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  The Income Tax Department is undertaking searches at the Delhi-based independent think tank Centre for Policy Research, as reported by news agency ANI. The premises of the think tank located near Malcha Marg in central Delhi are being covered, they said. The exact reason for conducting the survey, where only business premises are covered by the taxman, was not known. Income Tax sources said that the search is being carried out based on "credible information" about tax evasion. The sources said the search "is not linked to" the income tax searches underway across some states as part of the probe into alleged tax evasion and financial impropriety by unrecognised political parties over donations received without statutory compliances. According to its website,The Centre for Policy Research (CPR) has been one of India’s leading public policy think tanks since 1973. CPR is a non-profit, non-partisan, independent institution dedicated to conducting research that contrib...

  The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has restructured its high-level panel on cyber security that suggests measures to safeguard the capital markets from such attacks. The committee, which has now six members, will be chaired by Navin Kumar Singh, DG at National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC), news agency PTI report said. It is important to note that the committee had only four members earlier, an update with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) showed. The other members of the panel include Sanjay Bahl Director General at Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) and H Krishnamurthy, who was a chief research scientist at IISC Bangalore. Sandeep Shukla and Debdeep Mukhopadhyay, who are professors at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in IIT Kanpur and IIT Kharagpur, respectively, and Sugata Gangopadhyay, head of the department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Roorkee, are the other members...

  Central bank digital currency (CBDC), to be launched this year, could become a tool for reducing time and cost for cross-border transactions, Reserve Bank Deputy Governor T Rabi Sankar said on Wednesday. The RBI has proposed to launch on a pilot basis this year, as announced in the Budget by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. In the Union Budget for 2022-23, the finance minister had said the RBI would roll out a digital equivalent to the rupee in the current financial year. "We have to understand that internationalisation of CBDC is crucial to addressing the payments issue that bodies like G-20 and Bank for International Settlements (BIS) are dealing with now," he said at India Ideas Summit. Observing that India has an excellent, cheap and fast domestic payments system, he said the cost of cross-border payment, however, is still high. There is a lot of scope for improvement in terms of both cost and speed, he noted.   CBDC is probably the most efficient answer to this, he...

  After receiving repeated enquiries on the authorisation status of certain electronic trading platforms for foreign exchange transactions, the Reserve Bank of India has released a list of entities that are not authorised to undertake such trades. The list, which will be referred to as an ‘alert list’, is not exhaustive and is based on the latest information available to the RBI at the time, the central bank said on Wednesday. The list includes entities that are neither authorised to deal in foreign exchange under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 nor to operate electronic trading platforms for forex transactions. The central bank’s list has a total of 34 entities. Some of the entities listed are Alpari, AnyFX, Ava Trade, Binomo, e Toro, Exness, Expert Option, FBS, FinFxPro and Forex.com. OctaFX, one of the entities which has been listed, is an official sponsor of the Delhi Capitals team in the Indian Premier League cricket tournament, reports said. Websites of some of thes...

  The states on Sunday used the forum of the governing council of NITI Aayog to raise the issue of their dwindling resources. They demanded that the Centre increase their share in central taxes and extend goods and services tax (GST) compensation to them. he council meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was, however, boycotted by Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR). This move by KCR was a “mark of protest” against the NDA government for not giving states the “flexibility to design and modify schemes based on their needs.” ITI Aayog is mandated to boost cooperative federalism in the country ihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, who runs the NDA government in the state, also did not come to the meeting citing health reasons owever, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, a critic of the Modi government, joined after successive boycotts in the past.   Banerjee emphasised that the Centre should look into the demands of state governments “more seriously.”...

  Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Sunday that states should develop a clear time-bound road map for the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) and focus on promoting trade, tourism and technology. He also asked for collective action to increase Goods and Services Tax (GST) collections. During the 7th meeting of the NITI Aayog Governing Council, states, on the other hand, sought central assistance to help crop diversification. This was the first in-person NITI Aayog Governing Council meeting since 2019 and the PM interacted with chief ministers of states and lieutenant governors of Union Territories. “The PM said the NEP has been formulated after considerable deliberations. He said we should involve all stakeholders in its implementation and develop a clear, time-bound roadmap for the same,” said an official statement. Speaking at a media briefing after the meeting, NITI Aayog member V K Paul said there was a strong consensus among states on the implementation of...

  India’s plan to expand its corporate bond market faces an unexpected impediment because the regulator is considering tightening control of trading platforms that allow investments in company debt in just a few clicks. While the proposed framework is designed to protect investors and is therefore being welcomed by some, a few of the proposals by the Securities and Exchange Board of India could actually prove counterproductive and hurt liquidity, according to experts who spoke to Bloomberg. That’s because the sale of unlisted debt would be banned, platforms would be forbidden to sell privately placed corporate notes on to non-institutional investors soon after acquiring them, and trades would need to be settled via routes that today are not commonly used. Market participants have until Aug. 12. to give officials their input on the matter. “The trade off is very often between creating depth in the market and ensuring investor protection,” said Shilpa Mankar Ahluwalia, a partner at l...

  India may cut the goods and services tax on lithium-ion batteries and bring them on a par with taxes on electric vehicles to give a fillip to its green mobility plans. Discussions have begun among various stakeholders in the Union government on ways to proceed with the plan, which is crucial to making the country a global manufacturing hub for electric vehicles (EVs). Currently, EVs are taxed at 5%, while lithium-ion batteries are taxed at 18%. There have been considerations of tax rationalization on lithium-ion batteries earlier, but with the push for battery swapping policy, the talks have again gained momentum, said people in the know of the developments. The NITI Aayog, the ministries of new and renewable energy, heavy industries, and other government departments held their first meeting on Tuesday on the battery-swapping policy. This followed receipt of suggestions and recommendations on the draft policy until 5 June. Along with tax rationalization, standardization of batter...

  The Reserve Bank of India on Wednesday doubled the limit on housing loans from cooperative banks and also permitted Rural Cooperative Banks (RCB) to finance residential real estate projects to support affordable housing and inclusive growth. The central bank allowed urban cooperative banks (UCBs) to provide doorstep banking services to meet the needs of customers, especially senior citizens and differently abled persons. This would bring UCBs on par with scheduled commercial banks which already provide such services. RBI, in a monetary policy statement, today said it is raising the existing limits on individual housing loans by cooperative banks due to an increase in housing prices since the last revision and after factoring in customer needs. These limits were last revised for UCBs in 2011 and for RCBs in 2009. The limits for tier-I/ tier-II UCBs stand revised from Rs 0.30 crore to Rs 0.60 crore and Rs 0.70 crore to Rs 1.40 crore, respectively.   As regards rural co-operati...

  In a relief to subscribers of journals and insurance customers for paying premia on a regular basis, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has increased the limit for e-mandates for recurring payments to Rs 15,000 from Rs 5,000.After the e-mandate was capped at Rs 5,000 in October last year, customers had taken to social media complaining that they had to initiate payments at regular intervals for availing of such services. While announcing the move, the regulator said more than 62.5 million mandates had been registered in favour of a large number of domestic and over 3,400 international merchants. “Since October 1 when we introduced the new framework, so far about 59 million mandates have been registered. The total mandates are about 65 million, which basically means about 6 million mandates existed before that and subsequently these many mandates have been created. So, probably a large part is covered,” said T Rabi Sankar, deputy governor, RBI. “We heard from many people that interna...

  Customers borrowing from unregistered digital lending apps should approach the local police in case of any issue, Reserve Bank Governor Shaktikanta Das said on Wednesday, making it clear that the central bank will only act against entities registered with it. In remarks that came in the wake of a spate of alleged suicides abetted by harassment by agents or officials of lending apps, Das said most of the digital lending apps are not registered with the central bank and operate by themselves.Das said whenever it gets a complaint from any customer, the central bank directs customers of such unregistered apps to approach the local police, which will conduct an investigation and take necessary action on the issue. The RBI website has a list of apps that are registered with it on the website, the governor said, adding that the police in many states have acted against the wrongdoers as per the provisions of the law. “It’s my humble request to all those using such apps to first check if ...