The government collects a cess on petrol and high speed diesel (HSD) oil in a dedicated fund called Central Road Fund (CRF). Till fiscal 2006, only Rs 1.50 was collected as fuel cess. In fiscal 2007 a 50 paisa cess was levied on fuel dedicated for national highways. Since 2006-07, Rs 2 per litre was […]
Minister of state for ministry of road transport and highways, Pon Radhakrishnan in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha provided state-wise details of total area of land acquired by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) for the development of National Highways in the country during the last three years (see table). […]
Some of the answers given by the power minister Piyush Goyal in the Parliament to the questions raised by the Members of both the Houses have been reproduced herein for our readers. Open Access Open Access is one of key features of the Electricity Act, 2003. Open Access is defined in the Electricity Act, 2003 […]
The total outstanding credit to the energy / power sector from various banks amounted to Rs 582,276 cr at the end of 2014. This was informed in a written reply to the Lok Sabha by power minister Piyush Goyal. State Bank of India had the highest exposure to the power sector with a total loan […]
Manipur has the highest Aggregate Technical and Commercial (AT&C) losses at 85.49 per cent in 2012-13, yet the number of theft cases registered there are amongst the lowest (only 16 in number). On the other hand, Telangana registered highest number of theft cases consistently for the last three years, as a result, its AT&C losses […]
On 15.08.2003 the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced an initiative called “Sagar Mala”, under which all major ports and inland water / rivers were to be interconnected, road and railway networks were to be strengthened. However, successive governments (UPA 1 & UPA 2) did not take much interest in this project. After […]
Words like ‘Bundling’ and ‘Pooling’ are being freely used by the power ministry without realising that worldwide the governments including India have moved away from such opaque subsidy models which have long ago become outdated. Examples of USO Fund in telecom, Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) in schemes like gas subsidy, etc., are before us in […]
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is in discussions with the coal ministry for the use of space based tools for safety, monitoring and development of coal mines across India. In this regard, ISRO has submitted a proposal to the ministry
The Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been telling his ministries to follow the principle of minimum government, maximum governance. But, unfortunately the message has not trickled down to the bureaucracy. National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI), as a lead player, in association with Central Institute of mining and fuel Research (CIMFR) and Central Mine Planning & […]
In our January 2015 issue, we had carried out a story titled, “Gas Pooling Scam in pipeline: To benefit top five private wealthy companies,” that was followed by Gas Pooling: For whose benefit” as a cover story in our February 2015 issue. In these stories, we had stated in detail how the power ministry’s move […]
The process of procuring blowout preventers (BOP) for offshore in ONGC began with publication of NIT on 20.07.2010 but ended with suspension of top executive about five years later on 23.02.2015. In this tender, the technical bids of three companies were opened on 11.03.2011. These were Cameron France; Continent Project Technologies Pvt Ltd, Singapore; and […]
Coal based Budge Budge thermal power station located at Achipur near Budge Budge town in South 24 Parganas district in West Bengal, operated by the CESC Ltd, with an installed capacity of 750 MW (3×250 MW) that became fully operational in 1997, is the best environmentally TPS operating in India. And the worst performance is […]
