General Awareness

NATIONAL AFFAIRS - December 2016

Dec 2016

Jul 16, 2019

Gahlot Given Charge of Environment Ministry

The Delhi Cabinet witnessed a reshuffle with the environment portfolio, which was earlier with minister Imran Hussain, being transferred to minister Kailash Gahlot.
This was done on the direction of the Chief Minister in order to bring synergy between the environment, transport and law departments.
At present, Gahlot holds the transport and law portfolios — both of which are now inter-related with environment given that pollution levels are alarming in the city.
With this notification Gahlot would now hold as many as six cabinet portfolios including revenue, administrative reforms and information technology.
Minister Imran Hussain, on the other hand, would now handle two portfolios — food and supplies and election.

India and Russia Seek to Skirt US Sanctions Threat

India and Russia have agreed on a new payment method through their national currencies for multi-billion-dollar defense deals, in a bid to avoid risks created by the US threat of sanctions and banking restrictions.
The arrangement would enable India to pay the first instalment soon for two warships that Russia is building for its navy. Defense contracts would be settled in rubles and rupees under a payment agreement reached by the central banks of Russia and India.
While the new mechanism potentially opens the way for releasing billions of dollars in contract payments to Russia, it may still be dependent on India winning agreement from U.S. President Donald Trump not to impose sanctions in retaliation.

Trust motion to Decide Fate of Kumaraswamy's Government

The uncertainty surrounding the future of the Congress-Janata Dal Secular government in Karnataka may finally end in July 2019.
A Business Advisory Committee (BAC) meeting, which was also attended by Karnataka Speaker KR Ramesh, announced that the Karnataka assembly would go for a floor test on 18 July 2019 .
On the same day, the trust motion would be taken up in the Vidhan Soudha in Bengaluru.
Post the debate, the MLAs would vote to decide whether the Congress-JDS government stays or falls.

Jul 15, 2019

Law Commission to be Formed Soon

With the country left without a Law Commission since September 2018, the Law Ministry has initiated the process of setting up the body which gives advice to the government on complex legal issues.
The three-year term of the 21st Law Commission ended on August 31 last year (2018). On at least one occasion, the Ministry had moved the proposal to reconstitute the panel.
But the proposal could not move further, and the government later went into election mode. Sources said that the proposal to reconstitute the panel would be before the Union Cabinet in the next few days.
The 21st commission, under Justice B.S. Chauhan (retd), had submitted reports and working papers on key issues such as simultaneous polls to the Lok Sabha and the Assemblies and a uniform civil code.
While the Law Commission had supported simultaneous polls, it had said that the time was not ripe for a common code.
The Cabinet approves reconstitution of the law panel for a period of three years. It is usually headed by a former Supreme Court judge or a former Chief Justice of a High Court.

Sidhu Quits Punjab Cabinet

Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu, who has been at loggerheads with Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and was stripped off key portfolios in the cabinet reshuffle in June 2019, resigned from the state cabinet.
In June 2019, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had divested Sidhu of the Local Government and Tourism and Cultural Affairs Departments and allotted him the power and new and renewable energy portfolio.
Portfolios of several other ministers too had been changed in the reshuffle exercise.
In an apparent snub, Sidhu, the Congress MLA from Amritsar East, was also left out of the consultative groups formed by the chief minister on June 8, 2019, two days after the cabinet reshuffle, to accelerate implementation of government's flagship programmes.

Jul 14, 2019

India Builds to Assist Rohingya

Two years after more than 700,000 Rohingya fled to camps in Bangladesh alleging ethnic cleansing by Myanmar forces, the Indian government stepped up efforts to help them return to their villages.
On July 9, 2019, Ambassador to Myanmar Saurabh Kumar handed over 250 completed pre-fabricated homes to the Myanmar government for use by the refugees when they return.
The project is part of an agreement signed by the two governments in 2017, under which the government had committed to spending $25 million over five years.
The houses, measuring 40 square metres each, are designed to survive quakes and cyclonic storms, according to a presentation by the Ministry of External Affairs.

Jul 13, 2019

Lakshman Jhula Shut Down

The Uttarakhand government declared the Lakshman Jhula, the iconic suspension bridge across River Ganga in Rishikesh, out of bounds for pedestrians and traffic after a team of experts termed it unsafe owing to its dilapidated condition.
In its July 5, 2019 report, a private consultant company that surveyed the Lakshman Jhula and Ram Jhula, (the two bridges are a little distance from each other), had recommended that all movement across the first should be immediately stopped while the second could be restored for pedestrian use with infrastructural changes.
The Lakshman Jhula was constructed by the Uttar Pradesh public works department in 1924 and was opened to traffic in 1930.
The bridge connects the districts of Tehri Garhwal and Pauri Garhwal.

Supreme Courts Tells Speaker to Defer Decision

The Supreme Court pressed the pause button in the legal battle for power in Karnataka by asking Legislative Assembly Speaker K.R. Ramesh Kumar to refrain from deciding on the disqualification or resignation of 10 rebel Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) MLAs for the time being.
The order comes just a day after the court asked Mr. Kumar to meet the 10 MLAs and decide on their resignations forthwith or in the course of the remaining part of the day.
A Bench led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi ordered status quo and scheduled the hearing for July 16, 2019.
The bench's decision came after an hour-long hearing in which Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy said that the rebel MLAs have dragged the court into a "political thicket".

Jul 12, 2019

10 Goa Congress Dissidents Join BJP

Ten Goa lawmakers who split from the Congress formally joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), ending the saffron party's dependence on allies and independents to run the government.
The 10 legislators, who would not attract censure under the anti-defection law because they form two-thirds of the Congress in the state, were inducted into the BJP in the presence of working president JP Nadda and Chief Minister Pramod Sawant.
As per reports, a rejig in the council of ministers would happen soon to accommodate some of the 10 MLAs. Goa currently has 12 ministers, including Sawant, and three of them are from the Goa Forward party and two are independent MLAs
With 10 Congress MLAs joining the BJP, its strength in the 40-member assembly has gone up to 27 while the Congress's has reduced to five. The BJP now does not need support of the Goa Forward or independent MLAs.

Nagaland to Frame RIIN Norms after Consultation

The Nagaland government said that guidelines for implementing a localised version of the National Register of Citizens, being updated in Assam, would be framed in consultation with civil society groups and traditional tribal bodies.
The decision follows remarks from organisations such as the Naga Hoho, the apex body of all Nagaland's tribes, that the Register of Indigenous Inhabitants of Nagaland (RIIN) was premature and could have serious ramifications.
Other groups, including the Naga Students' Federation, said that the survey should be restricted to non-locals.
The RIIN exercise was launched with designated teams surveying people living in every village and urban ward to prepare a list of indigenous inhabitants who would be provided a certificate.
Nagaland's Home Commissioner R. Ramakrishnan said that the concerns and observations of different sections was a welcome development.

Six from TN Elected Unopposed to Rajya Sabha

According to K. Srinivasan, the Returning Officer and Secretary of Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly Secretariat, six candidates belonging to the ruling AIADMK, DMK, PMK and MDMK were elected to the Rajya Sabha unopposed.
As per Srinivasan, N. Chandrasegharan, Muhammath John (both from AIADMK), M. Shanmugam, P. Wilson (both from DMK), Anbumani Ramadoss (PMK) and Vaiko (MDMK) have been duly elected to fill the vacancies of six members of Council of States retiring on July 24, 2019.
The AIADMK has 123 MLAs in the 234-member Tamil Nadu Assembly, while the DMK has a strength of 101. DMK ally Congress has seven MLAs, there is one Independent member, while two seats are vacant.
The elections were held to fill up the vacancies created by the retirement of five Rajya Sabha members -- T. Rathinavel, V. Maitreyan, K.B. Arjunan, R. Lakshmanan (all AIADMK) and D. Raja (CPI) -- and the resignation of DMK''s Kanimozhi following her victory in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

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