New Delhi, November 21
The rupee continued its losing streak touching the psychological mark of Rs 52 to the US dollar and its overhang also weighed on the stock markets with the BSE Sensex falling below the 16,000 mark to a six-week low.

It closed at 52.15 today. The rupee has not seen these levels in more than 32 months and is now just shy of its all-time low of Rs 52.18 in March 2009.

The stock markets are reeling under the impact of global economic situation being volatile and the depreciating rupee is further weakening sentiment. The BSE Sensex is now down for 8 trading sessions in a row.

The Finance Ministry today said the ability of the RBI to intervene in the forex market to arrest the fall in rupee is limited. "RBI's ability to intervene in forex market is limited", Department of Economic Affairs Secretary R Gopalan said. This is broadly the same line that the RBI has been taking which was articulated by Deputy Governor Subir Gokarn last week.

However, industry body Assocham criticised the RBI statement which have also come in for criticism from analysts who are saying that this is becoming an invitation for speculators to further weaken the rupee and the RBI should reserve its options.

“The RBI cannot afford to intervene as India’s foreign exchange reserves are not very huge. However, the RBI’s statement that it will not intervene could best have been avoided to curb speculation”, Assocham said.

Assocham said there is no point in maintaining artificial exchange rates.

The rupee has depreciated against major currencies in the past three months. Against the US dollar, it has tumbled from Rs 43-44 to Rs 50-52. This has made oil imports costlier and even if crude oil prices fall globally, the landed cost of oil in India will be much higher.

Since most Indian imports are in US dollar, imported raw material for all industries will get costlier and import-intensive industries like automobiles, capital goods and IT hardware may be particularly hit.

The virtual collapse of the rupee is yet another indicator of the Indian economy going haywire. Fiscal deficit is mounting, investments, both domestic and foreign, have been hit, GDP growth is slowing down, industrial production is weak, FII inflows have dried up.

While there is mounting concern over slow government and policy action, investors are also worried that legislative business in Parliament, especially with economic bills, is not moving in the past few sessions with Parliament getting disrupted regularly.

A research by brokerage house, Motilal Oswal, pointed out in the Monsoon session there was little progress on key bills. The current (15th) Lok Sabha has passed only half, (60) bills midway through its term in comparison with 119 bills passed during the comparable period by the previous (14th) Lok Sabha, the research says. The Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha together passed only nine out of the 35 bills listed.

The research note says that a comparison with previous Lok Sabha records reveals that the amount of business transacted by the current Lok Sabha is among the lowest.

Dipen Shah, head, fundamental research, Kotak Securities, said the Sensex fall below 16,000 was in reaction to a host of concerns, including the European debt issue, depreciating rupee and the US debt problem.

New Delhi, November 21
The Supreme Court today dismissed a PIL questioning the appointment of UK Sinha as SEBI Chairman and the recent amendment to the rules of the stock market regulator.

A Bench headed by Chief Justice SH Kapadia observed that the petitioners had filed a revised a PIL on the advice of the court, but had failed to stay away from targeting individuals and keep their focus on ensuring the independence of SEBI.

The PIL petitioners were former Chief of Air Staff S Krishnaswamy and former DGPs of Punjab and Haryana, Julio Ribeiro and BR Lall, respectively.

At the last hearing, the government had assured the Bench that it would file its response to the PIL which had also challenged a SEBI decision authorising the Finance Minister to appoint two members on the search-cum-selection committee for choosing the Chairman and the whole-time members.

Instead of the FM, it should be the government that should have the power to appoint the members of the search and selection committee, the petition said.

The changes have been made “subverting the process of selection” and thereby undermining the independence of the SEBI and its status as a watchdog that safeguarded the interests of millions of people who invested their hard-earned money in the stock market, the PIL reasoned.

The petition also questioned the government’s decision against granting extension to CB Bhave, the predecessor of Sinha.

Chandigarh, November 21
The Punjab Government is willing to go extra mile to woo the country’s largest IT company, Infosys Technologies, to set up its campus in the state. With Infosys having announced its desire to expand its facility in Chandigarh, the Punjab Government is willing to offer land at concessional rates, besides a host of exemptions from state taxes.

Top officials in the Punjab Government informed The Tribune that the company’s executive co- chairman, S Gopalakrishnan, met Punjab Chief Secretary SC Aggarwal and Principal Secretary (Industries) SS Channy here today, where the state government offered land and other concessions to the company.

“The state government offered land to Infosys at the IT City in Mohali, which will soon be expanded and a new sector will be added there. Besides, we also told the company representatives of our new IT Parks at Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar and Kapurthala,” confirmed Channy.

He added that as per the state government’s IT policy, other concessions like waiver of clearance from the Punjab Pollution Control Board and from the Punjab Apartment and Regulation Act for units to be set up in IT parks; exemption for the company from statutory power cuts; and exemption from electricity duty for five years, will be given.

The state government has also offered exemption from stamp duty and registration fees for land transfer/allotted to it and a 100 per cent stamp duty exemption (first scale transaction) on purchase/ lease of built-up office space within constructed IT park. The company, if it decides to set office in Punjab, will also get a waiver from Change in Land Use (CLU) charges and External Development Charges (EDC) to be levied on any component of the integrated IT park. “We have made our presentation before the Infosys officials and they will now come back with a list of their demands,” said Channy.

Meanwhile, talking to mediapersons, after delivering a lecture as part of the CEO series, organised by the CII here this afternoon, Gopalakrishnan said the company had expanded its facility at Chandigarh and was now looking at a green field project in Punjab.

Earlier, while delivering the lecture, he said further deterioration of economic conditions in the US and Europe could hit the domestic IT sector though at present the impact was not as bad as it was in 2008. He said Infosys was eyeing a growth of 19 per cent this fiscal.

New Delhi, November 21
In an effort to boost the sales, Tata Motors today announced the launch of a refurbished Nano with a bouquet of features of new colours, new interiors, a more powerful gasoline engine and even greater fuel efficiency at no extra cost.

The company said while providing a mileage of 25.4 kmpl, Nano’s engine has been made more powerful delivering an impressive 38PS of power and 51Nm of torque. The high fuel efficiency, with a low kerb weight of 600 kg, ensures that the Tata Nano at 92.7 gm/km has the lowest CO2 emissions among cars in India.

New Delhi, November 21
The pesky SMSes are back in full flow within months of the Department of Telecom (DoT) launching the “Do Not Call” service and both the Telecom Ministry and telecom sector regulator TRAI have no clue how to stop them.

While earlier, the SMSes came from registered mobile numbers, in the latest trend the same have started coming even from the landline numbers, mostly the ones registered with the country’s largest telecom operator, Bharti Airtel.

Officials at DoT and the TRAI have no answer as to why these SMSes are still coming to people registered with the DND registry and when heavy penalties have been proposed for telecom operators allowing their network to be used for sending such unsolicited messages.

TRAI had implemented regulations on September 27, forbidding telemarketers from sending promotional messages to those on the "fully blocked" list of the DND registry.

Clauses in the regulations allow mobile users to register as "partially blocked" on the registry, and receive commercial texts from select categories of interest or register for complete blocking of such messages.

The pesky SMS senders have worked out a way to circumvent such clauses.

While DoT has imposed penalties on telecom companies, telemarketers have been flouting the norms with impunity.

Admitting that they are at a loss to control the flow of pesky SMSes, DoT officials said efforts were being made to work out a solution to ensure subscribers are not disturbed.

The problem that the TRAI and DoT is facing is that the telemarketers have started routing the SMSes through Internet messaging solutions from overseas servers which are not in the jurisdiction of either of the two agencies.

Many customers also report getting calls from insurance or property agents from landline and mobile numbers, in violation of the regulations which had enforced a "140" prefix for calls from registered telemarketers.

Officials, however, point out that the frequency of calls and messages had reduced largely.

Till early this month, TRAI had issued notices to 1,122 subscribers using their numbers for commercial purposes and 111 subscribers have been disconnected. In case of telemarketers, 17 had been penalised so far.

Officials said that subscribers still receiving pesky messages or calls should lodge their complaint by calling or messaging 1909.

Any commercial messages which is sent to a mobile customer needs to have a code indicating the location and source operator followed by the alphabets of the advertising companies or numbers.

However, now most of such messages do not contain any of that except for the names of random companies.

TRAI has laid out a maximum penalty of Rs 2.5 lakh for violators. There is also a provision of getting blacklisted for two years after the sixth violation, but these rules do not apply to servers located outside India.

New Delhi, November 21
After three months of slide in addition of mobile phone users in the country, there is a revival in one of the world’s fastest-growing cellular markets with the addition of 7.12 million users, just in the GSM segment, in the month of October.

Figures released by GSM operators umbrella body Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said as compared to 6.52 million additions in September, 7.12 million new subscribers were added in October.

With this, the GSM subscriber base in the country stood at 625.41 million on October 31, 2011.

Country’s largest telecom operator Bharti Airtel added 0.94 million users in October, taking its total subscriber base to 173.73 million, the data said.

The company had a 27.78 per cent market share at the end of October.

Vodafone Essar continues to be the second largest GSM operator in the country with a 23.33 per cent market share. It added 0.92 million new subscribers during the month taking its subscriber base to 145.91 million.

Aditya Birla group firm Idea Cellular saw the highest number of additions during the month, with 1.63 million new users taking its total subscriber base to 101.81 million, while Aircel added 0.48 million customers to take its subscriber base to 60.28 million. Public sector telecom firms BSNL and MTNL added 0.51 million and 34,919 new users, respectively, taking their subscriber base to 91.58 million and 5.36 million.

In addition, MTS added 7.95 million customers in the month of October 2011, taking its total customer base to 14.06 million.