Mumbai: Idea Cellular Ltd’s chairman and non-executive director Kumar Mangalam Birla took just Rs3.30 lakh remuneration for fiscal year 2017 after the company reported its first-ever annual loss. Last year, he took Rs13.15 crore.

The free offerings by Reliance Jio—owned by Mukesh Ambani which started operations in September 2016—has sparked stiff competition among Indian telecom majors which forced Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular to launch cheaper plans. This has hit the revenue and profitability of telecom companies.

A day after BJP President Amit Shah made references to Mahatma Gandhi’s caste along with adding that Congress had never been a party based on principles, Congress hit out on Saturday saying the ruling party leader has “insulted” the freedom struggle and the “Father of the Nation.”

While speaking at an event in Chhattisgarh, Shah had said: “Congress kisi ek vichaar dhaara ke adhaar par, kisi ek siddhant ke adhaar par bani hui party hi nahi hai, woh azadi prapt karne ka ek special purpose vehicle hai, azadi prapt karne ka ek saadhan tha.

Muted coal demand and eroding profitability have forced Coal India to ‘production closure’ of 37 loss making underground mines in the current fiscal to save between Rs 800 crore to Rs 1000 crore annually. “An action plan was prepared by the subsidiaries in which 37 underground mines were envisaged to be closed for production in 2017-18. This exercise will save between Rs 800 crore to Rs 1000 crore,” a top CIL official told PTI. Coal India has identifed some 60 underground mines belonging to its four subsidiaries, Eastern Coalfields (ECL), Bharat Coking Coal (BCCL), South Eastern Coalfields (SECL) and Central Coalfields (CCL) for closure in phases.

Infosys on Friday termed a media report that states the company’s founders will sell their 12.75% stake valued at around Rs 28,000 crore, as mere speculation, and stated that there was no such development. A report had stated that the founders led by N R Narayana Murthy are exploring the possibility of a sale with their holdings to be sold in tranches and not enbloc.A statement from Infosys said, “This speculation has already been categorically denied by the promoters. The company further reiterates that it has no information on any such development.

Growth in the sales of both the passenger car and utility vehicle segment slowed down in May since most of the top car makers barring Maruti Suzuki registered low single-digit growth in wholesale dispatches mostly due to lack of new products and capacity constraints. Maruti Suzuki registered 15.5% y-o-y growth in May on the back of healthy demand for its new offering – Baleno, Vitara Brezza, Ignis and Dzire. Apart from the new offerings the wholesale volumes of Alto and Wagon R also increased in the first two months of the fiscal as a result of the revival of demand in the rural and semi urban markets.

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has unanimously rejected Bharti Airtel’s complaint of predatory pricing and anti-competitive behaviour against Reliance Jio Infocomm, filed by the former in February. The grounds on which Bharti’s complaint was rejected were that the relevant market has to be telecommunication services and not 4G services; geographic market cannot be all-India but each of the 22 circles; free services does not mean elimination of competition if player not dominant; and huge investments by parent Reliance Industries in Jio has not established a dominant position of the latter.

It took a little over three years for State Bank of India (SBI) to overwhelm the markets with the sale of its shares to institutional investors (called qualified institutional placement or QIP in banking parlance).

In January 2014, SBI struggled to raise just over Rs 8,000 crore, way below the targeted Rs 9,600 crore, which, many believed, was a bailout by Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC). Many foreign institutional investors (FIIs) skipped the issue then over difference on pricing and concerns over bad assets.

Mumbai: The BSE benchmark Sensex and broader NSE’s Nifty on Friday rebounded about 49 points to close at 31,262.06 on fag-end buying in sectors such as realty, metal, auto, banking and health care amid a firming trend in global markets. Furthermore, covering-up of short positions by bears too supported the late recovery in stocks, helping wipe off initial losses.

The 30-share index started on a bearish note at 31,196.86 stayed in the negative terrain for most part of the day to hit a low of 31,087.28 as participants indulged in trimming their positions to lock in gains. However, late buying helped it stage a strong comeback to wipe off day’s losses to scale a high of 31,289.99 before ending 48.70 points, or 0.16%, higher at 31,262.06.

Popular messaging app WhatsApp, in 2016 had said that it will stop its support of outdated devices. The Facebook-owned company had said that the app will stop running on many older smartphones including iPhone, Windows Phone, Nokia, Android and BlackBerry. Meanwhile, as a change of heart, WhatsApp had decided that it will be extending its support for BlackBerry 10, BlackBerry OS, Nokia Symbian and Nokia S40 until the end of June 2017. In December 2016 itself, many other old smartphones did, however, lose the support of the popular messaging application.

The Supreme Court on Friday put a partial stay on the implementation of the provisions in the Income Tax (I-T) Act making Aadhaar number mandatory for allotment of PAN card and filing of income tax returns (ITR).

However, the apex court upheld the validity of Section 139AA of the I-T Act, subject to the outcome of the batch of petitions before its Constitution bench which is examining if the Aadhaar scheme infringes on the Right to Privacy and if there is threat of data leakage.

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