The Indian economy is expected to have grown at 9.08 per cent in 2007-08, as against 9 per cent reported earlier, Finance Minister P Chidambaram told Parliament today even as the UPA government won the trust vote in the Lok Sabha to remain in power.

"Despite predictions of gloom and doom, I had always maintained that the year will end with a growth rate close to 9 per cent. At the end of the year we have reported 9 per cent; but more refined estimates now place the growth rate at 9.08 per cent," Chidambaram told the Lok Sabha during the debate on the trust vote.

It will be life imprisonment and a penalty of Rs 10 lakh for those found guilty of sale and production of spurious drugs in the country.
Not only this, this offence has been made non-bailable and will be heard only at the special designated court which will be set up by Centre in collaboration with state governments and the judiciary.
At present such an offence is liable to five years of imprisonment and Rs 10,000 penalty.
The Centre gave its approval on Thursday to move official amendments to the Drugs and Cosmetics Amendment Bill, 2005 which is pending in Rajya Sabha.

ALLEGING that interests of developing nations have not been addressed, the CPM on Thursday asked the Manmohan Singh government to reject the revised drafts in the WTO mini-ministerial meeting at Geneva next week. The party sought a debate in Parliament on the issue before New Delhi "yields further ground' in agriculture or Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA).

Somnath Chatterjee has refused to quit, rebuffing CPM boss Prakash Karat, who wants him to resign as Speaker of Lok Sabha before July 22 so that Chatterjee can vote against the government in the floor test. Chatterjee, whom the party expected to step down, refused to yield, telling Sitaram Yechury that he would choose the timing of when to quit.

A day after formally severing ties with the UPA, Left parties on Thursday attacked the Government for approaching the IAEA Board of Governors without proving its majority in Parliament, dubbing the move as a "shocking betrayal of moral commitment' made to the country. They vowed to make it "politically' impossible for the Government to go ahead with the nuclear deal.

With its key demands on Parliament's approval for the deal having been met by the UPA Government, the BJP is set to raise the pitch on the "unholy alliance' between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party, the price rise, the farmers' issue and the Congress-led Government's "dismal record on the internal security front'. The NDA will meet here on Wednesday to discuss the alliance's future course of action.

ON BOARD PM'S AIRCRAFT : Buoyed by the turn of events on the political front for the Indo-US nuclear deal, an upbeat Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today made it clear that India will go to the IAEA with the safeguards agreement "very soon' and that he did not expect elections before time. He said he had been assured that once India moves the IAEA, the remaining processes will "move fast'.

NEW DELHI: As the standoff over the Indo-US nuclear deal between the Left parties and the government continued, RJD chief Lalu Prasad on Tuesday met Congress President Sonia Gandhi here. Prasad refused to talk to journalists waiting outside Gandhi's residence after the short meeting. The meeting came in the backdrop of reports that the Railway Minister was in touch with the Samajwadi Party for backing the UPA in case the Left parties withdrew support to the government in the event of forward movement on the nuclear deal.

Deal And Govt Will Survive: Lalu A day after Sonia Gandhi asked the Congress to get ready for elections, CPM announced that it would withdraw support to the UPA government if it took the

Two pieces of legislation, which will impact millions of people displaced or threatened with displacement in the name of development, will soon come up for discussion in the monsoon session of

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