The PM's Office & Finance Ministry are in favour of a big GST rate cut on housing and are working to build consensus with states to push this through at the next GST Council meet on December-22, ET Now learns from reliable sources. The intent is to be consumer friendly, and bring home buyers back to the market with a much cheaper GST rate.

The government estimates that illegal routing of international calls by grey market call centres caused it notional loss of around Rs.1,539 crore in the last 2 fiscal years. According to data shared by Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha in the Lok Sabha Wednesday, illegal routing of international calls led to notional loss of Rs.750.13 crore in 2016-17 and Rs.788.92 crore, excluding interest, in 2017-18.

The Railways has received more than 7,500 complaints from passengers over bad quality of food served on trains and imposed fines of about Rs 1.5 cr on vendors till October this year, the ministry informed Parliament on Wednesday. "Strict action is taken against contractors/suppliers whenever any complaint regarding poor quality of food is substantiated," he said.