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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Pinarayi Vijayan-led Left Democratic Front(LDF) Government has taken strong exception to the move of the Central Government to disinvest shares of the Fertilisers and Chemicals Travancore Ltd(FACT) and merge the State Bank of Travancore(SBT) in the State Bank of India(SBI).

Just two days ahead of the crucial referendum which would decide the future of the Britain and draw out a fresh contour of the geopolitics of the region, as a last ditch attempt the USA has floated the rumour that Scotland will quit the United Kingdom if the vote on June 23 goes against remaining in the European Union and would have another referendum on declaring it as an independent country.

The Modi Government, and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in particular would have a sense of relief, with the decision of the globally-acclaimed Dr Raghuram Rajan, Governor of RBI, to return to academia, at the end of his three-year term on September 3, saving them embarrassment from a rejection of extension of his term.

Increasing cost of thermal power, especially those from private producers and discoms such as Tata Power, Reliance, Adani and CESC, is becoming a growing concern of both consumers and the government which subsidises the power tariff in a number of ways in a bid to keep the generators, suppliers and consumers of all sorts – agricultural, industrial and domestic – happy across the country. Discoms in Delhi have proved to be a pain for both the Aam Aadmi Party government and bulk suppliers like NTPC. Lately, CESC came under severe criticism for high power tariff from industrial consumers in West Bengal at a Ficci meeting in Delhi.

Even her worst critics concede this: whatever her other drawbacks (and there are many!), West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has galvanised the usually somnolent state administration at all levels during 2011-16, her first tenure.

India has a big opportunity to show its leadership capability to address the major economic issues facing the world at the 8th BRICS summit in Goa on October 15 and 16 this year. As the Chairman of the BRICS-Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa group for the year 2016, India is the host of the summit and it can sponsor a number of proposals which will help in giving a new dimension to the course of economic collaboration among the BRICS group members. At the last Ufa summit in 2015, a number of important proposals were discussed and India has adopted the theme of the Goa summit as Building Responsive, Inclusive and Collective Solutions.

PATNA: In the land of scams, yet another scam, and this time the “rank scam” has surfaced with a bang. A caucus of the politicians, bureaucrats and unscrupulous businessmen has been running the show for some years. The unscrupulous activities of the caucus or education mafia in common parlance, might not have come to peoples’ knowledge, if the rank scam was not exposed.

KOLKATA: Over the next few months, the CPI(M) in West Bengal will function at two levels: it will continue to lead the Left Front (LF) and carry out agitations on different issues with its allies, the CPI, the Forward Bloc(FB) and the RSP, without involving the Congress.

The National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), conceived and set up in the wake up of 26/11 terror attack in Mumbai, to integrate 21 categories of data from agencies like banks, railways, airlines, income tax department, credit card companies, visa, immigration and related set-ups, and making such data available to Central agencies like RAW, NIA, CBI, Revenue Intelligence, IB, Narcotics Control Bureau, ED and related agencies to prevent and combat terrorism and criminal activities, is yet to be functional.

With barely a week to go for the referendum on whether to quit the European Union (EU), the Britons appear to be completely in the state of confusion. During last week the Brexit has gained nearly four points more than Remain, enforcing the belief that the people are in favour of quitting EU but skepticism has also started running high about the future of United Kingdom.