NEW DELHI: With just hours left for a crucial party meeting, Arvind Kejriwal quit as the national convenor of the Aam Aadmi Party, raising the stakes in the camp war against dissenting duo Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan.

AAP sources said Kejriwal sent his resignation letter to AAP national secretary Pankaj Gupta on Wednesday morning. They said Kejriwal had offered to quit in the last meeting of the national executive council (NEC) on February 26, but it was rejected overwhelmingly by the council.

The world’s oldest person says 117 years doesn’t seem like such a long time.

Misao Okawa, the daughter of a kimono maker, made the comment on Wednesday, at a celebration a day before her 117th birthday. Appropriately, she was wearing a pink kimono decorated with cherry blossom prints.

Raghuram Rajan, governor, Reserve Bank of India (RBI), seems to enjoying surprising the markets by cutting rates unannounced and ahead of monetary policy reviews.

After the rate cut on January 15, the Bank has cut rates by 25 basis points on Wednesday morning bringing the key repo rate down to 7.50%. Rajan said, "Given low capacity utilisation and still-weak indicators of production and credit off-take, it is appropriate for the Reserve Bank to be pre-emptive in its policy action to utilise available space for monetary accommodation.

Virat Kohli's short-tempered nature has landed him in unwanted trouble yet again.

In a case of mistaken identity, India's vice captain allegedly used filthy language against a New Delhi-based journalist, here on World Cup duty, on the sidelines of a practice session on Tuesday. Making his way from the ground to the dressing room at the Sports Oval, located on the premises of Murdoch University, Kohli apparently launched an unprovoked attack on the scribe.

The shares of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) shot up by 4.39 per cent on Tuesday following a global brokerage firm CLSA’s prediction that the company’s refining margins might rise to six-year high in the current quarter. The report, however, has warned about the rising expenditure in the telecom, which is pulling down the company’s valuation.

Driven by improvement in naphtha crackers, petcoke spreads, higher light-heavy crude differentials and shrinkage in internal loss due to the lower Brent price, RIL’s March quarter’s refining margin could rise $3 a barrel on a quarter-to-quarter basis to a six-year high of $10.3 a barrel.

Banking shares are in demand with the Bank Nifty surging 581 points to 20,542 in early morning deal on NSE after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) cut the repo rate by 25 bps to 7.5% today.

Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Canara Bank, Bank of India, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and State Bank of India are up between 2-3%.

RBI's surprise rate cut, much before its next month's meeting, means good news for infra, realty as well as high-debt companies.

Banks had not cut their base rates after the RBI cut the repo rate by 25 basis points on Jan 15. The gains, however, which typically come with a lag should start reflecting soon.

Ford India today reported 2.63% increase in total sales at 12,576 units in February.

It had sold 12,253 units in February 2014, Ford India said in a statement.

State-owned oil explorer ONGC is not yet ready for stake sale and the government will consider divesting it only after the subsidy sharing mechanism between upstream companies and centre is finalized and oil prices rebound, Disinvestment Secretary Aradhana Johri said on Tuesday.

"All I can say is that ONGC is not ready for sale as of now," Johri told Business Standard in her first post-budget interview.

The union of Air India pilots, Indian Commercial Pilots Association, has directed its members not to operate flights with commanders which the airline proposes to hire on contract.

The Association, which represents pilots on narrow body Airbus A320 fleet has also asked the management to withdraw the recruitment advertisement. Last week, the airline had announced it would hire 197 pilots including commanders and senior trainee pilots for its Airbus A320 fleet.

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