General Awareness

NATIONAL AFFAIRS - September 2015

Sep 2015

Jul 25, 2019

Five Members Bid Farewell to Rajya Sabha

Five members bid an emotional farewell to Rajya Sabha. The five members from Tamil Nadu completed their term.
V Maitreyan, D Raja, K R Arjunan, R Lakshmanan and T Rathinavel, completed their term. Barring Raja was from CPI, all others were from AIADMK.

Aadhar Could be used for State Schemes

The Cabinet approved official changes to Aadhaar and Other Laws (Amendment) Bill 2019 that incorporates a clause to allow the use of Aadhaar data for state schemes and subsidies.
The amendment to the Aadhaar Act entails the use of India's national biometric id by states governments for their schemes that are funded through the 'Consolidated Fund of the State'.
As per Supreme Court order, Aadhaar is allowed where the funds are going for beneficiary schemes coming straight from the central government.
It will enable the subsidies from the central schemes to be transferred from the central fund. Aadhaar can now be used for transferring state subsidies.

Jul 24, 2019

SC Says No to Verification of Draft NRC

The Supreme Court extended the deadline for publication of the final National Citizens Register (NRC) for Assam by a month to August 31, 2019, but rejected the central and Assam government's pleas to conduct 20% sample re-verification of the draft NRC in areas bordering Bangladesh.
The order for the extension of the deadline by a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and justice Rohinton F Nariman, comes on an application by Prateek Hajela, NRC coordinator, on the grounds that floods in Assam have paralysed the state. The original deadline was July 31, 2019.
Attorney general KK Venugopal, appearing for the centre, stressed on the need for a re-verification exercise before the final National Citizens Register (NRC) is published, contending that several illegal immigrants have been included in the list.

BJP Wins Junagadh Civic Body Polls

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Gujarat retained the Junagadh Municipal Corporation (JMC) for the second consecutive term by securing 54 of the 60 seats in the civic body and decimating the Congress to just one seat.
The elections were held on July 19, 2019.
The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which for the first time opened its account in the civic polls in Saurashtra region, has emerged as the main opposition party by replacing the Congress. The NCP won four seats out of 25 it contested.
In 2015, the Congress had got 15 seats and the BJP 40 in the outgoing municipal corporation.
Like the previous election, the BJP and the Congress contested on all 60 seats and NCP in 25 wards. Three of the NCP winners this time had won on the Congress ticket in 2015.
The Congress has blamed the BJP's "divide and rule politics" for its defeat in the civic polls. The BJP had swept the Lok Sabha polls in Gujarat, bagging all the 26 seats.

SC Draws a Hard Line in Amrapali Verdict

The Supreme Court took away all land assets of Amrapali Group, ordered federal money laundering investigation against its bosses and senior executives, and asked a state-run developer to build nearly 46,000 unfinished flats — a ruling that marks the strongest crackdown yet in the country's real estate sector and one that did not spare government officials and banks for conniving with developers.
Justices Arun Mishra and UU Lalit said the crisis in Amrapali – affecting tens of thousands of families -- was "a serious kind of fraud was played upon the buyers in active connivance with the officials of the Noida and Greater Noida Authorities and that of the banks".
Thus, the judges ruled, banks and administrations of the two cities will not have any claim on Amrapali's unfinished projects, which will now be completed by NBCC India Ltd, though no deadline was set.
Effectively winding up the Amrapali Group's rights to remain in the real estate business, the court cancelled its Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) licence and the leases that it held to build projects across Noida and Greater Noida.
The court also expanded the scope of the ruling to the realty sector at large, ordering the central and state governments to take action against similar builders.
In addition to the flats that Amrapali should have built, it owes Rs.5,000 crore to civic authorities and Rs. 1,000 crore to 10 banks.
There are also cases where Amrapali homebuyers have begun residing in their flats but have been unable to get ownership deeds or essential services since the builder did not clear the requisite dues to complete the handover process.
The court ordered relief for residents in such cases too, directing the authorities to execute the agreements within one month and issue "completion certificates" whether or not the dues are recovered.
Water Works Department of the concerned area and the electricity supplier are directed to provide the connections for water and electricity to homebuyers forthwith in Amrapali projects.
The ruling is a culmination of at least three years of campaigning by homebuyers, who protested in streets and outside government offices before taking their fight to the top court.
Amrapali's director and senior executives have been in custody since October 9, 2018, and some of their personal properties, which was determined to have been bought using laundered money, were attached.
Amrapali "diverted homebuyers' money and siphoned it off to foreign countries. The directors diverted the money by the creation of dummy companies, realising professional fees, creating bogus bills, selling flats at undervalue price, payment of excessive brokerage, etc,", the order observed, making the case for federal investigations.

Karnataka's Coalition Loses Trust Vote

Karnataka's beleaguered coalition government crumbled after losing a trust vote by six votes, capping weeks of political drama and setting the stage for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to stake claim to power in the only southern state it has ruled.
The Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) alliance secured 99 votes in favour and 105 against on a trust vote motion moved in the 225member assembly by chief minister HD Kumaraswamy.
Two Congress, two independent and one Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) legislator stayed away from the vote, as did 15 rebel legislators – 12 from the Congress and three from the JD(S) – whose resignations roughly three weeks ago pushed the 14-month-old government to the brink of collapse.
Kumaraswamy, 59, drove to the governor house shortly afterwards and submitted his resignation. It was immediately accepted but he was asked to continue as caretaker chief minister.

Jul 23, 2019

Two Skill Centres of Excellence to be set up in Uttar Pradesh

In a strategic meeting between Dr Mahendra Nath Pandey, Minister of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship and Yogi Adityanath, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, in Lucknow, a joint decision was made to set-up two Skill Centre sof Excellence (CoE) – one in Greater Noida for plumbing and one in Varanasi for the services sector.
The two centres will be international state-of-the-art infrastructure which will be created under joint collaboration between the state and the centre, where the state will provide the land for setting up the two buildings.
The infrastructure and training delivery will be supported by the respective sector skill councils and the industry partners.

Plea to Give Equal Status to Vande Mataram

A plea has been filed in the Delhi High Court seeking directions to the Centre to give Vande Mataram equal status like the national anthem—Jana Gana Mana. The plea filed by BJP leader and advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, has sought that 'Vande Mataram', written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, be equally propagated like the national anthem.
In his plea, Upadhyay has said that the national song played a vital role in the Independence movement and was first sung in a political context by Rabindranath Tagore at the 1896 session of the Indian National Congress.
"Both the 'Jana Gana Mana' and 'Vande Mataram' have to be equally respected. The sentiments expressed in 'Jana Gana Mana' have been expressed keeping state in view…… the sentiments expressed in 'Vande Mataram' deserves similar respect," the plea read.
The petition sought that a declaration be made that 'Vande Mataram' shall be honoured equally with the song 'Jana Gana Mana' and shall have equal status with it.

Central Govt Gets Power to Decide Salaries of CICs and ICs

The Lok Sabha passed a bill to amend the Right to Information (RTI) Act to give the central government the power to set the salaries and service conditions for Chief Information Commissioners (CIC) and Information Commissioners (IC), even as opposition parties protested the changes and activists argued that the alterations would weaken India's sunshine legislation.
The changes will apply to information commissioners at the Centre and also the states. The bill still has to be cleared by the Rajya Sabha before it becomes a law.
The current law, passed in 2005, says information commissioners will have a five-year tenure or serve until the age of 65; the new one says the Centre shall prescribe their term.
The current law says the salaries for the CIC and information commissioners at the Centre will be the same as those of the Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners, and that those of state CICs and Information Commissioners.

Jul 20, 2019

Rajasthan Likely to Shift Tigers to New Locations

The Rajasthan government is considering introducing tigers at nine locations spread over four districts in the state over the next 10 years in an effort to reduce humanwildlife conflict and provide new homes for the big cats.
The forest department was looking at the possibility of introducing tigers in forest areas such as Ramgarh Vishdhari, Shergarh, Kumbhalgarh, Rawli Toadgarh and Jhiri in Dholpur district, Khetri Bansiyal in Jhunjhunu district, Sultanpur (Bundi) and Shahbad (Baran).
The move was to avoid the possibility of human-wildlife conflict in existing tiger habitats and relocating excess tiger.
A workshop was held in May 2019 at which the possibility for distribution of excess tigers through self dispersal, environment improvement and relocation was discussed.
Rajasthan has three tiger reserves with at least 85 big cats, of which 66 are at Ranthambore Tiger Reserve, 15 at Sariska Tiger Reserve and four at Mukundra Hills Tiger Reserve.
Eight tigers have been relocated to Sariska from Ranthambore since 2004, and four to Mukundra in 2018 to decongest Ranthambore.
A tigress was sent to Sariska from Ranthambore in January 2019 to improve the skewed sex ratio in the habitat, but it died in June 2019 after being tranquillised.

World Bank Pulls Out of Amaravati Capital City Project

The World Bank said it had pulled out of the Andhra Pradesh government's Amaravati capital city project following the withdrawal of request by the Government of India.
World Bank's lead external advisor (special projects) for India Sudip Mozumdar said the Government of India had withdrawn its request to the bank for financing the proposed Amaravati Sustainable Infrastructure and Institutional Development Project.
The state government had not agreed to the World Bank's proposal to inspect the work undertaken so far as they had been taken up with loans obtained from other lending agencies.
The ruling YSR Congress Party and Telugu Desam Party are indulging in a blame game for the World Bank backing out of the Amaravati project.

SC Seeks Attorney General's Aid

The Supreme Court sought attorney general KK Venugopal's assistance in dealing with a plea that wants minority communities to be defined on the basis of state-wise population instead of national data.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose took note of the public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay and asked him to send a copy to the top law officer's office.
The PIL challenges the validity of the Centre's 26-year-old notification declaring five communities — Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis — as minorities.
Upadhyay's plea has sought to declare as unconstitutional the section of the National Commission for Minority Act, 1992, under which the notification was issued on October 23, 1993.
It has asked for guidelines to be laid down to define the word "minority" based on state-wise population of a community.
In the petition, Upadhyay said Hindus are a majority community as per national data but a minority community in some North-eastern states and in Jammu and Kashmir.
However, the Hindu community is deprived of benefits available to the minority community in these states.

Jul 19, 2019

NCP, CPI, TMC Get EC Notice on Status

The Nationalist Congress Party, the Trinamool Congress and the Communist Party of India face the prospect of losing their national party status following their performance in the Lok Sabha elections with the Election Commission (EC) issuing them a show cause notice.
The EC has asked them to explain why their national party status should not be revoked, sources said. They have been asked to respond to the notice by August 5.
The CPI, the BSP and the NCP were facing losing the national party status after the the 2014 Lok Sabha elections as well.
But, they got a reprieve when in 2016 the EC amended its rules, where it said that the status of political parties would to be reviewed every 10 years instead of five.

Alpesh Thakor and Dhaval Singh Zala Join BJP

Former Gujarat Congress MLAs Alpesh Thakor and Dhaval Singh Zala joined BJP in the presence of Gujarat BJP president Jitu Vaghani.
Both Thakor and Zala had quit as MLAs, just ahead of the Rajya Sabha elections. Thakor who had been vocal about his differences with the Congress quit the party before the Lok Sabha elections in April-May 2019.
A prominent OBC leader and a former MLA from Radhanpur in Gujarat's Patan district, Alpesh Thakor said that he was ignored and insulted in the Congress. Zala was the MLA from Bayad.
Both the leaders had earlier met Gujarat Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel that led to speculations that they might join BJP.
The BJP has 104 MLAs in the 182-member Gujarat assembly. The Congress has 71 MLAs.

India and Sri Lanka Sign Agreement to Upgrade Rail Track

Sri Lankan government signed an agreement with IRCON International for upgrading of a railway track with Indian concessional financing of around 91.26 million US dollars.
The agreement is for up gradation of over century old track of 130 km located between Colombo and Jaffna in Tamil -majority northern province.
The contract agreement was signed by Sunil Kumar Choudhury, Chairman & Managing Director, IRCON International Limited, and L. P. Jayampathy, Secretary, Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation of Sri Lanka.

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