General Awareness

NATIONAL AFFAIRS - May 2022

May 2022

Apr 09, 2023

Centre Declares Tripura Best State in NE for E-procurement

Tripura was given the best state award in the north-eastern region by the Centre for successful implementation of e-procurement.
To maintain transparency, the state has made it mandatory to go for e-procurement if the value of any government purchase or contract goes beyond Rs. 25,000.
Except the pension to 82,000 pensioners, all the employees including Anganwadi workers are receiving salary through digital payment, said Finance Minister Pranajit Singha Roy.

South Korean Foreign Minister Visits India

South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin took a two-day visit to India with an aim to make "substantive progress" in the special strategic partnership between the two countries.
Jin held wide-ranging talks with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and also called on Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar.
Notably, India and South Korea have completed 50 years of diplomatic ties.

Anil Antony, Congress Veteran AK Antony's Son, Joins BJP

Anil Antony, the son of Congress leader and former Union Minister AK Antony, joined the BJP.
Anil Antony, who was a Congress leader from Kerala, quit the party in January following the row over BBC's documentary on the 2002 Gujarat riots and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
BJP leaders Piyush Goyal and V. Murlidharan and the party's Kerala unit chief K. Surendran welcomed the former Congress leader to their party at a formal event.
Anil Antony ran the Congress's social media cell in Kerala before he left the party.

Apr 08, 2023

Former Andhra Chief Minister Joins BJP

Former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy joined the BJP, becoming the second ex-Congress leader from South India to switch sides in as many days, after Anil Antony, the son of Congress veteran from Kerala, A. K. Antony.
Reddy, who served as the last Chief Minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh before the formation of Telangana state in 2014, resigned from the Congress in March 2023 over differences with the party leadership.
Reddy's decision to join the BJP came ahead of the assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh next year (2024), where the ruling YSR Congress and the main opposition Telugu Desam Party are locked in a bitter contest. The move could potentially tip the scales in favour of the BJP, which is hoping to make inroads in the state.

Apr 07, 2023

Rakesh Sinha Presents Development Report of 'Whistling Village' to PM

BJP Rajya Sabha MP Rakesh Sinha presented his development report on Kongthong village in Meghalaya, India's only whistling village, to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The MP, though not hailing from the Northeast, took keen interest in the village and its dying tradition of naming children by whistling tunes and adopted Kongthong in 2019.
I n August 2019, Rakesh adopted the village under the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY) and has been focusing on the development work there, to make it a model village in the region.
SAGY was launched in 2014 under which each Member of Parliament was to adopt the gram panchayat of a village.
Kongthong is located in the East Khasi Hills in Meghalaya and is popular as the 'whistling village' due to its unique tradition of 'Jingrwai Lawbei' under which mothers create a tune for their newborns.

India to Become World's Second-largest Solar Manufacturer by 2026

With 110 gigawatts (GW) of solar photovoltaic (PV) module capacity set to come online in the next three years, India will become self-sufficient and will be the second-largest PV manufacturing country after China, as per a new joint report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) and JMK Research and Analytics.
As per the report, India's cumulative module manufacturing nameplate capacity more than doubled from 18GW in March 2022 to 38GW in March 2023.

Centre Formulates Plans to Rehabilitate Coastal People Hit by Rising Sea Level

Union Minister Jitendra Singh informed the Rajya Sabha that the Union Government has formulated plans to rehabilitate people from low-lying coastal areas who may be adversely impacted due to rising sea levels in the coming decade.
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) prepared a draft policy on "Mitigation and Rehabilitation measures for people displaced by Coastal and River Erosion" to deal with the extensive displacement of people caused by coastal and river erosion.
The minister pointed out that Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), an autonomous organization of the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), has formulated Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI) mapping to assess probable implications of rising sea level along the Indian coast.
This exercise has generated maps using seven input parameters: shoreline change rate, sea-level change rate, coastal elevation, coastal slope, coastal geomorphology, significant wave height and tidal range.

Apr 06, 2023

India, Japan Agree to Diversify Cooperation

India and Japan agreed to diversify cooperation in new and emerging domains such as defence space and cyber technologies.
The move was announced after the seventh India-Japan Defence Policy Dialogue. It was co-chaired by Defence Secretary Giridhar Aramane and Japanese Vice-Minister of Defence for International Affairs Oka Masami.
A wide range of issues, including service-level exercises and engagements, regional security issues and cooperation in defence equipment and technology, were discussed during the meeting.

India Elected to Top UN Statistical Body

In a significant victory, India was elected to the UN Statistical Commission for a four-year period in a competitive election.
India secured an overwhelming 46 out of 53 votes. A second candidate is yet to be decided between South Korea and China.
India was elected by secret ballot while Argentina, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Ukraine, the United Republic of Tanzania and the United States were elected by acclamation for a four-year term beginning January 1, 2024.
The United Nations Statistical Commission, established in 1947, is the apex body of the global statistical system that brings together the chief statisticians of member states around the world. It is the supreme decision-making body for international statistical activities, responsible for the establishment of statistical standards and the development of concepts and methods, including their implementation at national and international levels.
The commission consists of 24 member states of the United Nations elected on the basis of equal geographic distribution by the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
Five members are from African states, four from Asia-Pacific states, four from Eastern European states, four from Latin American and Caribbean states, and seven from Western European and other states.

Apr 05, 2023

AMU V-C Tariq Mansoor Resigns after Being Nominated to UP Legislative Council

A day after he was nominated to the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council, Tariq Mansoor resigned from the post of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) vice-chancellor.
As per a notification issued by AMU registrar Mohammad Imran, pro-vice-chancellor Mohammad Gulrez will officiate as the vice-chancellor till Mansoor's successor is appointed.
Mansoor became the V-C of AMU in 2017. He has been associated with the university for many years and was the principal and chief medical superintendent of JN Medical College, AMU, from 2013 to 2017.

Access to Justice Highest in Karnataka

According to the India Justice Report (IJR) 2022, Karnataka topped the list of states and union territories in providing access to justice and three other southern states figured among the best five.
In the IJR, except for Delhi and Chandigarh, no state or union territory spends more than one per cent of its total annual expenditure on judiciary where the vacancy of judges in High Courts stands at 30 per cent.
As per the IJR, an initiative of the Tata Trusts launched in 2019, as of December 2022, the country had 19 judges for every 10 lakh people and a backlog of 4.8 crore cases. The Law Commission had suggested, as early as in 1987, that there should be 50 judges for every 10 lakh people in a decade's time.
The statistics were shared in IJR which ranked states and UTs on various parameters like vacancies in judiciary, budgetary allocations, infrastructure, human resources, legal aid, condition of prisons, functioning of police and state human rights commissions.
While Karnataka topped the chart among 18 large and mid-size states having a population of over 1 crore each, it was followed by Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh.
The list of seven small states, having a population of less than 1 crore each, was headed by Sikkim, followed by Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura.

IIT Kanpur Hosts Y20 Consultation under G20 Presidency of India

The Indian Institute of Technology, IIT Kanpur hosted the Youth20 (Y20) Consultation under the G20 Presidency of India. More than one thousand two hundred youth delegates from across India and abroad attended the two-day event.
The Y20 Consultation is a platform that brings young people together to connect, share ideas and experiences, and deliberate on finding innovative solutions to pressing global concerns. The Y20 Consultation, under the aegis of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, is a pan-India activity in the run up to the final Youth-20 Summit to be held in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh.

Amitabh Kant to Lead Panel to Examine Stalled Real Estate Projects

The Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry set up a 14-member committee headed by former NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant to examine issues related to stalled real estate projects and recommend various ways for their completion.
The committee would submit its report within six months from the date of its first meeting.
The 14-member panel will deliberate on the issues of legacy stalled projects and suggest ways to complete and hand over these projects to homebuyers in a time-bound manner, the order states.
The committee comprises top central and state government officials, including the secretary in the department of financial services in the Union Ministry of Finance, the principal secretary of the housing and urban planning department of Uttar Pradesh and the chairperson of Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India.

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