PROS AND CONS OF INDIA POST PAYMENT BANK LICENSE.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently gave a licence to India Post to function as a payments bank. Does it change anything for the people? Post offices in India have already been working as payments banks. Individuals open accounts, deposit and withdraw money by cash or cheques and receive payments through them. All these transactions are meticulously recorded manually in their passbook. Post offices do not provide any loans or carry out any credit transaction. This has been in operation for more than a century and much before the RBI came into existence. So, what would change after the RBI’s licence?

The Department of Post (DoP) had earlier applied to RBI for a banking licence for its fully-owned subsidiary, India Post. The DoP’s assets and liability position, as revealed by its balance sheet, was far from satisfactory for RBI’s comfort to allow the grant of a banking licence to the parent organization. Its annual deficit kept increasing from Rs.5,339 crore in 2013-14 to Rs.6,378 crore in 2014-15 to Rs.6,665 crore in the budget of 2015-16. As a result, the banking licence had to be granted to a separate entity, India Post, with distinct assets and liabilities of its own. The RBI’s licence for payments bank to India Post should, therefore, separate the banking business from various other services provided by DoP, which may or may not run on a commercial basis. A commercial focus on the banking business is desirable for viability and efficiency.

Seventh Pay Commission’s Report To Be Implemented Ahead Of States Elections In May

New Delhi: Ahead of the states’ assembly elections in May’ 2016, the Central government may implement the recommendations of the Seventh Pay Commission after receiving the report of the pay panel within this year, which will benefit 50 lakh central government employees and 56 lakh pensioners including dependents.

“The central government will decide execution time of the pay commission’s proposals after the pay panel submits its report, which will be possible pre-election “special packages” for West Bengal, Assam, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which are all due for polls by May 2016,” an official of the Finance Ministry said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Message from Secretary(Posts) on Post Bank of India

Modi government announces OROP: Six things to know about 'One Rank One Pension'

By ECONOMICTIMES.COM | 5 Sep, 2015, 06.40PM IST

NEW DELHI: Ending a four decade long wait of veterans, Prime Minister Narendra  Modi-led NDA government on  Saturday announced the 'One Rank One Pension' scheme for ex-servicemen. 

"In simple terms, OROP implies that  uniform pension be paid to the Armed  Forces personnel retiring in the same rank with the same length of service,  regardless of their date of retirement. Future enhancements in the rates of  pension would be automatically passed on to the past pensioners. This implies bridging the gap between the rate of pension of current and past  pensioners at periodic intervals," said Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar while making the announcement. 

"Under this definition, it has been decided that the gap between rate of pension  of current pensioners and past pensioners will be bridged every 5 years," he  said. We take a look at six salient features of the OROP scheme, as announced by  Parrikar: 

Report of Seventh Pay commission might be submitted by second week of September 2015

The Hindi daily Dainik Baskar quoted in its report published on 22.8.2015 about report of Seventh pay commission that the pay commission report will be submitted by second week of September 2015,

According to its report the Seventh Pay Commission report to be submitted to the government will be examined by  the senior CoS, which will take two months. Then it will be submitted to the Ministry of Finance, which will be  implemented from 1st  January, 2016,

According to sources the fitment formula 2.86 would be recommended by 7th pay commission.

The report published in Hindi is given below…

The next date of hearing of our W P No 6895/2015 is on 28/08/2015. We all are eagerly waiting for that day.

The Hindi daily Dainik Baskar quoted in its report published on 22.8.2015 about report of Seventh pay commission that the pay commission report will be submitted by second week of September 2015,

According to its report the Seventh Pay Commission report to be submitted to the government will be examined by  the senior CoS, which will take two months. Then it will be submitted to the Ministry of Finance, which will be  implemented from 1st  January, 2016,

According to sources the fitment formula 2.86 would be recommended by 7th pay commission.

The report published in Hindi is given below…

Half the states show poor progress under Swachh Bharat Mission

NEW DELHI: Construction of toilets in urban areas, a key component under Swachh Bharat Mission, has not started in half the states almost a year after the ambitious initiative was launched by Modi government. 

Fourteen laggard states and union territories have not started building toilets under Swachh Bharat Mission. The list includes election-bound Bihar, Congress-ruled Kerala and Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Jharkhand, Lakshadweep, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura and West Bengal. Swachh Bharat Mission targets in urban areas include construction of 1.04 crore individual household toilets, over 5 lakh community and public toilet seats and 100% door-to-door collection of solid waste, its transportation and disposal, to be achieved by the year 2019. 

Here’s what you should know about the Sukanya Samridhhi Yojana

SSY is a government-run saving scheme for the girl child. It seeks to provide them with financial security. Roopal's daughter is eligible for an SSY account. The account must be opened before the child turns 10, with a minimum investment of Rs 1,000. Thereafter, she must invest a minimum of Rs 1,000 and a maximum of Rs 1.5 lakh (deduction available u/s 80C) annually. The money in the account can be fully withdrawn only after the girl turns 21. If the money is not withdrawn even after the girl turns 21, it will continue to earn interest.

Roopal seems to like PPF for three things—EEE tax benefit, long-term investment horizon and assured returns (notified by the Government of India), benchmarked to the prevailing market rates. All these benefits remain the same if she were to invest in SSY. However, this is where the similarities end. It is imperative that she is aware of the differences too before she makes a choice. While Roopal will be able to partially withdraw her PPF corpus from the seventh year, such partial withdrawals from SSY will be possible only after her daughter turns 18. Moreover, if she were to open the SSY account now, she would end up with an investment horizon that differs based on the age of the child, while the PPF would allow her to invest for 15 years, further extendable in blocks of 5 years. Having said that, there is a slight interest rate differential in favour of the SSY.

Union government to change 'clerical designations' for its workforce

Designations like Lower Division Clerk and Upper Division Clerk in central government's employee hierarchy may soon become a thing of the past as the Centre has proposed to change their nomenclature.  

The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) is considering changing nomenclature of a few posts of Central Secretariat Clerical Service (CSCS) and Central Secretariat Service(CSS), which forms the backbone of administrative work in the central government. 

It is proposed to rename the post of Assistant in CSS as Assistant Section Officer, Similarly, the posts of Upper Division Clerk (UDC) and Lower Division Clerk (LDC) under CSCS have been proposed to be re-christened as Senior Secretariat Assistance and Junior Secretariat Assistance, respectively, as per the DoPT proposal. 

All concerned have been asked to send in their inputs or suggestions on the proposal by September 18, it said. 

The total sanctioned strength of CSS and CSCS is 11,467 and 5,933 respectively. 

Earlier in March, it had decided to replace the 'class' categorisation for specifying the seniority of its employees with new alphabetical groupings. 

The posts under the central government will be denoted as groups A, B, C and D instead of classes I, II, III and IV in the service rules, it had said. 

The Class-I classification is for gazetted officers while Class-II refers to mainly the non-gazetted officers, though there are some gazetted officers in this category too. 

Class-III comprises clerical staff and Class-IV (which is now subsumed in Class III or Group C) includes peons and helps or multi-tasking staff in the government hierarchy. 

The Class-III (Group C) employees have often expressed concern that they are taunted as 'third-class' employees due to the categorisation.

Source:-The Economic Times

Compliance of Court Orders

The wilful disobedience of any judgment, decree, direction, order, writ or other process of a court or wilful breach of an undertaking given to a court constitute a contempt of court under the provisions of the contempt of Courts Act, 1971. Further, under Article 215 of the constitution of India, every High Court shall be a court of record and shall have all the powers of such a court including the power to punish for contempt of itself. The statutory provisions are binding on everybody including Central Government, State Governments and all local or other authorities within the territory of India and they are duty bound to obey the court judgment/orders. The Central Government does not maintain any data in this regard. 

This information was given by Union Minister of Ministry of Law & Justice, Shri D. V. Sadananda Gowda in a written reply in Lok Sabha today.

Source : PIB Release, 13.08.2015

FORMER PRESIDENT A P J ABDUL KALAM PASSES AWAY. A BIG SALUTE TO THE MISSILE MAN

RBI nod to Post Bank of India expected by July this year : Ravi Shankar Prasad

Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad today said he expects Reserve Bank of India(RBI) to grant payment license to proposed Post Bank of India by July. He said the network of 1,54,000 post offices (including 1,30,000 rural post offices) equipped with payment bank facility will bring new revolution.

On proposed Post Bank of India for which permission is pending with Reserve Bank of India, Union Minister said, “by July August the payment bank license is ought to be given. We have 1,54,000 post office. With opening of payment bank there will be new financial revolution. We have 1.5 lakh service sectors involved. We want our 1.30 lakh rural post offices also to be covered under this network.”

Plan to strengthen Money Order service: Postal Dept.

Contrary to reports that Money Order service is being withdrawn, the Postal Department has said that plans are afoot to strengthen the facility using technology for the benefit of the people. The department averred that the time-tested money order service will not be terminated.

“Some reports are appearing in newspapers stating that the service will be withdrawn. It’s not correct. Such negative publicity is creating unnecessary apprehensions in the public domain,” said B.V. Sudhakar, Chief Postmaster General, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Using technology, services like Electronic Money Order, Instant Money Order and Mobile Money Order were brought into vogue and these services were found to be user-friendly.

Electronic Money Order is an electronic format of traditional MOs, which enables payment at doorstep, drastically cutting down physical transmission. The booking for these services can be done at any post office, according to another official. He said the service was one of the prominent modes of door-to-door money transfer since decades.

Indefinite Hunger Fast by the Divisional Secretary, AIPEU Group 'C', Madurai Division

Union Budget 2015: Postal Department to use its vast network for proposed Payment Bank

NEW DELHI: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today said the Postal Department will utilise the services  of its vast network for the proposed Payment Bank.

"Government proposes  to utilise vast postal network with nearly 1.55 lakh points of presence across  villages of the country.

"I hope postal department will bring the  proposed Payment Bank venture successfully so that it can contribute in Pradhan  Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana," Jaitley said while presenting the Budget for 2015 in Parliament.

The postal offices will function as payment banks, he  added.

PRESS NEWS:- INFOSYS WAS PENALISED OF RS.9.33 CRORES FOR DEFAULT IN SERVICE

BANGALORE MIRROR cover story.

Blame it on Infosys, says Bescom MD on excess power bills

By Niranjan Kaggere, Bangalore Mirror Bureau | Apr 22, 2014, 02.00 AM IST

Pankaj Kumar Pandey says power utility had identified 150 issues based on consumer complaints, but Infosys was able to rectify just 85. Only govt can scrap the contract

In February this year, some United Bank of India employees had reportedly blamed inherent deficiencies in 'Finacle', the financial software provided by Infosys, the Bangalore based IT bellwether giant, for the bank's mounting NPAs. The NPA controversy had led to the exit of Archana Bhargava, chairman of the bank. Now, Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (Bescom) has called into question the reliability of the company's billing software.

PM likely to approve India Post revival plan

Task Force proposes to divide India Post into five biz verticals :                                                

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to review a report on the revival of India Post soon.

Official sources said that Minister for Communications and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad has approved the task force report and will submit it to the prime minister for a review.

The task force had submitted its report to the Minister in December, recommending division of India Post into five verticals, including one each for banking, insurance and e-commerce, with India Post being the holding company.

‘Post office cannot be held liable for postal delay’

THE POSTAL DEPARTMENT STANDS PROTECTED AGAINST CLAIMS OF DEFICIENCY IN SERVICES BY VIRTUE OF A STATUTE

The postal department takes 15 days to deliver a speed post resulting in a woman missing out on her chance of being appointed as a JBT teacher. However, the department stands protected against claims of deficiency in services by virtue of a statute which says a post office is not liable to compensate if damage caused was not wilful or fraudulent.

Mail vans to travel farther

In an effort aimed at improving delivery and reducing dependence on rail transport, the department of posts has started operating mail vans to places across the State.

Starting on a pilot basis, the department is now operating mail vans between Chennai and Madurai via Tiruchi, and between Chennai and Coimbatore via Salem. At present, nearly 75,000 mails and parcels, on an average, are processed and transported through trains every day. 

The department expects to save a minimum of two or three hours by operating the mail vans, and reduce the cost of transportation through the rail network by 50 per cent. “We plan to speed up delivery within the same postal region to the same day,” said Mervin Alexander, postmaster general (Chennai city region).

New Year Message from Secretary (Posts)