S. Inderjeet Singh, Member of Parliament of Singapore has called upon Non-Resident Indians to make investment in its home state of Punjab to facilitate long term growth.

- 091299DA

ICICI bank, under its expansion plans has opened its branch office based in Jalandhar, situated on the G.T. Road, opposite Kings Hotel.

- 091299PK

Mr. Satyanarayan Rao – Minister of State for Agriculture announced in the lower house of the Parliament that India has become the 2^nd largest growers of vegetables at 72,832 tonne, India is behind China whose vegetable cultivation grosses 2,36,936 tonne to be ranked the first.

- 091299PK

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The Regional Passport Officer Mr. Rakesh Sharma said, passports of NRIs will be given preference in its issuance, while looking into the problems faced by their relatives, he announced this after meeting Mr. Prem Singh – Advocate, the head NRI Association.

- 091299AS

The government will call for bids to sell 25 per cent of its holding in IPCL to a strategic investor by the end of this month. However, no price range has been fixed so far. CMD KG Ramanathan told that the government had already identified the three strategic players who had shown interest in the company.

Besides, the Indian Oil Corporation, which is bidding for a strategic stake in the company in collaboration with a subsidiary of George Soros group, Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) and Mitsubishi Trading Company have been selected by the government to participate in the bidding.

- 091299TOI

Asia’s biggest rural sports festival, popular as "Rural Olympics", will be held at Kila Raipur in Ludhiana from February 2 to 6 next year after a gap of two years, This was announced by Mr. Paramjit Singh Grewal, Secretary, Grewal Sports Association.

- 091299TB

The Ninth G.D. Birla Award for Scientific Research for the year 1999 has been awarded to Dr. Sankar K. Pal, distinguished scientist and Head the Machine Intelligence Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta by the K.K. Birla Foundation.

- 091299HT

The Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee will launch the Rs. 100 crore national venture fund for software and information technology set up by the IT ministry along with SIDBI and Industrial Development Bank of India. The fund will be available for entrepreneurs from December 11 for starting commercial ventures in software and IT sectors, Devendra Chaudhry, director of MIT, said here on Wednesday.

- 091299HT

Differences between the ruling BJP and the Akali Dal on including Udham Singh Nagar in the proposed Uttrakhand state were finally resolved as the government ensured that land holding rights of the Sikhs and others would be fully protected. When the matter relating to the creation of three new states was brought before the Union Cabinet, it was made clear that the status of land holding would remain unchanged in the proposed state of Uttrakhand.

- 091299IE

The Central Government has slapped income tax on the savings of the Jallianwala Bagh National Memorial Trust, which has come as a rude shock to the trust authorities, and families of the Jallianwala martyrs.

The various financial institutions where funds of the trust had been deposited have written to the trust authorities that they had deduced income tax at source from the fixed deposits on Maturity. Punjab National Bank and Unit Trust of India (UTI) have also sent income tax deduction statements to the Trust office.

The financial institutions are reported to have deducted tax at source following expiry of the exemption from paying tax granted to the Jallianwala Bagh Trust in March, 1998. It is for the first time since independence that the Jallianwala Bagh Trust has been asked to pay income tax on its deposits.

- 091299IE

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Hudco will be extending Rs. 600 crore assistance to Punjab during the current financial year which includes projects at Ludhiana and development of residential estate at Anandpur Sahib among other.

This was decided at a meeting here between the Union Minister for Urban Employment and Poverty Alleviation, Mr. Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa and the Punjab Chief Minister, Mr. Parkash Singh Badal. The package would provide for Rs. 200 crore for acquisition of land and integrated development at nine locations in Ludhiana.

The assistance would also cover improvement of road infrastructure, upgradation of existing bus stands, construction of new bus and truck terminals at Amritsar, Ludhiana, Phagwara, Jalandhar, Ropar and Anandpur Sahib.