Two persons were injured and four others were missing after a BJP meeting was attacked allegedly by ruling Trinamool Congress workers at Nandigram in East Midnapore district.

Local TMC leaders, however, said they were not involved in the attack which occurred yesterday.

Markets slipped to day's lows in noon trades on Wednesday, amid profit taking in bank shares after weak economic data raised concerns over credit growth.

At 1:40PM, the 30-share Sensex was down 123 points at 25,574 and the 50-share Nifty was down 38 points at 7,745.

Essential services such as banking and road transport were partially hit on Wednesday due to the day-long nationwide strike called by 10 major central trade unions (TUs).

In the national capital, auto rickshaw drivers were seen demanding more fares even as most of them were on strike.

Singapore wealth fund GIC will invest about Rs 1,990 crore ($300 million) in a new joint venture with real estate developer DLF that will build two projects in the Indian capital New Delhi, the two firms said in a joint statement.

The deal is one of several by GIC in India this year, after its investments in Bandhan Financial Services, which is setting up one of the country's two newest banks, and online taxi-hailing company Ola.

Buoyed by strong response to its newly launched SUV Creta, Hyundai Motor India ltd (HMIL) is increasing the output of the model by over 16 per cent to around 7,000 units a month.

The company, which launched the vehicle in July, has received over 40,000 bookings and is trying to reduce the waiting period.

Bajaj Auto today reported a 2% increase in total sales in August at 3,41,965 units as against 3,36,840 in the same month of 2014.

Motorcycle sales during the month also grew by 2% to 2,90,436 units as against 2,84,302 units in August last year, the company said in a BSE filing.

Banking shares are continue reeling under pressure with the country’s largest PSU bank State Bank of India (SBI), ICICI Bank and Bank of India hit their respective 52-week lows.

The CNX PSU Bank index, a gauge of public sector banks, hit a fresh 15-month low on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) on the back of weak macro economic data.

NTPC is examining whether to acquire the Sarni thermal power station of a state government company, in Madhya Pradesh's Betul district. NTPC sources said 'due-diligence' is on.

A state government source said, “NTPC already has presence in Madhya Pradesh, as they run one of the largest thermal power stations, the Vindhyachal project. It would be better to hand over the Sarni project to them or run it as a joint venture. Much will depend upon their due-diligence. SBI Caps is doing it.” NTPC would not comment.

Maruti Suzuki launched its first hybrid vehicle on Tuesday, upgrading the diesel Ciaz with hybrid features at a price cheaper by up to Rs 20,500 than the variant being phased out. The hybrid Ciaz SHVS sports features such as idle engine start/stop, power assist and brake energy regeneration. It claims 28.09 km a litre, highest in the country. The earlier Ciaz diesel offered 26.2 km a litre.

The vehicle helps us participate in India’s vision of promoting hybrid vehicles, said managing director Kenichi Ayukawa. In a hybrid system, the energy saved while decelerating/braking, otherwise lost, is stored in the battery and assists during acceleration.

Infosys, India's second-largest information technology (IT) services company, is looking at bringing more automation to all its new projects by the end of the financial year. The model, people-plus-software, was the way forward, chief executive Vishal Sikka said. Under this model, software would help lower the number of people engaged in projects, lowering customers' cost and improving their profit margins.

I am impatient to see that 'people-plus-software' is brought to all our clients as quickly as possible. Last week, we laid out a very clear goal to our sales team that we have to bring this model to every client before the end of this year, Sikka said at the JPMorgan Asia CEO-CFO Conference held at New York on Tuesday. We are going to track that goal aggressively.

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