The Budget Session of Parliament which began on 31st January will come to end today. Yesterday the Lok Sabha passed the Finance Bill, 2019 by a voice vote. 

Replying to the discussion on the bill, Finance Minister Piyush Goyal asserted that all the proposals in the bill are aimed at benefiting the middle classes and honest taxpayers. 

He appealed to the States to furnish data about farmers so that the income support under the PM-Kisan scheme is credited to their accounts at the earliest. 

However, the Congress staging a walk-out yesterday in the lower house over the Rafale deal while Rajya Sabha faced adjournment following an uproar by Samajwadi Party members after party chief Akhilesh Yadav was allegedly stopped at Lucknow airport while on his way to Allahabad.

Today being the last day of both Houses of the Parliament before the general elections, the government will try to get approval from the house on the key pending bills. 

The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019 and The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2018 is scheduled to be taken up in the Rajya Sabha. Both Bills which were introduced and in the Lok Sabha, if not passed in the Rajya Sabha before dissolution of the Lower House will get lapsed. 

In the Lok Sabha, the Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Bill, 2018 and The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Amendment) Bill, 2019 are scheduled to be taken up for discussion and passage today. 

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order directing federal agencies to prioritize research and development in Artificial Intelligence (AI). The plan, called the American AI Initiative, follows big investment pledges from China and other countries intended to advance and apply AI technology in fields ranging from warfighting to health care. The order directs federal agencies to make government data and computing resources more available to AI experts while maintaining security and confidentiality. The order also calls on agencies to protect civil liberties, privacy and American values in applying AI technologies, and to help workers gain relevant skills through fellowships, apprenticeships, training programs and computer science education.

In a bid to fight marine pollution, India signed a letter of intent with the Norwegian government establishing the India-Norway Marine Pollution Initiative.

The letter was signed by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) establishing the initiative with the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a statement from the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) said.

"In January, 2019, the Indian and Norwegian governments agreed to work more closely on oceans by signing an MoU and establishing the India-Norway Ocean Dialogue during the Norwegian Prime Minister's visit to India in January," it said.

The joint initiative was signed by Anil Kumar Jain, Additional Secretary, MoEFCC, and Nils RagnarKamsvag, Norway's Ambassador to India.

State-owned power giant NTPC Monday said that it has signed a term loan agreement for ₹5,000 crore with State Bank of India.

"The loan facility is extended at an interest rate linked to 3-Month MCLR of the Bank. This loan has a door to door tenure of 15 years and will be utilised to part finance the capital expenditure of NTPC," a company statement said.

The loan agreement was signed by Masood A Ansari, General Manager (Finance), NTPC Ltd and Neelabh Sinha, Dy General Manager, SBI in the presence of Saptarshi Roy, Director (Finance), NTPC Ltd , Sudhir Arya, CFO, NTPC Ltd and Pradeep Kelshikar, General Manager, SBI.

The Supreme Court on Monday directed the National Commission for Minority (NCM) to take a decision within three months on a representation seeking laying down of guidelines for defining the term 'minority' in the context of state-wise population of a community. A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi asked BJP leader and lawyer Ashwini Upadhyay to re-file his representation to the minority panel which, in turn, will take a decision on it within three months from Monday.

Upadhyay had filed a writ petition [WP(C) 1064/2017] to declare the Notification dated 23.10.1993, arbitrary unreasonable and ultra-vires the Constitution but withdrew it with liberty to approach National Commission for Minorities (NCM) and accordingly, submitted a Representation on 17.11.2017. According to him the NCM has done nothing over the past 15 months. Hence, he filed this writ petition to declare Section 2(c) of the NCM Act, 1992, and the Notification dated 23.10.1993, void and unconstitutional for being arbitrary, unreasonable and offending Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution of India.

A life-size portrait of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee will be unveiled by the President in Parliament House on Tuesday, an official said. 

President Ram Nath Kovind will unveil the portrait in the Central Hall of Parliament House in the presence of Vice President Venkaiah Naidu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ministers, and leaders of various parties are expected to mark their presence during the event, a parliament official said.

Vajpayee became the Prime Minister for the first time in 1996 for 13 days, then for 13 months from 1998 to 1999, and then from 1999 to 2004.

He passed away on August 16, 2018 at the age of 93 years after a prolonged illness. 

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Monday said Abu Dhabi declaring Hindi as one of the official languages in its courts will make the justice delivery system simpler and more accessible to Indian expatriates in that country.

In a landmark decision, Abu Dhabi has included Hindi as the third official language used in its courts, alongside Arabic and English, as part of a move designed to improve access to justice.

"We thank Abu Dhabi for declaring Hindi as one of the official languages in their judicial system. This will make justice delivery system simpler and more accessible to our people," she tweeted.

The Abu Dhabi Judicial Department last Saturday said it has extended the adoption of interactive forms of statement of claims filed before courts by including the Hindi language alongside Arabic and English in labour cases.

This is aimed at helping Hindi speakers to learn about litigation procedures, their rights and duties without a language barrier, in addition to facilitating registration procedures via unified forms available through the ADJD website, the judicial body said.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) yesterday airlifted over 700 people stranded due to the closure of the Jammu-Srinagar national highway following heavy snowfall last week. A defence spokesman said, for the first time, two C-17 Aircraft airlifted 707 passengers simultaneously from the Jammu Air Force Station to Srinagar. The spokesman said, IAF has airlifted around 1,400 people, mostly students, in the past four days.

AIR correspondent reports that Indian Air Force pressed two C-17 Globemaster aircrafts into service between Jammu and Srinagar yesterday and airlifted a total of 707 stranded passengers. The aircrafts carried 301 passengers in first sortie and 406 in second sortie yesterday. Air Commodore, Jammu SK Mishra personally supervised the entire air lifting operation at Jammu airbase. All the passengers were also provided eatables/food packets by the Tiger Division of Army at Satwari, Jammu.
 
Earlier, as many as 538 persons, including 319 GATE aspirants, were airlifted in separate sorties by the IAF between Jammu and Srinagar.

The relief effort has been undertaken jointly by the IAF and civil administration.

The Income Tax Department has busted a nexus of hawala operators who were running a money laundering racket in Delhi estimated to be worth over 20 thousand crore rupees. Official sources said, a series of raids and surveys were conducted by sleuths of the Delhi investigation unit of the I-T Department over the last few weeks in different business areas of old Delhi. The operations led to unearthing of illegal financial activities by three groups of operators.
 
A survey was conducted on one such group in the Naya Bazar area, that led to detection of bogus billing of about 18 thousand crores. The sources said, the group had floated a dozen bogus entities for providing fake bills.
 
In the second case, a money laundering racket was unearthed where current transactions in shares were fraudulently camouflaged as being sales of old shares held for years. The magnitude of the purported scam is estimated to be over one thousand crores.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate and lay foundation stone of several development projects at Kurukshetra in Haryana today. He will dedicate to the nation the National Cancer Institute at Bhadsa in Jhajjar district. The institute is the state-of-the-art tertiary cancer care-cum-research centre constructed at the AIIMS Jhajjar campus. The 700-bed hospital will have facilities like surgical oncology, palliative care and nuclear medicine, besides hostel rooms for doctors and attendants of cancer patients.
 
An official release said, Mr Modi will also inaugurate Employees' State Insurance Corporation's (ESIC) medical college and hospital in Faridabad. This will be the first ESIC medical college and hospital in north India. The 510-bed hospital will have state-of-the-art facilities. ESIC provides social security to the insured persons and their beneficiaries, especially to worker population and their dependents.
 
The Prime Minister will also lay the foundation stone of National Institute of Ayurveda in Panchkula which is being set up at Shri Mata Mansa Devi Temple Complex. It will be a national-level institute for Ayurveda treatment, education and research.
 
Foundation stone of Sri Krishna Ayush University in Kurukshetra will also be laid by Mr Modi. It will be the first university related to Indian system of medicine in Haryana as well as the first of its kind in India.