Mumbai Bandh: High Court asks Shiv Sena and BJP to pay
Mumbai: In a significant verdict, the Bombay High Court has directed the Shiv Sena and the BJP to pay Rs.20 lakh each as compensation for causing public losses due to the city bandh called by them on July 30 last year. The bandh was called to protest against the serial bomb blasts.

The compensation will be collected in a fund that will be used for public utility services, acting Chief Justice A P Shah and Justice S U Kamdar observed while disposing of a public interest litigation filed by an NGO and two others. The PIL, filed by AGNI, theatre personality Alque Padamsee and former Municipal Commissioner B G Deshmukh, alleged that the city suffered an estimated loss of Rs 50 crore owing to the bandh called by the Shiv Sena.

It was submitted that the bandh was forced on the people and was against the Supreme Court order of 1997, which had prohibited political parties from resorting to such methods of agitation. The Shiv Sena and the BJP emphatically denied that they had enforced the July 30 bandh and said it was spontaneous.
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Manmohan asks Soren to resign
New Delhi: The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh has written to the Coal Minister, Shibu Soren to put in his papers in the wake of the controversy over his "disappearance".
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Hearing on Soren plea put off
Ranchi: The Jharkhand High Court has deferred till Monday its hearing on a petition by Coal Minister Sibu Soren challenging the non-bailable arrest warrant against him in a massacre case.

In his petition filed on Tuesday, Soren appealed to the court to quash the arrest warrant, issued against him on July 17 by the Sub-Divisional Judicial Magistrate of Jamtara, in connection with the massacre case. He pleaded to quash the proceedings against him since the Jharkhand government had decided to withdraw all cases related to the movement demanding a separate state.
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Taj Corridor case: Behnji with the big bucks
New Delhi: The CBI's status report in the Taj Corridor project reveals that BSP President Mayawati has far more assets than she can account for. The CBI says Mayawati filed income tax returns of only Rs 88 lakh between April 1997 and March 2003. However, she has Rs 1.5 crore in cash in banks and Rs 9.78 crore in fixed deposits. According to the CBI, the details of the properties and assets owned by Mayawati and her family are as follows:

• Mayawati has jewellery worth Rs 31 lakh
• Mayawati and her family own four houses in Delhi's Inderpuri area
• A plot of agricultural land in Bulundshehar
• A plot in Dehradun as well as land and a house in Noida

The CBI had registered an FIR against Mayawati on October 5 last year and raided her home in Lucknow on October 8. The agency has submitted three status reports so far. The CBI now has three months to finalise its report.
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Inflation touches 6.52 per cent
New Delhi: Continuing its rising trend, inflation touched its highest level in nearly five months, with the wholesale price index (WPI) at 6.52 per cent for the week ended July 10. Inflation touched 6.16 per cent during the previous week. WPI was up marginally by 0.1 per cent to 184.6 points during the latest reported week. The index stood at 173.3 points in the corresponding period a year ago.
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Kelkar panel: Two rate structure for Income Tax
New Delhi: The Kelkar Task Force has suggested a shift to a two-rate structure for personal income tax. The panel has proposed that annual income below Rs 1,00,000 would be exempt from taxation, while income between Rs 1,00,001 and Rs 4,00,000 should attract a 20 per cent tax and for income above Rs 4,00,000 the tax rate should be 30 per cent. Currently, personal income tax has a three-rate structure (10 per cent, 20 per cent and 30 per cent) on varying slabs of income. Along with this, the panel has suggested removal of all exemptions under the various sections of the Income Tax (I-T) Act, barring those relating to housing loans and those available to senior citizens and women. It has also proposed elimination of standard deduction available to salaried employees.

On the savings front, the panel has suggested that the structure of savings incentives should be rationalised into a single EET (Exempt, Exempt, Taxable) system where contributions and accumulations are tax-exempt, but the withdrawals are taxed as ordinary income. This would lead to elimination of tax concessions such as those under section 80L of the I-T Act. However, it has suggested that all existing investment under schemes such as the Public Provident Fund (PPF) should be "grandfathered" whereby interest on existing deposits would continue to be tax-exempt while all new investments would be part of the EET system. The above "package" the panel has said would lead to a lower effective average tax rates for all category of taxpayers while at the same time it would rationalise the personal income tax structure.
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Date for filing I-T returns extended
New Delhi: The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has extended the last date for filing of returns of income for the assessment year 2004-05 in respect of salaried and other non-corporate assessees, whose accounts are not required to be audited under the Income-Tax Act. An official release held that such assessees can file their returns with the Income-Tax Department up to October 31, as against the earlier specified date of July 31, 2004.
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