Rewa region, where the BSP has had a fair following. The two regions in the north and north-east of the State yielded two seats each to the Congress in the 2013 election. With the BSP coming second in 12 of the 230 constituencies in that election, some observers contended that an alliance would have helped consolidate the crucial Dalit vote in these pockets and taken a Congress-led combine past the BJP in quite a few seats. ...