General Awareness

NATIONAL AFFAIRS - September 2015

Sep 2015

May 14, 2019

JD(U) Changes Tack in Last Phase

As the election campaign in Bihar enters the last stretch, the ruling JD(U) has apparently changed its campaign narrative and returned to its demand for special status for the State.
Recently, JD(U)'s principal general secretary K.C. Tyagi had urged voters of Bihar to give his party at least 15 or more MPs, promising that they would raise the issue of special status for Bihar again.
Out of total 40 Lok Sabha seats in the State, the JD(U) and BJP are contesting 17 seats each with the partner Lok Janshakti Party contesting the remaining six.

Collegium Recommends Chief Justices

The Supreme Court Collegium has recommended names of four High Court judges for appointment as Chief Justices of the High Courts of Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Telangana.
As per the May 10 resolutions on the Supreme Court website, a three-member Collegium, headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, recommended the name of Justice D.N. Patel as the chief justice of the Delhi High Court.
Similarly, the Collegium has recommended names of Justices A. A. Kureshi, V. Ramasubramanian and R. S. Chauhan for their appointment as Chief Justices of High Courts of Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Telangana, respectively.

May 13, 2019

UP Records Lowest Turnout

Uttar Pradesh, where 14 Lok Sabha seats were at stake, recorded just 54.12%, the lowest among the seven states and union territories that went to polls in the penultimate sixth round of the seven phase national election.
The total national turnout was 62.12%.
About 80.16% of the electorate turned up to vote in West Bengal —the highest in this phase.
At 57.58% turnout, Delhi recorded a low voter turnout, standing only next to Bihar (59.29%). Haryana recorded 65.07%, Madhya Pradesh 61.89%, Jharkhand 64.50%.

BJP to Scrap Article 370

BJP president Amit Shah said that Article 370 that gives special powers to Jammu and Kashmir would be scrapped if Narendra Modi was elected as Prime Minister again.
Targeting the Congress on the issue of national security, he said that the Manmohan Singh government did not act when Pakistan beheaded five Indian soldiers, but Mr. Modi ordered air strikes in Balakot after the Pulwama terror attack.

May 12, 2019

The Sixth Phase of Polling

As many as 10.17 crore voters will decide the fate of 979 candidates in the sixth phase of polling in 59 Lok Sabha seats across six States and Delhi.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had won 45 of these seats.
In the sixth phase, voting will be held for 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh, 8 seats each in Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, 4 seats in Jharkhand, all 7 seats in Delhi and all 10 seats in Haryana.

May 11, 2019

Over 110 Declared Foreigners Sent to Detention Camps

The police in Assam have sent more than 110 declared foreigners to detention camps as it looks for more than 72,000 such people, who remain untraceable.
According to a letter sent to the Border Organisation of Assam police, the state government has also directed that people who are absconding and declared foreigners must be booked by the police.
It has also reached out to the office of the state coordinator of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) for details of around 11,000 declared foreigners who have been traced as they tried to enrol in the register.
This rush by the police's special task force to detain declared foreigners comes in the backdrop of the Supreme Court hearing a petition on the abysmal condition of detention centres in Assam.

August 15 Deadline For Ayodhya Mediation Panel

The Ayodhya mediation panel, tasked with exploring the possibility of an amicable settlement of the decades-old issue, has been given time till August 15 to find a solution.
After chairman of the mediation panel, Justice FM Khalifullah sought more time to reach a solution, Rajeev Dhavan, advocate for Muslim parties, said that they support all attempts at mediation if a conclusion can be reached.
The other members of the mediation panel are the Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and senior advocate Sriram Panchu, who is a trained mediator.

May 10, 2019

Supreme Court Pushes for Full Strength

The Supreme Court Collegium, led by the Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, recommended the names of two judges to the court and rejected the Union government's disapproval of the elevation of two others.
If the four judges are elevated without delay, the Gogoi Court would reach the full sanctioned judicial strength of 31 judges by the time it re-opens in July after the summer vacations.
The Collegium refused the government's request to reconsider its April 12 recommendation to elevate Jharkhand High Court and Gauhati High Court Chief Justices Aniruddha Bose and A.S. Bopanna as Supreme Court judges.
The Collegium said their names were recommended after all parameters were considered.

Smaller Parties Field More Women

Smaller political parties, both regional and national, have shown the way in this Lok Sabha election by giving ticket to a higher percentage of women candidates, while big parties with a much larger number of contestants fared poorly in doing so.
As a result, the number of women candidates is a mere 8.82%, according to numbers available for the first five phases.

AAP Punjab Manifesto

The Aam Aadmi Party released its manifesto for Punjab for the Lok Sabha election. Senior party leader and MLA Aman Arora said that the elected representatives would prioritise the issues and concerns of the people and raise their voice to redress the grievances.
The issue of the beleaguered farming community would be taken up with the Union government for the implementation of the recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission.
The manifesto bats for setting up of agro-based industry to boost the farmers' income to stop the unending trail of suicides committed by them and the farm hands.
The party would fight for 'One-country-one-tax'.
The manifesto sought to reduce and simplify the GST, offering relief to traders and industrialists. To generate employment opportunities, the party would focus on large-scale PSUs.

Government Denies Perjury Charge

Rubbishing the charge of perjury, the government said that the contents of briefs and responses made in the Supreme Court in the Rafale fighter purchase case were finalised after extensive deliberations at the highest levels in government after a series of meetings.
In a reply affidavit filed in the court, the Centre said that its averments in court were based on the final decisions taken by the Cabinet Committee on Security.
The submissions were based on the final decisions of the Defence Acquisition Council, the Defence Minister, provisions in the Defence Procurement Procedure and inputs received from the Air Force and the Ministry of Defence.
These had endeavoured to bring out the final conclusions of the process, which led to the signing of the Inter-Governmental Agreement with France.
The government played down the mismatch between the December 14, 2018, judgment of the court, upholding the deal on the basis of a non-existent Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report, and unsigned confidential notes filed by the Centre in the court.

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