GST COUNCIL MEET ON COMPENSATION MECHANISM INCONCLUSIVE AGAIN

The standoff between Opposition-ruled states and the Centre over

compensation shortfall in Goods and Services Tax continued at the GST

Council meeting Monday with both sides failing to arrive at a consensus on

the borrowing options made available.

At the end of the GST Council meeting, Union Finance Minister Nirmala

Sitharaman was clear that the Centre will not borrow on behalf of the states

because it had already finalised the borrowing calendar. Any further

addition will jack up the bond yields thus making borrowings dearer for the

states and the private sector.

The Centre repeatedly emphasised the point that 21 states and UTs have

already accepted the first option and that as per Constitutional provisions,

the GST Council does not have the jurisdiction to approve the borrowing plan

of states. It has to be decided by states and the expenditure department.

Sitharaman also sought to advocate the cause of "majority" of states and UTs

that have agreed to take the first option offered by the Finance Ministry.

"It will make them appear very poor to people back home. They come thinking

that answers will be given at a time when we are approaching festival

season," she observed.

Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal said that 10 opposing states

asked for a dispute resolution mechanism and formation of a Group of

Ministers on the issue, but there was no agreement at the meeting.

STIMULUS 2.0: FM'S BOOSTER TO SPUR CONSUMER SPENDING, ALBEIT MARGINALLY

To stimulate growth in the economy, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on

Monday announced a twin set of measures to boost consumption demand and

capital expenditure, which along with participation of the private sector,

are estimated to result in quick spending of more than Rs 1 lakh crore by

March-end.

Through the Leave Travel Concession (LTC) voucher scheme, which can be

availed by private sector employees as well, and a festival advance for

government employees, the Finance Ministry has tried to advance consumption

of non-essential, relatively high-value goods and services in the economy.

Like in the earlier leg of its relief package in May, the series of

announcements made by the Finance Ministry on Monday continued with the

basic design of leveraging a degree of stimulus with minimal fiscal cost to

the exchequer. Department of Economic Affairs Secretary Tarun Bajaj said

these measures would not require any extra borrowing by the central

government.

An additional Rs 25,000 crore is being provided for capital expenditure on

roads, defence infrastructure, water supply, urban development, and

domestically produced capital equipment. This is expected to come through

re-allocation of resources.

Special assistance will be provided to states in the form of interest-free

50-year loans of Rs 12,000 crore, which can be used only for capex purposes,

with certain conditions.

Central government employees will be provided tax benefits on LTC component

without having to actually travel. The employees would be required to spend

three times the LTC fare component to purchase items that attract 12% or

more GST.

Under the festival advance scheme, all central government employees will get

interest-free advance of Rs 10,000 that will be recovered in 10 instalments.

It will be given in the form of a pre-loaded RuPay card of the advance

value. The government expects to disburse Rs 4,000 crore under the scheme by

March 31.

While some experts argued that this stimulus was too little, the additional

outgo of the govt. was negligible and the employees' hands were being tied

by imposing conditions on individual spending, Sitharaman argued that these

steps were taken keeping in mind that these "must not burden the common

citizen with future inflation", and "must not put government debt on an

unsustainable path".

The travel and tourism sector, though, is upset that LTC is being redirected

to buy consumer goods.

INDIA SIGNS $400 MILLION LOAN PACT WITH MALDIVES FOR INFRA PROJECT

India on Monday signed a $400 million (over Rs 3,000 crore) loan pact with

Maldives for a mega connectivity project that will dwarf the Maldives-China

Friendship Bridge as the most visible infra-project in the island country.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar made the announcement during a video

call with his Maldivian counterpart Abdullah Shahid.

The projects envisaged relate to water and sewerage, island development, a

cricket stadium, a port, an airport and a road. India's credit lines and

grants to Maldives stand at over $2 billion, all announced after Ibrahim

Solih became President in November 2018.

Maldives has received 5.5 MT of essential medicines from India which also

helped in evacuation of Maldivians from Wuhan and deployed a medical team.

India has gone the extra mile to help Maldives financially through a

transparent mechanism. The RBI raised Treasury Bonds which were sold to the

SBI, Male, for handover to the Maldives govt.

After the Galwan Valley clash, not only has India stepped up aid but

welcomed the US signing a defence framework agreement with the Maldives.

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

======================

PAUL R MILGROM AND ROBERT B WILSON WIN 2020 NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS

Two Stanford University academics who helped design the US auction that

allocates mobile-phone frequencies will share the 2020 Nobel Prize in

economics. Paul Milgrom and Robert B Wilson, whose ideas have been applied

to sales of anything from aircraft landing slots to fishing quotas, won't

need to travel to Stockholm to receive the award because of Covid-19,

according to Nobel officials.

"They have used their insights to design new auction formats for goods and

services that are difficult to sell in a traditional way, such as radio

frequencies," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement on

Monday.

The 2020 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred

Nobel is again opting to laud the real-world application of the discipline,

after recent years of honoring groundbreaking research ranging from

inequality to climate change to behavioural economics.

Wilson, who was born in Nebraska and studied at Harvard University, was the

thesis adviser of his fellow winner. The 72-year-old Paul Milgrom was born

in Detroit and earned his PhD in business at Stanford in 1978. He and

Wilson, along with Preston McAfee, are best known for the so-called

simultaneous ascending auction, which was developed for the US Federal

Communications Commission's 1994 sale of spectrum.

The method has since been used to set prices on such things as electricity

and gas.

AMERICA HEADING FOR POST-ELECTION STRIFE

There are increasingly ominous signs that the US is heading towards

postelection strife with massive distrust over voting procedures and

counting of ballots. Unless there is a landslide in favour of one of the

candidates - and perhaps even if there is one - it is unlikely the country

will see finale on November 3.

President Trump himself has laid the ground for questioning any adverse

result by repeatedly highlighting stray errors, mistakes, or malfeasance in

distribution of ballots, even though most experts agree they are not on a

scale that should make a difference to the final outcome. On Monday, Trump

retweeted a story about a New Jersey postal employee accused of dumping

1,800 pieces of mail, including 99 ballots for the upcoming election, with a

one word comment: "Rigged!"

With polls all across the country showing Biden opening up big leads and

drawing level even in toss-up states that Trump won in 2016, the president

appears to have decided on a slash-and-burn strategy that will involve

torching any result that does not favour him. At the same time, political

operatives on the ground on both sides are preparing for legal challenges

amid sporadic reports of ballot harvesting and malfeasance.

THE REST

========

BJP SLAMS FAROOQ ABDULLAH'S STATEMENT ON ARTICLE 370; NC SAYS HIS CHINA

REMARKS BEING TWISTED

The BJP on Monday slammed NC leader Farooq Abdullah for his latest statement

on Article 370 of the Constitution, terming it seditious and anti-India. BJP

spokesperson Sambit Patra said it was sad that an elected MP was "using this

kind of language against the country".

"According to Abdullah, abrogation of Indian Parliament irked and disturbed

China, that's why China is justified for aggression (against India). In a

way by making the anti-national statement he is justifying the Chinese

aggression..He is saying that with the help of China we will bring back

Article 370. How can a sitting MP say this? If you have reservations against

any decision of the Parliament you are free to express them but to say what

Farooq Abdullah has said is absolutely seditious," Patra said.

The National Conference (NC) on Monday denied that its President Farooq

Abdullah had said Article 370 would be restored with the help of China and

accused the BJP of "completely twisting" his remarks. "Our president

articulated the people's anger over the abrogation of Article 370 and 35-A

by Parliament on August 5 last year as he has consistently done in recent

months. He emphasised that no one in Jammu and Kashmir was willing to accept

these changes," said an NC spokesperson.

He claimed that Abdullah's comments on China in response to a question have

been "completely twisted" by Patra, who accused the NC president of

justifying Chinese aggression and expansionist mindset.

MUMBAI SEES A MASSIVE POWER OUTAGE

Train services came to a halt, homes and businesses were without electricity

and people sweltered in humid heat as a grid failure resulted in massive

power outages across Mumbai on Monday morning.

Tata Power, which is into both generation and distribution, attributed the

power outage to a simultaneous substation tripping at 1010 hrs at state-run

transmission company MSETCL's two substations in the suburbs of Kalwa and

Kharghar.

With work-from-home (WFH) becoming the norm across vital industries, such as

banking, finance and information technology, employee output was also

impacted as the residences do not have electricity backup in a city which

generally has stable power.

KUSHBOO SUNDAR JOINS BJP AHEAD OF TAMIL NADU ELECTION NEXT YEAR

Congress national spokesperson Kushboo Sundar on Monday joined BJP ahead of

Tamil Nadu elections next year. Sundar was welcomed in the BJP by general

secretary CT Ravi and L Murugan.

"For the nation to move forward, we need someone like Prime Minister Modi to

take it forward," Kushboo said.

Kushboo Sundar resigned from the primary membership of the Congress

protesting against what she called some leaders "dictating terms" and

"suppressing" her.

The party, meanwhile, announced in Delhi that Sundar was removed from her

post of the All India Congress Committee spokesperson with "immediate

effect".

Sundar, a popular Tamil actor, who was with the DMK before joining the

national party in 2014 sent her resignation letter to Congress top leader

Sonia Gandhi.

CREMATION AGAINST OUR WISHES, HATHRAS VICTIM'S FAMILY TO ALLAHABAD HC

The family members of the 19-year-old Dalit woman, who died after being

assaulted and allegedly gangraped by four upper-caste men in Hathras, told

the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court on Monday that the district

administration carried out her cremation "against their wishes".

"Her family told the court that the cremation was done by the Hathras

district administration against their wishes," said senior advocate Jaideep

Narain Mathur, who was appointed amicus curiae in the case.

"In his statement, Hathras District Magistrate Praveen Kumar Laxkar told the

court that they had inputs about a huge law and order problem the next

morning, following which they took the decision to carry out the cremation.

The District Magistrate denied having sought any direction from Lucknow or

got any guidance from Lucknow in the decision regarding the cremation. He

told the court that the decision was taken (by officials) locally, including

him," said Mathur.

Seema Kushwaha, counsel for the family members, said that they wanted the

case to be transferred out of the state. She said the family asked for

security and also did not want the report of the investigation so far to be

made public.

Taking suo motu cognizance of the case, especially the hurried cremation,

the the Allahabad High Court had directed senior officials of the state govt

and police to be present at the hearing yesterday.

The court will hear the case again on Nov 2.

34 BOLLYWOOD PRODUCERS MOVE HC AGAINST IRRESPONSIBLE REMARKS BY REPUBLIC TV,

TIMES NOW

Leading Bollywood producers Monday approached the Delhi high court seeking

to restrain Republic TV and Times Now from making or publishing allegedly

irresponsible, derogatory and defamatory remarks' against film industry and

conducting media trials against its members on various issues.

The lawsuit by four Bollywood industry associations and thirty four leading

producers have also sought to restrain them from interfering with the right

to privacy of persons associated with the industry.

It has sought direction to Republic TV, its editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami

and reporter Pradeep Bhandari, Times Now, its editor-in-chief Rahul

Shivshankar and group editor Navika Kumar, and unknown defendants as well as

social media platforms to refrain from making or publishing allegedly

irresponsible, derogatory and defamatory remarks against Bollywood.

The suit filed through DSK Legal firm said, "This comes in the wake of these

channels using highly derogatory words and expressions for Bollywood such as

dirt', filth', scum', druggies' and expressions such as it is Bollywood

where the dirt needs to be cleaned', all the perfumes of Arabia cannot take

away the stench and the stink of this filth and scum of the underbelly of

Bollywood', This is the dirtiest industry in the country', and cocaine and

LSD drenched Bollywood'."

Among the studios that have filed the petition are Shah Rukh Khan's Red

Chillies Entertainment, Salman Khan Films, Aamir Khan Productions, Ajay

Devgn Films, Karan Johar's Dharma Productions, Anushka Sharma's Clean Slate

Filmz, Zoya Akhtar's Tiger Baby and Farhan Akhtar's Excel Entertainment.

RICHA CHADHA, PAYAL GHOSH GET 2 DAYS TO FILE CONSENT TERMS

The Bombay High Court on Monday granted two days time to actor Richa Chadha

and aspiring actor Payal Ghosh to file 'consent terms' for settling the

dispute between them with regard to the defamation suit filed by Chadha

against Ghosh.

Last week, Chadha filed the suit against Ghosh for making a "false,

baseless, indecent and derogatory" statement against her and sought monetary

compensation as damages.

Ghosh, while levelling allegations of rape against filmmaker Anurag Kashyap,

had also dragged Chadha and two other female actors into the controversy.

Ghosh's lawyer Nitin Satpute told the high court last week that his client

regrets the statement she made, and sought to withdraw it and apologise.

On Monday, Chadha's however, told a single Bench of Justice AK Menon that

the defendant (Ghosh), after the court hearing last week, put up a post on

her social media saying she would never apologise.

Justice Menon then asked Satpute if Ghosh was interested in settling the

matter with Chadha. Satpute reiterated that Ghosh was withdrawing her

statement and apologising, but with certain conditions. "After settling this

matter, the plaintiff (Chadha) should not file any criminal case against the

defendant," Satpute said.

"After the last hearing, the plaintiff made certain statements to the media

saying she has won the case. This has resulted in the defendant being

trolled on social media. But, we would like to settle the matter, he said.

ROGER FEDERER LAUDS RAFAEL NADAL FOR MATCHING HIS RECORD

Roger Federer saw his men's record haul of 20 Grand Slam singles titles

matched by Rafa Nadal on Sunday and the Swiss great was quick to offer his

congratulations to the Spaniard.

"I have always had the utmost respect for my friend Rafa as a person and as

a champion," Federer, who already owned four Grand Slam titles when Nadal

won his maiden French Open title in 2005, said on Twitter. "As my greatest

rival over many years, I believe we have pushed each other to become better

players. "Therefore it is a true honour for me to congratulate him on his

20th Grand Slam victory."

"It is especially amazing that he has won Roland Garros an incredible 13

times, which is one of the greatest achievements in sport. "I also

congratulate his team because nobody can do this alone."

Federer turned 39 in August and missed the U.S. and French Opens while

recovering from an injury, but he has vowed to be back at the Australian

Open next year. "I hope 20 is just another step on the continuing journey

for both of us," the Swiss said.

IPL: ABD STARS IN RCB'S BIG WIN

A clinical bowling display, led by spinners Yuzvendra Chahal and Washington

Sundar, after AB de Villiers' batting pyrotechnics helped Royal Challengers

Bangalore beat Kolkata Knight Riders by 82 runs in Sharjah yesterday. De

Villiers smashed a sensational 33-ball 73 not out to power RCB to 194/2.

Then, Sundar (2/20) and Chahal (1/12) reduced the match to a no-contest,

stifling KKR to 112/9 in 20 overs. Pacer Chris Morris (2/17) chipped in at

the death to hand RCB a comprehensive win. T

The league phase is at exactly the halfway stage now - each side has played

7 matches so far.

Three teams, Mumbai Indians, Delhi Capitals and RCB have won 5 matches each.

KKR have 4 wins while SRH and Rajasthan Royals have 3 wins each.

CSK have 2 wins and Kings XI Punjab have just one.

INDICATORS

Sensex 40,594 (+85), Nifty 11,931 (+17), Trading Value NSE ,(Rs.crores)

47,202.27

Nasdaq 11,876 (+296) Dow 28,838 (+251), S&P 3,534 (+57)

US$-Rs. 73.11 GBP-Rs. 95.36, Euro-Rs. 86.35, UAE Dhm-Rs.19.90, Can$-Rs.

55.71, Aus$- Rs. 52.75

GBP 0.76 /US$, Euro 0.84 /US$, Jap.Yen 105.43 /US$, Aus$ 1.38 /US$, Sing

1.35 /US$, Bang Taka 83.25 /US$, Can$ 1.31 /US$, Mal Ring 4.13 /US$,

Pak Re 163.56 /US$, Phil Peso 48.42 /US$, Russian Rouble 76.88 /US$, NZ$

1.50 /US$, Thai Baht 31.09 /US$, Ukraine Hryvnia 28.05 /US$, Norway NOK 9.14

/US$

Bitcoin - USD 11,461

Dollar Index 93.21 Brent Crude 41.81 BDI 1,892.00

Gold world Spot Price USD/aoz 1,912 India (Rs. per gm 24k/22k) 5,082 / 4,982

Silver (Rs. Per KG) 62,920

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold

yourself up as a warning and not as an example. - George Bernard Shaw

OFF TRACK

During a conference, Julie was pleasantly surprised to be seated next to a

very handsome man. They flirted casually through lunch, then grew restless

as the dignitaries gave speeches. During one particularly long-winded

lecture, Julie's new friend drew a # sign on a cocktail napkin. Excited, she

wrote down her phone number.

Looking startled for a moment, he flipped the napkin over and drew another #

sign, this time adding an X to the upper-left-hand corner.