SC to hear plea seeking relief for traders
New Delhi: The Supreme Court is to hear a number of applications seeking relief for the traders. An SC bench will hear applications filed by the central government, the Delhi government and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) seeking suspension of the sealing drive in view of the prevailing law and order situation in the aftermath of a three-day strike by the traders.

The authorities have sought relief for over 44,000 traders who had filed an affidavit giving undertakings to stop the misuse of premises in residential areas for commercial activities.

Such traders, by September 29 order, were allowed to continue their business till October 31 in view of the festival season.

The ministry of urban development and MCD have submitted that the traders who have filed affidavits, are feeling betrayed as against the traders getting away from sealing till January 31, 2007 even without giving any undertaking.

The court will also peruse the two reports submitted by the monitoring committee, the second of which was placed before the Registry in sealed cover as members of the committee were not happy with the leakage of the first report.
Back to News Review index page  

500 million mobile users in India by 2010: Maran
Chennai: The number of mobile phone users in the country is set to increase to 500 million by 2010, according to the Union Minister for Communication and IT Dayanidhi Maran.

Maran said the number of cellular phone customers had already increased from 75 million in 2004 to 175 million till September this year.
Back to News Review index page  

Government may advocate competitive bidding to arrive at natural gas price
New Delhi: The Government may advocate competitive bidding to arrive at the price of natural gas produced from new fields and recommend different price in different regions.

A committee, formed by ministry of petroleum and natural gas to formulate guidelines for approving natural gas price formula/basis for giving government approval, has suggested discovering price of natural gas from fields like Reliance Industries D6 in Krishna Godavari basin, by inviting bids from different consumers, an official said here.

The five-member Committee suggested competitive bidding despite the entire industry public and private rejecting such an idea since the Indian gas market was as yet highly underdeveloped.

The industry was of the view that the economic price of gas cannot be passed onto the final consumer in case of bulk consumers like power and fertiliser units.
Back to News Review index page