Open ballot for Rajya
Sabha
New Delhi: The Union cabinet on Monday decided to amend the
law to switch over from secret to open ballot in the polls for
Rajya Sabha and waive the provision that a candidate in such polls
should hail from the same state.
The cabinet, at its meeting, approved proposals to amend Section
59 and 128 of the Representation of People's Act, 1951 to stop the
menace of cross voting and large scale use of money power in the
Rajya Sabha polls, law and justice minister Arun Jaitley told
reporters.
He said major political parties had also favoured doing away with
the provision in Section 3 of the R P Act which stipulated that a
candidate in the Rajya Sabha polls should hail from the same
state.
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Koshiyari
new Uttaranchal CM
Dehradun: Bhagat Singh Koshiyari was on Monday elected
leader of the BJP Legislature Party in Uttaranchal and will be
sworn in as chief minister on Tuesday.
Koshiyari, 59, will be the second chief minister of the newly
formed hill state replacing Nityanand Swami, who was asked to quit
ahead of the assembly elections early next year.
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E-commerce
to reach Rs 252-b in 2005
New Delhi: Indian e-commerce is projected to reach Rs 252
billion in 2005, according to International Chamber of Commerce
president Richard McCormic.
E-commerce in India totalled Rs 2.5 billion last year in
business-to-business transactions and Rs 500 million in
business-to-consumer, McCormick said at a FICCI-organised seminar
on 'promoting International Trade Through E-commerce'.
" In the present scenario the Internet is a new way and often
the only way of doing the business that we used to do by other
means," he added.
The IT infrastructure development will reach $1.98 trillion in
2004 and e-commerce spending will reach $2.5 trillion during the
same period; the total Internet economy in 2004 will be of the
order of $4.48 trillion, S Laxminarayan, Joint Secretary in
Ministry of IT said.
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BA
cuts ticket prices to India
New Delhi: British Airways has slashed its ticket prices by
almost 40 per cent to kickstart the travel market but has upset
travel agents by asking for up-front payments.
BA is selling a London-New Delhi return economy class ticket for
Rs 18,000, down nearly 37 per cent from previous levels, in an
offer open until October 31 but valid for travel until March 2002.
Virgin and Air-India, which have a code-share arrangement, are
also planning to cut prices to match the British Airways offer.
Virgin Atlantic operates two flights a week out of India in a
code-share block-seat deal with Air-India. The Indian flagship
airline also flies four times a week to London.
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Centre
rules out divestment of ONGC, IOC, Gail
Mumbai: The Centre on Monday ruled out divestment of its
stake in Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Indian Oil Corporation
and Gas Authority of India.
The government will not dilute its control in these three flagship
companies in view of national oil security, said union minister
for petroleum and natural gas Ram Naik.
Presently, the government is only working on divestment of IBP and
has no other proposals for divesting its stake in other oil
companies.
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Service
tax on ISPs, paid websites
New Delhi: Internet Service Providers including VSNL and
MTNL, would have to pay service tax from this fiscal even as
government exempted websites offering free e-commerce service and
cyber cafes from the new tax.
Paid websites like indiainformer.com and ciionline.com, who charge
customers for specific information and those who charge a fee for
e-commerce transaction, have also been brought into the service
tax net, Central Board of Excise and Customs clarified in a
detailed guideline.
About 120 ISPs including VSNL, MTNL, Satyam online, Bharti, Tata,
RPG, HCL, Wipro, BPL, Mantraonline and dishnet providing access to
websites through their network and dedicated lease lines would
come under the tax net after the centre decided to extend service
tax to "online information and database access and
retrieval" and 14 other services.
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Govt
to spend Rs 225cr on info kiosks in N-E
New Delhi: The government has decided to set up about 487
community information centres in North-East region by August 2002
at a cost of Rs 225 crore.
At present, 30 CICs are already operational in the region. These
CICs would be connected through Very Small Apperture Terminals.
According to government estimates, by 2008 computer density is
estimated to rise to 30 per thousand from the current 5.8 while
internet connection is expected to rise to 50 million from the
current 2.3 million and internet users base would be 120 million
by the same time from the current seven million.
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