NEWS

The Allahabad High Court has said that the future of India to a “large extent” will depend on the well-being of the river Ganga, and that it is “imperative that every effort should be made to revive the river and make it pollution-free”. Justices Ritu Raj Awasthi and Dinesh Kumar Singh of the court’s Lucknow Bench pointed out that after being elected as Prime Minister in May 2014, Narendra Modi said that it was his “destiny to serve Maa Ganga”.

The court said that despite being the “lifeline of the nation, having been worshipped, providing sustenance to a large population, over the time the river has become highly polluted”.

The Congress party has refuted Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's recent statement on oil bonds and accused her of making false claims.

Reacting to the Nirmala Sitharaman's statement, Congress leader Ajay Maken said the Narendra Modi-led government has spent Rs 73,440 crore on servicing of oil bonds since 2014-15. On the contrary, the government has collected Rs 22.34 lakh crore through taxes on petroleum products.

Ajay Maken said official figures are enough to expose BJP's "oil bond falsehood". He said that in the current fiscal year, the government has a liability to pay Rs 20,000 crore tower repayment and interest on outstanding payments towards oil bonds. He added that the spending on servicing of oil bonds is just 3.2 per cent of the tax collection from petroleum products.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has said that there was a 24% improvement in financial inclusion (FI) as measured by RBI’s FI-Index between March 2017 and March 2021. The FI-Index incorporates details of banking, investments, insurance, postal as well as the pension sector in consultation with government and respective sectoral regulators. In April this year, the RBI had announced that it would launch the FI-Index to capture the extent of financial inclusion.

On Tuesday, the RBI announced the first numbers of the FI-Index, and will henceforth publish the data once a year in July. The highest weightage in the index (45%) is given to the usage of various financial services, followed by access (35%) and quality (20%). The index captures information on various aspects of financial inclusion in a single value, ranging between 0 and 100, where 0 represents complete financial exclusion and 100 indicates full financial inclusion.

In its first official statement since it claimed power in Kabul, the Taliban late on Monday night warned that it won’t allow anyone to use the Afghanistan soil against any other country. It, however, said that India is welcome to complete its reconstruction and infrastructure projects in the country.

The statement was made by Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen during a TV interview with Pakistan’s Hum News channel.

Talking about the terrorist organisation’s views regarding India, Shaheen said in Urdu, “We have said that we will not allow any country or any group to use the soil of Afghanistan against anyone. This is clear. Secondly, [India] has made projects, many reconstruction and infrastructure projects, and if they want, they can complete the incomplete projects because they are for the people.”