Cash, liquor and freebies worth Rs 540 cr seized since poll announcement

Karnataka saw the total seizure of inducements and cash worth Rs 26.53 crore, Maharashtra Rs 19.11 crore and Telangana Rs 8.2 crore

Elections: Suspect money, illicit alcohol and medications worth about Rs 540 crore have been seized the nation over since parliamentary race plan was declared by the Election Commission a fortnight back, official information demonstrated Tuesday.

Tamil Nadu recorded the greatest seizure of these illicit affectations, suspected to have been directed and used to pay off voters, worth Rs 107.24 crore, trailed by Uttar Pradesh Rs 104.53 crore, Andhra Pradesh Rs 103.4 crore and Punjab Rs 92.8 crore.

Karnataka saw the all out seizure of actuations and money worth Rs 26.53 crore, Maharashtra Rs 19.11 crore and Telangana Rs 8.2 crore.

An Election Commission official said the complete estimation of caught things was Rs 539.99 crore.

The surveys were announced by the Election Commission on March 10 and according to information refreshed till March 25, an aggregate of Rs 143.37 crore presume money, Rs 89.64 crore worth of alcohol, drugs esteemed at Rs 131.75 crore, gold and different valuable metals worth Rs 162.93 crore and different complimentary gifts of Rs 12.20 crore have been seized, the EC information for all states for Lok Sabha surveys said.

The EC has conveyed many general onlookers, use spectators and static and portable observation groups in the nation to keep a beware of stream of dark cash and other unlawful delight with the goal that the dimension playing field of holding reasonable surveys isn’t irritated.

The seven stage surveys will start from April 11 and the tallying of votes will happen on May 23.

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Lok Sabha elections: Why some parties are fielding more women this time

While the overall sex ratio has marginally worsened from the 1960s to the 2000s, the voter sex ratio has improved in India

Nadia: Women stand in a queue to cast their vote for Panchayat election at Shantipur polling station in Nadia district of West Bengal on Monday.( PTI Photo) (PTI5_14_2018_000071B)

Elections: To see how some ideological groups appear to have woken up to the requirement for more prominent ladies’ political portrayal in front of the general races booked for April and May 2019, you have just to take a gander at the millennial female voter.

Anju Baa, a 20-year-old ancestral young lady from Rajgampur town in Sundergarh locale in northwestern Odisha, has finished her graduation. She is taken a crack at a PC class and says she will apply for work once her course is finished. Marriage? She shrugs, first comes the activity.

At the point when Anju was only an infant, her mom, Rani Secundra Baa, class 12 pass and utilized as a household specialist in Delhi, casted a ballot in her first- – thus far just – race. The contender for Birmitrapur, her get together seat in the year 2000, was inborn pioneer George Tirkey, who as of late joined the Congress party. For what reason did she vote in favor of Tirkey? Since, said Rani, her town had taken an aggregate choice to help him.

Be that as it may, no one discloses to Anju who to vote in favor of. Like her companions, she is guided by her marzi (decision). Would she lean toward a lady hopeful? “I will see who the competitor is. In any case, up until this point, ladies have done great work in my town. Our sarpanch [elected leader of the town council] is a lady and she is open and dedicated. She got a great deal of street works accomplished for us. Along these lines, indeed, ladies are more devoted than men with regards to serving the network,” she told IndiaSpend via telephone.

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Lok Sabha polls: Rahul Gandhi promises Rs 6,000 a month for poorest 20%

Congress leaders said NYAY gets its inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of helping the last man and woman

Elections: Congress President Rahul Gandhi said his gathering, if it somehow happened to shape the legislature at the Center after the Lok Sabha races, would guarantee a base pay of Rs 6,000 every month to 20 percent most unfortunate of poor family units, or 250 million individuals.

While the Narendra Modi government had guaranteed to Rs 6,000 every year to poor ranchers, the Congress has guaranteed a coordinating add up to all poor, especially the landless.

The gathering, notwithstanding, rejected its prior suggestion that conceived fixing up the hole between a poor family unit’s salary to convey it to Rs 12,000. It has now guaranteed a level Rs 6,000 every month stipend, or Rs 72,000 every year, if a family’s salary is beneath Rs 12,000. Gandhi said an advisory group of gathering pioneers, which included Manmohan Singh and P Chidambaram, had determined that the essential living salary every family needs to endure is Rs 12,000.

Calling the plan “keep going assault on neediness”, Gandhi said the salary would be exchanged to the financial balances of ladies in every family. The plan would cover country also urban poor. The execution will be founded on pilot extends the gathering intends to take up in the initial two years of its legislature, and the plan is probably going to be propelled in the third year.

As indicated by gathering sources, NYAY, or Nyuntam Aay Yojana, could subsume a portion of the current plans, especially maturity annuities. In any case, they denied any designs to scrap its provincial work ensure plot. The gathering said the financial weight at Rs 3.5 trillion for each annum would be around 1.2 percent of the GDP of India.

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Share facts, not rumours: WhatsApp educating users on spotting fake news

Aimed to educate people, the short online videos (available on YouTube) shows step-by-step tutorial on how to exit a group, block a contact and the significance of the forwarded label

Technology: WhatsApp, a Facebook-claimed texting stage, on March 25 propelled the second period of its ‘Offer Joy, Not Rumors’ crusade, urging its supporters of utilization the stage with duty. This is one of the means that the organization has attempted to control the spread of phony news before the Lok Sabha Elections 2019.

The battle is accessible as short online recordings (accessible on YouTube) appearing by-step instructional exercises on the most proficient method to leave a gathering, obstruct a contact and the criticalness of the sent name.

“Proactively working with the Election Committee and neighborhood accomplices for a sheltered race is our best need. Growing our training effort to help individuals effectively recognize and stop noxious messages is another progression towards improving the wellbeing of our clients,” said Abhijit Bose, Head of India, WhatsApp.

WhatsApp bans accounts taking part in mass informing and robotized conduct to remain in front of exceptionally energetic abusers. Most as of late, an association with the NASSCOM Foundation was commenced to prepare undergrads and volunteers on computerized education with an emphasis on first time voters.

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Over 30,000 political ads on Facebook since February

Over Rs 6 crore spent on these ads; Twitter data shows no promoted tweet in past seven days from key handles

Technology: A sum of 30,457 commercials identified with legislative issues or issues of national significance have hit the world’s biggest Social media network in front of the general decision. The use on these commercials was Rs 6.54 crore, demonstrates the information from Facebook‘s Ad Library Report.

“This report is a week after week outline of the library and incorporates information for promotions that have been seen by individuals in India. Making this report accessible to the open is a piece of Facebook’s endeavors to expand straightforwardness in promoting,” as indicated by a note on the web based life goliath’s site.

The decision Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) appears to overwhelm the space. A page called ‘My First Vote For Modi’ represents the biggest number of promotions by number (2,765). Another called ‘Bharat Ke Mann Ki Baat’ was second (2,429). ‘Namo Supporters’ was third with 2153 promotions.

The ‘Bharat Ke Mann Ki Baat’ page was the most astounding high-roller on commercials. It represented about one out of each six rupees spent so far on Facebook’s political advertisement‘s, as indicated by the information. It was likewise the greatest high-roller for the most recent week. ‘Bharat Ke Mann Ki Baat’ spent over Rs 20 lakh between March 10 and March 16, the most recent week for which the information is accessible.

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Lok Sabha elections: 21 Opposition parties move SC against EVM machines

The parties have also sought that at least 50% of the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail machines be tallied with the voting machines to avoid any discrepancy

Lok Sabha Elections 2019: Somewhere around 21 restriction gatherings, including Indian National Congress and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu have moved the best court looking for better security standards to keep the altering of electronic casting a ballot machines.

The gatherings have additionally looked for that something like 50 percent of the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail machines be counted with the casting a ballot machines to dodge any error. The gatherings have approached the best court following a gathering of 15 non-BJP parties held at Sharad Pawar’s living arrangement in New Delhi in February.

Peruse our full inclusion on Lok Sabha Elections 2019

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How can India get past its corporate-financing hump? Elections may tell

The tempo for India’s corporate credit is going to be set by the next government

Election:India’s corporate subsidizing market is the thing that Winston Churchill may have portrayed as a question, enveloped by a riddle, inside a puzzle.

The enigma, as per India Ratings and Research Pvt., a unit of Fitch Ratings Inc., is that borrowers’ credit measurements aren’t probably going to exacerbate from here. But in the money related year beginning April 1, their obtaining expenses may rise regardless of whether the national bank cuts arrangement rates further.

India Ratings’ specialists Arindam Som, Priyanka Poddar and Soumyajit Niyogi have endeavored to settle the riddle by taking a gander at interest and supply of assets. There’s probably going to be a sizable confuse, they state, as siphoned up government borrowings – just as obligation issuance by open offices, which I expounded on here – swarm out private borrowers. Moreover, financial specialists are stopping less cash with shared assets. Any shrinkage in their advantages under administration will exacerbate the financing test.

There’s a further riddle on the supply side of the financing condition. Families’ monetary reserve funds have moped between 9 percent and 11 percent of GDP since 2012. Financier Kotak Securities Ltd. can’t pinpoint why Indians aren’t sparing more in spite of genuine loan fees of in excess of 5 percent. It may, the investigators state, have something to do with a 1-percent-of-GDP flood in their liabilities, joined with lukewarm employment creation and the feeble dealing intensity of work, which has turned into a worldwide wonder. The individuals who don’t have enough money in the wake of overhauling advances for home loans and bikes can’t exploit high financing costs on bank stores.

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Going TikTok: Indians hooked on to Chinese video app ahead of LS polls 2019

TikTok allows users to create and share short videos with various special effects. It is becoming hugely popular in rural India, home to most of the country’s 1.3 billion people.

TikTok‘s video-just interface makes it less detailed and simpler to utilize contrasted with stages, for example, Facebook or Twitter, making it a greater fascination in provincial India

A video cut shot on a meager housetop of what resembles a low-ascent loft square demonstrates a youthful Indian man influencing while lip-adjusting a melody adulating Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Depicting himself as a glad Indian with the online personality “garrytomar”, he is wearing ear-studs and demonstrates a beaded jewelry under a somewhat unfastened shirt in the 15-second clasp.

“Modi has without any help trounced everybody … Modi is a tempest, all of you currently know,” goes the Hindi tune, posted on Chinese video versatile application TikTok, the most recent computerized stage to hold India’s residential communities and towns in front of a general decision due by May.

Made by Beijing Bytedance Technology Co, one of the world’s most profitable new companies possibly worth more than $75 billion, TikTok enables clients to make and impart short recordings to different enhancements. It is ending up enormously prominent in provincial India, home to the vast majority of the nation’s 1.3 billion individuals.

Online networking stages, for example, Facebook, its unit WhatsApp and Twitter are broadly being utilized by Indian government officials for crusading in front of the decision: Facebook’s 300 million clients and WhatsApp’s 200 million have made India their biggest market on the planet, while Twitter also has a large number of clients.

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Lok Sabha Elections: Twitter plans to liaise with EC, boost hiring in India

India has stepped up scrutiny of social media firms to curb the propagation of so-called fake news

Twitter Inc intends to help procuring in India and delegate an officer to liaise with the Election Commission (EC), a senior official said on Tuesday, reacting to worries about political abuse of web based life in front of the current year’s general races.

Talking multi day after an Indian parliamentary board of trustees advised the organization to connect more with the Election Commission to help guarantee a free and reasonable vote, Twitter’s worldwide head of open arrangement, Colin Crowell, revealed to Reuters the decision was a best need for the organization.

Crowell said he had told the board that “we will absolutely have a procedure and instrument set up to address issues that will emerge amid the race time frame”. The organization was set up to meet a demand to employ an officer to liaise with the Election Commission, he said in a meeting.

India, which has one of the world’s greatest Internet markets, has ventured up investigation of web based life firms to control the spread of supposed phony news and anticipate remote obstruction in the decision, which is expected by May and in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is looking for a second term.

Twitter is likewise during the time spent employing a nation head for India, Crowell stated, declining to give a particular course of events. Twitter’s previous India head, Taranjeet Singh, ventured down before the end of last year and another official is right now filling in as the between time head of neighborhood activities.

Considering India an “unbelievably vital” showcase, Crowell said the organization would contribute “both in work force and in the stage, especially on the grounds that we have this essential race coming up here”. He didn’t intricate.

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Time to turn cautious on India Inc, debt levels to triple by next year: S&P

Elections may pose additional risks for Indian corporates, it said

Worldwide Rating agency Standard and Poor‘s (S&P) on Tuesday cautioned that it’s a great opportunity to turn careful on evaluated Indian corporates as their income development is probably going to back off in the following 18 two years.

Worldwide dangers, for example, strength of product costs just as interest from the US and China will have a more noteworthy bearing on Indian organizations as opposed to residential interest in the following year or two, it advised.

India’s focal government decisions may represent extra dangers for Indian corporates. A difference in organization may trigger expansionary government spending which may push up getting costs or even raise swelling, S&P said in an announcement.

In any case, the execution of organizations appraised by S&P should stay steady, given low costs, limit extension, and kind info costs, said S&P Global Ratings credit investigator Krishnakumar Somasundaram Vishwanathan in a report titled “Indian Corporate 2019 Outlook- – Time For Caution.”

Except for telecom, development in different areas in India has been joined by edge steadiness. This pattern is relied upon to proceed. The income condition for evaluated corporates is confronting expanding worldwide dangers, for example, China’s log jam, exchange war heightening, or an untidy Brexit, the report said.

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