The National Hindu Movement, Swarajya Hindustan, Shiv Pratisthan Hindustan, Shriram Seva Samiti, Yog Vendanta Samiti, BJP, Sanatan Sanstha and Hindu Janjagruti Samiti demonstrated in Kalyan demanding the government must ensure that Nepal is declared a Hindu nation.

“A conspiracy is being hatched to turn Nepal, identified as the only Hindu nation in the world, into a secular state. When Bharat was partitioned on the basis of religions, the Congress imposed secularism on Bharat despite a Hindu majority nation. Therefore, Bharat should ensure that Hindu majority Nepal does not suffer from similar injustice,” a National Hindu Movement release said.

The release said that Nepal’s communist and secular forces have launched an agitation in support of secular Constitution; while on the other hand, the Hindu community is making efforts to get Nepal declared a Hindu nation.

The demonstrators also demanded action against anti-nationals hoisting Pakistani and ISIS flags and demanded implementation of a uniform civil code to check the increasing Muslim population.

Bulge-bracket property deals by the rich and the famous are not new to the land-starved megapolis, but the weekend sale of the iconic Lincoln House here to the Pune-based industrialist Cyrus Poonawalla for Rs 750 crore is nothing but mind-boggling.

The sale of the Lincoln House in the Breach Candy area of south Mumbai, which used to house the US Consulate, to the billionaire chairman of the Pune-based Serum Institute, makes it the largest ever real estate deal in the country’s financial capital.

Founded in 1966, Serum Institute of India is the largest producer of drugs for snake bite.

The high-profile deal comes within a week of leading industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla setting a record last week when he paid Rs 425 crore for Jatia House in the plush Malabar Hill area.

The 2-acre Grade-III property at Breach Candy has a built-up area of around 50,000 sq ft.

Though Grade-III heritage properties are open for redevelopment now, sources said Poonawalla wants to use the Lincoln House as a family residence.

Both the US Consulate and Poonawalla could not be reached immediately.

However, the property, which has been on the block since 2011, was sold at a lower price than what the Americans were demanding — a whopping Rs 850 crore.

Joining the league of Kumar Birla, Poonawalla will also use the property as a family residence, sources added.

Last year, the iconic Mehrangir, the house of the father of the nation’s atomic programme, Homi Bhabha, in the Malabar Hill area, was sold to the Godrej family for Rs 372 crore.

In another high profile deal in 2011, the Maheshwari House was sold for Rs 400 crore.

Aiming to do business with Japan in a big way, Maharashtra government said it will have a ‘One stop shop’ to monitor all projects involving Japanese companies.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who returned after a four-day trip to Japan today, told PTI that the state government has decided to set up a special desk in Mantralaya (state secretariat) to oversee these projects.

“A special desk will be set up along with JETRO to do hand holding for Japanese companies. “This will be a sort of one stop shop,” the Chief Minister said.

Fadnavis said NIDEC Corporation (Nihon Densan Kabushiki Kaisha), world’s leading manufacturer of electric motors, will send its team to Maharashtra to explore investment opportunities.

“NIDEC Corporation manufactures electric motors for hard disk drives, electronic appliances and automobiles,” said Fadnavis, who met Shigenobu Nagamori of the Japanese company during the last leg of his Japan tour.

“The company will send a team to Maharashtra to explore investment opportunities,” he said.

Fadnavis also visited the Yokohama port and reviewed the development work being carried out. Fadnavis and Industries Minister Subhash Desai visited the port, which handles 27 million tonne of cargo.

He also attended and addressed a function organised by Association of Friends of Japan. “The Association has agreed to work as a facilitating centre in Japan to bring investment in Maharashtra,” he said.

During his visit, the Maharashtra Chief Minister, who unveiled Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar’s statue at Koyasan University in Japan, said “Ambedkar’s struggle and principles for human dignity, social equality and justice is universal and relevant even in the modern age.”

Fadnavis had on September 8 embarked on a four-day visit to Japan where he held consultations with captains of Japanese trade and commerce for investment opportunities back home.

He was accompanied by top officials of Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC), Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) and Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), on the trip.

More than a third of the 69 small and marginal oil and gas fields that the government plans to auction to private firms are in Mumbai Offshore and the biggest of them holds about 15 million tons of oil reserves.

Of the 69 idle oil and gas fields of state-owned ONGC and Oil India Ltd which are to be auctioned, 27 are in Mumbai Offshore while another 15 are in the prolific Krishna Godavari (KG) basin, official sources said.

As many as 10 discoveries in the Assam Shelf are also on offer.

The discoveries, which the government says were given up by the two oil companies as they were unable to develop them for varied reasons, include ones made as late as 2012-13.

In all, seven marginal discoveries of ONGC date back to less than five years, with 2012-13 Koravaka gas field in KG basin being the youngest. An equal number of finds were made between 2005-06 and 2008-09.

While cumulatively the surrendered small and marginal fields hold about 50.8 million tons of oil and 53.45 billion cubic meters of gas, the biggest discovery is the D-18 in Mumbai Offshore that along holds 14.78 million tons of inplace oil reserves.

Among the gas discoveries, the largest is ONGC’s B-9 find in the offshore Kutch basin that has an inplace reserve of 14.67 bcm.

Sources said while Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) has surrendered 63 discoveries, OIL has given up six all of whom are in Assam Shelf.

The 69 fields will be grouped with those lying adjacent clubbed to form on unit. So far the clubbing has brought down the number of fields to be offered in the auction to 48, they said adding the final number of offer may be a little lower.

The auction will be done on a new revenue sharing model where bidders will be asked to quote the revenue they will share with the government at low and high end of price and production band.

This would help the government capture windfall of steep rise in prices as well as quantum jump in production.

The new revenue sharing regime will replace the controversial Production Sharing Contract (PSC) model where oil and gas blocks are awarded to those firms which show they will do maximum work on a block.

The PSC regime allowed all their investments to be recovered from sale of oil and gas before profits are shared with the government. This model was criticised by CAG which said it encouraged companies to keep raising cost so as to postpone higher share of profits to the government.

A third student of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), who was on a relay hunger strike, was taken to a hospital on Sunday after his sugar levels dropped, even as protests against appointment of actor and BJP member Gajendra Chauhan as institution’s chairman continued.

Ankit Thapa was shifted to a private hospital on the fourth day of relay hunger strike. He had replaced Hiral Savad who too was hospitalised on Friday and was discharged yesterday.

Another student, Shahi Aj of 2012 batch, replaced Thapa on the chain hunger strike, said Ranajit Nair, representative of FTII Students’ Association (FSA) said.

Alok Arora, who was on a hunger strike, hospitalised after he felt unwell due to a drop in sugar level.

The hunger-strike entered the fourth-day.

The agitating students now on more than three-month-old strike in support of their demands resorted to indefinite hunger strike on Thursday claiming that they had been left with no other option because of the “apathy” shown by the government to the issues raised by them including that of setting up a ‘transparent mechanism” to select the FTII chairman.

They have also alleged that Chauhan lacks “credentials and vision” to head the premiere institute expected to give a direction to film making in country.

The Information and Broadcasting ministry who has taken a tough stance on the long drawn out strike by the students who have been boycotting classes since June 12, has so far cold-shouldered their demand to hold another round of talks with them after failure of the July 3 dialogue in Delhi to find a solution to the impasse.