Ringing Bells starts refunding money to customers

Noida-based Ringing Bells, which has promised to sell smartphones for Rs 251 apiece, has started refunding money to customers due to negative speculation around its claim.

“There was a lot of negativity around us so we have decided to take money from customers only after delivering phones to them. We are refunding money to those who have paid for booking the phones and giving them an option of cash on delivery," Ringing Bells Director Mohit Goel said.

Start-ups bat for tax sops, investment incentives in Union Budget

The startup community, which has started facing funds crunch of late, is looking to the Union Budget 2016 for an easy tax regime, relaxation in investment norms and furtherincentives for innovation.

The country is home to over 18,000 startups, making it the third-largest in the world after the US and England.

“iSpirt has represented to the finance ministry that a small basket of tax sops merely will not be effective for the existing system which is riddled with several bottlenecks," co-founder of iSpirt Foundation Sharad Sharma told PTI. Read More.

Budget 2016: Fiscal Framework: Review medium-term fiscal stance

Fiscal hawks might not like it but the Budget 2016 has made a case for reviewing the medium-term fiscal framework in the upcoming Budget News. It, however, has argued that there were “good” arguments for both relaxing the fiscal deficit target and keeping it.

The framework mandates the government to cut its fiscal deficit to 3.5 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) next financial year and 3 per cent by 2017-18 from the targeted 3.9 per cent in the current financial year.

Budget 2016: Subsidies: Plug subsidy leaks to help fiscal consolidation

If lower tax rate is equivalent to subsidising, the National Democratic Alliance government is clearly targeting the 'well-off' segment of the population. Unlike the previous years, the Budget 2016 has dealt with the issue of subsidy by giving only a box on petroleum subsidies, while devoting a chapter with nine-and-a-half pages to 'Bounties for the Well-Off'.

Read more from our special coverage on "BUDGET 2016"

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Maternal and child health could be a top priority for the government, says Economic Survey

Understanding that relatively low-cost maternal and early-life health and nutrition programmes offer very high returns on investment, investing in these two sectors could become a top policy priority of the government, said the economic survey, Budget 2016.

“One can build clinics in villages or transfer money to pregnant mothers or build latrines, but how does one bring out the right usage of all this physical capital is the next task in front of the government,” stated the survey.Read More.

10 unanswered questions on the Diageo-Vijay Mallya deal

British liquor giant, Diageo and Vijay Mallya, Chairman of UB group, on Thursday signed a settlement agreementthat absolves Mallya of claims over diversion of funds from United Spirits to other UB group firms, including Kingfisher Airlines. But the transaction comes at a huge cost to USL’s minority shareholders as the Indian company will no longer take any action on the recovery of Rs 2,100 crore from various UB group entities.

Budget 2016: Economic Survey pegs FY17 GDP growth at 7-7.75%

The #EconomicSurvey2016 , tabled in Parliament by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday, pegged India’s gross domestic product (GDP) to grow by 7-7.75 per cent next financial over this year. The upper part of the range  given in the Survey is slightly higher than the 7.6 per cent, officially pegged for the current financial year, while the lower part is way down.

The Survey was hopeful that the economy could clock eight per cent economic growth in a couple of years due to reform measures initiated by the government.

Why OBC status is not the solution for Jat unemployment

Haryana will take a while, probably few years and couple of thousand crore rupees, to get over the impact of nearly two weeks of agitation by the Jats to press for their demand for quota in government jobs. Physical reconstruction is possible. But what about the ugly caste clashes that killed many lives? Will dilon ka milan be possible henceforth?

The great showdown of smartphones in weeks

While a fleet of flagship smartphones are being launched in the yearly extravaganza of mobile devices at Barcelona, site of the Mobile World Congress (MWC), Indian subsidiaries of major handset makers are gearing for their launches.

Global and Indian smartphone leader Samsung, China’sGionee and Lenovo are preparing to introduce flagship devices within weeks of their global launch at MWC 2016 in the past four days. According to sources, others such as Xiaomi, LG and Intex are no less behind.

Sanjay Dutt walks out of Pune's Yerawada Jail a free man

Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt today walked free out of theYerawada prisonhere after completing his prison term, putting behind his turbulent past as a convict in the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts case.

Clad in blue shirt and jeans, a smiling Dutt was escorted out of the imposing jail gates this morning after completing formalities and got into a car that drove him straight to Lohegaon Airport here to take a chartered flight to Mumbai.Read More.

Rail Budget 2016 Live:

Rail Budget 2016 Live: Operating ratio at 92% this year, up from 90% last year, says Prabhu

All 23 on board missing Nepal plane killed in crash: Nepal Aviation Minister

A Nepal airlines plane with 23 people -- 20 passengers and three crew members -- that went missing on Wednesday morning has crashed and all people on board have been killed, said Civil Aviation Minister Ananda Prasad Pokharel.

The minister quoted Nepal Army officials at the crash site in Myagdi district as confirming the crash.

JNU row: All you need to know about Umar Khalid

Hemmed in by the Delhi High Court's decision, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Umar Khalid, along with Anirban Bhattacharya, surrendered to Delhi Police Tuesday night.  Khalid, who faces charges of sedition, is among the five students who allegedly shouted anti-national slogans at a campus event on February 9.

The former Democratic Students Union (DSU) leader has remained at the centre of the storm surrounding JNU in the past few weeks.

A 'Tinystep' for parenting woes

Tinystep is an interactive platform that lets parents share experiences, reports Tech in Asia

Suhail Abidi remembers the time when a close friend and his wife had just had a baby and found themselves completely at sea.

“They had finally started a lovely family. But we now live in a fast-paced society and family dynamics have changed. I noticed my friend struggling,” says Suhail.

Investors can give rail related stocks a miss: analysts

Rail related stocks have underperformed the market thus far in calendar year 2016 (CY16) with counters such as Hind Rectifiers, Kernex Microsystems, Stone India and Titagarh Wagons skidding around 16% - 22%.

While the market participants are keenly eyeing the Union Budget proposals, analysts say the Railway Budget too assumes significance this time around given that it is being looked upon for its potential to rejig the investment cycle as well as bring transformative change to transportation in India.

Air force, DRDO, pleased with Tejas performance at Bahrain

In a milestone for India’s Tejas light-combat aircraft (LCA), two Tejas fighters travelled from India to performed aerobatics at the Bahrain International Air Show (BIAS-2016) from January 21-23.

This official account comes from the Indian Air Force (IAF), which is overseeing the flight test programme of the Tejas; and from the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), the defence research & development (R&D) organisation responsible for the Tejas programme.

JNU row: Sting shows lawyers' plan to thrash Kanhaiya Kumar in jail

In a sting operation conducted by a news channel on two of the three lawyers wanted for alleged assault on journalists, students and teachers of JNU at a court here last week, the perpetrators purportedly claimed that they planned to thrash JNU Students' Union president Kanhaiya Kumar in prison too.

In the video broadcast on the English news channel this evening, the lawyers can be seen claiming that they also thrashed Kanhaiya for around three hours while he was in police custody and said he wet his pants during the beating.