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The Appellate Tribunal under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act has found a “prima facie case” in the matter allegedly involving the former Chief Executive Officer of ICICI Bank Chanda Kochhar and others.

In a recent order partially confirming the Enforcement Directorate’s asset attachment, while hearing the agency’s appeal against an order of the Adjudicating Authority, the Appellate Tribunal observed: “It may be true that the issue will be determined by the trial court but we find a prima facie case against the respondents for commission of the offence of money laundering and, therefore, the provisional attachment order is justified.”

After considering the submissions of both the sides, the Tribunal said: “…we cause interference in the impugned order passed by the Adjudicating Authority other than for attachment of ₹10.50 lakhs not confirmed by the Adjudicating Authority. It is accordingly set aside other than for a sum of ₹10.5 lakhs attached by the appellant. The Provisional Attachment Order dated 10.01.2020 for the properties other than for ₹10.5 lakhs is confirmed”.

The ED had challenged the order dated November 6, 2020, passed by the Adjudicating Authority. Its case is based on a first information report registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation on January 22, 2019.

As noted in the order, the allegation against the accused was about the criminal conspiracy, cheating, illegal gratification, criminal misconduct and abuse of official position by the public servant. It was for sanction of loan to Videocon Group of Companies in contravention of the Rules and policies of the ICICI Bank.

The loan granted to the Videocon Group of Companies for a sum of ₹1,730 crores turned Non-Performing Assets (NPA) and resulted in wrongful loss to the ICICI Bank and purported wrongful gain to the borrowers and the accused persons.

The U.S., UAE, and China have emerged as the top three export destinations for India’s electronics sector during April-June quarter of 2025-26, according to the Commerce Ministry data.

The Netherlands and Germany are other major export destinations for the country’s electronic exports.

During April-June this fiscal, the exports rose by 47% to $12.41 billion, the data showed.

“This geographical spread highlights India’s growing integration into the global electronics supply chain and underscores the country’s emergence as a credible alternative manufacturing hub in Asia,” an official said.

The U.S. remains India’s largest export destination, commanding a 60.17% share, followed by the UAE (8.09%), China (3.88%), the Netherlands (2.68%), and Germany (2.09%).

The data also showed that the U.S. remains the dominant export destination for India’s ready-made garments (RMG). It accounted for 34.11% of shipments. The U.S. is followed by the U.K. (8.81%), the UAE (7.85%), Germany (5.51%), and Spain (5.29%).

During April-June this fiscal, exports of RMG of all textiles rose to $4.19 billion as against $3.85 billion in the same quarter last fiscal.

“These figures reflect India’s continued competitiveness in the global apparel market, backed by its skilled manufacturing base, diversified product offerings, and growing reputation for quality and compliance,” the official said.

India’s RMG sector, a key pillar of the textiles industry, recorded a 10.03% growth during FY25 at $15.99 billion compared to $14.53 billion in FY24.

Similarly, marine exports grew by 19.45% to $1.95 billion during April-June this fiscal.

In 2024-25, these exports rose marginally by 45% to $7.41 billion.

The revival in these exports during the first quarter of the current fiscal is largely attributed to robust demand from key markets such as the U.S., which remains the largest importer with a 37.63% share.

It was followed by China (17.26%), Vietnam (6.63%), Japan (4.47%), and Belgium (3.57%).

Diversification in product offerings, improved cold chain logistics, and compliance with international quality standards have been instrumental in sustaining India’s competitive edge in the global seafood market.

A closer look at India’s export performance across electronic goods, RMG, and marine products reveals a common thread — strong reliance on mature, high-value markets.

“The U.S. consistently emerges as the leading destination across all three sectors, underscoring its position as India’s most critical trade partner,” the official said.

“Goods and Services Tax (GST) officers have uncovered fake Input Tax Credit (ITC) claims of ₹15,851 crore in the April-June quarter of current fiscal, a 29% jump over the year-ago period, even though the number of fake firms detection was less year-over-year,” officials said.

The total number of fake firms detected by Central and State GST officers during the first quarter of FY-26 stood at 3,558, less than 3,840 such entities detected in the same quarter of FY25.

A panel of State Finance Ministers, chaired by Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, is currently studying tax evasion in specific sectors and looking at ways to check ITC fraud.

“On an average, about 1,200 fake firms are getting detected every month. The number of fake firm detection in the April-June period is less compared to last year, which shows that the drive against fake GST registration has worked,” an official said.

As per the data of the fake firms and ITC frauds detected by Central and State GST officers during the June quarter of FY26, ₹15,851 crore worth ITC was found to have been fraudulently passed involving 3,558 fake firms. During the period, 53 persons have been arrested by GST officers and ₹659 crore recovered.

In the Q1 of FY25, GST officers had detected ₹12,304 crore fake ITC involving 3,840 fake firms; ₹549 crore was recovered and 26 persons were arrested.

Under the GST regime, ITC refers to the taxes paid by businesses on purchases from suppliers. This tax can be claimed as a credit or deduction at the time of paying the final output tax. Dealing with fake ITC has been a major challenge for the GST administration as unscrupulous elements were creating fake firms just to claim ITC and defraud the exchequer.

During 2024-25, GST officers have detected 25,009 fake firms involved in fraudulently passing input tax credit worth ₹61,545 crore. GST officers have carried out two pan-India drive against fake registration under the GST.

In the first drive against fake registration between May 16, 2023 and July 15, 2023, a total of 21,791 entities having GST registration were discovered to be non-existent. An amount of ₹24,010 crore of suspected tax evasion was detected during the first special drive last year.

In the second drive between April 16 and October 30, 2024, GST officers have detected about 18,000 fake companies registered under GST, which have been involved in tax evasion of about ₹25,000 crore. To deal with this, the GST registration process has been made stringent with checks on risky applicants.

While non-risky businesses are to be granted GST registration within seven days, physical verification and Aadhaar authentication are mandatory for those those applicants who are flagged as risky by data analytics.

As a measure to track down the masterminds, the GST Act provides for punishment for wrongly availed ITC, suspension or cancellation of registration of taxpayers involved in fake ITC cases; blocking of ITC in electronic credit ledger; and provisional attachment of property/bank accounts, etc. for the recovery of government dues.

A report of the parliamentary committee set up to scrutinise the new Income Tax Bill, 2025, which would replace the six-decade old Income Tax Act, is scheduled to be tabled in the Lok Sabha on Monday (July 21, 2025).

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The 31-member Select Committee, chaired by BJP leader Baijayant Panda, was appointed by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to scrutinise The new Income Tax Bill, 2025, which was introduced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 13 in the Lok Sabha.

The Committee has made 285 suggestions and at its meeting on July 16 adopted the report on new Income Tax Bill, 2025, which will now be tabled in the House for further action.

The simplified Income Tax Bill, which is half the size of the 1961 Income Tax Act, seeks to achieve tax certainty by minimising the scope of litigation and fresh interpretation.

The new bill, introduced in the Lok Sabha, has a word count of 2.6 lakh, lower than 5.12 lakh in the I-T Act. The number of sections is 536, as against 819 effective sections in the existing law.

The number of chapters has also been halved to 23 from 47, according to the FAQs (frequently asked questions) issued by the I-T department.

The Income Tax Bill 2025 has 57 tables, compared to 18 in the existing Act and removed 1,200 provisos and 900 explanations.

Provisions relating to exemptions and TDS/TCS have been made crispier in the Bill by putting them in a tabular format, while the chapter for not-for-profit organisations has been made comprehensive with use of plain language. As a result of this, the word count has come down by 34,547.

In a taxpayer-friendly move, the Bill replaces the term ‘previous year’ as mentioned in the Income Tax Act, 1961 with ‘tax year’. Also, the concept of assessment year has been done away with.

Currently, for income earned in the previous year (say 2023-24), tax is paid in assessment year (say 2024-25). This previous year and assessment year (AY) concept has been removed and only tax year under the simplified bill has been brought in.

While introducing the Bill in the Lok Sabha, Ms. Sitharaman had said that “substantial changes” have been made in the Bill. The number of words have been halved from 5.12 lakh, and sections reduced from 819 to 236. Following introduction, the Bill was referred to the select committee of the Lok Sabha and the committee was mandated to submit its report by the first day of next session.

The Monsoon session of Parliament is scheduled to sit from July 21 to August 21, 2025.

Over the last five years, the Union government has nearly doubled the dividends it has received from public sector companies to ₹74,000 crore, with an analysis by The Hindu showing it relies heavily on a few oil, gas, and coal companies for a large chunk of these dividends.

The analysis of company-wise dividend data from the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) for the last five years shows that five fuel-related PSUs accounted for 42% of the total dividends the government has collected since the financial year 2020-21. The analysis excluded dividends from the Reserve Bank of India and the nationalised banks.

These companies — Coal India Ltd, Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL), and Gail (India) — contributed ₹1.27 lakh crore, or 42.3% of the total ₹3 lakh crore dividends the Centre received from non-banking PSUs between 2020-21 and 2024-25.

Minimal cut in petrol prices

The data also shows that the two directly-owned public sector oil marketing companies (OMCs) — IOC and BPCL — together saw a 255% increase in their dividend payouts to the government since 2022-23 and a 65% decrease in oil prices. However, they only passed on a 2% decrease in petrol prices to the public.  

The third public sector OMC, Hindustan Petroleum, is owned by ONGC, and not directly by the government. 

The total dividends from non-banking PSUs have also grown consistently since the COVID-19 pandemic. The government collected ₹39,558 crore as dividends from these companies in 2020-21, which almost doubled to ₹74,017 crore by 2024-25.

High dividends offset slow disinvestment

According to sources in the government, this is due to a “calibrated” approach to balance revenues from disinvestments and dividends. 

“The government’s disinvestment policy announced during the pandemic is still very much in place, but it is not progressing as fast as it was initially hoped,” the official told The Hindu. “At the same time, many PSUs are turning profitable and so the government is maximising the dividends it can earn from them.”

The disinvestment policy, officially called the Public Sector Enterprises Policy, stated that the government would maintain a minimum presence in strategic sectors and would exit from all non-strategic ones. It was first announced as a part of the government’s COVID-19 Atma Nirbhar Bharat package in May 2020.

However, since then, enhancing dividends has also become a part of official policy.

Mandatory minimum dividends

An office memorandum sent out by DIPAM in November 2024 to all departments of the government and the managing directors of all PSUs laid out new rules for how much dividends these companies must pay their shareholders, the largest of which is the government of India.

According to the new rules, every Central PSU must pay a minimum annual dividend of 30% of its Profit After Tax (PAT) or 4% of its net worth, whichever is higher. In fact, the government has pushed these PSUs to pay dividends much higher than this mandatory amount.

“The minimum dividend as indicated in para 5.1 above is only a minimum benchmark,” the office memorandum said. “The CPSEs are advised to strive paying higher dividend taking into account relevant factors such as profitability, capex requirements with due leveraging, cash reserves and net worth.”

High payouts

IOC and BPCL saw their combined dividend payouts to the government increase 255% between 2022-23 and 2024-25, from ₹2,435 crore to ₹8,653 crore. Dividends of OMCs are paid from their profits, which themselves rise if the selling price of their fuel is higher than the cost of their inputs. 

While the price of crude oil has fallen 65% — from $116 a barrel in June 2022 to $70 a barrel in July 2025 — the retail price of petrol has only been reduced by ₹1.95 per litre, or 2%, over this period. 

State-owned Central Bank of India on Saturday (July 19, 2025) posted a 33% growth in net profit at ₹1,169 crore during the first quarter of this financial year, aided by improvement in core income and decline in bad debts.

The Mumbai-based bank had earned a net profit of ₹880 crore in the same quarter of the previous fiscal year.

The total income rose to ₹10,374 crore during the June quarter of 2025-26, from ₹9,500 crore in the same quarter of FY25, Central Bank of India said in a regulatory filing.

Interest earned by the bank improved to ₹8,589 crore, as compared to ₹8,335 crore in the June quarter of FY25.

During the period under review, operating profit of the bank increased to ₹2,304 crore, as compared to ₹1,933 crore in the same quarter a year ago.

The bank’s asset quality showed improvement as gross non-performing assets (NPAs) declined to 3.13% of gross advances at the end of the June quarter, from 4.54% a year ago.

Gross advances increased by 9.97% to ₹2,75,595 crore from ₹2,50,615 crore at the end of June 2024.

Similarly, net NPAs, or bad loans, declined to 0.49%, as against 0.73% in the year-ago period.

As a result, provisions and contingencies halved to ₹521 crore during the first quarter as compared to ₹1,191 crore in the same period a year ago.

Provision Coverage Ratio (PCR) improved to 97.02% from 96.17%, an improvement of 85 basis points.

At the same time, Return on Assets (ROA) improved to 1.02% for June 2025, from 0.82% in June 2024, registering an improvement of 20 bps, it said.

Capital adequacy ratio of the bank rose to 17.6%, from 15.6% in the same quarter of FY25.

Total business grew by 10.84% to ₹7,04,485 crore from ₹6,35,564 crore at the end of June 2024.

State-owned Union Bank of India on Saturday (July 19, 2025) reported a 12% rise in net profit to ₹4,116 crore during the first quarter of this financial year.

The Mumbai-based lender had earned a net profit of ₹3,679 crore in the same quarter of the previous fiscal year.

The total income rose to ₹31,791 crore during the June 2025 quarter from ₹30,874 crore in the year-ago period, Union Bank of India said in a regulatory filing.

Interest earned by the bank improved to ₹27,296 crore compared to ₹26,364 crore in the June quarter of FY25.

However, net interest income declined to ₹9,113 crore during the quarter against ₹9,412 crore a year ago.

The bank’s operating profit also dropped 11% to ₹6,909 crore from ₹7,785 crore in the same quarter of the preceding fiscal.

The bank’s asset quality showed improvement as gross non-performing assets (NPAs) declined to 3.52% of gross advances at the end of the June quarter from 4.54% a year ago.

Its gross advance increased by 6.83% to ₹9,74,489 crore from ₹9,12,214 crore at the end of June 2024.

Similarly, its net NPAs, or bad loans, declined to 0.62% against 0.90% in the year-ago period.

As a result, provisions for bad loans declined to ₹1,153 crore during the first quarter compared to ₹1,651 crore a year ago.

Provision Coverage Ratio (PCR) improved to 94.65% from 93.49%, an improvement of 116 bps.

At the same time, Return on Assets (ROA) rose to 1.11% for June 2025, from 1.06% in June 2024, registering an improvement of 5 bps, the lender said.

Capital adequacy ratio of the bank rose to 18.3% from 17.02% in the same quarter of FY25.

The total business grew by 5% to ₹22,14,422 crore from ₹21,08,762 crore at the end of June 2024.

The textile industry is pitching for a fibre-neutral GST at 5% for the entire textile and apparel value chain.

Currently, cotton-based textile sector has 5% GST, except for garments priced above ₹1,000. These garments attract 12% duty. However, in the Man Made Fibre (MMF) sector, the GST on PTA (Purified Terephthalic Acid) and MEG (Monoethylene Glycol) that are critical raw materials for polyester production is 18%, MMF filament and spun yarn attract 12% duty, fabric and garments are at5 %, and garments and fabric priced above Rs. 1,000 a piece are at 12%.

There should be no inverted duty structure and there should be a fibre-neutral rate which is the lowest in the GST slabs, said RK Vij, secretary general of Polyester Textiles Apparel Industry Association.

If the industry should achieve the target of $100 billion annual exports and $250 billion domestic sales by 2030, all sectors of the textile industry should grow. For now, there is no major expansion in the pipeline for three years in the viscose sector and the cotton sector is not growing. The growth of the MMF sector is crucial and hence, the government should rationalise the GST rates for this sector, right from the raw material stage, he said.

According to K. Selvaraju, secretary general of the Southern India Mills Association, garments and fabric priced above ₹2,000 should be levied 12% duty and for the other products across the textile value chain, be it cotton, viscose, or polyester, the rate should be 5%. The micro, small and medium-scale enterprises are struggling when funds are blocked in tax paid for inputs. MMF-based fabric and garment are the most affordable for the common man. And, hence, MMF sector should also be brought under uniform 5% duty. Further, textile and apparel sector is the highest job-generating industry and it should attract investments to create more jobs. Rationalisation of the GST rates will help make investments viable, he said.