Top news of the day: Consumer price inflation eases to 5-year low in July; IIT Madras bags NIRF top ranking, IISc Bengaluru and IIT Bombay follow, and more

Consumer price inflation eases to 5-year low in July; IIT Madras bags NIRF top ranking, IISc Bengaluru and IIT Bombay follow, and more in The Hindu’s top news of August 12, 2024.

Inflation in India’s consumer prices eased to a nearly five-year low of 3.54% in July, with food price rise moderating to 5.4% from a six-month high of 9.4% in June, thanks to base effects from last July when retail inflation stood at 7.4% and the food index was up 11.5%. Inflation faced by urban consumers dropped to just under 3% in July, from 4.4% in June, while rural consumers experienced a relatively higher price rise of 4.1%, down from 5.7% in June. Food price rise was also higher in rural India at 5.9% compared with 4.6% in urban parts of the country. In June, rural food inflation was lower at 9.15% while urban food prices were up 9.6%.

India’s industrial output growth slumped to a five-month low of 4.2% in June, with manufacturing output growth halving to 2.6% from the previous month, and electricity generation easing 2.8% from May’s record high in the face of an abating heat wave. On the basis of end-use, production growth fell in all six segments compared to May, with consumer non-durables’ output shrinking 1.4% from last June, marking the second such contraction in three months.

IIT Madras bagged the top position as the best educational institution in the country overall category in the ranking conducted by National Board of Accreditation (NBA) and National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF). Following IIT Madras, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, and IIT Bombay secured the second and third positions, respectively, in the overall category. IIT Delhi, which was at the third spot last year in the category, has slipped to the fourth position.

All the ten Adani group stocks slumped in early trade on August 12, with Adani Energy tumbling 17%, after the U.S. short-seller Hindenburg Research alleged that SEBI chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch and her husband had undisclosed investments in obscure offshore funds in Bermuda and Mauritius, the same entities allegedly used by Vinod Adani to round-trip funds and inflate stock prices. Adani Energy Solutions nosedived 17%, Adani Total Gas tanked 13.39%, NDTV plunged 11% and Adani Power dropped 10.94% on the BSE.

The Congress on August 12 slammed the Modi Government over the Hindenburg Research’s allegations against SEBI chairperson Madhabi Buch, demanding a JPC probe into “Modani Megascam involving the self-annointed non-biological PM and a perfectly biological businessman”. The Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh demanded SEBI chairperson Madhabi Buch’s resignation and urged the Supreme Court to transfer the Adani probe to the CBI or a Special Investigation Team given the “likelihood of SEBI’s compromise”.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on August 12 visited the residence of the doctor allegedly sexually assaulted and murdered at R G Kar Medical College and Hospital. She reached the residence by 12:45 p.m. Ms. Banerjee has said that she has no issues with the investigation by Central agencies if the family so desires, after talking to her parents and family members. Meanwhile, 10 government hospitals in Delhi have begun an indefinite strike, halting all elective services on August 12 in response to the murder in Kolkata.

A special camp to retrieve official documents of the landslide survivors who lost everything, was launched on August 12 in the disaster-hit regions of Wayanad, Kerala, where a search mission to locate missing people continued. The camps are being held in select schools at Meppadi as part of the certificate/document retrieval campaign jointly carried out by the Local Self-Government department, district administration and the State IT Mission.