Indian Express news — ✅ خرید وی پی ان ❇ ip ثایت vPn آی پی اختصاصی ◐

سپتامبر 9, 2022

As 2024 polls draw closer, Sharad Pawar becomes rallying point for anti-BJP forces in Maharashtra, Centre

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar met Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar on Wednesday to evolve a consensus among non-BJP parties to forge a political front keeping the 2024 elections in sight. Though the efforts are still in the preliminary stage, the message that came across is that Pawar is playing the role of a catalyst to bring individuals across parties and states to the talking table.
Last week, Sharad Pawar had announced in Maharashtra that he would work to unite non-BJP parties, but he also made it very clear that he would not take any responsibility due to his age. Pawar’s refrain was that the BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, failed to usher in the promised “achhe din” in the country. Most of the promises made in 2014 have remained on paper, he lamented.

At 81 years, Pawar is still among the most proactive leaders who extensively tour Maharashtra. However, the downfall of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government after two and a half years has proved to be a setback for the NCP which was a crucial party in the coalition.
After the 2019 state Assembly elections that led to the Shiv Sena breaking ties with the BJP, Pawar had taken the initiative to unite the Congress, NCP and the Shiv Sena to form the tripartite MVA with the objective of keeping the BJP out of power in Maharashtra.
Yet, the experiment in the state was short-lived as the BJP succeeded in exploiting the unrest within the Shiv Sena, causing a vertical split in the party both in the state Legislative Assembly as well as the Parliament. Of the total 55 Shiv Sena MLAs, 40 walked out of the parent party under the leadership of Eknath Shinde whom the BJP rewarded with the most-coveted Chief Minister post.
Notwithstanding the setback, seasoned politician Pawar is now focused on building a front against the BJP ahead of the 2024 polls. In Maharashtra, during the Monsoon Session in August, Opposition leader Ajit Pawar and former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray had announced that the Congress, NCP and the Sena will put up a united front in the 2024 Assembly and Lok Sabha polls. They also intend to fight the BMC polls under the MVA banner.
What applies to Maharashtra is also being replicated at the national level. Pawar seems to have become the rallying point, but then this is not the first time that the idea of an anti-BJP front has been floated.
Sharad Pawar had on umpteen occasions in the past taken the lead to form a third front which was then perceived as a pressure group to fight both the Congress and the BJP. At times, the consolidation of such a group was seen as a method to bring regional parties to the centre stage of national politics.
A senior NCP state leader said, “Pawar has always worked to unite like-minded secular parties. The political agenda is to fight communal forces.” Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Pawar will once again continue the effort to get like-minded parties to put up a united front against the BJP.
Sources in the NCP, however, are cautious with one leader saying, ” At this stage, leaders are just meeting. Nothing concrete has emerged.”
Janata Dal (United) chief Nitish Kumar, meanwhile, is likely to meet leaders across parties, including Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, CPI(M)’s Sitaram Yechury, CPI leader D Raja, Indian National Lok Dal’s Om Prakash Chautala and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, among others.
.

سپتامبر 1, 2022

Old liquor policy back in Delhi from today: All you need to know

From Thursday onward, only government-run liquor shops will be open in Delhi for a period of at least six months. The Excise Department is soon coming up with a new app—mAbkariDelhi—to provide customers with liquor-related information.
What changes from today:
300 shops will open in Delhi from Thursday and the 250 shops being run by private players will be shut.

All discounts and offers—buy one, get one free, two-plus-three on MRP of liquor price—will be discontinued and the dry days in the national capital will once again go up from 3 to 21.
Shops at the Delhi airport will remain shut for another few weeks as procedural requirements are still pending.
Once the Excise Department app goes live, one can check the availability of various brands of liquor in Delhi, the list of retail vends with its locality, information about dry days, and a bottle scanner tool to check the genuineness of liquor. The app will be available in both English and Hindi.
By the end of the first seven days, as many as 500 shops will be functional across the city. The price will not increase but may slightly come down as the existing import fee of Rs 45 per nine bottles, 1 per cent VAT and 1 per cent retail fee will go.
By December end, 200 more shops will open including in the airport area, NDMC zone and Delhi Cantonment area. Besides, six to eight premium vends for selling foreign liquor brands will open in malls and shopping complexes in September, and there will be 12 more by the end of this year. In total, Delhi will have 700 liquor shops by the end of 2022.

!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘444470064056909’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
.

آگوست 24, 2022

Mundra drug haul case: NIA raids multiple locations in Delhi, elsewhere

The NIA Wednesday conducted searches at multiple locations across Delhi, NCR, and other places in connection with its probe into the interception of nearly 3,000 kg of heroin in Gujarat’s Mundra port last September.
In March this year, in a charge sheet filed against 16 people, the National Investigation Agency alleged that those involved in the racket have links with terror groups in Pakistan.
The central agency had filed the charge sheet in an Ahmedabad court against the 16 accused—11 of whom are Afghan nationals, four Indians and one Iranian—in connection with its narco-terrorism probe into the case where 2,988.21 kg of heroin being smuggled in the guise of talc was caught on a ship by Directorate of Revenue Intelligence. The consignment was said to be worth over Rs 21,000 crore.
“Links of the accused Mohammad Hasan Hussain Dad and Mohammad Hasan Dad and other co-conspirators have also emerged with proscribed terror organisations based in Pakistan. The proceeds of drug trafficking were channelled back to foreign entities through hawala channels at the behest of Pak-based terror outfits for use in anti-India activities,” the NIA had said in a statement then.

Hasan Dad and Hussain Dad are promoters of Hasan Hussain Ltd based in Kandahar, Afghanistan. It was this company that had sent the consignment declaring it as semi-processed talc stones. The consignment originated from Kandahar in Afghanistan and was sent through Bandar Abbas port in Iran. In India, it was supposed to be received by Andhra Pradesh-based Aashi Trading Company run by Chennai-based Machavaram Sudhakar and his wife Govindaraju Durga Purna Vaisali.
“During the investigation, it was established that the smuggling of narcotics into India was carried out earlier as well by the same set of accused persons. These included the offences registered by the DRI Delhi zonal unit wherein 16.105 Kg of Heroin was seized from a warehouse in Delhi; and a case FIR No- 90/2021 PS Garh Shankar dated 01.07.2021 in Hoshiarpur, Punjab wherein 20.250 kg of Heroin was seized. These two offences were also subsumed in the instant case as connected offences,” the NIA had said.
According to the NIA, the Dads and accused M Sudhakar, D P Vaishali and Rajkumar Perumal of Aashi Trading Company along with others had entered into a criminal conspiracy to smuggle huge quantities of narcotics to India by concealing in consignments of semi-processed talc. “The consignment sent in September 2021 was intercepted whereas earlier consignments were received and stored in a warehouse in Delhi for further distribution in Delhi and Punjab,” it had said.
Those chargesheeted by the agency include 10 arrested and six absconding accused. Among the arrested accused M Sudhakar, D P Vaishali, Perumal and Pradeep Kumar are from India. Mohammad Khan Akhlaqi, Said Mohammad Hussaini, Fardin Amery, Sobhan Aryanfar, Alokozai Mohammad Khan, and Murtaza Hakimi are Afghan nationals,
The six absconding accused who have been chargesheeted include the Dads, Iranian national Javad Najafi and Afghan nationals Najibullah Khan Khalid, Esmat Ullah Honari, and Abdul Hadi Alizada.
.

آگوست 22, 2022

No renewals or new patrons: Zomato takes Pro off menu

Food tech platform Zomato is recalibrating its loyalty programs, and has closed new sign ups and renewals for its flagship program Zomato Pro, The Indian Express has learnt. The company had already shut down the more premium iteration Zomato Pro Plus earlier, and revised the terms of its co-branded credit card with RBL Bank.
The Gurgaon-based company launched Zomato Pro in 2020 and Zomato Pro Plus in 2021. The Zomato Pro program replaced the Zomato Gold membership offering. Pro members get discounts while ordering food online from or dining out at partner restaurants.
In a message to users trying to renew their expired Pro membership, Zomato says: “Thank you for being a part of the Zomato Pro program. The membership is unavailable for renewal as we are working on a new and better experience for you. We request you to check the Zomato app to stay updated on the latest offerings.”
Confirming the development in response to queries sent by The Indian Express, a Zomato spokesperson said: “While Zomato Pro and Pro Plus have been loved tremendously by our customers and merchants, we want it to be even more beneficial, especially for the most engaged customers and merchant partners.”

“We are taking feedback and working closely with our customers and restaurant partners to craft a new program. Meanwhile, we are not onboarding new members and merchant partners to Zomato Pro and Zomato Pro Plus. While active members can continue to get their benefits as promised, they will not be able to extend/renew their memberships once their membership tenure expires,” the spokesperson added.
In a separate message to the users of Zomato’s co-branded credit card, RBL Bank and the food tech platform said that September 20 onwards, it was capping the cashback from orders placed on the app using the co-branded credit card to 500 Edition Cash a day (1 Edition Cash is redeemable as Re 1 for subsequent Zomato orders).
Zomato offers 5 per cent cash back on spends done on its app. Under the new conditions, the company has also added spends done on the Blinkit app to the cashback scheme. Zomato recently acquired quick-commerce platform Blinkit, formerly known as Grofers.

ExplainedEye on newer use casesThe decision to pause onboarding of new members as well as to renew the membership of existing ones on Zomato Pro comes amid the company’s strategy of introducing newer use cases, focused more on dining out. These plans are unfolding as Zomato attempts to further narrow its losses.

These recent decisions are in line with Zomato’s new strategy of looking beyond loyalty programs to drive customer frequency. In its earnings call for the April-June quarter earlier this month, Zomato’s chief financial officer Akshant Goyal said, “I think if you have to go from where we are today and meaningfully increase customer frequency, we will have to look beyond these loyalty programs and look at introducing newer use cases, which perhaps leads to a lot of the current offline spend on restaurant food moving on to our platform.”
The company reported a consolidated net loss of Rs 186 crore for the three-month period ended June, compared with Rs 359.70 crore in the March quarter and Rs 360.70 crore in the quarter ended June 30, 2021. This, even as its topline grew to Rs 1,413.90 crore in April-June this year, against Rs 844.40 crore in the same period last year.
The company said food delivery business grew 15 per cent sequentially and saw a break-even in adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) — a measure of its operating margins.
Newsletter | Click to get the day’s best explainers in your inbox
Zomato’s chief rival in the food tech space Swiggy too runs its loyalty program Swiggy One, which was launched in November last year.
Swiggy operates this program as a common membership for the bouquet of services it provides, including food delivery, quick-commerce and local door-to-door package delivery.
The Swiggy One program offers the app’s users unlimited free deliveries from select restaurants and unlimited free delivery from Instamart on orders greater than Rs 99 in value, in addition to other discounts and no surge fees.

آگوست 19, 2022

5G launch in sight: Telcos issued spectrum assignment letters

In what could significantly reduce timelines of network deployment by telecom operators, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has issued the spectrum assignment letters to telcos just 17 days after the auctions for 5G spectrum was concluded. Comparatively, in the previous auctions last year, these letters were issued more than a month after bidding ended.
Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw tweeted on Thursday morning, “5G update: Spectrum assignment letter issued. Requesting TSPs (telecom service providers) to prepare for 5G launch.”
Bharti Airtel said it was provided with an allocation letter for the designated frequency bands it purchased at this year’s 5G spectrum auctions “hours after” it submitted its first tranche of upfront dues towards the airwaves to the DoT, said Bharti Enterprises founder & chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal. Calling it an example of ease of doing business, he said this has never happened in this three decade long experience with the DoT.

“No fuss, no follow up, no running around the corridors and no tall claims. This is ease of doing business at work in its full glory. In my over 30 years of first-hand experience with the DoT, this is a first. Business as it should be…” Mittal said in a statement.
On Wednesday, the DoT received Rs 17,876 crore as upfront dues from four entities that bought spectrum in the auctions that ended earlier this month. Bharti Airtel paid the highest amount of Rs 8,312.4 crore, followed by Rs 7,864.7 crore from Reliance Jio, Rs 1,679.98 crore from Vodafone Idea and Rs 18.94 crore from Adani Group arm Adani Data Networks.
As per DoT’s rules for receiving payments from the spectrum auctions, companies have the option to pay dues in 20 equated annual instalments.
However, they are also free to pay the entire amount or part of it upfront, with the minimum duration for upfront payment being two years.
On August 5, the Department had issued demand notices to all the four companies to pay up their spectrum payments in 10 days, with Wednesday being the final day.
Analysts tracking the field said that before this year, spectrum assignment was typically a months’ long process. For instance, in last year’s auctions, which ended on March 2, telecom operators had submitted their first upfront dues by March 18. But the spectrum assignment happened on April 16, almost a month later after the payments were made. In 2021, the amount of spectrum sold was worth Rs 77,814.80 crore, almost half of what was sold this year.
“Allocation of spectrum post auctions is an administrative and bureaucratic task, and it shows that the government was well prepared in this year’s auctions. Even the earlier decisions that have been taken regarding this, including issuing the Notice Inviting Applications (NIA) for the auctions that was released right after the Cabinet cleared the country’s biggest ever spectrum auctions so far, shows that everything was already in place. It points towards the government making a conscious effort to cut bureaucratic slack. Sunil Mittal is right to highlight this change,” telecom analyst Mahesh Uppal said.
Bharti’s Mittal said that the government also has assigned the company E-band spectrum “as promised”. The E-band spectrum, which is radio waves in the 70-80 GHz band, are pegged to play a major role in helping the telcos with backhaul, which will help smoothen data on their network. Last month, the DoT had agreed to provisionally allot E-band airwaves exclusively to mobile operators via the administrative route in circles where they hold 5G spectrum.
Newsletter | Click to get the day’s best explainers in your inbox
Airtel and Jio have unveiled their 5G rollout plans, with the former saying that it will start rolling out the service this month itself and, by 2024, is expecting to cover large parts of the country, including in rural areas. Airtel has also prepared detailed network roll-out plans for 5,000 towns in India. Jio, meanwhile, has completed 5G coverage planning in 1,000 cities.
India’s biggest ever spectrum auction for 5G airwaves had ended on August 1 with bids upwards of Rs 1.5 lakh crore coming in after seven days of bidding spread over 40 rounds, belying initial expectations that the auction process would be wrapped up in under three days.
Jio emerged as the largest spender in the 5G spectrum auction, acquiring almost half of all the airwaves sold for more than Rs 88,000 crore, and was also the only one to have acquired spectrum in the premium 700 MHz band. Airtel, shelled out Rs 43,084 crore to acquire a total of 19.8 GHz of spectrum in the 900 MHz, 1,800 MHz, 2,100 MHz, 3,300 MHz and 26 GHz bands. Vi spent Rs 18,799 crore and bid for certain medium and high frequency bands. Adani Data Networks acquired spectrum only in the 26 GHz band and spent Rs 212 crore.