Keeping with his practice, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will celebrate this Diwali with the Indo Tibetan Border Police Force (ITBP) personnel at one of the remotest border posts in Uttarakhand.

Modi, who as Prime Minister had celebrated his first Diwali in 2014 with the army in Siachen and second one last year on the Punjab border with Pakistan, will spend time on the border with China on the upcoming festival of lights on Sunday.

Following the alliance call by Samajwadi Party’s Shivpal Yadav, the Congress is seriously considering a ‘mahagatbandhan’, acknowledging that it would serve their cause better than marching in alone with very weak political presence. Yadav had hinted at an alliance with the RLD and Congress to stop the “communal forces” in the state. Pradip Mathur, Congress’s Legislature Party Leader told the ToI that most of the MLAs extended their support for a pre-poll alliance after which Rahul Gandhi informed them that their opinion would be considered as top priority. Since it is very evident that that BSP looks in no mood for an alliance, the other possible alliance remains to be RLD and SP.

Rapped by the Supreme Court for delaying judicial appointments, the government has said that it has increased the sanctioned strength of High Court judges from 906 to 1,079 and insisted that there has been no abnormal increase in the vacancies in the high courts under NDA rule.

The average annual rate of appointment of judges in the High Courts has not declined during the last two years, though no new appointments were made during April-December 2015 due to hearing of the NJAC matter, sources said.

Days after the Tatas replaced Cyrus Mistry as the chairman of the Tata Sons group, with Ratan Tata as the new chairman, three other members, who were part of the advisory council of the ousted head, had also quit. Tata groups’ Chief of Human Resources NS Rajan was one, among the members who had put their papers, along with business development officer Madhu Kannan, strategist Nirmalya Kumar.

Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump on Saturday criticised outgoing President Barack Obama for leading a slow economic growth, arguing that if a large country like India can grow at 8%, why the United States (US) is not.

Trump remarks at an election rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, came hours after latest figures showed the American economy grew 2.9% in the third quarter this year.

A BSF jawan was today killed in ceasefire violation by Pakistani troops in Macchil sector along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir.

28-year-old Constable Koli Nitin Subhash, hailing from Sangli in Maharashtra, was martyred this morning in firing by Pakistani security forces, a BSF official said.

ICICI Bank has decided to cut its MCLR by 10 basis points (bps) for loans with tenor of one year to 8.95 per cent. The new rate will be effective from November 1.

This is an outcome of monthly review and not an out-of-turn action. The private-sector lender has reduced MCLR for one-year loans by 25 bps since April. MCLR in April was 9.20 bps for one-year loan.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has allowed Bombay Commodity Exchange (BCEL) to exit the commodity futures business with immediate effect. In a directive on Friday, Sebi also asked the exchange to drop “Exchange”, from its name and avoid its use in any variant.

The stock markets regulator had in February told BCEL to abide by the exit policy in view of suspension of trading for more than 12 months.

NTPC, India’s largest power generating company, reported an 18 per cent drop in its stand-alone net profit at Rs 2,496 crore for the September 2016 quarter compared to Rs 3,039 crore in the year-ago period. According a company statement, its total income rose seven per cent to Rs 19,588 crore compared to Rs 18,218 crore a year ago.

NTPC has a total installed capacity of 47,228 Mw. It generated 125 billion units during the second quarter of FY17 against 119 billion units last year.

New Delhi: In what could bring cheers to 50 lakh central employees and 58 lakh pensioners ahead of Diwali, the Centre is all set to announce 2% dearness allowance (DA) to be effective from 1 July 2016.

“The proposal to provide 2% dearness allowance and dearness relief to central government employees and pensioners respectively, is listed on agenda of the Union Cabinet meeting scheduled for tomorrow,” a person familiar with the matter said.

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