| Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day's biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. We hope you are staying safe. Stimulus package 3.0: Focus on job creation, incentives for home buyers Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday announced a fresh set of relief and stimulus measures for the economy worth ₹1.19 lakh crore, including a scheme to boost re-employment chances of formal sector employees who lost their jobs amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. Unveiling a list of 12 measures, she said they may be referred to as Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan 3.0. The measures, announced soon after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said the country had entered into a technical recession in the first half of 2020-21, include a ₹65,000 crore additional outlay for providing fertiliser subsidies to farmers. Highlights of the stimulus package include: - ₹900 crore for research and development towards a Covid-19 vaccine
- An additional ₹10,000 crore for spending through the MGNREGS and PM's rural roads scheme. Effectively, this takes the total allocations for MGNREGA in the year close to ₹1.1 lakh crore, the FM said.
- To boost formal sector employment, a new Atmanirbhar Rozgar Yojana has been launched, under which the government will bear the entire employees' provident fund (EPF) contributions for two years of all new employees hired between October 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021, in firms with less than 1,000 employees.
- "We are providing income tax relief for developers and home buyers. At the moment, on the differential between the circle rate and the agreement value, you get 10% relief. We have decided to increase the differential from 10% to 20% till June 30, 2021 for only primary sales of residential units of value upto ₹2 crore," the minister said.
- Entities in 26 stressed sectors identified by KV Kamath Committee, plus health care sector with credit outstanding of above ₹50 crore and up to ₹500 Crore as on February 29, 2020, would now be able to avail 20% additional credit for a period of five years, with a moratorium of one year on principal repayment.
India in 'technical' recession: RBI India's economy rebounded sharply in the wake of the reopening from lockdowns, slowing the pace of its contraction to 8.6% in the second quarter, a 'nowcast' in the RBI's monthly bulletin showed on Wednesday. Still, the estimate implies that India is likely to have entered a technical recession in the first half of 2020-21 for the first time in its history, with two successive quarters of GDP contraction, wrote an RBI official who authored an article in the bulletin.  The Reserve Bank of India headquarters in Mumbai. File An Economic Activity Index, which tracks real-time data from 27 monthly indicators, showed that the economy had rebounded sharply from May/June, with industry normalising faster than contact-intensive service sectors, pointing to a short-lived contraction. "The index nowcasts GDP growth at (-) 8.6% in Q2, implying that India is likely to have entered a technical recession in the first half," Pankaj Kumar of the RBI's Monetary Policy Department wrote in the article titled 'An Economic Activity Index for India'. A-G gives consent for criminal contempt action against Kunal Kamra Attorney-General of India K.K. Venugopal on Thursday gave his consent to initiate criminal contempt action in the Supreme Court against stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra for a series of tweets which "clearly cross the line between humour and contempt of court". "I find that today people believe that they can boldly and brazenly condemn the Supreme Court of India and its judges by exercising what they believe is their freedom of speech. But under the Constitution, the freedom of speech is subject to the law of contempt... I believe it is time people understand that attacking the Supreme Court unjustifiedly and brazenly will attract punishment under the Contempt of Court Act," Venugopal observed in his consent letter. A resident of Aurangabad, Shrirang Katneshwarkar, had requested Venugopal's permission under the Contempt of Court Act to initiate contempt proceedings against Kamra for his tweets. The Attorney-General has issued identical consent letters to other separate requests for contempt action against Kamra.  Stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra. Photo: Twitter/@kunalkamra88 Kamra's tweets were targeted at the Supreme Court order granting interim bail to Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami on Wednesday. One of these tweets shows a picture of the Supreme Court building swathed in saffron colour with the ruling BJP flag flying atop it instead of the tricolour. The Attorney-General said this tweet of the picture of the Supreme Court building was a "gross insinuation against the entirety of the Supreme Court of India". It insinuated that "the Supreme Court is not an independent and impartial institution and so too its judges, but on the other hand is a court of the ruling party, the BJP, existing for the BJP's benefit". He said the other tweets were also "highly objectionable" and left it to the Supreme Court to decide whether these tweets would also constitute contempt. Tejashwi Yadav takes over as MGB leader, alleges voter fraud After being elected leader of the Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) on Thursday, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav asked the Election Commission (EC) on Thursday to release videos and other documentary evidence on the counting of postal ballots in 20 seats where the alliance candidates lost by a margin of less than 200 votes. "We lost about 20 seats where irregularities were resorted to in the counting of postal ballots and our candidates' queries were not heard by the Election Commission…we've won 130 seats and the mandate was in our favour, but the Election Commission's results were declared in favour of NDA," Yadav told mediapersons in Patna.  RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav speaks at the party legislators' meeting in Patna, on Nov. 12, 2020. "In 2015 too, the mandate was in favour of the Mahagathbandhan, but the BJP grabbed power through the back door. The EC must satisfy the candidates who had raised queries about counting of postal ballots but were not heard…we're again sending our demand to the EC today," he said. Congress had spread itself too thin in Bihar: CPI (ML) leader Dipankar Bhattacharya There were some interesting comments about the Bihar elections from Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, who spoke to The Hindu on his party performing far beyond expectations.  CPI (ML) General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya. File In particular, he took aim at the Congress for dragging down the Mahagathbandhan alliance. "I think what stands out very clearly is that the Congress underperformed. 70 seats was too big a number for the Congress to handle. They were overstretched and had spread themselves too thin. If the Congress had contested 40 seats, like they did in 2015, they would have been able to focus much better. If the RJD had contested 10 seats more, if the CPI(ML) 10 seats more, if between the CPI-CPI (M) they had contested 10 seats more, it would have been better for both the Congress and the alliance. We are only a few seats behind the NDA and those seats could have been won with a more rational seat-sharing formula," he said. You can read the full interview here. DMK, CPI(M) condemn T.N. university move to withdraw Arundhati Roy's book after ABVP's objection Acting on objections from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the Manonmaniam Sundaranar University in Tirunelveli has withdrawn Arundhati Roy's book, Walking with the Comrades, from its postgraduate English syllabus. The book was based on her visit to Maoist hideouts. At a meeting chaired by Vice-Chancellor K. Pitchumani, it was decided that the book will be removed and replaced with a few essays from naturalist M. Krishnan's My Native Land: Essays on Nature.  Arundhati Roy. The DMK and the CPI (M) have condemned the university's decision to remove the book from the syllabus prescribed for M.A. English literature students. "It is an attempt to saffronise education and a mindset against alternate views," DMK deputy general secretary and former Minister, A. Raja said. DMK women's wing leader and MP Kanimozhi said, "If politics is going to decide what is art, literature, culture and curriculum, it is very dangerous for the pluralistic society." CPI (M) MP Su. Venkatesan demanded the withdrawal of the decision to remove the book, saying a curriculum should be decided only by the syllabus committee, standing committee and the senate of the university. COVISHIELD completes enrolment of Phase-3 clinical trials The Serum Institute of India (SII) and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on Thursday announced the completion of enrolment of Phase-3 clinical trials for the COVISHIELD vaccine in India. "The ICMR and the SII have further collaborated for clinical development of COVOVAX (Novavax) developed by Novavax, USA, and upscaled by the SII," noted a release issued by the ICMR. It added that the ICMR had funded the clinical trial site fees while SII had funded other expenses for COVISHIELD.  A volunteer receives a COVISHIELD vaccine shot in Visakhapatnam. File At present, the SII and the ICMR are conducting Phase-2 and 3 clinical trials of COVISHIELD at 15 different centres across the country. COVISHIELD has been developed at the SII's Pune laboratory with a master seed from Oxford University/AstraZeneca. The vaccine made in the U.K. is currently being tested in large efficacy trials in the U.K., Brazil, South Africa and the U.S. "The promising results of the trials so far give confidence that COVISHIELD could be a realistic solution to the deadly pandemic. COVISHIELD is by far the most advanced vaccine in human testing in India. Based on Phase 2/3 trial results, the SII, with the help of the ICMR, will pursue the early availability of this product for India. The SII has already manufactured 40 million doses of the vaccine, under the at-risk manufacturing and stockpiling license from the DCGI," said the release. Doorstep service for submitting Digital Life Certificate, boost for pensioners In a move that could bring relief to lakhs of central government pensioners, the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions on Thursday introduced a chargeable doorstep service for submission of Digital Life Certificate (DLC) through postmen. The India Post Payments Bank of the Department of Posts and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) have launched the initiative of the Department of Pension & Pensioners' Welfare (DoPPW).  Photo: jeevanpramaan.gov.in The facility to submit life certificate online via Jeevan Pramaan Portal was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in November, 2014 to provide a convenient and transparent facility to pensioners for submission of Life Certificate, said a release. "In order to make this facility available across the country, DoPPW roped in the India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) and utilised its huge network of postmen and gramin dak sevaks in providing doorstep facility to pensioners for submission of life certificate digitally," it said. Pensioners can get detailed information about the facility on ippbonline.com. It is a chargeable service and would be available to all the Central government pensioners across the country, irrespective of their pension accounts being in different banks. Covid Watch: Numbers and Developments The number of coronavirus cases reported from India stood at 87,10,423 at the time of writing this newsletter, with the death toll at 1,28,550. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. | 
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