Aarohi Blog

James Quincey , The 52-year-old newly appointed president and chief executive officer (CEO) of The Coca-Cola Company, has a packed schedule on Thursday and Friday on his maiden trip to India. In Mumbai on the first leg of his tour, Quincey’s itinerary includes meeting representatives of the Maharashtra government, following the announcement of a nearly Rs 11,000-crore investment along with partners in June, launching an orange flavour in the company’s Minute Maid portfolio, and visiting the Gurgaon office of Coca-Cola India to address employees there, and review operations with the senior management on Friday. British-born Quincey, who succeeded Muhtar Kent as CEO in May, is keen to take Coca-Cola India into the parent company’s top 3 club. “That is my vision,” he said, during his media address in Mumbai on Thursday. “But in the foreseeable future, K K’s (T Krishnakumar, president, India and Southwest Asia, Coca-Cola) mandate would be to take the company from being the sixth-...

Mumbai Building Collapses - The building,located at Pakmodia street near the J J Hospital, with 12 rooms and six godowns on the ground floor, crumbled at around 8:30 am. Seven persons were killed, 15 others injured, while around 25 people are feared trapped after a five-storey residential building collapsed in Bhendi Bazaar area of south Mumbai on Thursday.According to fire brigade sources present at the spot,"There were around nine families staying in the building. Thirty people are feared trapped". The disaster management cell of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) received a call about the collapse at 8.40 am."We immediately rushed fire brigade personnel to the site to rescue the trapped people," a senior MCGM official said. A senior police official said seven persons, including an elderly couple, died and 13 others were injured in the incident. The injured were admitted to the J J Hospital. "The exact number of trapped peop...

Aadhaar-PAN linking -Two more days left to link Aadhaar with PAN as the income tax department is unlikely to extend the deadline beyond August 31.Tax payers will have to link their PAN with Aadhaar by the stipulated deadline as the Supreme Court verdict on privacy has no bearing on the requirement, UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey said on the day the apex court pronounced the historic Right to Privacy ruling. Tax department had extended the deadline till August 31, but cautioned that returns would not be processed until the “linkage of Aadhaarwith PAN is done“. The deadline was extended as there were complaints that taxpayers were unable to link the Aadhaar number with PAN because of different names in the two databases.According to The Economics Times, tax department said there was no move to extend the date now as enough time had been provided to link PAN and Aadhaar. For your convenience, the tax department has introduced a one-page form for taxpayers to manually apply ...

India is deploying thousands of riot police and shutting down internet services in two northern states, as it prepares for the sentencing on Monday of a self-styled ’godman’ whose followers went on the rampage after he was convicted of rape on Friday. Ram Rahim Singh cult Dera Sacha Sauda has a vast rural following in Punjab and Haryana states, where frenzied mobs burned down gas stations and train stations and torched vehicles after a local court found him guilty of raping two women in a 2002 case. At least 38 people were killed and more than 200 injured in the violence in Haryana, officials said, drawing sharp criticism for the state government run by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The case has also highlighted the Indian heartland’s fascination with spiritual gurus, who enjoy immense political clout for their ability to mobilise millions of followers frustrated by the shortcomings of the state. Security forces have cordoned off a jail in ...

Just a day before the last episode of " Game of Thrones " Season 7 set to hit the screens,  the HBO hackers calling themselves as "Mr Smith" have leaked the climax of the ongoing season, thus ending the suspense that kept the millions of fans on toes. According to Mashable on Friday, the hacking group which stole approximately 1.5 terabytes of data from HBO have released, what they call, a sixth wave of leaks that contain confidential plot summaries and details of how the season will end. "Mashable has read the confidential summary but has chosen not to publish the explicit details," the report said.In response, HBO has said the hackers may continue to drop bits and pieces of stolen information in an attempt to generate media attention."That's a game we're not going to participate in," HBO was quoted as saying.The hacking group demanded approximately $6.5 million worth of Bitcoin from HBO but that demand has not been met so far ...

The Supreme Court nine-judge Bench, in a unanimous judgment on Thursday, upheld the Right to Privacy as a fundamental right, reported news agency ANI.According to LiveLawIndia, the apex court said that privacy is protected under Article 21 and Part 3 of the Constitution. The Supreme Court, according to ANI, overruled the M P Sharma (1962) and Kharak Singh (1954) judgments and held the Right to Privacy as a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. The verdict was given as soon as the nine-judge Constitution Bench of the apex court resumed the hearing on the case on Thursday morning. Following this, a five-judge constitutional Bench will decide whether Aadhaar violates the Right to Privacy or not, the news agency added. The nine-judge Constitution Bench comprising Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar, Justice J Chelameswar, Justice S A Bobde, Justice R K Agrawal, Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman, Justice Abhay Manohar Sapre, Justice D Y Chandrachud, Justice...

The Madras High Court today directed the TamilNadu government to lay down guidelines for organisers for installation of idols for Vinayaka Chathurthi festival and also securing power connections.The First Bench comprising Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M Sundar disposed of two PILs filed with regard to installation and immersion of idols of the Elephant God and energy theft by organisers in connection with the festivities. Vinayaka Chathurthi is to be celebrated across the state on August 25 and idols of the deity installed at various locations during the festival would be immersed on September 3 . Referring to the counter already filed by the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation Ltd (TANGEDCO), in which it was submitted that 62 enforcement teams were formed to curb energy theft, the judges in their order said, "TANGEDCO has filed an affidavit indicating steps taken by it to detect cases of theft of electricity. "It is further stated t...

Karti Chidambaram , son of former finance minister P Chidambaram, on Wednesday appeared before the CBIin connection with a corruption case.Karti was directed by the Supreme Court to appear for questioning before the CBI. The agency wants to examine him in connection with a Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance given to media group INX Media for receiving funds from Mauritius when his father P Chidambaram was the Union Finance Minister.  It is alleged that a firm "indirectly controlled" by him received money from INX Media , run by Indrani and Peter Mukerjea.The CBI had issued a notice to Karti to appear for questioning in June but he had sought more time. Later, a look out circular was also issued against him to prevent him from leaving the country, CBI sources said. A bench comprising Chief Justice J S Khehar and Justice D Y Chandrachud allowed Karti to be accompanied by a lawyer at the CBI headquarters during the questioning.The CBI had regis...

. The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the TamilNadu medical colleges to follow the common National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for admissions (NEET).The court observed that NEET will be the only basis for admissions and the counselling will begin on August 24. The court stated that the counselling should be conducted immediately and the process should end by September 4.On August 16, the medical students from Tamil Nadu moved the Supreme Court seeking directive for the State Government to start medical counselling soon. This came after the National Eligibility and Entrance Test ( NEET ), which was made mandatory for admission in the MBBS and the BDS courses across India last year, got separate petitions filed at the Madras andGujarat High Courts, where medical aspirants demanded cancellation of the NEET 2017 as theGujarati and Tamil medium paper were allegedly tougher than the English and Hindi medium. The medical aspirants in the case are being represented ...

Catalan football giants FC Barcelona on Tuesday took legal action against their former star Neymar, demanding 8.5 million euros ($10 million) over what they called breach of contract.The club also demanded that Neymar pay back the sum he received when he extended his contract last year, given that the Brazil forward has now paid his 222 million euros ($261 million) buy-out clause to join Paris Saint-Germain, reports Efe. "The club demands from Neymar Jr the amount already paid for the renewal premium due to the breach of contract, in addition to 8.5 million euros in damages and an additional 10 per cent in arrears," FC Barcelona said in a statement. Barcelona said they had sent the Royal Spanish Football Federation the lawsuit against Neymar that they submitted on August 11 to a court in Barcelona so it could pass it on "to the appropriate authorities in the French Football Federation and FIFA", Barcelona said in a statement. "The club also reque...

  The All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board and the All India Shia Personal Law Board on Tuesday welcomed the Supreme Court judgement on triple talaq, terming it as a victory of Islam and Muslim women in the country.The decision, they said, has given new hope to Muslim women. "The Supreme Court decision is historic, it is the victory of women in the country. But more than that, it is the victory of Islam," said President of the All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board Shaista Amber, who has been fighting for the rights of Muslim women."We hope that triple talaq will be banned once and for all in times to come," she said, adding it causes immense hardships to Muslim women even though "there is no provision of triple talaq in Islam". This discriminatory arrangement is made by so-called religious leaders and it has harmed the lives of lakhs of women...The decision has given new hope to Muslim women," she said.The Supreme Court by a m...

Supreme Court declaring triple talaq as unconstitutional, the stage has been set for the Parliament now to frame laws to regulate this practice among Muslims. One cannot help but recall a Bombay High Court order in a case involving India domiciled Pakistani musician Adnan Sami and his thrice married wife Sabbah in 2010. The Bombay High Court while pronouncing its verdict had quoted a famous judgment of the Delhi High Court of 2007 in the Masroor Ahmed vs State of Delhi case. The Delhi High Court observation in parts was as follows: Classical Hanafi law, especially as it is practised in India, seems to take the opinion that triple talaq is sinful yet effective as an irrevocable form of divorce. The difficulty lies with triple talaq which is classed as bidaat (an innovation). Generally speaking, the Shia schools do not recognise triple talaq as bringing about a valid divorce. Judicial notice can be taken of the fact that the harsh abruptness of triple talaq has brought about e...

India is Afghanistan most reliable regional partner, the Pentagon has said in its latest Afghan report, the first under the Trump administration."India is providing significant training opportunities for Afghan officers and enlisted personnel. Approximately 130 Afghans travel to India each year to attend the various military academy and commissioning programs," it said in the six- monthly report to the US Congress . "India is Afghanistan's most reliable regional partner and the largest contributor of development assistance in the region, including civil development projects such as the Afghanistan-India Friendship Dam and the Afghan parliament building," the Pentagon added. According to the report which covers the period from December 2016 to May 2017, India has donated limited security assistance, most notably four Mi-35 aircraft. In May 2016, India, Iran and Afghanistan signed the Chabahar Port agreement opening a trade route into Central Asia a...

The price of Infosys Technologies' stock last week plummeted 10 per cent to Rs 923, thanks to the unsurprising exit of Vishal Sikka as the chief executive and managing director of the company. Worse, since his exit has been shrouded in controversies, the confidence that Sikka had built up in the stock since his appointment three years ago has also thinned significantly. The exit was indeed inevitable and that is clear from the fairly incisive questions raised by co-founder N R Narayana Murthy – now in the public domain. The questions dwell upon Sikka, the board’s conduct, the Panaya acquisition, and the severance package given to former chief financial officer Rajiv Bansal. The governance issues raised by Murthy give an impression that the board had not acted fairly on the whistleblower report highlighting malpractices during Sikka’s regime. In questioning the processes followed by the company’s board, Murthy represents himself and "some well-meaning shareholder...

Legendary comic artiste Jerry Lewis , who was known for his brash slapstick humour, has died at the age of 91.Lewis's agent confirmed that the actor died at his Las Vegas home at around 9.15 am Sunday morning, reported Variety .He was one of Hollywood's most entertaining comedians, whose career spanned for more than six decades and he went on to become an auteur filmmaker of comedic classics such as "The Nutty Professor" and "The Bellboy".   Lewis was born as Joseph Levitch on March 16, 1926 in New Jersey's Newark to parents, who were in showbiz. He made his debut at a Borscht Belt hotel singing "Brother, can you spare a dime?" at the age of five. At 15, he started pantomiming operatic and popular songs and was booked into a burlesque house in Buffalo. In 1942, his comic pantomiming gig at Brown's Hotel in upstate New York, where he was also working the summer as a bellboy,made him cross paths with comic Irving Kaye.   He ...

Decks have been cleared for the biggest foreign acquisition ever in India. The completion of the $12.9-billion Essar Oil buyout by Russian government-owned Rosneft and other partners is expected to be announced on Monday. The deal, signed in October 2016, went through a lot of hiccups, with the lenders to the Ruia-controlled Essar group insisting on certain conditions. Among the last to approve the deal was Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India. The Mumbai-based Essargroup owed over Rs 2,300 crore to LIC, part of which has been repaid. Around Rs 1,200 crore is said to be pending. The Essar group had in October 2016, signed a deal with Rosneft, United Capital Partners and Trafigura group to sell 98 per cent equity in Essar Oil. The proceeds from the sale were expected to help the group reduce its debt, which stood at around $13.5 billion at the time of signing the deal. Essar Steel, another group company, is undergoing insolvency proceedings after the Ahmedabad be...

Vishal Sikka on Friday resigned as the chief executive (CEO) and managing director (MD) of Infosys Technologies, India’s second-largest software services company. While the board of Infosys accepted the resignation of Sikka with immediate effect and appointed U B Pravin Rao as the interim CEO & MD, Sikka has been appointed the executive vice-chairman of the company. In a BSE filing, Infosys said Sikka reiterated his belief in the great potential of Infosys, but cited among his reasons to leave a continuous stream of "distractions and disruptions over the recent months and quarters, increasingly personal and negative as of late, as preventing management's ability to accelerate the Company's transformation”. When Sikka had taken over as the CEO & MD of Infosys three years ago, Sikka was prescient in forecasting that automation would take away jobs and clients would shift their investment dollars to newer digital technologies. The shift, in fact, ha...

India’s second largest IT services firm Infosys  has signed a five-year agreement with Indiana-based Purdue University to provide classes and training for many of the 10,000 American employees that Infosys proposed to hire over the next two years. Total American employees the company planned to hire, 2000 will be based out of Indiana.Infosys said a large portion of this training would be for new employees and conducted on the West Lafayette campus of the university, while the partnership also includes lifelong-learning opportunities through specialized online courses for existing Infosys employees. Infosys said it would conduct research jointly with Purdue University and develop course materials in areas such as digital agriculture, cyber security, biopharma analytics, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence and data analytics..“The strategic alliance with Infosys will marry Purdue’s talent and expertise in innovation with cutting-edge research and learning oppo...

This year, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered his shortest Independence Day speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort, it might have been directed to a generation whose attention span is shorter and lifespan longer than its predecessor. His eye might have been set on those born from 1997 to 2001: They will be exercising their voting rights for the first time in the 2019 general elections. “January 1, 2018, will not be an ordinary day – those born in this century will start turning 18. For these people, this is a decisive year of their lives. They are going to be the creators of the destiny of our nation in the 21st century. I heartily welcome all these youth, honour them and offer my respects to them. You have an opportunity to shape the destiny of our country,” Modi said. In many ways, Modi was addressing an important electoral constituency that also has the power to shape his party’s destiny: In the 2019 polls, 133 million young adults will get to cast their vote...

NITI Aayog  — the country’s think-tank that finds solutions to problems ranging from economic issues to how Indian athletes can get more Olympic medals — is now looking towards the start-up community to find answers to India’s woes.. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and NITI Aayog will meet 212 entrepreneurs on Thursday to get their views on almost everything under the sun — jobs, ease of doing business, climate change, tourism, health care, skilling. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and NITI Aayog will meet 212 entrepreneurs on Thursday to get their views on almost everything under the sun — jobs, ease of doing business, climate change, tourism, health care, skilling.Ahead of this meeting, Modi met the entrepreneurs for a private chat over dinner on Wednesday.  This is the second such event — after Prime Minister’s magnum opus event Startup India in January 2016 — where start-up bosses are being called by the PM en-masse. This would lead to a similar programme on ...

The U.S. and China seem to be on the verge of a costly trade war.Most recently, the Trump administration announced that Chinese shipments of aluminum foil will now face a hefty import tax, a decision that is intended to offset what the administration believes are unfair Chinese subsidies of its aluminum industry. What this means in practice is that a handful of Chinese companies will now face “countervailing duties” ranging from 17 percent to 81 percent on their exports of aluminum to the U.S. And a trade war may also be brewing between the U.S. and several Asian countries in the solar industry.It is not unusual for the U.S. to punish businesses it deems to be “cheating” on global trade rules, and one should not be too quick to judge any specific punitive measure taken. But the fear is that we are now on a slippery slope toward a trade war, as China is certain to respond by taxing U.S. sales of goods in China. This latest action comes on the heels of a breakdown...

1.1 million permanent account numbers (PAN) that the government deactivated last month, Income-tax (I-T) sources say a majority were duplicates and were being used to open share-trading and demat accounts, transact on the stock markets, and operate in shell firms. The I-T department has discovered one individual could have five to seven PAN cards, each with a slightly different spelling of the holder’s name. According to I-T officials, such people, who have been identified as small- and medium-sized stock brokers, sub-brokers and their clients, have evaded taxes.They could have evaded so by using one card for filing tax returns, and others for investing in financial instruments or making high-value transactions, said a senior tax official. High-value transactions of more than Rs 50,000 and above require PAN details. During demonetisation, PAN was required to be quoted in the case of cash deposits of more than Rs 2 lakh in savings accounts.Sources said that the tax departme...

Uber and Ola are huge taxi companies but they own very few cars. However, their highly sophisticated systems of fleet management and GPS based navigation through city traffic make them so easily available and inexpensive. They have revolutionized personal transportation in nearly a thousand major towns worldwide with the result that many people don’t need to keep a car any longer. A small car with a driver can however only carry 3 passengers and if the driver can be eliminated it will increase its passenger capacity by 25%. Enough to greatly improve a taxi’s earning power or profitability. The idea of a driverless car is, however, rather scary. It might be terrifying to see one speeding toward you but the ongoing revolution in electronics has achieved and is achieving many amazing things. A Robot on an automotive manufacturing line is, for example, many times faster and more efficient than a hundred workers and they do not make mistakes. They don’t also need medicare, welfar...

  In the 70 years since Independence , India has made most progress in improving life expectancy, literacy, but has been slower in improving the level of income, and reducing infant mortality rates when compared to five other nations.On the eve of independence day, we compared the progress India has made in improving income, health, education, and in preserving its forests, to five countries–China, Pakistan, Malaysia, South Korea and Brazil. We chose China because it had roughly the same per capita income in 1960 as India did. Our analysis showed that even though China and India are constantly compared, until now, China has outperformed India across most wealth and health indicators.We looked at South Korea to get a sense of how India performed compared to a country that has gone from being a developing to a developed country after 1947. We used Pakistan to compare progress in a country that shares the same history and culture, and was formed at the same time as Indi...

Chinese textile firms are increasingly using North Korean factories to take advantage of cheaper labour across the border, traders and businesses in the border city of Dandong told Reuters.The clothes made in North Korea are labelled "Made in China" and exported across the world, they said. Using North Korea to produce cheap clothes for sale around the globe shows that for every door that is closed by ever-tightening United Nations (UN) sanctions another one may open. The UN sanctions, introduced to punish North Korea for its missile and nuclear programs, do not include any bans on textile exports. "We take orders from all over the world," said one Korean-Chinese businessman in Dandong, the Chinese border city where the majority of North Korea trade passes through. Like many people Reuters interviewed for this story, he spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Dozens of clothing agents operate in Dandong, acting ...

Markets have been on a downward spiral since August 2 when the Nifty50 hit a high of 10,137 levels in intra-day deals. Since then, the index has tanked nearly 4%, or around 400 points to 9,737 levels in intra-day deals on Friday. The recent fall has been triggered by rising geopolitical tension across the globe – one, between India and China on the Doklam standoff, and two the developments with North Korea and the United States. That apart, Sebi’s order to ban trade in 331 suspectedshell companies also dented sentiment, as did sub-par second quarter results of select companies. Given the developments, analysts say there could be more pain in store for the markets that have recently taken cognizance of the developing geopolitical situation. Though they do not wish to predict how deep and long this correction could last, experts do caution that the fall is beyond anyone’s control as it is driven by geopolitical reasons. “Global events that are beyond market control have...

Though the rupee saw its sharpest fall in a day since July 3 of 24 paise to hit 64.08 against the US dollar (USD) on Thursday, the Indian unit is in no hurry to breach 60 levels in the near term, suggests the latest report by Tanvee Gupta Jain, an economist with UBS. Going ahead, Jain expects the rupee (USD/INR) to remain range-bound between 62-66 levels over the next few months and average 64.3 in FY18 and 65.4 in FY19. UBS had earlier estimated it to hover around 65.4 and 67.6 levels, respectively. The USD/INR pair has been among the better-performing currencies in emerging markets, appreciating 5.9% thus far in calendar year 2017 (CY17). On Thursday, however, the Indian unit lost ground on reports of escalating India's geopolitical tension with China amid developments relating to North Korea and the US. “ Rupee came under pressure against the US dollar and fell to the lowest level in a week after geopolitical tensions weighed on domestic as well as global equiti...

The Bombay High Court on Monday asked theMaharashtra government to explain in detail its decision to release Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt early from jail on grounds of good conduct. A division bench of Justice RM Sawant and Justice Sadhna Jadhav directed the government to file an affidavit justifying its decision, what parameters were considered for letting the actor out eight months early, and the procedures followed while showing leniency towards him. Dutt was convicted and sentenced to five years in an arms possession case connected to the March 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case which he served in Yerawada Central Jail, Pune. He was released on February 25, 2016. The court was hearing a PIL filed by Pune-based activist Pradeep Bhalekar challenging the series of furloughs and paroles granted to Dutt when he was serving his sentence.The court sought to know if the Deputy Inspector General, Prisons was consulted, or whether the Jail Superintendent sent the recommendati...