The session will be held in two parts — from January 29 to February 15 and March 8 to April 8.
The 5th session of the 17th Lok Sabha will have 35 sittings — 11 in the first part and 24 in the second part.
President Ram Nath Kovind will address both Houses of Parliament — the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha — at 11 am on January 29.
Sitharaman will present the Union Budget at 11 am on February 1.
Parliament will adjourn on February 15 to enable various Standing Committees to consider the Demands for Grants of Ministries/Departments and prepare their reports, and reconvene on March 8. unionbudget2021-2022
Social media platform Parler, which has gone dark after being cut off by major service providers that accused the app of failing to police violent content, may never get back online, said its CEO John Matze.
As a procession of business vendors severed ties with the two-year-old site following the storming of the US Capitol last week, Matze said in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday that he does not know when or if it will return.
“It could be never,” he said. “We don’t know yet.” The app said in a legal filing it has over 12 million users.
Matze said that Parler was talking to more than one cloud computing service but refused to disclose names, citing the likelihood of harassment for the companies involved. He said the best thing would be if Parler could get back on Amazon.
Parler on Monday filed a lawsuit against the company, which Amazon.com Inc said has no merit. Matze said the company was considering suing other vendors but declined to say more.
The gem and jewellery industry has sought reduction in customs duty on gold to four per cent, withdrawal of tax collected at source (TCS), cut in import duty on polished precious and semi-precious gemstones, in the upcoming Union Budget 2021-22.
All India Gem and Jewellery Domestic Council (GJC) Chairman Ashish Pethe told PTI, “We urge the government to reduce the customs duty to 4 per cent from the current 12.5 per cent. If the tax rate is not kept at this level, it will encourage smuggling and encourage people to do unorganised business.”
He further urged the government to keep goods falling under HSN-71 (Harmonised System Nomenclature) out of the purview of TCS provisions as the amount of funds blocked in TCS is 6.67 times more than the ability to pay income tax, resulting in blockage of funds.
Pethe also said the facility of equated-montly instalment (EMI) should be extended to the gems and jewellery industry and to increase the cash purchase limit to Rs 1 lakh from the current Rs 10,000.
Gems and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC)Chairman Colin Shah urged the government to reduce import duty on cut and polished precious and semi-precious gemstones to 2.5 per cent, from the current 7.5 per cent.
Nvidia has announced their GeForce RTX 30 series flagship graphics processors for laptops at the CES 2021.
The new series includes the RTX 3060, RTX 3070, and the RTX 3080, all backed by a new Max-Q design to deliver optimal power and performance for notebooks.
Each of the cards brings a performance upgrade, and the 3080 is the fastest.
Nvidia said these will be the world’s fastest laptops, promising over 100 frames per second at 1440p with RTX on for “popular graphics-intensive games”.
The new GeForce RTX 3060 is claimed to deliver 90fps on the latest games with ultra settings at 1080p resolution on laptops that will have a starting price of $999.
According to Nvidia, the new RTX 3070 laptops should be up to 50 per cent faster than the RTX 2070 and deliver around 90 frames per second at Ultra settings and 1440p, starting from $1,299.
For desktop users, the company also revealed the GeForce RTX 3060 for desktop PCs, bringing the latest technologies from Nvidia’s more expensive cards down to a $329 price point.
Accelerating its efforts to increase access to high-quality entertainment for every Indian, Amazon on Wednesday introduced Prime Video Mobile Edition – a mobile-only plan at an introductory price of Rs 89.
Prime Video Mobile Edition is a single-user mobile-only plan, providing SD quality streaming to customers which is created especially for a mobile-first country like India.
Prime Video is collaborating with Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), India’s premier communications solutions provider, for the first roll-out of Prime Video Mobile Edition.
“Given high mobile broadband penetration in the country, the mobile phone has become one of the most widely used streaming devices. With the launch of Prime Video Mobile Edition we look forward to entertaining every Indian with our Exclusive and Original content,” Jay Marine, Vice President, Amazon Prime Video Worldwide, said in a statement.
As part of the Prime Video Mobile Edition launch in India, all Airtel customers on bundled pre-paid packs can avail a 30-day free trial by simply signing up to Amazon from the Airtel Thanks app using their mobile number.
Industry body CII has suggested a graded road map towards competitive import tariffs over three years, with lowest or nil slab between zero to 2.5 per cent for raw materials, highest of 5 to 7.5 per cent for finished goods and 2.5 to 5 per cent for intermediates, as part of its pre-Budget recommendations to the government.
The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has proposed the road map to encourage domestic manufacturing in alignment with global trade trends that would boost India’s export competitiveness as per shifting global value chains in the next three to five years.
“This will help Indian industry integrate into the global value chain while becoming competitive with its goods and services in the world markets,” the industry body said.
Making a case for the need to boost to employment at higher levels, the CII suggested raising the cap on emoluments to Rs 50,000 per month to encourage employment in higher skilled jobs.
Section 80JJAA, provides for deduction of 30 per cent on emoluments paid to new employees, which can be claimed for three years. This is available up to Rs 25,000 per month.
The past year has been a rather difficult one for the economy. With the coronavirus pandemic in our midst, the economy has reeled from an unprecedented crisis — not just in India but across the globe. Like the rest of the world, we in India are all waiting eagerly for more policy actions, among other things, to bring the much-needed green shoots of recovery.
Coming against this backdrop, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s next Union Budget, likely to be presented in early February, will be keenly watched.
Just how deep is the trouble facing our economy? What can be the remedies? What are the tools before the government to deliver us from the throes of a downturn? What will be reasonable, or not, to expect from the finance minister? Through its extensive coverage – news reportage, insightful columns, compelling views and special analyses – Business Standard will try to answer all these and more.
Here is an overview:
In the run-up to the Budget
1. Beyond Budget Headlines with AKB: In this special video every Monday, watch Business Standard’s in-house policy expert A K Bhattacharya read beyond the news headlines to make sense of what could and should be expected from the finance minister on the Budget Day.
2. Banking on Budget: In this weekly special column every Wednesday, an industry expert looks at the needs and wants of a key sector of the economy to gauge where we stand and where we wish to be.
3. Budget Beeps with BS: This thrice-a-week newsletter – on every Monday, Wednesday and Friday – delivers right into your inbox all Budget-related reportage, views, analyses, and multimedia from the entire week.Read Complete Article
Xiaomi’s Mi India on Tuesday announced that its recently launched smartphone Mi 10i has done a record-breaking sales of worth Rs 200 crore during its first sale across all platforms.
The smartphone went on sale for the first time exclusively for prime members on Amazon.in on January 7 and across all Mi.com, Mi Homes and Mi Studios starting January 8.
“We are truly overwhelmed with the love and response received from our Mi Fans and consumers for Mi 10i Rs 200 crore worth of sales within the first sale is a major milestone and we are happy to announce that. Mi brand aims to bring the latest and the best technology to our Mi Fans,” Manu Jain, Managing Director, Mi India, said in a statement.
According to the company, over 1.5 million users chose to keep themselves notified on Amazon during launch. The two variants of (6GB+128GB storage) and three variants of (8GB+128GB) of Mi 10i were top five selling products across all the categories on Amazon India.
The Mi 10i India price is set at Rs 20,999 for the 6GB + 64GB store variant. The 6GB + 128GB storage option is priced at Rs 21,999. There is also a 8GB + 128GB storage option priced at Rs 23,999 in India.
Sony which stunned the public with showcasing its Vision-S prototype sedan last year at CES 2020, has now revealed more details in a video where the Vision-S prototype can be seen driving on a private track and on public roads in Austria.
Sony has partnered with some key players, including automotive contract manufacturer Magna Steyr, on this project.
According to TechCrunch, Sony has increased the number of sensors on the vehicle to 40 to allow for 360-degree awareness and experimented with ways to increase their capabilities.
Izumi Kawanishi, a senior vice president at the company, said in the video that Sony also created a system to verify the safety and security of its connected vehicle.
The dashboard-length display screen has five playing card-sized tiles in the centre labeled camera, settings, navigation, music and video.
Video footage suggests several other features, including a voice assistant, gesture control, ability to update car’s software wirelessly, 5G connectivity and more.
Sony India on Saturday said that as pre-order date for PlayStation 5 comes closer, potential customers should avoid visiting the retails stores and first connect with them if the devices are available.
The company announced earlier this month that it will launch PlayStation 5 in India on February 2 and will start taking pre-order requests for the new gaming console from January 12.
“PS5 will be available for pre-order on various online and offline channels (until stock lasts at respective retailer) such as Amazon, Flipkart, Croma, Reliance Digital, Games The Shop, Shop at Sony Center, Vijay Sales and select other authorised retailers taking pre-orders,” Sony India said in a fresh statement.
“Keeping the current situation in mind, Sony India urges all customers to keep their health and safety in mind before physically visiting any store for pre-order and advise them to call the local retailer before visiting,” the company advised.
For contact details and address of the local retailers taking pre-orders, customers can also call the toll-free number 1800-103-7799.
Mansa 