Here are some important reports from the biggest newspapers of India.
1) Centre Defers Agusta-Tata Joint Venture; FIPB Took Decision on April 8, Day After Milan Verdict
On the day the CBI questioned former IAF chief S P Tyagi over his alleged links to middlemen in the Rs 3,600-crore AgustaWestland chopper deal, the government announced it had deferred a decision on increase in FDI in AgustaWestland’s joint venture with Tata Sons to assemble helicopters in India, as per report in The Indian Express.
It was one of the five proposals deferred on the recommendations of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) which met on April 8 — no other reason was cited by the government. The Milan court verdict, handing prison terms to former chiefs of Finmeccanica and AgustaWestland, came on April 7.
2) Gujarat Class XI economics textbooks to feature Deendayal, Gandhi and Chanakya
Higher secondary students of the Gujarat state board will study about Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya, one of the founders of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh and an RSS pracharak, as part of economics from the coming year, as per report in The Indian Express.
Under a revised curriculum, to come into force from academic session 2016-17, the Gujarat State Board of School Textbooks has introduced a chapter on 'economic thought' in Economics for Class XI commerce students, which will feature Upadhyaya apart from Chanakya and Mahatma Gandhi as "main economic thinkers".
3) Nine-year-old boy thrashed by alleged Trinamool workers for pulling down flex poster
It was a windy day and he wanted to fly a kite. It was also the end of the month, and he knew he couldn't ask his mother for the last scraps of his father’s earnings of Rs 3,000. Then the nine-year-old’s eyes fell upon a flex poster fluttering in the wind, just the right size and material for a kite, he thought.
Shaheel Mollah never got the chance to find out. The flex poster, put up in the Canning East constituency that covers Shaheel's village Hariharpur, featured Trinamool Congress sitting MLA Saukat Mollah. Minutes after he had pulled the poster down, the boy was abducted, bound, gagged and thrashed, allegedly by TMC workers. After he fainted, he was dumped near a ditch, reports The Indian Express.
4 IIT dream a step away for 60 MP tribal kids who cleared JEE
They didn't have teachers with multiple PhDs or the money to afford some of the resources available to their private school counterparts, but against all odds 60 tribal students from Alirajpur and Jhabua districts in Madhya Pradesh cleared the JEE (Main).
This year, 210 tribals, who lived in government hostels and studied at tribal welfare department schools in remote areas, sat for the exam for admission to the premier technology institute — 150 from Jhabua and 60 from Alirajpur. The results were declared on April 27.
Of them, 38 students, including nine girls, from Jhabua, and 22, all boys, from Alirajpur cleared the exam in their first attempt, as per report in the Hindustan Times. The cut-offs this year was 100 for Common Merit List, 70 for Other Backward Class (OBC) and 52 for SC and 48 for ST.
5) Uttarakhand forest fires could melt glaciers faster, say experts
Raging forest fires in Uttarakhand could have a devastating effect on the state's glaciers which are the lifeline of the major rivers flowing through India's northern plains.
According to experts at Nainital's Aryabhatta Research Institute for Observational Sciences (ARIES) and Govind Ballabh Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development (GBPIHED) in Almora, 'black carbon' from smog and ash is covering the glaciers, thereby making them prone to melting, reports The Times of India.
6) Intolerance in India rose in 2015, says USCIRF
Religious freedom in India was on a "negative trajectory" in 2015 as religious tolerance "deteriorated" and religious freedom violations "increased", alleged US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in its 2016 annual report.
The USCIRF suggested that the Indian government publicly rebuke officials and religious leaders that make derogatory statements about religious communities, as per report in The Times of India.
7) Educated moms have fewer kids, reveals Census
Rising education of girls has resulted in an accelerating dip in the average number of children born to them after they get married, Census 2011 data released on Friday shows. India had nearly 340 million married women and the average number of children was 3.3, down from 3.8 in 2001 and 4.3 in 1991, reports The Times of India.
8) PM against MPs deciding own salary
A parliamentary panel's recommendation for a 100% pay hike in MPs' salary may be awaiting the PMO's nod, but government sources on Monday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi's stated position has been against lawmakers deciding their own pay and allowances, as per report in The Times of India.
Sources said though the PM's take on the current round of recommendations is not known, Modi has supported linking salary hikes for MPs with increments for people holding other posts, like the President and Vice-President or cabinet secretary. The hike proposed this time will take the salary of MPs from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh per month. The government will have to shell out over Rs 250 crore per year for this.
9) Debt market likely to give better returns vs equity: Mahesh Nandurkar, CLSA
The returns from Indian equities are likely to be in low single digits this year as there are hardly any meaningful positive triggers and premium valuations are a cause of concern, said Mahesh Nandurkar, India Strategist at CLSA.
Nandurkar said debt market will give better returns than Indian equities this year and while earnings may see a base effect-induced improvement from September quarter, there aren't any other major positive triggers for the market going ahead, reports The Economic Times.
10) Fast-tracking redressel: Officials to get reminders for public complaints via text message
Secretaries of central ministries will get a text message on their phones this morning, as they have started getting every Tuesday, apprising them about the public grievances pending with their department, according to a report published in The Economic Times.
From next month, 12,000 of their subordinates across 90 departments will start getting similar reminders about the pending complaints from a first-of-its-kind call centre. The outsourced call centre conducted a pilot last month, making 15,000 calls to government officials in 20 ministries which have reported the highest number of grievances since 2012 Officials said the exercise is part of the Narendra Modi government's efforts to put in place a mechanism to make all public grievances count.
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