Congress candidate Ahmed Patel today beat the BJP nominee in a bitterly fought Rajya Sabha election in Gujarat after late night dramatic developments saw the Election Commission reject the votes of two dissident MLAs of the main opposition party for violating electoral rules.

Patel, political secretary to Congress president Sonia Gandhi beat Balwantsinh Rajput, till recently the party's chief whip in the state Assembly before defecting to BJP, polling 44 votes, in the first RS polls in Gujarat in two decades which saw a contest instead of official candidates of major parties getting elected unopposed. Rajput secured 38 votes.

NEW DELHI: Sebi and exchanges have given a conditional go-ahead to the USD 23 billion merger deal between Idea Cellular and Vodafone India, which would be subject to the outcome of an ongoing probe by the regulator and approvals from public shareholders and NCLT.

The multi-layered deal was announced in March and recently got clearance from the fair trade regulator CCI.

Mumbai: Bajaj Auto Ltd and Triumph Motorcycle UK have got into a global partnership, the companies said in a joint statement on Tuesday.

The objective of this “non-equity partnership is to deliver a range of outstanding mid-capacity motorcycles benefiting from the collective strengths of both companies,” it said. With the partnership, the companies hope to draw from the individual strengths, including brand position, perception, design, development technology, quality, cost competitiveness and worldwide distribution, it added.

New Delhi: Tata Motors on Tuesday reported a 12% increase in global sales in July at 98,534 units, including those of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) vehicles.

The company had sold 88,159 units in July 2016, Tata Motors said in a statement.

Mumbai: The Indian rupee on Tuesday strengthened against the US dollar, tracking gains in the Asian currencies market.

At 2pm, the rupee was trading at 63.75 a dollar, up 0.10% from its Monday’s close of 63.81. The rupee opened at 63.76 a dollar and touched a high and a low of 63.72 and 63.80 respectively.

Mumbai: Reliance Industries Ltd plans to refinance a significant portion of about $12 billion of borrowings that mature over the next three years and may sell bonds to repay the debt, according to company executives with knowledge of the matter.

India’s largest company by market value will repay some of the debt coming due, mostly bonds and interest, the officials said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential matters. Reliance’s repayments from 2018 through 2020 will be its biggest for any previous three-year period and include about $8.14 billion of term loans, $3.52 billion of bonds and a $300 million revolver loan, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It also has about $1.65 billion of interest payments, the data show.

Benchmark Sensex erased early gains and plunged 216 points in late morning trade, while the Nifty tested the 10,000 level due to sudden selling pressure in realty, oil & gas, power, energy, banking, capital goods and FMCG counters amid lower Asian cues.

The BSE mid—cap and small—cap indices too were down 0.86 per cent and 0.95 per cent, respectively.

India's second largest carmaker Hyundai Motor India will soon be joining the race to bring in electric cars to India and the company is planning to undertake a feasibility study to bring in an small electric SUV into the Indian market sometime later next year. Hyundai India is also considering bringing in electric version of its Grand i10 and Elite i20 cars. In an interview to Times of India, Y K Koo, MD, Hyundai India commented that “Electric cars are a focus for us. We have to go by the government’s policy and norms,It’s better to implement electric cars on lower-segment products. For example, the Grand i10 and i20 and small cars are more convenient, more easy, and more practical for electric than bigger-sized vehicles when it comes to the Indian market."

Ford India will launch the updated EcoSport in the country during the festive season, the sub-compact SUV has been spotted several times revealing the exterior design as well as the interior features. Earlier, we reported that the upcoming Ford EcoSport will be powered by the same 1.5 litre petrol and 1.0 litre EcoBoost petrol engine along with the 1.5 litre diesel unit. The above-mentioned engines also power the current EcoSport models. It is now expected that the carmaker will also launch the 2017 EcoSport with a new petrol engine.

BENGALURU: Indian IT companies are doing their best to weather the changes in the sector and are actively working at retraining their employees to ensure that they make the transition, head of Nasscom IT services council Nitin Rakesh said.

Several articles have been written predicting the end of the Indian IT sector but changes in the space are nothing new, Rakesh, also Mphasis CEO, said. “We have gone from mainframes to client server, to internet and now to digital offerings. We have made these changes before. As always there is a period of transition. And I can tell you, each company is capable of making this pivot though they may pick different parts to focus on,” Rakesh said.

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