Petrol prices were hiked for the 10th time since June 2010, by a little over Rs.3.14 a litre from Friday (15-Sep-2011), as India's oil retailers sought to pass most of the burden of the falling value of the rupee and high crude prices on to consumers.

The increase in petrol price is the latest after a record 5 rupee hike in May 2011. Petrol prices vary from city to city depending on VAT and other local levies.

Oil companies in India have been free since June 2010 to set their own prices for petrol, which is considered a rich person's fuel. Raising the petrol price is politically easier than lifting state-controlled diesel prices, which New Delhi did in June after months of delay.

The recent depreciation of the rupee, which has fallen nearly 8 percent from its 2011 high, adds to the subsidy burden for oil marketing companies.

Petrol price were freed from the government control in June last year but the retail rates have not moved in line with cost as high inflation rate forced the oil companies to seek 'advice' from parent oil ministry before revising rates.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa was today (12-Sep-2011) asked by the Supreme Court to appear personally on October 20 before a Karnataka trial court, adjudicating a disproportionate assets case against her.

Rejecting Jayalalithaa's earlier plea for grant of exemption from personal appearance, an apex court bench had on September 5 observed that she was trying to delay proceedings. Jayalalithaa had sought exemption from personal appearance for recording her statement under Section 313 of the Criminal Procedure Code on grounds of threat to her security.

She will appear before the court Oct 20. Jayalalithaa faces charges for accumulating wealth disproportionate to known sources of income when she was the chief minister from 1991 to 1996.

The case was transferred from Chennai to Bangalore.

A bench of justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma, however, left it to the trial court judge to decide her plea for being examined at a separate building, other than the regular court, in view of security considerations.

The apex court said the presiding judge shall ensure that she is examined in a proper environment.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed a case stating that yoga icon Baba Ramdev and his trust have violated foreign exchange laws.

There is trouble for Baba Ramdev. The Enforcement Directorate has finally found evidence of FEMA violations in two of his trusts - Divya Yog Mandir Trust and Patanjali Ayurveda Ltd.

Ramdev's castle on Scotland's The Little Cumbrae Island, is also being investigated. The island off the fishing town of Largs in Scotland, serves as Ramdev's base overseas and also as a wellness centre.

The ED is verifying the holding patterns and other details of the companies through the Registrar of Companies (RoC) and the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.

However, Ved Pratap Vaidik, a close associate of Ramdev, said the case has been filed because of "vendetta and revenge".

"The timing of the case is suspect. If the government had all this information, why did they not file a case earlier," Vaidik told reporters.

The case has been registered under the Foreign Exchange Managment Act (FEMA), official sources added.

Hacking group Anonymous is asking PayPal users to "immediately close their accounts and consider an alternative," as a way of protesting the arrests of 14 people tied to a denial-of-service attack on PayPal's website last December. That attack, which brought down the site, was said to be retribution against PayPal for dropping WikiLeaks' donation account.

"PayPal continues to withhold funds from WikiLeaks, a beacon of truth in these dark times," the groups said in a statement.

"We encourage anyone using PayPal to immediately close their accounts and consider an alternative," they said.

"The first step to being truly free is not putting one's trust into a company that freezes accounts when it feels like, or when it is pressured by the US government," they added.

Various Anonymous Twitter accounts are making a call for action. Anonymous Press tweets: "Paypal suspended the closing of accounts online, so call in and close ur account 1-888-221-1161 make sure 2 quote #OpPayPal via@odotm"

Wikileaks is showing support by tweeting: "We support the work of #Anonymous in drawing attention to the economic blockade of #Wikileaks by corrupt financial institutions. #OpPayPal"

So far, however, the campaign may not be having much effect.

"We haven't seen any changes to our normal operations (including account opening and closing) overnight," a PayPal spokeswoman told CNN via e-mail on Wednesday (27-July-2011).

Anonymous wants PayPal users to switch to other similar services.
"Get yourself a slice of MyBitCoin, Liberty Reserve, WebMoney, Neteller, Moneybookers, and start using prepaid credit and gift cards," tweeted allied hacking group LulzSec.

Income tax sleuths have raided the houses, offices and hotels of Malayalam film stars Mammootty and Mohanlal. The searches started at 6.30am on Friday (22-July-2011) morning.

The operation followed allegations of amassing wealth disproportionate to their income. More details about the nature of the raid have not been revealed.

The raids were conducted at premises in Kochi, Bengaluru and Chennai.

Mohanlal is currently shooting for a film in Rameshwaram and his statement is being recorded, while Mammootty is in Chennai.

On July 11, the Income Tax sleuths raided the houses of several Kannada film makers and distributors and seized many documents. Reports said that the I-T officials raided the houses of Kannada TV and film stars Ravikiran, Sihi Kahi Chandru and K Manju and others at Teachers Colony, J P Nagar, Vijayanagar, Sadashivanagar, Jayanagar etc.

Chennai Police have summoned Kalanidhi Maran, the elder brother of former Telecom and Textile Minister Dayanidhi Maran. The police have summoned Kalanidhi who heads the SUN TV Network which is the Maran-family-run business.

Born in 1964 in a family deep-rooted in politics, Kalanidhi is the son of former Union Minister of commerce Murasoli Maran, brother of ex-textile minister Dayanidhi Maran and grandnephew of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi.

A business owner, a media baron and the Forbes billionaire- Kalanidhi Maran, 47, owns television channels, magazines, news papers, DTH Service and FM Radio stations in South India. Founder, Chairman and Managing Director of Sun TV Networks, Kalanidhi is television king of Southern India where his Sun TV rules.

A film distributor in Tamil Nadu has accused Sun Pictures of cheating and criminal intimidation. The Chief Operating Officer of Sun Pictures, Hansraj Saxena, was arrested recently.

Mr. Selvaraj alleged that he was cheated and threatened by Sun Pictures in connection with the release and distribution of the Tamil movie, Theeratha Vilaiyattu Pillai, the sources added.

“We have summoned Mr. Kalanithi Maran in his capacity as head of Sun Pictures. Since there are complaints of cheating, extortion, criminal intimidation against the Sun Pictures, we need to make enquiries with him,” a senior police official said.

PTI adds:

The counsel for Mr Kalanidhi has sought time saying his client is out of station and would return only on July 26.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Ashok Kumar told reporters that the plea has been accepted.

The film and television industry are keenly watching the outcome of this interrogation, it may be mentioned here.

A treasure has been discovered in India. It was found in the underground storage of a 16th century temple in the southern state of Kerala.

Call it the mother of all treasure hunts. The stock-taking by a panel of experts at the Sree Padmanabha Swamy temple has catapulted the shrine located in Kerala to the country's richest, with reports claiming that the value of recoveries may have touched close to Rs 1 lakh crore, more than Kerala public debt of Rs 70,969 crore.

The disclosure of the vault's contents is startling. So far, so good. The real challenge, however, lies in safeguarding the treasure. A beginning should be made by preparing a detailed, tamper-proof inventory. The valuables should also be preserved. Their intrinsic and antique value will only appreciate with time.

The invaluable treasure worth several millions belongs to the public. It was accumulated out of the revenue of the princely state over several centuries. It is not the private property of any royal family or the temple authorities. The treasure should be used for the much-needed infrastructural development of Kerala.

Amid conflicting opinions about future management of the treasure-trove found at Sree Padmanabhaswami temple, Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said on Sunday (03-July-2011) the wealth would remain with the temple.

After a high-level meeting convened to assess the security at the temple, where the preparation of an inventory of the hidden treasure is on, Chandy said the gold and other priceless objects found there belonged to the temple. “The gold was offered to the lord. It is the property of the temple. The government will protect the wealth at the temple,” he said.

The decision of Indian govt to put 25 paise coins put of circulation has been ridiculed by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday June 29.

Modi said the Centre was increasing fuel prices with impunity and could not ask the state governments to cut taxes.

“They increase oil prices with impunity and tell states to eliminate taxes, but we will (electorally) eliminate them with help of the people,” Modi said.

He said when the people joined their voice with the yoga expert Baba Ramdev for the demonetisation of thousand rupee notes, which was the only way to unearth black money, the Centre responded by stopping 25 paise coins. This reflected, he said, the Centre's lack of desire to fight against black money.

Over a month after petrol prices were hiked, the government on Friday (24-June-2011) raised the price of diesel by Rs 3 per litre, cooking gas by Rs 50 per cylinder and kerosene by Rs 2 per litre. The raise is nearly 8 percent.

The Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM), headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, met today and took the much-deferred politically sensitive decision, which Oil Minister S Jaipal Reddy said was done to cut down on burgeoning under-recovery of oil marketing companies.

The current hike comes just a day after the government announced that India's food inflation had soared to a nearly 10-week high of 9.13% for the week ended June 11.

The price hike is excluding value added tax (VAT).

With Baba Ramdev insisting that his hunger strike against corruption will begin as scheduled on Saturday (04-June-2011), the government is pulling out the steps to convince him otherwise.

Yoga guru Baba Ramdev remains adamant on going ahead with a fast to demand urgent steps to curb corruption and bring back black money stashed abroad despite efforts by the government to stop him.

Baba Ramdev's object is to compel the authorities to facilitate the return of black money to the country; the UPA's is to persuade him to abandon his fast.

The government had faced a similar situation in April when social activist Anna Hazare went on hunger fast on the issue of corruption.

"The black money stashed abroad should be declared national property, and keeping black money should be considered a crime at par with sedition," Ramdev told reporters. "We are not staging any protest or rebellion."

Ramdev, who enjoys a wide following particularly in north India, is to go on a fast from Saturday in New Delhi's sprawling Ramlila Maidan.

He also cleared the air over reported differences with Gandhian Anna Hazare, who has spearheaded a campaign for a strong anti-corruption Lokpal Bill, saying they were together.

The yoga guru says his fast is to protest against the illegal funnelling of wealth abroad by Indians for tax avoidance.

Baba Ramdev called on his many followers to join the fast.

The US-based group Global Financial Integrity has said that India has lost more than $460bn through the illegal flight of capital since Independence.

Almost three quarters of the illegal money that comprises India's underground economy ends up outside the country, it said in a report last year.

Authorities say the government is taking measures to bring back the illegal money, but there are difficulties owing to confidentiality treaties between countries.

On Wednesday (23-March-2011) morning, prominent film actors Akkineni Nagarjuna, Anushka Shetty and Ravi Teja and film producer D. Shiva Prasad Reddy woke up to a slew of income-tax raids.

Anushka Shetty - In the popular fairytale Sleeping beauty, the girl is awakened by Prince Charming. But for mana Tollywood beauty Anushka, it was a bit of a rude awakening. On Wednesday morning, the actress, who was fast asleep, was woken up by a team of Income Tax sleuths at her residence in Woods Apartments, Jubilee Hills.

Nagarjuna - Wednesday’s I-T raids on film stars appear to have a Nagarjuna ‘angle’ to them. Except for Ravi Teja, all the others are known to be close to Nagarjuna and some are also said to be his active business partners.

News of the raids did the rounds throughout Wednesday. However, not much information was forthcoming from the department. Simultaneous searches were carried on at residences, offices and other properties in Banjara and Jubilee Hills localities here, apart from some premises in Visakhapatnam.

Film industry sources said the action was prompted when the department found out about large number of land transactions involving film personalities in Visakhapatnam, the second-largest city in the State after Hyderabad.

The undisclosed land deals in Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam and Bengaluru are now under scrutiny. Ravi Teja`s house was also searched by the same team. He has had a meteoric rise in T-town and his rate increased from a meager Rs 10 lakhs to Rs 5 Crores per film.

IT officials found a lot of discrepancies in the money transfer between different accounts for purchase of properties by these stars. Last year, there were IT raids on producer Ganesh Babu and two years ago IT raided Dilraju, V V Vinayak, actors Mahesh Babu and Charmee.

We are yet to get details on what they unearthed in these raids.

The Indian rupee was largely steady on Wednesday as the dollar's drop against major currencies was partly offset by mixed cues from regional stock markets.

At 9:15 a.m. (0345 GMT), the partially convertible rupee INR=IN was at 46.52/53 per dollar, little changed from its Tuesday's close of 46.50/51.

"The dollar is slightly weaker but not much, equity markets would be the factor to watch out for today," a dealer with a private bank said, predicting a range of 46.45 to 46.70, for the day >> [ More details ]