As Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi started speaking to the women wing of Ficci a war broke out on the micro-blogging website Twitter between pro-Modi and anti-Modi netizens.

India’s industrial production grew by 2.4 per cent in January, leading some economists to predict that the economic slowdown may have bottomed out. This has come after the second consecutive month of positive growth in February.

To increase house sales, finance minister P. Chidambaram on Thursday raised tax deduction limit by `1 lakh for the first time home buyers to promote the housing sector.

Sticking to his promise that the last full Budget of UPA-2 would not be populist, Union finance minister P.

The pre-Budget Economic Survey presented to Parliament on Wednesday by finance minister P. Chidambaram reflects the grim reality that India is facing a severe slowdown and must act fast to spur investment, restart stalled projects, cut interest rates and contain its fiscal deficit.

India’s GDP is pegged to grow in 2012-13 at five per cent, the slowest in a decade, due to sharper than expected deceleration in services, according to the Central Statistical Organis-ation’s advance estimates released on Thursday. This suggests that the slowdown in the Indian economy is much deeper than earlier anticipated.

After re-establishing its credentials with some bold reform measures recently, India is going all out to woo investors back. Finance minister P. Chidambaram met investors in Hong Kong Tuesday while a 100-strong delegation led by urban development minister Kamal Nath is on its way to Davos for the World Economic Forum Summit on a similar mission.

Get ready for a hike of over 50 paise per litre in diesel prices every month as the government tries to rein in the fiscal deficit to avoid any further downgrade in India’s credit rating. The Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs on Thursday allowed oil marketing firms to raise diesel prices by small amounts at a time, to soften the blow, and raised the cap on subsidised domestic LPG cylinders to nine in a year, up from six.

The government on Monday deferred implementation of the controversial General Anti-Avoidance Rules by two years to April 1, 2016; but only investments made before August 30, 2010 will not attract tax provisions under the proposed new rules.

The petroleum ministry plans to launch LPG portability in the country, through which consumers will be able to switch LPG gas distributors. This was done after consumers complained of problems as distributors were not supplying LPG cylinders on time.