StayGeo

How to change/correct name in a demat account?

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 14:57:00 +0000

Those who open demat accounts online would know that brokers fetch the name from the PAN database and sometimes it could be different from what is printed on the PAN card. Here I would be sharing my personal experience about how I got it corrected for my wife.

My wife's last name was misspelt and was broken into three parts in the PAN database. The steps involved the correction of the name in PAN, followed by the movement of stocks to another demat account and back to Zerodha. We came back to Zerodha due to the trust factor and their excellent interface.

Correction of name in PAN

This was the easiest thing. We had to fill the forms online with the corrected name, attach proofs and send them to Protean. You may be able to e-authenticate if the name matches in Aadhaar but that was not the case with us. We only had initials in Aadhaar for the second name. The correction was done in around two weeks.

Attempt to correct name in demat account

Her account was with Zerodha and we tried submitting the account modification form and KYC, Annexure B, new PAN and address proof as outlined here. However, the request was promptly rejected as they considered it a major change and requested a gazette notification for a name change or passport to be submitted. Our attempts to make them understand that ours was a name correction and not a name change were unsuccessful. That is when I sought advice from Manmohan whom I know through the ever-helpful AIFW community. He was quick to point out that these attempts would be futile based on his multiple experiences and suggested that I move my demat account elsewhere and come back to Zerodha later if necessary. Another suggested option was to transfer the holdings to my account temporarily, close the Zerodha account and move the holdings back to a new account - this will have to be backed by documentation.

Transfer to Shoonya

The search for a broker equivalent to Zerodha began and I zeroed down to Shoonya by Finvasia. We invest only for the long term and zero brokerage was a must. Zero charges for account opening would be nice and Shoonya fit the bill. The account opening process was online and it took about a week to activate the account. We took the CDSL Easiest route to transfer all the holdings to the Shoonya account and had to bear the transaction charges of 0.03% of the transfer value or ₹25 per ISIN, whichever is higher, + 18% GST. This was the only option (and not closure cum transfer which would have been free) since the names were different in both accounts.

We continued investing through the new account and the experience was largely good. However, the interface was not great and we did not like a few aspects like the requirement of separate logins for back office and reporting sites. Adding to it, those sites were not protected by 2FA either.

Back to Zerodha

In the meantime, Zerodha had made account opening free which started attracting me towards them again. One fine day, I took the plunge and got my wife to open the Zerodha account. Unlike Shoonya, the process was quick and we could operate the account in ~48 hrs. I believed that I would have to again take the CDSL Easiest route to transfer holdings back to Zerodha as I did not want to get a CMR copy and courier it to the Finvasia office. This used to be the process earlier and account closure cum transfer would be free. My understanding was that Shoonya did not offer an online option for this procedure. But while looking around in Shoonya, I discovered that they offer this option online. In fact, CDSL mandates all their brokers to do so. Elated by this discovery, we triggered the closure cum transfer process and that took about ten days to complete.

So with some back and forth, we finally have the correct name in the demat account thereby reducing any risk in the future.

The Mutual Fund Mandate Conundrum

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 09:07:00 +0000

I always use the biller option in net banking to set up mutual fund SIPs. This time I was set to help an elderly gentleman to set up a SIP in a scheme run by UTI Mutual fund and that led me to write this post - one after several months in this blog! He has his savings account with a PSU - Canara Bank and I must say that is one tough bank to deal with. Every update requires a branch visit and they charge for literally everything - even for mobile number and email ID updates, separately. It cost us ₹59/- including GST.

Tip: If you are unable to reset your net banking password for Canara Bank due to your date of birth not being registered with them, use the Unix default - 01 January 1970!

Now coming to the actual topic,

One Time Mandate (OTM)

MF Central (MFC) has been my choice for managing mutual funds, especially for account particular updates, ever since they launched. As long as your investment value does not exceed ₹10 lakhs, they allow doing most of the things online. If you were procrastinating on that mobile number or email ID update just because of an office visit requirement, MFC is the place for you. They have built a neat interface and things get done in a time-bound manner. Things like consolidation of folios are a breeze as long as account particulars are the same across folios.

With Canara Bank, not offering the biller option, I had to opt for OTM setup for this gentleman. At MFC, I was prompted to set up an OTM in order to start the SIP and for this, I was provided with two options - CAMS and KFintech. Assuming it to be just like payment gateway choices, I went ahead with CAMS. After repeated failures at the bank's end due to myriad reasons, it was finally successful. Got charged a sum of ₹177 for a simple operation and the problems just began.

Tip: Know various banks' mandate setup charges.

Despite OTM registration successful confirmations from the bank and MFC, when I tried registering the SIP by clicking on the "One Time Mandate" option, the OTM which was shown until then kept disappearing from the screen.

Before

After

This baffled me and multiple communications with MFC did not help much. They kept asking me to try again and send the screenshots. Then a sudden realization dawned - does it matter where the mandate is registered? I set out to look for who is the registrar for UTI MF and that turned out to be KFintech. 🤦‍♂️

Could this be handled better?

Definitely, IMO. All that had to be in place (in MFC) was some help text informing users about what difference it makes depending on who you register the mandate with.

I have two choices now -

Register another mandate with KFIN and pay setup charges to the bank
Go with a CAMS registered fund house

And I am likely to choose # 2.

Update

I had shared the above observations and suggestions with MFC and they replied stating they would consider my feedback - I hope to see it implemented in the coming months!

smoother transactions.
We thank you for the valuable feedback, we have shared your requirements with our development team to check feasibility of implementing same in our future enhancements. (2/2)
— MFCentral (@MFCentral_India) September 16, 2022

DevOps Demo: GitHub Actions for Azure WebApp Deployment

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Sat, 29 Feb 2020 08:10:00 +0000

On a daily basis, I automate builds and deployments with Azure DevOps Pipelines. I was excited to come across the news of the launch of CI/CD capabilities on GitHub Actions and was looking for an opportunity to try things out. The opportunity came when I got to be one of the trainers for DevOps track in the NASSCOM GCC Skills development session for select Engineering college faculties hosted by Hexagon.

SonarCloud Dashboard

The objective was to give insights into software development practices followed by large IT organizations. In addition to an in-depth presentation, we demonstrated source code management, explained good coding practices and tools involved from a DevOps perspective.

The Choices: GitHub and Microsoft Azure

For source code management, we chose GitHub owing to the awareness factor
Through GitHub Actions, demonstrated Azure DevOps pipelines kind of capabilities
For the demo, we felt a web application would be a good choice as it would enable us to showcase cloud platform usage

The PetClinic Project

To avoid building everything from scratch, I started looking for a nice looking free web application. This led us to the PetClinic project approved by the Spring Team. I got started by forking it and managed to set up a GitHub Actions workflow to build and deploy the application. While the Java part, until "Build with Maven" was simple, it took quite some effort to get the Azure WebApps Deployment part to work.

name: Build & Deploy Pet Clinic

on: push

jobs:
  build-and-deploy:

    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v1
    
    - name: Set up JDK 1.8
      uses: actions/setup-java@v1
      with:
        java-version: 1.8
    
    - name: Unit Tests
      run: mvn test
      
    - name: Build with Maven
      run: mvn -B package --file pom.xml
      
    - name: SonarCloud scan
      run: mvn verify sonar:sonar
      env:
        GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        SONAR_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.sonarToken }}
      if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/master'
        
    - name: Azure WebApp Deployment
      uses: Azure/webapps-deploy@v1
      with:
        publish-profile: ${{ secrets.stagingPublishProfile }}
        app-name: thepetclinic
        package: '${{ github.workspace }}/target/*.war'
        slot-name: thepetclinic-staging
        
    - name: Azure Login
      uses: Azure/login@v1
      with:
        creds: ${{ secrets.AZURE_CREDS }}
    
    - run: |
        az storage blob upload -c petclinic -f '${{ github.workspace }}/target/petclinic.war' -n 'petclinic_${{ github.sha }}.war' \
        --account-name warfiles \
        --account-key ${{ secrets.azureStorage }}

In addition to the process involved in building the Actions workflow, we explained the following best practices -

Version control for source code management - this is something which students rarely do today and end up with code scattered between computers during their project work
Pull request based code change merging
Secrets and variable management - no checking in credentials in plain text to version control system
Unit testing
Eliminate bugs and vulnerabilities from start through SonarCloud - free for open source projects
Overview of the Microsoft Azure functionality - quick bits about opening free/trial accounts with Microsoft Azure, AWS
Swapping between staging and production slots
Artifact management - here the generated .war files were uploaded to Azure Storage account

What Next?

The next time, I get to demonstrate on the topic, I am planning following improvements -

External database in place of present in-memory database
More data
Custom domain mapping
Secondary demo, perhaps using a containerized version of PetClinic

How to pay India Post Recurring Deposit (RD) installments online?

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Mon, 18 Nov 2019 08:50:00 +0000

Most middle-class Indian households have Recurring Deposit (RD) accounts with India Post to save for the future. My mother used to open RD accounts in such a way that money was available just before an academic year begins to cater to school expenses. In those times, the monthly installments used to be paid through agents who visited every month collecting to collect the dues. While this continues even today, some of us wish if we could avoid these agents and pay the installments online. In the recent years, India Post has launched internet banking facility for accounts held in Department of Posts and also the India Post Payments Bank (IPPB). However, it is a hassle to activate net banking for each member of the household when small monthly contributions are involved to products such as RD. Thankfully, this can be avoided if you have an IPPB account.

All you need is the account numbers and customer IDs. While these details are often found on the RD passbooks, if you don't find them approach your post office one last time. You are good to proceed now.

Step 1 - Login to IPPB Mobile app

Step 2 - Use the Send Money option

On the home screen or the hamburger menu, you will find the 'Send Money' option. Click on it and subsequently tap the DOP Products option.

Step 3 - Fill in the details

Fill in the details here. Though the screen presents number of installments, it didn't work for numbers other than one. Therefore, 'set it, forget it' standing instructions are still away.

In the subsequent screen you will be shown the account holder's name and the details like installment due, no. of installments etc. plus the Pay button.

As you can see, with IPPB there are a lot more things you could do w.r.t. to your accounts in Department of Posts - like paying for PPF, SSY accounts and even avail loan against RD accounts.

Cashbacks - How about investing the money and see it grow?

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Sat, 02 Nov 2019 15:23:00 +0000

I have always been a fan of cashbacks, especially the instant ones. Deferred cashbacks can be a hit or a miss - have seen instances of they not coming through at all. Wallet Cos. like Paytm, Amazon Pay, Freecharge all give us cashbacks ranging from tiny amounts like ₹5 to large amounts like ₹250. For long, I counted cashbacks as free money and didn't worry about tracking them. Just ensured that they don't expire and used them up. Recently, I was excited to notice that my total cashback earnings were hitting three digits as in ₹300 in some months.

This is when I decided to take a closer look and computed the totals for a wallet platform. Turned out that the total was a princely four digit sum over the past year. I repeated the exercise across wallets that I use and arrived at a decent number. Add credit card earnings and that number becomes even bigger.

As a small time investor, I started feeling why not invest the money and see it grow? This is exactly what I am going to do now. Start investing the amount in a mutual fund. While the general advice has been to add the money to the funds I am already investing in, I will take a different route since this doesn't allow me to see it grow separately. I will use a new fund solely for this purpose - channelise cashback earnings and see it grow over the years.

Now the investments won't be big sums every month since monthly earnings can even be lesser than ₹100. So depending on how much comes, I am planning for a minimum of ₹500 to accumulate and then push it to this fund.

Want to do the same?

If you plan to do a similar thing with your cashbacks, just do it! Head over to your wallet's statement page and drill down for cashbacks. Amazon Pay for instance allows you to filter just the cashbacks -

Paytm's statements or spend analysis section show the details -

At Freecharge, use the 'Money In' filter.

A simple search of your email inbox can give you these details as well. Let me know what you do with cashbacks in comments.

Azure Az: Operation failed with status: 'Forbidden'. Details: 403 Client Error

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 07:51:00 +0000

I was trying to create a new resource group on Azure using a Shell script. An app registration was created followed by assigning the 'Contributor' role to the Service Principal. However, the az group create command repeatedly returned 403 Client errors.

Operation failed with status: 'Forbidden'. Details: 403 Client Error: Forbidden for url: https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/<subscription id>/resourcegroups/rg-internal?api-version=2018-05-01

We suspected Service Principal permission issues and even elevated it as owner but that didn't help. Next, I tried using my personal account with contributor permissions to create the resource group but even that failed. That's when I suspected something is amiss and tried creating the resource group from the Azure Portal. It revealed the actual reason -

Once I added the relevant tags, errors vanished and the resource group was instantly created.

Moral: If commands don't work, wherever possible try the operation from Azure Portal.

Changing the host name on Ubuntu 18.04

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Tue, 11 Sep 2018 08:54:00 +0000

I cloned an Ubuntu 18.04 Server instance post which I wished to change the hostname of the new instance. What was supposed to be a simple operation of updating the hostname in the /etc/hostname and running sudo hostname <new hostname> didn't work as expected. The hostname used to revert on reboot. It took me quite some time to arrive at the right solution. An Ask Ubuntu answer set me in the right direction though it did not work as-is. The reason is the shipment of cloud-init in Ubuntu 18.04. I got it to work with the following steps -

The Procedure

Step 1

Edit the cloud.cfg file present in /etc/cloud to set preserve_hostname to true.

sudo sed 's/preserve_hostname: false/preserve_hostname: true/' /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg

Step 2

Edit the /etc/hostname file and set the desired hostname in it.

sudo vi /etc/hostname

Step 3

Use hostnamectl to set the hostname. The new name would persist on reboots.

sudo hostnamectl set-hostname <new name>

Why I moved away from Airtel?

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Fri, 29 Jun 2018 06:05:00 +0000

Little over a year ago, I ported one of my BSNL numbers to Airtel. The idea was to make Airtel my primary number, essentially due to strong coverage at my workplace. However, post becoming a customer things took a different turn. It turned out that Airtel's coverage is pretty bad across Hyderabad - except for okayish internet speeds, calls were a nightmare. Call drops and getting connected to a number other than the called number was way too common. The experience became even poorer after much-hyped network upgrades to offer VoLTE services. I'm yet to meet anyone in Hyderabad who is constantly seeing VoLTE active on the device. In contrast, several of my friends and colleagues who even use high-end devices like iPhone and OnePlus didn't see VoLTE show up even once. In the recent months, several of them ported out and the first choice was Jio. Speaks volumes about India's fastest network.

I should add that beyond the network experience, there are several other factors which influenced my decision to move away from Airtel. While I had often heard complaints about the operator's unfair treatment of customers, I experienced them personally in this timeframe.

Segmented offers - for Airtel all customers are not equal. Thanks to their efficient PR machinery, they get widespread coverage for launching new competitive tariffs which are often reactive measures to Jio's offerings. The ground reality is these attractive tariffs are barely available to a majority of Airtel consumers.
Offers not applicable to Airtel customers - as a BSNL subscriber for several years, I enjoyed double benefits of cashbacks plus limited time offers like full talk time by recharging the number through private portals like Paytm. Soon after becoming an Airtel subscriber I observed that such offers (especially full/extra TT) are exclusive to Airtel's app/website and different ones are available at private portals.
Not allowing recharge from the balance - this came as a major disappointment. I am used to maintaining good amount as prepaid balance, often above ₹500. With the advent of unlimited plans like ₹349, I was shocked when I discovered that the existing balance could not be used to recharge the so-called *best offers*. According to the customer care, I could use the balance to activate data packs or rate cutters. Who on the earth would need them when one is on an unlimited plan?!
Not truly unlimited - Despite advertising unlimited voice, calls to premium numbers like the 1860 series costs ₹2/minute
Deliberately hiding cost-effective recharge options in the app - Rate cutters, for instance, are not shown in the My Airtel app at all. Even on the website (which is no less than a maze), one has to exercise options carefully for the rate cutters to be shown.

Result

I am now on Jio, India's most transparent telecom operator who is serious about offering a great experience to the entire customer base. Jio app ecosystem is making the service even more attractive. BSNL will continue to be my secondary number hereafter.

Nginx - Solution for 10060: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Fri, 08 Jun 2018 09:33:00 +0000

I was in the process of setting up Nginx to serve as the reverse proxy for Nexus Repository Manager OSS. However, the Nexus repository started loading really slowly post this and used to repeatedly display disconnected and reconnected messages. The Nginx log file used to log the below error -

<timestamp> [error] 3240#3632: *1 upstream timed out (10060: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond) while connecting to upstream, client: <ip address="">, server: <fqdn>, request: "GET /nexus HTTP/1.1", upstream: "http://[::1]:8081/nexus", host: "<fqdn>"

My nginx.conf for this context path was -

location /nexus {

proxy_set_header Host $host:$server_port; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;

proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme; proxy_redirect http:// https://;

proxy_pass http://<fqdn>:8081/nexus; # though this was the same VM, I used FQDN here

}

After spending a significant amount of time, I finally came across a really simple but non-obvious solution here. It was to change proxy_pass to;

proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8081/nexus;

Quoting from the linked document -

There might also be an issue when using domain names which are external while you are internal to Nginx, ea. All traffic going out through a router and back in again, use a local DNS (or your ‘host’ file to keep such traffic local)

Now the Nexus repository does not have any access issues. Loads blazing fast.

Making a custom field mandatory for a specific project in JIRA

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Wed, 09 May 2018 06:35:00 +0000

Often we have project teams seeking the addition of custom fields and request that it be mandatory for only their project. These projects essentially share the same JIRA workflow, issue type, field, permission schemes but have different screens to enable display of the new custom fields. Now comes the tricky part - making the custom field mandatory would start throwing up errors while creating issues in the screens where they are not even available -

Error while attempting to create an issue in a different project

I checked out discussions on the subject in Atlassian Community but most answers suggested having a different field configuration altogether. This was not really an option in my case - didn't want to add clutter. That's when I came across an option in the custom field configuration that allowed specifying the projects to which a custom field needs to be available -

Choose applicable context for the Custom Field

This resolved our issue entirely and we are now able to add custom fields and make them mandatory for specific JIRA Projects.

Turning off a Dell Laptop Monitor: Keyboard shortcut(s)

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Fri, 27 Jan 2017 14:18:00 +0000

I am someone who is particular about power savings and I don't leave appliances powered on when not in use. The same applies to computing devices - be it a smartphone or a PC/Laptop. I power off the desktop monitor when I step out for a tea break or hit Fn+F2 on my Lenovo laptop that turns off the display. Recently, I got a Dell Laptop and I was surprised to discover that Dell does not provide any shortcut to turn off the display. This led to some exploration and I found two ways to achieve that which are outlined below -

Power Button Options

This is the easiest and straightforward option. Just head to Power Options and go to what the power buttons do section. Here the best option I found was to assign turn off the display option to the sleep button since I never put the computer to sleep. Even if I have to use sleep, I can do it through the OS Power menu.

Note: If your keyboard does not have a sleep button, you could use the Fn + Insert combination.

BIOS Settings - Unobtrusive mode

This is relatively difficult and depends on you having access to the System Setup (BIOS). Here under system configuration, you can enable the 'unobtrusive mode' which is disabled by default. Once enabled, you can use Fn+F7 that will turn off all the light and sound emissions in the system. All the lights include even the power, hard disk LED indicators.

SSL VPN: Configuring and Using Forticlient on Ubuntu, creating a Launcher

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Wed, 28 Sep 2016 08:30:00 +0000

Is your primary OS at home Linux and do you use Windows only to connect to your work PC over VPN or to attend meetings?
Do you often wish to connect to your work VPN from a Linux PC?

If your answer is 'Yes' to the above questions, I have an answer if your workplace uses Fortinet SSL VPN. Note that it's possible to connect to Fortinet and other VPNs like Cisco VPN from Linux through the inbuilt network manager by installing additional tools but this post would focus on using the standard Forticlient for accessing the resources on your work network.

Obtaining Forticlient

The most important thing to note w.r.t. using Forticlient for Ubuntu (or any Linux distro) is to note that the client is not publicly available for download from the official website. You will have to ask your IT department to download the client for you, in case they haven't provided it.

Here is the Fortinet KB which explains the location from where the file can be downloaded.

Using Forticlient

Files Extraction

Once you have the file (the name would be forticlientsslvpn_linux_<version>.tar.gz), extract it to the location of your choice on your Linux PC (I'm on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS).

1	tar xvzf forticlientsslvpn_linux_<version>.tar.gz

Launching

You can launch the Forticlient using the terminal after navigating to the path. You need to launch the script as superuser only the first time you run it.

1 2	cd forticlientsslvpn/ sudo ./fortisslvpn.sh

Accept the license agreement and you will have the client running immediately after that -

Enter the details provided by your administrator in terms of the URL, port number etc. and click connect to establish the connection. If you don't use a certificate you can leave the fields blank. A warning dialog to this effect would be shown while connecting on which you can click 'Continue'.

To avoid entering details every time, you can save the connection details which will persist between sessions. Click 'Settings' for this -

Connecting to the remote computer

Now once Forticlient shows Tunnel Running, you are all set to connect to your work PC. Use Ubuntu's Remmina Remote Desktop Client.

Click on 'New' and save your machines details. You can select various color depth values; quality, sound (in Advanced tab) to improve your connection experience.

Once done, click 'Connect'.

Creating a Unity Launcher

One wouldn't want to navigate to the fortisslvpn folder every time to launch this client application. Therefore, let's create a launcher, a .desktop file to launch the application.

Prior to that, let's move the fortisslvpn folder (which is likely to be residing in your home or Downloads folder to /usr/local).

Assuming that the forticlientsslvpn folder is inside Downloads,

1 2	cd Downloads sudo mv forticlientsslvpn /usr/local/

Create a .desktop file which will act as a launcher with the following content.

gedit ~/.local/share/applications/Fortinet.desktop

Fortinet.desktop's content

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Fortinet
Exec=/usr/local/forticlientsslvpn/fortisslvpn.sh
Path=/usr/local/forticlientsslvpn
Icon=forticlientsslvpn.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Utility;Application;Development;

You can pin the launcher to Unity Launcher if necessary.

No TDS on FDs does not mean no Taxes! Your guide to Reporting Fixed Deposit Interest in ITR

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Sun, 17 Jul 2016 14:16:00 +0000

Every year in the months of June and July, Indian taxpayers would be rushing to file their Income Tax Returns. A common mistake which many taxpayers do is not declaring the interest earned on Fixed Deposits. This is partly due to the belief that a sum of ₹10,000 or lesser is not taxable. Also, banks do not deduct TDS when they don't expect interest income to go beyond ₹10,000 in a financial year. However, that is not true.

Only interest up to ₹10,000 earned on SB (Savings Bank) account is exempt from income tax. The total amount earned needs to be mentioned in Section 80TTA. The exempt amount would be computed by the system / offline utility.
Every rupee of interest earned on FD (Fixed Deposits) and RD / CD (Recurring / Cumulative Deposits) is taxable as per a person's income tax slab. All income earned through these instruments needs to be declared under the heading 'Income from Other Sources'.

The Real Problem: Computing Interest Income

Now that we understand the importance of declaring the SB and FD interest, the real problem lies in computing them. The problem gets compounded when you have multiple Savings Accounts in different banks / branches or auto-sweep deposits. There are also cases where banks don't quote Savings Bank interest in the interest certificate. In order to compute the exact interest income, you can

Obtain interest certificate from the bank website and match it against tax credit entries in Form 26AS. The Form 26AS may be retrieved by heading to TRACES website. You can directly view 26AS without registering in TRACES by navigating there from your bank's internet banking platform (taxes section)
However, for some banks, interest certificates are not available online or you might be living in a different city. You can visit them to request a certificate but you may have to visit again to collect it. In such cases, manual computations might be necessary and that's easier than multiple visits to the bank branch.

Manual Computation

All banks allow downloading statements in Excel format (as .xls or comma separated .csv files). With some data filtering or a manual examination, you will be able to find interest credits for both Savings and Fixed Deposits (when you have specified interest payment intervals as quarterly, half-yearly etc.). Typically interest credits happen on credits on 30 June, Sep, 31 Dec, March. You can then tabulate all your interest income from different banks in a spreadsheet and arrive the numbers. Reconciliation against Form 26AS is recommended.

How to File ITR?

Filing income tax return has never been as easy as it is now. Popular options available to the taxpayers to file IT Returns are

E-Filing using the online form in the official e-filing website of Income Tax Department. Only ITR-1 and 4S are available as online forms, for other forms one will have to use the Excel or Java utilities
User-friendly websites like ClearTax [Referral Link] which allow uploading Form-16 provided by the employer and take care of the majority of calculations. You just need to verify the numbers. The best part is self e-filing is 100% free at ClearTax! This approach is highly recommended if you are filing your returns for the first time or are using complex forms like ITR-2 which can be intimidating at first glance. ClearTax and other similar websites also offer paid services like CA assisted filing.
File with the help of a Chartered Accountant

Points to Remember

In option 2, I have noted that ClearTax takes care of computations from the uploaded Form-16. It is important to note that Form-16 provided by employers generally does not contain income earned from Savings / FD / RD interest. Therefore,

You will have to enter the details you computed manually in the appropriate fields. Same holds good for other filing modes too.
Banks deduct TDS at a standard rate of 10% but you are obliged to pay taxes at your slab. ClearTax [Referral Link] or the IT E-Filing Website would be suggesting the pending amount and you need to follow the instructions to pay the amount via Challan 280.

After filing the ITR don't forget to E-Verify it. More about how to E-Verify.

Which ITR for whom? (AY 2016-17)

Best Practice for Future Use

A best practice here would be to keep a personal book of accounts. Do not start cumulative FDs. Only Quarterly/Monthly interest payable FDs, so that everything can be calculated from the SB statement via Asan Ideas for Wealth

Some more ideas on maximizing returns from the same conversation -

Troubleshooting a Constantly Freezing Windows 10 PC

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Sat, 05 Mar 2016 09:58:00 +0000

On my Windows 10 Home, I was being bugged by constant freezes which forced me to hard reboot now and then. Since I use Ubuntu as my primary OS, I chose to adjust with this for long. However, this became more of a trouble in the recent times with Windows starting up at 98% CPU usage and every process actually showing 0% CPU usage. That's when I decided to get into the root of the problem and resolve it. I was confident that the hardware was fine since Ubuntu worked perfectly all the time.

It turned out that many Windows 10 users, especially those who upgraded from previous versions of Windows 7 or 8 / 8.1 faced similar freezing issues. The answers at Windows Forums by Microsoft staffers generally suggested using the command sfc /scannow to verify that system files were intact. However, most users found it unhelpful and that didn't help me either.

Using the Event Viewer

I was taken aback by the sheer number of errors and warnings which were being logged in the Windows System log (use Event Viewer to check) during the freezes. Here are the ones that impacted me -

Event Level	Source	Event ID	Description
Error	Service Control Manager	7001	The Net.Tcp Listener Adapter service depends on the Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service service which failed to start because of the following error: The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it.
Error	Service Control Manager	7031	The User Data Access_Session1 service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1 time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 10000 milliseconds: Restart the service.
Error	DistributedCOM	10010	The server {4991D34B-80A1-4291-83B6-3328366B9097} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout. You may have to take ownership
Error	Service Control Manager	7011	A timeout (30000 milliseconds) was reached while waiting for a transaction response from the netprofm service
Warning	disk	153	The IO operation at logical block address 0x6f8b0 for Disk 0 (PDO name: \Device\0000002d) was retried.
Warning	storahci	129	Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued.
Warning	TaskScheduler	414	Task Scheduler service found a misconfiguration in the NT TASK\Microsoft\Windows\Media Center\PBDADiscoveryW2 definition. Additional Data: Error Value: %SystemRoot%\ehome\ehPrivJob.exe.
Warning	TaskScheduler	414	Task Scheduler service found a misconfiguration in the NT TASK\Microsoft\Microsoft Antimalware\Microsoft Antimalware Scheduled Scan definition. Additional Data: Error Value: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Security Client\MpCmdRun.exe.

Now I will describe how each issue was resolved -

Event ID 7001

Error

Service Control Manager

7001

The Net.Tcp Listener Adapter service depends on the Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service service which failed to start because of the following error: The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it.

In order to fix this issue, use Turn Windows Features on or off and uncheck the TCP Activation option. In my PC, I chose to turn off some IIS related services which were checked. To be honest, I don't really remember when did I check them! This took care of the TCP part.

Event ID 7031

Error

Service Control Manager

7031

The User Data Access_Session1 service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1 time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 10000 milliseconds: Restart the service.

Following these steps can resolve 7031 (Source)

Run Regedit
Expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services menus
Scroll down the list of Services in the left pane to find the following services

MessagingService
OneSyncSvc
PimIndexMaintenanceSvc
UnistoreSvc
UserDataSvc

Click once on the service to highlight it and show its content in the right window pane
Double click the name Start in the left pane
Change the Value data to 4 and then click OK in the window that pops up.
Do this for each of the services above
Close Regedit and restart your computer

Note: All of these services have multiple services with the same name followed by a string of several number and letters. Only change the Start value data in the services identified above, not the other ones with all the numbers and letters.

Event ID 10010

Error

DistributedCOM

10010

The server {4991D34B-80A1-4291-83B6-3328366B9097} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout. You may have to take ownership

Run Regedit
Find the key {4991D34B-80A1-4291-83B6-3328366B9097} (yours' might be different) using the Edit > Find option in Registry Editor. It will bring up a result under HKCR\CLSID\
In the context menu select 'Permissions'. Click Advanced and change the owner to Administrators group. Thereafter, in the previous dialog give 'Full Control' to Administrators

Event ID 7011

Error

Service Control Manager

7011

A timeout (30000 milliseconds) was reached while waiting for a transaction response from the netprofm service

In 'Run' type “dcomcnfg” and enter
Under Component Services\Computers\My Computer\DCOM Config\netprofm

Right click “netprofm”
Click “Properties” -> “Security” -> “Launch and Activation Permissions”
“Customize” -> click “Edit” button -> click “Add..”. It the options in this page are disabled, you will have to take ownership of the Application ID key through Registry as described in the steps for Event ID 10010 above. The application ID can be found in the General tab of the dialog.
Type “LOCAL SERVICE” as the object names, click “OK” -> in “Permissions for LOCAL SERVICE”,
select “Allow” for “Local Launch” and “Local Activition” -> “OK” -> “OK”

Source. I liked the statement made there: Be patient when repairing computers and don’t give up! The “fix” is probably just “around the corner” and eventually, you’ll discover it. That’s how you become a better tech!

Event ID 129 and 153

Warning	disk	153	The IO operation at logical block address 0x6f8b0 for Disk 0 (PDO name: \Device\0000002d) was retried.
Warning	storahci	129	Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued.

This issue was causing the PC to freeze during normal usage. The freezes used to last for 10 - 30 seconds. Both the issues were resolved after setting Hard Disk's AHCI link power management settings to Active. While I used the registry links provided in this forum post to enable those options to see AHCI power settings, I had to use active mode instead of HIPM+DIPM suggested there. By default, my setting was HIPM.

Event ID 414

Warning	TaskScheduler	414	Task Scheduler service found a misconfiguration in the NT TASK\Microsoft\Windows\Media Center\PBDADiscoveryW2 definition. Additional Data: Error Value: %SystemRoot%\ehome\ehPrivJob.exe.
Warning	TaskScheduler	414	Task Scheduler service found a misconfiguration in the NT TASK\Microsoft\Microsoft Antimalware\Microsoft Antimalware Scheduled Scan definition. Additional Data: Error Value: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Security Client\MpCmdRun.exe.

These errors were cropping up since the target executables were unavailable, the reason being the changes Microsoft made in Windows 10. The solution was to delete the (Media Center, Microsoft Antimalware) folders from the event scheduler.

Final Result

After I took care of each error / warning as described above, my Windows 10 works like a charm.

Perform Spell Checking in Visual Studio

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 12:31:00 +0000

We tend to commit unintentional spelling errors especially while using IDEs like Visual Studio which do not ship with a spell checker. The spelling errors would look bad especially when the errors are made in comments which might find their way into documentation. This limitation can be offset by installing freely available extensions (Tools > Extensions and Updates, switch to Online section in the left pane). One such extension is Visual Studio Spell Checker.

The Visual Studio Spell Checker provides good inputs, just like Microsoft Office.

Take a focused approach when you search for a new job

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 15:55:00 +0000

This is the general route chosen by youngsters when searching for a new job -

Shoot off resumes (sometimes tailored to different companies / roles)
Seek referrals (sometimes from random strangers at LinkedIn)
Start liking and commenting on posts from spammers at LinkedIn
Update LinkedIn headline as 'Seeking new opportunities'

The first two approaches can be successful in a timely manner but the last two are literally wasted time. Another phenomenon that is often relied upon by many is Job Shopping. I made an attempt to underline the importance of focused efforts when it comes to job search. Check out my first post at LinkedIn - Job Shopping or Job Searching? Which is better for your Career?

Validating entries in a WPF dialog using Coded UI and Telerik Properties

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 09:44:00 +0000

Recently, we were faced with a challenge of capturing Tooltip text on a Telerik WPF control using Microsoft Coded UI. It took considerable research, forum discussion and support tickets to arrive at an accpetable solution.

The Problem

Here is the dialog and the tooltip text which we were trying to capture -

The issue was, the tooltip "invalid value..." used to appear only on hover and even the new properties like ToolTipText when run on the WPF row / cell containing the wrong value, were not fetching the tooltip text. The primary reason for this turned out to be, the tooltip coming up from a hidden object and Coded UI Test Builder could not identify it.

Finding a Solution

Faced with the above situation, we decided to check if the cell with value ddf exposes any property which can be of help to us. Interestingly, Coded UI Test Builder could help us distinguish between the valid and invalid values using ItemStatus property. The values used to appear like this -

Error - CommitEdit!#!#True!#False!##7FADCDEF!#1!#0!#0!#False!#False!#False!#False!<and lot more text>

No error - CommitEdit!#!#True!#False!##7FADCDEF!#1!#0!#0!#False!#False!#False!#True!<and lot more text>

The String.Contains method could be used to validate the results but this approach lacked the elegance we were hoping for.

The Telerik Extensions

We then discovered Telerik's extensions for Coded UI which offered an elegant solution. The process began with installing two extensions (only WPF extension might be sufficient as the case may be) -

After installing the extensions, two DLLs (can be found in Telerik Binaries folder; refer Telerik VSExtensions Options from Telerik menu in Visual Studio) need to be referenced or registered -

Telerik.VisualStudio.TestTools.UITest.Extension.ExtensionsCore.dll
Telerik.Windows.Controls

This completes the pre-requisites. Now Coded UI Test Builder would be able to retrieve more properties. For instance, IsValid True or False for values in text boxes.

How to use the Property?

Define the object heirarchy as per your dialog design
Define the objects as required Eg. WpfGridViewRow row = new WpfGridViewRow(table);
Use the IsValid Property when necessary -

[WpfGridViewRow.PropertyNames.HelpText] = "GridViewRow";

if (row.IsValid == false)

That's all. Your function will start giving the right results!

ArcGIS Earth (Beta): Initial Impressions

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 12:24:00 +0000

Back in June 2015, Esri made an announcement about an upcoming offering, the ArcGIS Earth

ArcGIS Earth is part of Esri’s offer for Google customers and partners looking to transition to Esri software. Along with other capabilities of the ArcGIS platform, ArcGIS Earth provides an alternative to the Google Earth Enterprise Client.

Here is an Esri Video showcasing an alpha version of the product. Just yesterday, Esri started sending out Beta invites as part of Early Adopter program.

#ArcGISEarth Beta invites were sent out today. The URL will be made available more widely tomorrow! pic.twitter.com/JgJuUC83eb
— Chris Andrews (@ArcGISEarth) October 20, 2015

I received one and decided to try the product immediately. The email mentioned that following features are ready for use:

Display KML layers in 3D.
Connect to Esri RESTful services including feature, map, image, and scene services.
Browse Esri basemaps and Living Atlas of the World content.
Save your view as an image and share it with others via email.
Securely access data stored in ArcGIS for Server on premises or in ArcGIS Online.
Create placemarks by drawing points, line, polygons on the globe.

The product sports a nice black theme and minimilastic UI as shown above.

One toolbar (which can also be collapsed) at the top left corner has the following options

To add layers (which can be done either by entering a URL or file location or directly from ArcGIS Online)
Draw
Measure
Capture snapshot in three different formats,
Email
Print
Change basemap layer

Search bar at the top right corner
A north arrow button below the search bar. This can set the north orientation as well on double click
A home button
It is possible to Sign In to one's Esri global account just like Google Earth
A full screen option

Issues faced

Moving around the virtual globe was not as smooth as in Google Earth and one could feel the lag. Also, the refresh rate on panning or after adding new layers seemed to be a bit slower. Lack of settings option meant lesser configurability for advanced users.

I believe these things would change and the product would be even more refined when launched in December 2015.

Resolving INS-20802: Oracle Net Configuration Assistant failed error on Windows 10

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Fri, 31 Jul 2015 06:48:00 +0000

I was all excited about the migration to Windows 10 until I had to install Oracle client 12.1.0.2 on it. The Oracle client installation used to fail miserably at the last stage with this error named INS-20802.

As with several Oracle error messages, the details were hardly of any use and no clear understanding was possible even after examining the error log. Googling for the error led me to several forum posts but most of them didn't have the right solution - most answer seekers were meeting with dead ends.

I tried several methods for resolving the issue -

Disabling Windows UAC
Disabling firewall
Disabling antivirus - mine was a fresh VM, so disabled Windows Defender
Adding localhost IP i.e., 127.0.0.1 to the hosts file etc.

but none of them helped.

At last I found this which suggested installing Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x86) and this solved the problem in a matter of seconds! I just had to click 'Retry' on the installation dialog.

Guide to e-file the Income Tax Returns - verifying using EVC, the Electronic Verification Code

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Sat, 18 Jul 2015 13:25:00 +0000

Indians who file Income Tax Returns online would know that the filing process involved two steps -

e-Filing the returns
Posting the ITR-V form to CPC, Bengaluru by Post

Everyone including Income Tax department wanted to get rid of the second step due to multiple reasons, the prime one being tax payers missing out the sending part! Multiple modes were being talked about and finally this year it has materialized. This year onward, taxpayers who e-file the returns need not send ITR-V by post but are required to electronically verify the returns using an EVC (Electronic Verification Code).

EVC Generation Modes

Aadhaar Based OTP

This mode is applicable for those who have completed the Aadhaar - PAN linking in the Income Tax e-Filing website. Unfortunately this linking process fails for many Indians who use initials for last name or have abbreviated middle names in Aadhaar card. The linking system uses name as one item for verification and with a mismatch in names in PAN and Aadhaar the process fails. I brought it to the notice of Income Tax Department and later complained at PG Portal but a resolution is still far away! :(

Had raised the PAN - #Aadhaar linking issue at PG Portal. Closed with Partial resolution, in < 48 hrs @invest_mutual pic.twitter.com/K8cf0oSCS0
— Chethan S (@gischethans) July 16, 2015

There is also an additional field to add Aadhaar number in the IT Return forms this year. This however does not link PAN and Aadhaar.

Internet Banking EVC

I had to use this mode of e-Filing since the Aadhaar linking failed. The process is simple and straight forward. You need to login to internet banking platform of your bank (list of supported banks) and click the e-Filing link there which takes you to IT Department's e-Filing website.

Select the appropriate form to e-file, ITR-1 and 4S are available online. For other forms you will have to use either Java or Excel utility which can be downloaded from the website.

After you complete filling all the details based on your Form-16, hit submit. Since you would be logged in through internet banking, on clicking e-Verify, the return gets verified and an acknowledgement is displayed. This is also sent to registered email ID.

For already e-Filed Returns

If you file your returns through a third party service provider or have filed before the EVC process was notified you can generate an EVC to verify the return.

EVC Generation Steps

The Difference

Till Last Year

This Year Onward

Looking to switch your home loan provider? @SwitchMe_IN can be an answer

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Sun, 10 May 2015 12:44:00 +0000

After RBI's rate cuts several banks have reduced interest rates (on both loans and deposits) in the recent times. Some banks haven't done that yet. In addition to rate cuts there are instances where one lender would be better than another (your current loan vendor). In such cases it makes sense to switch your home loan provider. Now this is not a simple process and involves the following steps as neatly described by SwitchMe.

So switching a home loan is time consuming and cash burning process. However if done right it can help you save cash in long run. SwitchMe is a provider who claims to help home loan consumers switch their vendors with ease. They also claim to have helped people save over ₹170 Cr. with their services!

I provided some random inputs to assess the quality of suggestions. When the amount involved was smaller, say ₹3 L and the remaining tenure was just 3 years @ 10.25% interest, I was suggested to stay with current provider as my savings were considered negligible. Additionally it turns out that even banks at times are reluctant to accommodate such small tenure loans. Once I tried providing bigger inputs I got some good suggestions. Sample these -

SwitchMe seems to charge ₹5000 for their services - I got the same quote for both the queries I made. Overall SwitchMe can be a good resource for anyone who is -

Casually evaluating the benefits of a home loan switch
Hard pressed for time to complete the paper formalities required to switch a service provider

Interested in UX - Sign up for Stack UX

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 12:48:00 +0000

For the past few days I have been following Q & A on UX aspects at Stack UX. Users there come up with questions on why some design aspects are the way we see it now like Why doesn't the space bar have anything written on it? Some even ask for best design suggestions. Answers by Professionals suggested historical reasons and more often than not economic factors as well in What was the reason behind total transition towards wide screen displays by the manufacturers?

Some other questions that I found interesting were:

Just yesterday I posted my first question there seeking information on the term / principle that can describe this rule enforced by leading web platforms –

LinkedIn shows Who's viewed your Profile only if you enable the feature for your profile
Communications app WhatsApp has a similar setting for last seen and read receipts - "If you don't share your last seen, you won't be able to see other people's last seen"

My question has received two interesting answers so far. At my end I have also signed up for the weekly newsletter and also follow @StackUX on twitter.

Overall if you are a UX Professional or a casual tech enthusiast interested in UX aspects, Stack UX is the place to go.

ArcGIS Pro on NVIDIA DaaS

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 16:27:00 +0000

I always wanted to try out the all new ArcGIS Pro but never got a chance thanks to Esri's normal style of restricting new offerings to customers under maintenance or an active Organization subscription. (Check update at the end)

Finally today I got a chance to try it through Desktop-as-a-Service offered through NVIDIA Test Drive Virtual Machines, thanks to this blog post.

Signup etc.

The signup process for the service was simple - I had to provide my name, email address, mobile number etc. A PIN was sent to my mobile number for verification. Further I had to download a desktop client (available for Windows and Mac, Linux to come soon). A Chrome app was available but did not launch for me on Ubuntu! :( Though the Chrome App invoked fine on Windows 8.1 it failed to initialize for some reason.

ArcGIS Pro Experience

NVIDIA Test Grid VM is a cloud hosted Windows 7 VM. Along with ArcGIS Pro several other leading applications are hosted there to enable test drive. Once the GRID Workspace client loaded, it took nearly a minute to show the below desktop. The subsequent responses w.r.t. application launches and further operations were good. Switching between ribbon tabs on ArcGIS Pro led to screen blurs for short time frames but that was manageable.

As explained in the Esri blog post I went on to check out the ArcGIS Pro experience -

In this Desktop virtual machine ArcGIS Pro is setup to use the Philadelphia dataset which is provided by Pictometry. It’s ready to use. This high quality, visually appealing dataset is used by the Performance Engineering team for regular performance testing of ArcGIS Pro. It’s also used by virtualization vendors in their testing efforts to benchmark their VDI platforms.

The 3D rendering was smooth and I could move around Philadelphia using the Bookmarks option and the normal pan/zoom way.

Geoprocessing

I tried some basic geoprocessing operations like Buffer and the response was good. At the same time some toolboxes like Buffer 3D failed to load.

I later downloaded some shapefile data and loaded them onto ArcGIS Pro to try out the labeling capabilities. Unfortunately, labeling turned out to be not very intuitive and I could not get it to work in reasonable amount of time even after checking out relevant help.

I certainly appreciate ArcGIS Pro for the advancements in terms of functionality, UI/UX that has happened since I last used ArcGIS 10 some years ago.

Update 11-03-2015

A full 60-day trial of ArcGIS Pro is now available

Try ArcGIS Pro for free: http://t.co/LhH8PNJa18 60-day, all-access pass to the entire ArcGIS platform + free training pic.twitter.com/m0dZ3RG2nL
— ArcGIS Pro (@ArcGISPro) March 10, 2015

Will you give ArcGIS Pro a try? Let me know your thoughts about the application.

Converting Times between Time Zones was never so Easy!

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 09:24:00 +0000

Google has finally started showing up time zone conversions right within the search page:

A pretty useful feature that was long overdue for someone like who attends webinars hosted in different time zones. :)

Making Screen Resolution Persist on a Linux Machine after Restart

noreply@blogger.com (Chethan S.) — Wed, 24 Sep 2014 08:39:00 +0000

I encountered a situation with a low powered Linux machine wherein the screen resolution would not persist after restart. I used to change the screen resolution under 'Monitor Settings'. The Linux distro in question was a custom build based on OpenSUSE Xfce. That's when I took to creating a new xorg.conf file with necessary parameters!

Steps Involved

Generate a 'modeline' for the most suitable resolution of your monitor. In my case it was 1680 x 1050. The modeline can be generated using:

cvt 1680 1050

Create a file by name xorg.conf with the following contents:

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Default Monitor”
Modeline "1680x1050_60.00" 146.25 1680 1784 1960 2240  1050 1053 1059 1089 -hsync +vsync
EndSection
 
Section "Screen"
    Identifier "Default Screen"
    Device "Card"
    Monitor "Default Monitor"
    SubSection "Display"
        Modes "1680x1050_60.00"
        Depth 24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

The xorg.conf must now be copied to /etc/X11. Use the below command to do that:

sudo cp xorg.conf /etc/X11

Now restart the machine to see the changes persist.

Note: I did try to directly create the file in /etc/X11 folder but the text editor failed to come up when invoked as 'root' through terminal. As I mentioned above, it was a custom Linux with lot of features absent!