General Awareness

NATIONAL AFFAIRS - February 2016

Feb 2016

Dec 19, 2020

Goa Congress Chief Girish Chodankar Quits after Dismal Show in Local Polls

Taking responsibility for the party's poor show in the recently held Zilla Panchayat (ZP) polls, Goa Congress president Girish Chodankar resigned from his post.
Chodankar earlier this week had submitted his resignation from the post of Goa Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) president to interim party chief Sonia Gandhi and state in-charge Dinesh Gundu Rao.
The Congress had won only four Zilla Panchayat seats, out of the 49 where polling was held last week. The ruling BJP had bagged 32 seats.
Results of the Zilla Panchayat polls were announced on December 14.
Chodankar was appointed the GPCC chief in April 2018, replacing Shantaram Naik, a former Member of Parliament.

Dec 18, 2020

UP CM Approves Name, Design and Log of Jewar Airport

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath approved the design, name and logo of the international airport to be constructed in Noida's Jewar. It will be named Noida International Greenfield Airport while a picture of stork, the state bird, will used in its logo.
It will be designed on the lines of world-famous airports in London, Moscow and Milan.
The initial capacity of the airport, proposed to be built in four phases, will be 12 million passengers per year, which will be expanded to 70 million passengers per year by 2050.

Karnataka CM Unveils Bengaluru Mission 2022 to Revamp City

Aimed at providing world-class amenities and infrastructure and making it the best place to live, Karnataka Chief Minister B. S. Yediyurappa unveiled Bengaluru Mission 2022 to revamp the city in the next two years. After studying the problems and challenges faced in everyday life in the city, the mission has been formulated identifying four core areas for development - enabling faster commute, Swachcha (clean), Hasiru (green) Bengaluru and connecting with citizens.
The objectives of this mission included enabling faster commute by easing out traffic congestion, re-establishing the reputation of the Garden City under Green Bengaluru, ensuring efficient and scientific waste management and connecting with the people with unified digital platform and also by creating spaces to showcase culture, heritage and other specialties of the state capital.

India and Bangladesh Ink 7 Pacts

India and Bangladesh inked seven agreements to broaden cooperation, and restored a cross-border rail link snapped in the 1965 war with Pakistan.
The restoration of the Chilahati-Haldibari rail link and signing of the pacts, providing for cooperation in areas of hydrocarbons, agriculture and textiles among others, came at a virtual summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina.

Dec 17, 2020

Justice Pankaj Mithal Next CJ of Jammu and Kashmir HC

Justice Pankaj Mithal of the Allahabad High Court will be the next Chief Justice of Jammu and Kashmir High Court.
The Supreme Court Collegium headed by Chief Justice of India SA Bobde has also recommended Calcutta High Court's Justice Sanjib Banerjee for appointment as Chief Justice of the Madras High Court. Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia of the Uttarakhand High Court has been recommended for appointment as the new Chief Justice of Gauhati High Court.
In a major reshuffle, the Collegium in its December meeting also recommended transfer of Chief Justices of high courts of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Sikkim and Odisha.

Kerala Local Body Elections

The ruling CPI(M)-led LDF in Kerala appeared to make a sweep of the local body elections in the state, while the BJP seemed to have made some gains, leading in Pandalam, the centre of protests against women's entry into Sabarimala, among others.
The Left Front was leading in 514 gram panchayats, five corporations and 11 district panchayats, prompting Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to attribute the good show to the people of the state. The outcome of the polls is seen as an indicator of the public mood ahead of the 2021 assembly elections in the state. The Opposition Congress-led UDF was in the second spot, leading in over 400 local bodies.

TMC Leader Suvendu Adhikari Resigns as MLA from West Bengal Assembly

Nearly three weeks after resigning as West Bengal Transport minister, rebel Trinamool Congress leader Suvendu Adhikari submitted his resignation as an MLA to the Assembly Speaker and subsequently met a few other rebel party leaders, one of whom said that the likes of them have no option but to join BJP.
Adhikari has a big support base in Medinipur area.
Adhikari represented Nandigram constituency in Purba Medinipur district and was the face of the Nandigram movement, which catapulted Mamata Bannerjee to power in 2011.

Dec 16, 2020

Delhi Roads to be Redesigned on Lines of European Cities

The Delhi government has appointed a consultant for redesigning of national capital roads on the lines of European cities, and it is likely to be completed by early 2023.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said the consultant should submit the detailed project report by February 2021 for rapid progress of the project.
The consultant is responsible for preparing and submitting a detailed project report by February 2021 based on which tenders will be given and the operations will begin by June 2021.
The Delhi government is working to redesign 540 km of 100-feet-wide roads on the built-operate-transfer (BOT) model and the construction company will take care of the maintenance for 15 years.

Aam Aadmi Party Will Contest UP Assembly Elections in 2022

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced that his party — Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) — will contest the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls in 2022.
Kejriwal, who is AAP's national convener, slammed the political parties in Uttar Pradesh, accusing them of stabbing the people in the back.
The Aam Aadmi Party had earlier contested assembly elections in Delhi, Punjab, Goa and Haryana and the 2019 general election. Thanks to its successful education, health and free electricity-water policies, AAP has succeeded in forming the government for the third time in Delhi by winning 62 seats out of 70 in the 2020 Delhi Assembly Elections.

Dec 15, 2020

NITI Proposes 'Surveillance Information Platform' to Boost Public Health

Government think tank NITI Aayog proposed setting up a surveillance information platform to strengthen India's public health surveillance system.
According to a report titled 'Vision 2035: Public Health Surveillance in India: A White Paper', which is jointly prepared by NITI Aayog and University of Manitoba, Canada -India's public health surveillance will be a predictive, responsive, integrated and tiered system of disease and health surveillance.
Going forward, India's public health surveillance will be based on individual Electronic Health Records (EHR) that capture and amalgamate individuals' health-care related information through the use of a unique health identifier (UHID).
According to the Aayog, this is used in every clinical, laboratory, or pharmacy visit and for vertical disease control programmes.

No Winter Session of Parliament This Year

The Centre said that there will be no winter session of Parliament this time because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi confirmed this in a letter responding to Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chaudhary, who has demanded for a short Winter Session.
According to Joshi, all parties supported the scrapping of the Winter session in order to curb the spread of coronavirus and hold the Budget Session in January.
It is expected that the Budget session would be held in the last week of January and Budget would be tabled on February 1.

Demands for Renaming Certain Areas Justified

Amid demands by some leaders of the ruling BJP in Madhya Pradesh to change names of certain places, state Culture Minister Usha Thakur said that such demands are absolutely valid if they are backed by facts and evidences.
Some leaders of the BJP from Bhopal and Indore have demanded that the existing names of some areas be changed.
If the names of some places in the state are changed on the basis of facts and evidence, and in accordance with the Constitution, then these changes must surely take place.
MP Assembly Speaker and senior BJP leader Rameshwar Sharma recently demanded that the name of Idgah Hills in Bhopal be changed to "Guru Nanak Tekri".
Indore Lok Sabha MP Shankar Lalwani had said that local people wanted the area adjacent to the famous Ganesh temple in Khajrana locality be renamed, either as Ganesh Nagar, Ganesh Dham or Ganesh Colony.

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