ED seeks CBI probe into “illegal interference” by Mamata Banerjee during search operations

by Hansraj Agrawal | Jan 9, 2026 | Business

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee during a protest rally from Jadavpur to Hazra Crossing against the ED raid on the IPAC office
| Photo Credit:
ANI

The Enforcement Directorate in a plea before the Calcutta High Court has sought a CBI probe into an alleged illegal interference by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee during its search operations at the premises of I-PAC chief Pratik Jain in connection with a multi-crore coal scam.

The ED, in its petition, has also sought return of the documents and electronic material Banerjee was said to have taken from the premises of political consultancy firm I-PAC.

The high court on Friday adjourned the hearing on the ED’s plea, citing large scale commotion in the courtroom .A major chaos unfolded inside Justice Suvra Ghosh’ courtroom during the hearing of the petitions filed by ED and two other petitioners, Trinamool Congress and Prateek Jain, as a huge number of lawyers and people entered the courtroom.

Failing to hear the argument, Justice Suvra Ghosh left the courtroom. The court was adjourned and the next date of hearing has been scheduled on January 14.

Judicial intervention

In its petition, ED has urged a judicial intervention over what it described as “hindrance and obstruction” caused by the Chief Minister to its officers executing searches under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

The Enforcement Directorate carried out searches at ten premises, including the office of Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC) and the residence of Jain in Kolkata, on Thursday to probe into the alleged multi-crore rupee coal pilferage scam.

During ongoing raids, Banerjee barged into the home of the I-PAC’s chief, Pratik Jain, and walked out with files and a cellphone even as an ED raid was on there.

Banerjee, the Trinamool Congress supremo, alleged that the raids were “politically motivated to steal party data” relating to the party’s strategy document and candidate list for the upcoming Assembly polls in Bengal.

While the court proceedings were underway, Chief Minister Banerjee began a large protest rally on foot from Kolkata’s Jadavpur to Hazra crossing, 6 km away, on Friday to protest against the raids. Banerjee walked at the front with a big group of party leaders and workers behind her and a large crowd lined the sides of the road to support her.

The Trinamool Congress chief and other leaders of the party accused the BJP of being desperate to win the upcoming West Bengal Assembly elections and using all possible methods to achieve that.

Published on January 9, 2026

Source link

Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board informs companies to register for Extended Producer Responsibility

by Hansraj Agrawal | Jan 9, 2026 | Business

This obligation must be met through recycling, reuse or environmentally sound end-of-life disposal such as co-processing, waste-to-energy, plastic-to-oil, road construction or industrial composting.

The Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) has informed that Medium and Large Producers, Importers, Brand Owners (PIBOs), Sellers, Importers of raw materials, Manufacturers and Micro and Small Producers (SIMPs), and Plastic Waste Processors (PWPs) dealing with plastic packaging in their operations are required to submit an application with complete details as per the guidance manual on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) on the centralised EPR portal for plastic packaging on or before 31 January 2026.

The notice has come after the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), Government of India, notified the guidelines for plastic packaging on 16 February 2022.

EPR is a key policy instrument under which producers, importers, manufacturers and brand owners are mandated to take responsibility for the collection and processing of plastic packaging waste generated from the products they place in the market.

This obligation must be met through recycling, reuse or environmentally sound end-of-life disposal such as co-processing, waste-to-energy, plastic-to-oil, road construction or industrial composting.

More Like This

The Tamil Nadu government has notified 100 new reserve forest areas across 10 districts between 2021 and 2025, raising the state’s forest and tree cover to 24.47 per cent.

The Karnataka Hate Speech and Hate Crimes Bill is still under the Governor’s consideration, proposing up to seven years’ jail and a ₹1 lakh fine.

Published on January 9, 2026

Source link

NPST partners Infinity Infoway to launch ERP-integrated prepaid payment platform

by Hansraj Agrawal | Jan 9, 2026 | Business

Digital banking and payments firm Network People Services Technologies has partnered with ERP provider Infinity Infoway to enable identity-linked digital payments through an embedded, ERP-integrated platform.
| Photo Credit:
PILAR OLIVARES/Reuters

Network People Services Technologies, a leading digital banking and payments technology company, has entered into a strategic partnership with Infinity Infoway to enable identity-linked digital payments through an embedded, ERP-integrated platform.

NPST, along with Infinity Infoway, has launched the TimePay Prepaid Card, which embeds payments into the heart of enterprise operations by integrating prepaid payment capabilities with ERP-led business workflows.

Infinity Infoway provides ERP solutions to various schools, colleges, and logistics companies, and has potential clients of over 20 lakh students and 3 lakh drivers who can use the prepaid card.

Ashish Aggarwal, Director, NPST, said parents can preload funds for their school-going children to inculcate digital payments at an early age and have strict control over their spending, while it can also support core school and student management operations.

In the transport sector, he added that fleet owners can preload funds for drivers, which can be used by tapping the QR code readers.

Digital transaction trails and real-time reconciliation improve cost control and audit readiness, while supporting safer, cashless operations for drivers. The platform also integrates fleet operations, including inventory management, fuel controls, and employee management, into a single system, he said.

NPST has tied up with NSDL Payment Bank for the settlement of transactions. The solution will be rolled out pan-India in a phased manner, beginning with controlled deployments across select educational institutions and enterprises, followed by broader expansion based on partner requirements and regulatory guidelines.

Bhavesh Gadhethariya, Founder and Managing Director, Infinity Infoway, said the newly launched payment solution builds a single, identity-based, infinite payments ecosystem for students, employees, and drivers.

Infinity’s strong capabilities and large-scale presence in the education ecosystem will enable it to create new milestones and deliver greater value to students, parents, and education management, he said.

Published on January 9, 2026

Source link

G RAM G Debate: Farmers seek cost relief, wage security

by Hansraj Agrawal | Jan 9, 2026 | Business

A section of farmer unions, while welcoming provisions such as a break in public works during peak sowing and harvesting seasons, is pushing for a more fundamental rethink

Farmer organisations are split over the newly-enacted G RAM G law that has replaced the two-decade-old MGNREGA framework, but a key strand of opinion is emerging from the farm sector: the programme should be leveraged to lower farmers’ input costs while simultaneously guaranteeing minimum wages for agricultural labourers.

A section of farmer unions, while welcoming provisions such as a break in public works during peak sowing and harvesting seasons, is pushing for a more fundamental rethink. Their demand is that agricultural operations on farmers’ fields be brought within the ambit of job work under the new law, allowing MGNREGA-style employment to directly support farm productivity.

Articulating this view, Abhimanyu Kohar, a leader of Samyukt Kisan Morcha (non-political), said farmers had long demanded a halt to MGNREGA works during critical farm periods because of acute labour shortages in agriculture. “We now want to go a step further. The government should notify agricultural work on farmers’ fields as eligible job work under the new law,” he said. Such a linkage, he argued, would ease labour availability while reducing the overall cost of cultivation.

Manual harvesting

Kohar pointed to the recently harvested basmati crop in Haryana to underline the problem. This season, the cost of manual harvesting rose so sharply that Pusa 1121 paddy fetched ₹4,100–4,200 per quintal when manually harvested, compared with ₹3,100–3,200 per quintal when harvested by combine. “Earlier, the difference between manually and machine-harvested crop used to be ₹200–300 per quintal. This year it jumped to nearly ₹1,000,” he said, reflecting the scarcity and rising cost of farm labour.

Under the proposed linkage, Kohar explained, the government would pay labourers the notified minimum wage, while farmers would top up the difference between that wage and the prevailing market rate for agricultural work in many northern states. This, he said, would marginally reduce farmers’ cost of production, protect minimum wages for labourers, and potentially improve farm profitability.

Private farmland

The demand to include agricultural activities under MGNREGA or its successor is not new and has been raised earlier by parliamentary panels as well. Successive governments, however, resisted the idea, citing administrative and monitoring challenges associated with allowing public employment works on private farmland.

At the other end of the spectrum are unions that are outright opposed to the new framework. The Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), formed during the 2020 agitation against the now-repealed farm laws and currently a diminished collective after several groups exited, has called for a complete rollback of the new legislation. On December 26, 2025, the SKM appealed to the President to restore and strengthen MGNREGA and repeal the VB-G RAM G law. It has also joined hands with central trade unions to observe an “All India Resistance Day” on January 16 against the legislation.

The government last month repealed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, and replaced it with the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, which was passed in Parliament by voice vote amid protests from the Opposition. As the debate sharpens, the fault line among farmer organisations is clear: while some reject the law outright, others see scope for recalibrating it to support farm economics without undermining wage security for rural labour.

Published on January 9, 2026

Source link

SEBI proposes sweeping clean-up of trading norms to ease compliance for exchanges

by Hansraj Agrawal | Jan 9, 2026 | Business

SEBI has also proposed merging the two disclosure frameworks and clarifying that bulk deal information should be disseminated at the client level, mapped to PAN, rather than at the unique client code level
| Photo Credit:
ABEER KHAN

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has proposed a wide-ranging overhaul of trading-related rules for stock exchanges, aimed at simplifying regulations, removing duplication and reducing compliance costs, as part of its ease of doing business agenda.

The regulator has suggested consolidating and rationalising provisions under Chapter 1 (Trading) of the master circular for stock exchanges and clearing corporations, along with relevant sections of the commodity derivatives master circular. The proposed framework would apply uniformly across equity cash, equity derivatives and commodity derivatives segments.

SEBI has also proposed merging the two disclosure frameworks and clarifying that bulk deal information should be disseminated at the client level, mapped to PAN, rather than at the unique client code level. Since exchanges already have access to client-level data, this would reduce back-and-forth with brokers while ensuring the original regulatory intent of transparency, the regulator said in a draft paper on Friday.

MTF norms

In margin trading, SEBI has proposed raising the minimum net-worth requirement for brokers offering margin trading facility (MTF) to ₹5 crore from the current ₹3 crore, with exchanges given the flexibility to prescribe higher thresholds. The timelines for submitting net-worth and auditor certificates are also proposed to be aligned with financial reporting cycles, easing compliance pressure.

A significant revamp has been proposed for liquidity enhancement schemes (LES) and market making. SEBI plans to subsume market making schemes into a single, principle-based LES framework applicable across segments. The proposal replaces multiple layers of approvals and monitoring with a single half-yearly board review and removes the requirement for exchanges to submit half-yearly effectiveness reports to SEBI.

To support newer exchanges or new segments, SEBI has proposed allowing incentives of up to 25 per cent of net worth for the first five years of operations in a segment, subject to safeguards against artificial volumes or market manipulation.

Other changes include tabulating rules on circuit breakers, price bands and pre-open auctions for better clarity; deleting obsolete provisions on negotiated deals and FPI exemptions; simplifying PAN and client code rules; and allowing more flexibility for genuine client code modifications without penalty.

SEBI has invited public comments on the proposals by January 30.

Published on January 9, 2026

Source link

SEBI proposes sweeping clean-up of trading norms to ease compliance for exchanges

by Hansraj Agrawal | Jan 9, 2026 | Business

SEBI has also proposed merging the two disclosure frameworks and clarifying that bulk deal information should be disseminated at the client level, mapped to PAN, rather than at the unique client code level
| Photo Credit:
ABEER KHAN

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has proposed a wide-ranging overhaul of trading-related rules for stock exchanges, aimed at simplifying regulations, removing duplication and reducing compliance costs, as part of its ease of doing business agenda.

The regulator has suggested consolidating and rationalising provisions under Chapter 1 (Trading) of the master circular for stock exchanges and clearing corporations, along with relevant sections of the commodity derivatives master circular. The proposed framework would apply uniformly across equity cash, equity derivatives and commodity derivatives segments.

SEBI has also proposed merging the two disclosure frameworks and clarifying that bulk deal information should be disseminated at the client level, mapped to PAN, rather than at the unique client code level. Since exchanges already have access to client-level data, this would reduce back-and-forth with brokers while ensuring the original regulatory intent of transparency, the regulator said in a draft paper on Friday.

MTF norms

In margin trading, SEBI has proposed raising the minimum net-worth requirement for brokers offering margin trading facility (MTF) to ₹5 crore from the current ₹3 crore, with exchanges given the flexibility to prescribe higher thresholds. The timelines for submitting net-worth and auditor certificates are also proposed to be aligned with financial reporting cycles, easing compliance pressure.

A significant revamp has been proposed for liquidity enhancement schemes (LES) and market making. SEBI plans to subsume market making schemes into a single, principle-based LES framework applicable across segments. The proposal replaces multiple layers of approvals and monitoring with a single half-yearly board review and removes the requirement for exchanges to submit half-yearly effectiveness reports to SEBI.

To support newer exchanges or new segments, SEBI has proposed allowing incentives of up to 25 per cent of net worth for the first five years of operations in a segment, subject to safeguards against artificial volumes or market manipulation.

Other changes include tabulating rules on circuit breakers, price bands and pre-open auctions for better clarity; deleting obsolete provisions on negotiated deals and FPI exemptions; simplifying PAN and client code rules; and allowing more flexibility for genuine client code modifications without penalty.

SEBI has invited public comments on the proposals by January 30.

Published on January 9, 2026

Source link

Times Top News

Times Top News