Ahead of the Union Budget, Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee has opposed any further cut in corporation tax rates. He stressed the need to push demand to encourage investment by India Inc.

At an event in New Delhi, Banerjee said corporate houses in India were sitting on a pile of cash without investing it in the economy.

The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) administration on Friday stated that it will take strict action against students who disrupted the semester registration process on Friday.

In a statement, the administration said that a group of students wearing 'masks on their faces' entered the Center for Information System in the Univesity, evicted the technical staff, switched off the power supply and 'made servers dysfunctional' to disrupt the registration process.

The security forces on Friday late night arrested Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist Nissar Ahmed Dar from Srinagar. According to news reports, he was arrested by the Special Operations Group of the J&K Police from Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital in the city.

Arms and ammunition were also recovered from his possession. Security forces are now interrogating him for more information about planned operations.

In what comes as a shocking revelation, recent data shows that there has been a record increase in farmers' suicides in Maharashtra, specifically in the month of November 2019. Data shows that 300 farmers across the state ended their lives in the month.

Among these deaths, a record number of suicides occurred in the Marathwada region alone - where as many as 120 farmers committed suicide in eight districts of Aurangabad, Jalna, Beed, Latur, Osmanabad, Nanded, Parbhani, and Hingoli.

Under pressure from sustained and widespread protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has announced a 10-day door-to -door awareness campaign from Sunday to “dispel misinformation” on the issue. It also sought to distance itself from the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

Even as protests against the CAA and its criticism continued from Opposition leaders, former diplomats, and academicians, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said in Jodhpur that the Narendra Modi government will not budge an inch on its decision to implement the CAA.

India's progress depends on scientists who must innovate, patent, produce and prosper, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday

The growth story of India depends on its success in science and technology sector. There is a need to transform the landscape of Indian science, technology and innovation, Modi said in Bengaluru after inaugurating the 107th Session of Indian Science Congress.

Facebook-owned WhatsApp has reported that during the 24 hours leading up to midnight on New Year's Eve, over 20 billion messages were sent via the private messaging app in India alone.

WhatsApp has over 400 million users in India.

Worldwide, a record-breaking 100 billion messages were sent via the private messaging app on New Year's Eve.

The official announcement of the allocation of portfolios to newly-inducted ministers will be done by Friday evening as per the sources.

As per the sources, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar is likely to get a finance portfolio whereas first time Cabinet minister Aaditya Thackeray will have Environment and Tourism portfolios in the newly formed coalition government.

The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal said on Friday that it would not change its judgment in the Tata Sons matter but it will however, clarify that Mumbai Registrar of Companies was only following the order of NCLT in conversion of the company from public to private entity.

The RoC counsel told the Tribunal the judgment was highly critical of the RoC and deems them to have done illegal acts whereas they were merely following orders of the NCLT while converting the company from public to private.

The DMK continued to extend its gains in the rural local body polls over the ruling AIADMK, winning 100 seats for the post of district panchayat ward members as of 9.30 a.m. on Friday. The AIADMK had won 70 out of 191 seats announced. There are a total of 515 seats in this category.

The counting process which was slow on Thursday, which State Election Commissioner R. Palaniswamy attributed to a “transparent” process, had picked up pace at night.

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