Hyderabad: The city police on Sunday arrested G.S. Raju, a director of Nagarjuna Finance Ltd (NFL), on charges of cheating depositors, taking the number of arrested officials to three.
Raju was detained by immigration officials Saturday night at Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, when he was trying to board a flight to the US.
Raju was brought here and produced before a local court on Sunday, which remanded him in 14 days judicial custody, detective department DCP R.S. Praveen Kumar said.
“We have issued alert notices for nabbing 16 others who are involved in the case,” the police officer said.
The city police had earlier arrested its chairman K.S. Raju and director P.K. Mahadevan on charges of cheating and defaulting payments of matured deposits. They are in judicial custody.
— PTI
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Centre plans to halve fertilizer subsidy by ’10
New Delhi: After projecting the fertilizer subsidy at a massive Rs1.02 trillion for this fiscal, the Centre is aiming to restrict the burden at Rs50,000 crore for fiscal 2010 as prices have plunged in the global markets.
“All said and done, we do not want to cross the Rs50,000 crore level of subsidy next year, which means it will fall by 50%. Even if the present subsidy system continues through the next fiscal, it would not cross Rs50,000 crore,” fertilizer secretary Atul Chaturvedi said.
The fertilizer ministry’s confidence has emanated from the fact that prices of farm nutrients have been falling in global markets continually, cutting down the government’s import bill.
— PTI
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Oil firm managers plan strike over smaller hike
Mumbai: Supervisors and junior managers at Indian Oil Corp. Lt and other state oil companies plan to strike from 7 January in protest against a pay increase smaller than they had demanded.
The 17% wage increase announced by the government is less than expected, the Oil Sector Officers’ Association, which claims to represent officials at 14 state-owned companies, said in an emailed statement on Saturday.
Refiners will lose as much as Rs900 crore a day and exploration companies up to Rs225 crore if workers strike, the association had said last month.
— Bloomberg
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Irda margin cut gives insurers more capital
New Delhi: Life insurers got another booster from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda) in the form of a cut in the solvency margin for Ulip (unit-linked insurance plan) schemes, which would release additional capital for firms.
Irda has cut solvency margins for various Ulip schemes by around 1.2% on average so that the firms can use their resources in a judicious way and insure vast sections of society.
Solvency margin refers to the capital that an insurance company is required to keep aside for policyholders to meet unforeseen exigencies.
“There is a need to utilize the capital optimally with affordable cost so that insurance penetration increases,” Irda said in a circular.
— PTI
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US-listed Indian firms start ’09 on a good note