NEW DELHI: Adding to a series of recent boosts for India's defence sector, Indian Navy's latest Naval establishment, INS Sardar Patel, was commissioned at Gujarat's Porbandar on Saturday. The base was commissioned by Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel.

According to the Navy, the commissioning of INS Sardar Patel would enable it to qualitatively augment its infrastructure and organisational effectiveness in Gujarat, which would improve coordination and synergy with other maritime agencies of the government.

MUMBAI: Markets endured immense volatility and unprecedented sell-off sessions by FIIs during the week, leading the benchmark Sensex and the CNX Nifty to log their multi-months low though it managed to accrue gains on hectic short-coverings on April 8 on government's move to soothe foreign investors' tax worries and the rupee rebound.

The week commenced strong, with investors taking fresh positions at the beginning of May contract on heavy sell-off in April series and the passing of Finance Bill, 2015.

To compete against Xiaomi and Motorola, now Chinese smartphone maker CoolPad is set to enter the Indian market and will soon set up R&D centre alongside a manufacturing plant in the country as part of the ‘Make in India’ campaign. The company has appointed former Flipkart executive, Varun Sharma as the India CEO. It will launch affordable smartphones under its Dazen brand and intends to sell its smartphones only through eCommerce websites.

The firm claims to own about 5,500 patents including dual-SIM and dual standby, but nature of the patents that are in the process of being filed locally are still undisclosed. It will sell smartphones in Rs 5,000-20,000 range under the Dazen brand. Also, the company wants to be among the top three online selling brands in India by December and number 1 in the segment with in 2-3 years.

The Founder and CEO of Future Group, Kishore Biyani is set to launch an app for Big Bazaar to give a competition to its eCommerce counterparts in India. This move is a price-cutting strategy that brick-and-mortar stores have been struggling to come to terms with.

Biyani in an interview stated, “We are launching a price-match offer where if you shop from us and anybody else is selling cheaper than us at that moment, we will automatically give credits in your account — anything online or offline.”

The CAG has indicted the Indian Railways for not employing strict checks and balances in its dual freight policy (DFP) for transportation of iron ore that led to a financial loss of nearly Rs 30,000 crore to the organisation between May 2008 and September 2013.

The DFP policy provides for categorisation of iron ore in two categories — for ‘domestic consumption and ‘other than domestic consumption’ (exports). The freight rate for latter category of iron ore was three times that of the former.

Air India has dismissed Indian Commercial Pilots Association’s (ICPA) claim that the airline pays its junior pilots on an ad hoc basis, doesn’t pay them for domestic night stops, forces them to fly overtime and does not grant them leave, causing illness. ICPA had written to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation on the issue, marking a copy to Air India, last month.

ICPA had highlighted that 40-45 junior pilots at Air India were under stress because being ad hoc, they got a third of the salary. Besides, one fine day, the airline management had “unilaterally” changed the terms of employment for co-pilots. The letter was sent to DGCA just a few days after a German pilot (suffering depression) crashed a Lufthansa plane in the French Alps, killing 150.

The department of posts’ database is susceptible to data manipulation and fraud, according to a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.

“The aim of computerisation of postal savings bank functions through Sanchay Post software was improving operations and providing error-free and faster service to customers. But we observed the database has not been secured and is easily susceptible to data manipulation, which might lead to fraud,” the report said.

After Indian Railway Finance Corporation (IRFC), state-owned NTPC is also considering raising funds through masala bonds, or rupee-denominated bonds issued in capital markets abroad.

An NTPC official said the company was planning to raise such bonds to part-finance its capital expenditure. Recently, the company’s board had approved a proposal to raise debt from foreign bond markets. “Depending on market conditions and requirement, the company will look at an offering of global rupee bonds soon, after the guidelines on this are notified,” the official said, adding discussions on the issue were in preliminary stages.

NEW DELHI: The government has decided to cancel a coal block attached to the Sasan ultra mega power project of the Anil Ambani group in line with the Supreme Court's directive forbidding commercial use of surplus coal from such units for other plants.

The decision, which also forbids the use of coal from other mines of the 4,000 MW project for other plants, ends the special dispensation given earlier to Reliance Power's Sasan Project that would have helped the company fuel the Rs 21,000 crore Chitrangi power project.

A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has said the Mukesh Ambani-promoted Reliance Jio Infocomm got undue advantage of Rs 3,367.29 crore after the department of telecommunications (DoT) allowed the company to offer voice services by using broadband wireless access spectrum (BWA).

Reliance Industries in 2010 acquired Infotel Broadband, which had won pan-Indian BWA spectrum in auctions to be used for 4G services.

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