The government on Tuesday approved new rules for bidding out oil and gas blocks as it reverted back to a two-decade-old system of awarding areas based on exploration work commitment, granted marketing and pricing freedom to yet to be developed discoveries and allowed ONGC to induct private firms in existing fields.

Ashok Leyland, the commercial vehicle (CV) maker from the Hinduja Group, reported a 21.5 per cent decline in net profit at Rs 380.8 crore during the quarter ended December 31, 2018, as compared to Rs 484.9 crore during the same quarter of last year. Total income declined 12.3 per cent to Rs 6,346 crore.

Gopal Mahadevan, chief financial officer, said: “Cumulative growth in TIV (total industry volume) till December was 25 per cent, which is significant.

Rupee on Wednesday opened 5 paise higher at 71.29 against the US dollar amid drop in crude oil prices. The domestic unit weakened by 11 paise to end at 71.34 against the greenback on Monday, amid firming crude oil prices and persistent foreign fund outflows.

Money market was closed on Tuesday on the account of Chhatrapati Shivaji Jayanti.

In the first-ever deal by an Indian company, Indian Oil Corp (IOC) Monday said it has signed an annual deal worth USD 1.5 billion to import 3 million tonnes of crude oil in the fiscal year beginning April 1.

This is the first time any Indian refiner has signed an annual contract since the country in 2017 began importing crude oil from the US.

The country’s largest lender State Bank of India has initiated slew of measures, including waving off outstanding loans of 23 CRPF soldiers martyred in a terrorist attack in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir.

Last week, 40 CRPF personnel were killed and five injured in one of the deadliest terror strikes in J&K.

The BSE benchmark Sensex recovered over 100 points on Tuesday, led by strong buying by domestic institutional investors amid positive global cues.

The 30-share index was trading 124.21 points, or 0.35%, at 35,622.65. Similarly, the 50-share NSE Nifty rose 38.90 points, or 0.37 per cent, to 10,679.85.

Internet companies that have built their businesses using public data are likely to have created the privacy threat debate around the country’s unique digital ID Aadhaar, Trai chairman RS Sharma said on Monday.

“My suspicion, I will have to prove that, but based on circumstantial evidence, we think that many of data companies are behind the issue. They want to create their own identity system,” Sharma said at ‘International Colloquium on Ethics and Governance of Autonomous AI Systems’.

ArcelorMittal has offered lenders Rs 4,800 crore for Essar’s 2×600 MW Mahan thermal power project in Madhya Pradesh, surpassing the Essar promoters’ one-time settlement offer of Rs 3,500 crore, a senior PFC official told FE.

Rajeev Sharma, chairman and managing director of PFC, which is one of the consortium lenders to Essar Power’s MP project, told FE, “We are in process of evaluating the offer.

Ashok Leyland on Monday launched new variants of intermediate commercial vehicle (ICV) GURU 1010 and a medium duty vehicle (MDV) Boss 1616 and 1916.

While GURU 1010 is 10 tonne gross vehicle weight (gvw) , Boss will come in 16 and 19 tonne gvw. The company is betting on providing better profitability to the customer with the new variants by providing better operational efficiency in terms of driver comfort and fuel efficiency.

Reliance Jio, which has been the fastest in utilising the opportunity of bringing 2G feature phone users to its 4G network with the 4G feature phone, has acquired around 50 million Jio Phone users since late 2017.

Counterpoint Research, in its latest report, said that Jio has been the fastest to see the opportunity and adopt the platform to acquire tens of millions of 2G feature phone users to its 4G network with its KaiOS-powered 4G smart feature phone.

Inviting Real Estate Agents, Job Placements Agents, Educational Institutes, Software Service Providers, Real Estate Builders, Marriage Bureaus, Travel Agents, Restaurant Owners, Health & Fitness Centers and other Local Businesses to Post a FREE Classified Advertisement on Cootera.com Classifieds Website.