Tata-owned Air India aircraft have started flying from 'Hindu Kush', one of the world's highest routes for US (North America) and Europe operations, cutting flight time and saving fuel. Since the closure of Afghanistan's airspace, Air India operates flights from India to the Western countries through the Hindu Kush route. "Hindu Kush is one of the world's highest air routes and Hindu Kush route starts saving time and fuel," an airline official on anonymity told ANI.

Recently, Air India Toronto to Delhi flight operated on the Hindu Kush route on December 16. AI deploys a set of four pilots to the Toronto route last week. Captains Zoya Agarwal, R Someshwar, Sandeep Mukhedkar and Abhay Agarwal senior commander of AI's Boeing B777 call sign (VT-ALQ Manipur) over the Hindu Kush.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is likely to extend the deadline on new tokenisation rules given the discomfort expressed by various stakeholders in meeting the December 31 deadline, according to two people familiar with the development.

“The RBI may extend it for 3-4 months so that the system can prepare in a better way to avoid a massive disruption,” said one of the persons quoted above.

However, there is no final decision taken on this yet, said the persons quoted above.

The government is unlikely to come up with the IPO of Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) in the current financial year ending March 2022, as the valuation of the state-owned behemoth is taking more than anticipated time, and preparatory work is still far from complete.

There are still some issues that need to be addressed with regard to the valuation of LIC, a senior official of one of the merchant bankers said.

Even after the valuation, there are several regulatory processes that have concluded, the official said.

Telecom operator Bharti Airtel on Friday said it has paid Rs 15,519 crore to the government towards prepayment of its entire deferred liability pertaining to spectrum acquired in the 2014 auction.

The company had acquired 128.4 MHz spectrum (including Telenor spectrum) for a consideration of Rs 19,051 crore in the 2014 auction, Airtel said in a statement.

The company estimates that the prepayment to Department of Telecom (DoT) will likely result in interest cost savings of at least Rs 3,400 crore over the residual life for fully substituted capital.

Leading Indian steelmaker JSW has declared a special rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R) compensation package for the would be affected people before going ahead with its plans to set up a Rs 55,000 crore steel plant in Odisha’s Jagatsinghpur district.

The R&R compensation package for the project affected people with ration card in the land losing villages of Nuagaon, Gada Kujang and Dhinkia Gram Panchayat, for its integrated steel plant at Paradip, is announced based on discussions at the district, gram panchayat and village level with extensive participation of villagers, district administration and other stakeholders to elicit public opinion, an official said.

The Posco project in the same area was withdrawn earlier due to stiff resistance from the local people during the land acquisition activities. The compensation announced now by the JSW is way above the policy provisions outlined in the Rehabilitation & Resettlement Policy, Odisha, 2006, the official said.