NEW DELHI: Eight new faces have been inducted in the Union Council of Ministers on Monday, with Sisram Ola and Oscar Fernandes making a re-entry after a gap of four years. Ola, Girija Vyas and K.S. Rao have been inducted as Cabinet Ministers.

The Ministers of State are Manikrao Gavit, Santosh Chowdhury, J.D. Seelam, E.M.S. Natchiappan.

Ola and Fernandes were Ministers in the UPA-I but did not find a place in the UPA-II government.

While Fernandes has been made the Road and Highways Minister, Vyas is the new Housing, Urban Development and Poverty Alleviation Minister.

Seelam is the new MoS for Finance and Nachiappan has been made MoS Commerce and Industry.

Gavit is the MoS Social Justice and Empowerment and Santosh Chowdhury has been given charge of the Health & Family Welfare Ministry.

With the new inductions, the strength of the Council of Ministers goes up to 77.

The expansion-cum-reshuffle of the Council of Ministers has been necessitated by the exit of Ministers from DMK as well as resignation of Pawan Kumar Bansal, Ashwani Kumar, Ajay Maken and C.P. Joshi. — PTI

Heavy rain in North India triggers landslides, floods; toll 22

NEW DELHI: Heavy monsoon rains on Monday wreaked havoc in the hill states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh and flooded parts of Haryana where the water level in the Yamuna rose alarmingly, leaving 22 people dead and 1000 stranded.

The toll in the rain fury is expected to climb with 50 people missing in Uttarakhand, where authorities suspended the Chardham Yatra to Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath. The annual Kailash Mansarovar 'yatra' was also suspended in view of heavy rains in Uttarakhand.

The tribal Kinnaur district in Himachal Pradesh was the worst hit with nine persons dead in landslides that blocked important roads leaving Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh stranded in Sangla Valley.

About 1,000 tourists and locals were stranded at various places, including 800 in Sangla alone, and heavy rains were hampering the rescue operations. About 25 foreigners and a Doordarshan team were also stranded in Kinnaur district.

In Uttarakhand, five more bodies were recovered today from near the Himalayan shrine of Kedarnath, taking the toll in the torrential rains lashing Uttarakhand to 13.

The rains have triggered flash floods in the Ganga, Yamuna and their tributaries at most of the places sweeping away a number of bridges, roads and buildings.

The swirling waters of Assiganga, a tributary of the Ganga, has swept away several buildings including a four-storeyed house which had been vacated in advance and a temple.

Heavy rains in several parts of Haryana, particularly in Yamunanagar district, has led to floods even as water level in the Yamuna river rose alarmingly, prompting authorities to sound a high alert in the neighbouring districts of Karnal, Panipat and Sonepat.

Several low-lying villages in the district were flooded after the Yamuna river received heavy rainfall in its catchment areas.

The rains have led to an alarming increase in the water level of Yamuna, with over 8 lakh cusecs water flowing through the Hathni Kund barrage early this morning. — PTI

PATNA: A day after JD(U) snapped ties with NDA, a combative Nitish Kumar rejected BJP’s charge of betrayal and squarely blamed it for the break-up of the 17-year-old alliance, saying his party was left with “no other way” in the “new era” within BJP.

As the war of words intensified between JD(U) and the BJP, Kumar also accused BJP of “betraying” and “cornering” its elders in an oblique reference to the sidelining of L.K. Advani.

Advani was miffed over Modi being anointed the party’s campaign commitee chief, an event that triggered the split within the NDA with the JD(U) seeing this as the first step before the Gujarat Chief Minister is named as BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Kumar maintained that the decision of his party to part ways from the BJP was “not taken in a haste” and it happened after “due deliberations” and at “appropriate time“.

The JD(U) leader said, “further waiting over it would have been cheating onself” as the central leaders of BJP were not in a position to give any assurance and were only asking us to put on hold a decision on the split.

“Our parting ways from the NDA is BJP’s failure. You created a situation in which the old allies walked away. An alliance does not run under compulsion.

“If you do not leave any way out before the ally... If any party wants to form a government (at Centre), the responsibility is of that party to get support of other parties if it is not in a position to get the numbers for it on its own. And here an old ally was forced to leave,” Kumar said. — PTI

Sushil Modi resigns as GST panel chief

NEW DELHI: Sushil Kumar Modi, who ceased to be Bihar Finance Minister following the JD(U)-BJP split, on Monday resigned as Chairman of the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers looking into the implementation of the proposed new indirect tax regime — Goods and Services Tax (GST).

“I have demitted my office as Deputy Chief Minister and Finance Minister, Bihar. I have also resigned from post of Chairman, Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers,” he stated in a letter to Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram.

In his letter, Modi pleaded for early payment of CST compensation to states to build the trust between states and union to ensure early roll out of the GST, which has missed several deadlines.

This development could delay the implementation of the GST further as the new Chairman would have to start afresh building consensus among all states.

In 2011, Modi replaced Asim Dasgupta, who had resigned following defeat of Left-front government in West Bengal.

The GST Bill, introduced in Parliament in 2010, is being vetted by the Standing Committee on Finance. After the committee submits its report, the states and the Centre would together finalise the draft and bring it back to Parliament.

Modi had earlier said that 80 per cent consensus has been built on the Bill.

The proposed GST will bring in a common tax regime for goods and services by subsuming most indirect taxes, and is expected to help increase revenue mop ups.

The GST rollout has missed several deadlines on account of differences over contentious issue of Central Sales Tax compensation and design of the GST structure between the states and the Centre.

Conventionally, the post of chairman of empowered committee has been with the opposition party. So now it is likely that the finance minister of a BJP ruled state or from Punjab or Odisha could chair the committee. — PTI

CHENNAI: One of India's foremost security experts and one of the founders of India's external intelligence wing — the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), Bahukutumbi Raman passed away in Chennai on Sunday evening after a prolonged fight with cancer. He was 77.

Described as an asset by the Indian intelligence community, Raman was a former Additional Secretary with the Cabinet Secretariat. He was also the Director of the Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai.

Author of several books, Raman was a critic of India's foreign policy.

He used to write on security, counter-terrorism and military issues of India and South Asia.

A firm believer of Nehru-Gandhi rule, Raman often proposed it as a solution to many of India's political uncertainties and socio-economic woes.

Till his end, Raman was active on micro-blogging site Twitter, where he used to talk about his fight with cancer. His last tweet from SORBONNE75 was, "Hanumanji willing, shd be back home coming Saturday."

One of the few officers who saw the creation of RAW in 1968 by R.N. Kao, his analysis on Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and China were helpful for the Indian intelligence community.

He had also written a memoir titled "Kaoboys of Research and Analysis Wing: Down Memory Lane".— ANI

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday took oath as member of Rajya Sabha after being re-elected from Assam.

80-year-old Singh, who is the Leader of the Upper House, was recently elected a member of Rajya Sabha from Assam for the fifth consecutive term.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi and party leaders Ahmed Patel, Motilal Vohra and Rajv Shukla were among those present on the occasion.

Singh, who took oath in the name of God, told reporters that "It is a great opportunity for me to re-dedicate myself to the service of the people of Assam".

Lok Janshakti Party President Ram Vilas Paswan, SP leader Ram Gopal Yadav and a number of Rajya Sabha members were present at the function.

Another Congress member from Assam Santius Kujur also took oath today.

The election to the two Rajya Sabha seats from Assam had taken place on May 30 and Congress had won both the seats. — PTI

NEW DELHI: NEW DELHI: Expressing disappointment over RBI's decision to keep key rates unchanged, India Inc said on Monday the time was appropriate for cut in interest rates to revive the country's economic growth.

The industry said it hoped RBI would not wait for the next quarterly review on July 30 to intervene and would do so earlier, if required.

The industry urged the central bank to consider a rate even before the next monetary policy review on July 30.

The repo rate at which the RBI lends to the system has been retained at 7.25 per cent, while the cash reserve ratio will continue to be 4 per cent.

CII director general Chandrajit Banerjee said "The decision of the RBI to hold policy rates on status quo is disappointing. At a time when both growth and inflation dynamics call for an accommodative monetary policy, RBI has taken a cautious approach of attending to the prospect of a possible resurgence in inflation over reviving growth in the economy."

The quarterly GDP figures point towards a poor health of the economy even while industrial slowdown has not bottomed out and sluggish private and government capital expenditure is hurting investment in industry and economy, CII said.

"CII hopes that the RBI would not wait for the next quarterly review but intervene sooner if the economic condition warrants a mid-course correction," the statement said.

Assocham also said the RBI's decision to keep rates unchanged is a complete disappointment.

"We cannot be going just by a sole consideration of rupee depreciation and its possible impact on inflation. Why ignore other factors like arrival of good Monsoon which will surely boost food supply to have a dampening impact on the price situation," Assocham president Rajkumar N Dhoot said.

The Central Bank had reduced key policy rate (repo rate) by 0.75 per cent during the last three monetary policy announcements.

Though the headline inflation has come down, the RBI also sounded concerned over the persistently high food inflation, which has been hovering in the region close to 10 per cent. — PTI

NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Monday announced reduction in the national mobile phone roaming charges, but said there will be no free national roaming as of now.

The sectoral regulator has also come out with conditional free national roaming plans, a move that will bring down cell phone roaming charges.

The changes will come into effect from next month.

"TRAI has reduced ceilings for national roaming calls and SMS and instituted a new regime for providing flexibility to telecom service providers to customise tariffs for national roamers through STVs (Special Tariff Vouchers) and Combo Vouchers," the regulator said in a statement.

It has also mandated two types of free national roaming plans to be provided by all telecom service providers. These changes will come into effect from July 1, 2013, it added.

"With increased subscribers and usage, the costs associated with national roaming have declined, but not vanished. There are still real costs incurred in providing the national roaming facility.

"Mandating a fully free roaming regime is simply not practicable at this juncture. Compelling a transition to a fully free national roaming regime would result in telecom service providers not being able to recover their costs from roamers," the regulator said.

In turn, telecom service providers would pass these costs on to all consumers (predominantly non-roamers) through higher tariffs, it added.

The ceiling tariffs prescribed by TRAI in 2007 were Rs 1.40 per minute for outgoing local calls and Rs 2.40 per minute for outgoing STD calls while on national roaming. These ceilings have been reduced to Re 1 per minute and Re 1.50 per minute, respectively, it said.

Similarly, the ceiling tariffs for incoming calls while on national roaming have been reduced from Rs 1.75 per minute to 75 paise per minute, it added.

Tariffs for outgoing SMS while on national roaming, which were earlier under forbearance, have now been capped: outgoing SMS (local) at Re 1 per SMS and outgoing SMS (STD) at Rs 1.50 per SMS. Incoming SMS will remain free of charge, TRAI said.

"TRAI feels that the best way forward is to establish a tariff regime in which roamers self-select themselves out and so minimise the impact on the rest of the subscriber community," it said.

In working towards free roaming, TRAI has also borne in mind the need to keep costs to roamers at a minimum, it added.

TRAI has decided that STVs and Combo Vouchers which were hitherto allowed only for home tariffs can be permitted for roaming tariffs. This will give the service providers the greatest possible flexibility in customising tariffs for their roaming subscribers.

TRAI has also mandated the service providers to offer special plans for roaming subscribers in which subscribers can avail of partially free roaming, or fully free roaming in lieu of payment of fixed charges, it said.

The present exercise to review national roaming tariffs was initiated by TRAI earlier this year in the context of decline in costs and the declared intent in the New Telecom Policy-2012 to move towards One Nation-Free Roaming throughout the country.

The National Telecom Policy, 2012, aims to abolish roaming charges and allow mobile phone subscribers to use the same number across the country without having to pay extra charges for services once they are outside their telecom circle. — PTI