Undue extra amount of Rs 199.48 crore was paid due to defective contract terms relating to escalation of payments, it says.

According to the CAG, a loss of more than Rs 315 crore has been incurred and a loss of Rs 2460 crore will be further incurred due to faulty finances.

Bulk purchase of aircraft indicates lack of foresight of the management in protecting financial interest of Air India while signing an agreement of such magnitude.

The decision to pay wage arrears out of working capital loans with associated additional interest when NACIL was facing acute financial crisis was imprudent, the report says, adding, the financial case for Air India’s merger with Indian Airlines was not adequately validated.

The decision of Sonia Gandhi to opt for US hospital for treatment has also came as a huge surprise for Medical Association in India. It raises questions on the claim made by medical experts that India is not only a cheap medical destination but also provides world class treatment.

But questions will be raised when President of ruling Congress party of India and a Gandhi family member decides to go abroad for treatment. Already several experts in United States and Europe have started to take dig at the India’s medical tourism industry.

Ideally Sonia Gandhi should have opted for an Indian hospital. Big personalities in India like Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan, all went through critical surgery in India successfully. Medical Association in India praised these personalities for showing faith and reaffirming the fact that doctors and medical facilities in India are of World Class.

A large number of medical tourists opt for treatment abroad not because its cheap but because of quality. India also receives majority of medical tourists from neighboring Asian countries as well from Africa who travel here for good services and being relatively close to their country.

Total revenues for the quarter rose 18.5 percent to 35.82 billion rupees.

Analysts had forecast Jet to show a higher loss, of 2.7 billion rupees. Air passenger traffic has been rising this fiscal year, leading to healthy seat occupancies for airlines, but this has been offset by steep fuel costs, which have hurt most Indian airlines’ earnings.

Jet said its fuel costs rose 57 percent in the April to June quarter. Jet expects strong growth in international business in coming months, a statement said, but added that the second quarter would be “tough” due to firm global crude oil prices.

In the first quarter, international operations accounted for 57 percent of total revenues and Jet achieved a seat load factor of 78.5 percent, compared with 79.7 percent a year earlier.

The airline carried 4.07 million passengers in the quarter, up 14 percent in the same period a year earlier. Jet operates a fleet of 97 aircraft and flies to 75 destinations in India and abroad. Jet shares rose 2.36 percent or 11.5 rupees to 499.05 ahead of the earnings figures. India’s airline sector, which was hit by the global slowdown in 2009, has been recovering in line with a rebounding Indian economy.

“I am amazed that the current issue of Granta has engaged so many people in the debate about feminism,” Butalia said. Her biography of Mona dredges up the debates over gender swap which continues to vex millions of Indians to this day when alternative sexual groups and minorities are asserting their rights the world over and winning brownie points in their crusade.

In India, despite the amendment of Article 377 by the Delhi High Court to allow the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) communities marginal sexual freedom, eunuchs are still objects of curiosity and doubt in the conservative social fabrics – given the historical stigmas, roles and lifestyles associated with them. “I met Mona, a boy-turned-girl, at a birthday party in a graveyard. The proximity of birth and death stayed with us for many years in the graveyard,” Butalia said in her book. “The back wall of her home abutted that of a morgue of a local hospital and Mona would often say to unsuspecting people, ‘I have the dead behind me and the dead below me’,” she added.

Mona finds the grave on which people had built their homes a “fine way to live”. “Mona, born a boy, always wanted to be a mother. She learnt how to burp a baby even before she adopted one,” the writer said. But like all other members of the extended adopted families of transgenders in India, tragedy stalked her. The birthday party where Butalia met Mona was heart-rending.

“It turned out that Ayesha (Mona’s daughter) had not come to her own birthday party because a few days earlier she had been abducted by her adoptive grandmother Chaman and ‘mother’ Nargis, who along with Mona had formed themselves into a family for the child,” the writer said. If Butalia’s story in the anthology is a picture of an Indian reality, Caroline Moorehead’s “A Train In Winter” is a wrenching tale of a police crackdown on French Resistance in 1942. It is a tale of the tough fronts women presented to the police.

Of the 113 people detained in the raid, 35 were women. The youngest of those picked up was a 16-year-old school girl, Rosa Floch, and the eldest was a 44-year-old farmer’s wife, Madeline Normand, who told police the 39,500 francs in her handbag was the money she had paid for selling a horse — standing her ground during interrogation. Nine months later, the women were transported on the only train meant to ferry women from the French Resistance to Nazi death camps.

Said emerging African writer Taiye Selasi, whom Granta has introduced in its current issue on feminism: “In the peculiar hierarchy of African households, the only rung lower than the motherless child is the childless mother.” Her narrative, “Sex Life of African Girls”, a comment on the vulnerability of women in big families, drives home an irony: “Africa may be opening itself to the world, but in the regimented filial closets voices of battered wives are the last ones to be heard.” After all, it is a man’s home.

The launch event was attended by Omar Abdullah, Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir, Farooq Abdullah, Abhijit Mukerji, Executive Director, Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces along with Veer Vijay Singh, Chief Operating Officer, Vivanta by Taj – Hotels & Resorts. Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces has entered into a management contract with SAIFCO Hill Crest Hotels Pvt. Ltd, part of a well-known business house in the state.

Offering a new signature in hospitality, Vivanta by Taj – Hotels and Resorts, from the Taj group of hotels, caters to the upper upscale segment and has 19 hotels presently across the country, thus expanding its footprint in the Northern region with the launch of the property in Kashmir.

The Bangalore-based company, formerly known as Flight Raja Travels Pvt. Ltd, also plans to sell shares to the public in India and the U.S. to raise as much as $1 billion in the next 18 months to 24 months, said Vinay Gupta, co-founder and chief executive of the company.

In India, travel portals have generated a lot of interest among venture capital and private equity investors with firms such as Cleartrip Travel Services Pvt. Ltd and Yatra Online Pvt. Ltd raising multiple rounds of funds from investors

Via is in talks with more than half-a-dozen investors, and expects to complete the initial fund-raising process in four to five months. The corpus raised would be used to fund Via’s growth and build its brand.