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The Election Commission said voting would start Sunday and last for eight hours across the country in over 42,000 ballot stations to receive the more than 119 million registered voters. Ballot boxes, among other election supplies, have been sent over in preparation for the vote, the commission said.

metro ridership as daily ridership across metro systems in the country has already crossed the 10 million mark, and is expected to exceed 12.5 million in a year or two, according to Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. This comes after UK-based publication, The Economist claimed that India's metro rail systems are failing to attract enough passengers in its year-ending 'Christmas Double' issue, dated December 23 last year. According to a press release by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs highlights the significant growth of metro rail in the country, emphasizing that daily ridership across all metro rail systems has surpassed 10 million, reflecting the evolving aspirations of a rapidly urbanizing young India. The UK publication was criticized by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs for factual inaccuracies and lacking necessary context, contending that none of India's metro rail systems have achieved even half of their projected ridership. The ministry rebutted claims made by UK publications, emphasizing that over three-fourths of India's current metro rail network has been conceptualized, constructed, and operationalized in less than a decade. In 2023, India's metro rail ridership increased three times from 2019. This can be attributed to traffic congestion and a preference for faster transit options.

Consumer Affairs Minister Piyush Goyal on Saturday said the government will bring more products under the mandatory quality norm as India moves towards becoming a developed nation by 2047. Addressing virtually the 77th foundation day of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), Goyal said complying with high quality standards in products and services will help India achieve high goals and become a developed nation. Towards this direction, the BIS should become an ambassador of quality standards.

Police are investigating the fires in Gazipur, on the outskirts of capital Dhaka, but suspected that wrongdoers aiming to disrupt Sunday's election had set fire to the schools in the middle of the night.

start-ups had a relatively tougher time in the past year, yet over 950 tech start-ups saw the light of the day, taking the total tally to a whopping 31,000 in the past 10 years. Since 2019, tech start-ups in India have managed to raise $70 billion in funding, revealed Zinnov-Nasscom 2023 report on tech start-ups landscape. The report states that Indian start-ups are successfully transforming challenges into opportunities, thus creating jobs and facilitating growth.

China's envoy's team visited the RSS headquarters in Nagpur, Maharashtra. In a post on X, Kerala Congress captioned a media report, saying, “Ab Ki Baar Xi Jinping?" However, according to the TOI report, the group of Chinese scholars specializing in Hindi participated in a workshop at Wardha's Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya (Hindi University) in Nagpur on December 7th.

foreign job is so luring that individuals have even paid up to Rs 5 lakh to various fake overseas job recruitment agents, revealed data from the Ministry of External Affairs. «It has been noticed that there has been a huge rise in the number of overseas job seekers being cheated by unregistered recruitment agents by fake job offers and also overcharging to the tune of Rs 2-5 lakhs,» said the MEA in a press release dated December 14, 2023. In light of these incidents of fraud, the MEA has highlighted how Indians can search and connect with genuine overseas job recruitment agents who are registered with the MEA. «Persons seeking jobs abroad are requested to use the safe and legal services of registered Recruiting Agents (RA) only. All registered RAs are issued a license number which is prominently displayed in their office premises and their advertisements, including newspapers and social media,» said the MEA in the press release.

Global supermarket chain Carrefour will stop selling PepsiCo products in its stores in France, Belgium, Spain and Italy over price increases for popular items like Lay’s potato chips, Quaker Oats, Lipton tea and its namesake soda.

The Wire. Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars mentioned that in 2018, India had spent $66,046 on combined common charges for two units at Trump World Tower on Turtle Bay. The report further provides a projection of this figure over the four years of Trump’s administration giving a total of $264,184.

consecration ceremony at the Ram Mandir. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has appealed to the people to light special diyas -- Shri Ram Jyoti -- in their homes to celebrate the day as 'Deepawali'. Ayodhya is getting decked up for the 'pran pratishtha' at the grand Ram temple.

Ayodhya for the consecration ceremony of the Ram Temple later this month. The police personnel engaged in the Ayodhya inauguration on January 22 should not use smart phones, he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to attend the consecration ceremony of the Ram Temple on January 22. Many VVIP guests from the country and abroad are expected to come to the temple town to attend the event. Preparations are underway in full swing for the event, which is expected to be attended by thousands of dignitaries and people from all sections of society. Vedic rituals for the Pran-Pratishtha (consecration) ceremony of Ram Lalla (infant Lord Ram) in Ayodhya will begin on January 16, a week before the main ceremony. A priest from Varanasi, Lakshmi Kant Dixit, will perform the main rituals of the consecration ceremony of Ram Lalla on January 22.

Ayodhya was bigger than the movement for the country's independence in 1947. The VHP leader said that lakhs of people sacrificed their lives for the movement and it took nearly 500 years to give a final shape to the construction of the temple of Lord Ram Lalla. «Ram Temple movement was a bigger movement than the independence movement.

Joe Biden's first 2024 campaign speech, Donald Trump accused him of «fearmongering and claimed that Biden was attacking him on the democracy issue because he couldn't run on other matters, The Hill reported. Biden described Trump as a clear threat to democracy who could not be trusted with a second term, it added.

New Delhi: Union steel minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said India becoming a net importer of steel between April and November this fiscal year is not a concern for the government, terming the imports a drop in the ocean of total steel consumption in the country. “Indian steel production has gone up by 12.9% y-o-y (year-on-year). So, more steel is being produced, but the demand is also much more," he said.

proposed ₹30,000 crore of equity investments into Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum (HPCL) this fiscal year as these companies have clocked robust profits and don't need major financial support for their planned transition to green energy, said people familiar with the matter. The government had announced its capital support plans for these state-run refiners last February in the FY24 Union budget. At the time, these companies were facing a difficult patch and were demanding compensation for the heavy losses they had suffered in the first two quarters of 2022-23 for not increasing retail fuel prices in line with rising international rates. Since pump prices are deregulated in the country, the government didn't agree to the compensation but allocated a capital support of ₹30,000 crore in the budget, which could be used by the companies for their green transition projects, the people cited above said requesting anonymity. To start with, the companies were not too keen on equity infusion by the government as, like debt, equity also needs to be serviced, several company executives told ET previously.

North Korea was responsible for greater than $600 million worth of crypto being stolen in 2023, blockchain intelligence company TRM labs announced Friday.

₹1,080 crore, he said. "It is for the first time that a private power plant is being bought by the government," Mann said at a news conference here. "We have purchased it for ₹1,080 crore, which works out to a cost of ₹2 crore per megawatt, making it the cheapest buy in the country.

Mint broke the story in October on the government’s plan to prematurely exit the Bharatamala highway programme conceived six years ago, and start building largely access-controlled highways in the country. The development of expressways was critical for the next phase of infrastructure development, as it would lead to faster travel, reduce fuel consumption and help lower logistics cost, Jain said, briefing media persons about the achievements of the ministry in 2023. The government finalized the Bharatmala Pariyojana in 2017, with the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approving the phase 1 of the programme the same year.

₹1 lakh for farm-sector registrations, ₹27 lakh for new manufacturing units and ₹4.2 lakh on average for services firms, indicating the small size of the new firms. More than 13,300 firms were formed in November, the shares of which were sold to investors for ₹1,232 crore, showed the ministry’s data.

JSW Steel Ltd’s subsidiary – JSW Utkal Steel – has now got the possession of 2,677.80 acres of forest land in Jagatsinghpur, Odisha where it intends to set up a 13.2 million tonne integrated steel plant. The company had already got the environmental clearance from the Union Ministry of Environment & Forest and Climate Change in April, 2022, which was then re-validated by the ministry in September last year, with some additional and modified conditions. “…the Divisional Forest Officer, Mangrove Forest Division (WL), Rajnagar & the Collector have on January 4, 2024 delivered documents pertaining to the handing over of possession for the total forest land admeasuring 2677.80 Acres to JSW Utkal Steel Limited,” company said in an exchange filing on Saturday. JSW Steel will need a total of 2,950.31 acres of land for this project, of which the non-forest land of 272.51 acres was already leased to the company by the state government over the last two years. The country’s largest producer of steel – by production capacity – is likely to spend likely to spend ₹65,000 on setting up the plant, which is expected to be one of the largest in the manufacturing sector. South Korean steel giant POSCO had earlier planned on setting up a plant at this location, which then had to be abandoned amid local protests and delays in environmental clearance. Tata Steel, Jindal Steel and Power, and Steel Authority of India already have significant manufacturing capacities in the state.

government has appointed IAS officer Senthil Pandian C as ambassador to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva after Brajendra Navnit’s tenure as India’s ambassador to the global trade watchdog ends on March 31, 2024. The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) on Friday approved the appointment of Pandian, a 2002 IAS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre, for three years from the date of assumption of charge. Pandian is currently posted as commissioner, excise in Uttar Pradesh. His appointment comes at a time when the world is witnessing inflation, high interest rates and geopolitical tensions. In October, WTO has more than halved its growth projection for world merchandise trade volume for 2023 at 0.8% compared to the 1.7% forecast in April last year due to a continued slump in goods trade. However, the 3.3% growth projected for 2024 remains nearly unchanged from the previous estimate of 3.2%. WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the expected slowdown of trade was a cause for concern because it could depress the living standards of people around the world, particularly in poor countries.