Current Affairs

Current Affairs Weekly
By Saurabh Agrawal
Utkrist IAS

National Affairs

LEGISLATIONS, POLICIES & EXECUTIVE ORDERS

• The depiction of new and more stringent pictorial warnings on tobacco products has been deferred by six months to December 1 from the earlier scheduled date of June 1. The new warnings will show pictures of cancerous mouths and occupy at least 40 per cent of the packet area. They will be displayed on the upper portion in a bid to dissuade people from using tobacco, which causes cancer, one of the top 10 killers in India. The Ministry, under the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Packaging and Labelling) Rules, 2008, and amended in 2008 and 2009, had notified the new pictorial health warnings on March 5.
• The Union Cabinet gave its approval for a hike in the price of natural gas supplied under the Administered Pricing Mechanism (APM) by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Limited (OIL), doubling it to $4.20 per mBtu (million British thermal unit) from the present $1.79 per mBtu, bringing it on a par with the price at which Reliance Industries sells its gas.
• The Finance Ministry has suspended the facility of e-filing of income tax returns, as security certification for the Income Tax Department's website is not yet in place.
• Defence sector not mature enough to absorb more FDI, says Antony. At present FDI in Defence Sector is 26 per cent.
• The Centre is contemplating certain changes in the Memorandum of Procedure of appointment of Judges under which the Executive will have more say, according to the Union Law Minister Veerappa Moily. At present the system of appointment of Judges was governed by the Supreme Court 1993 and 1998 judgments and the Memorandum of Procedure, viz. the collegium system of appointment, was evolved subsequent to the 1998 judgment.
• The government was considering the proposal to make the retirement age of High Court judges on par with Supreme Court judges by increasing the retirement age of High Court judges from 62 years to 65 years. Union Law Minister Veerappa Moily said that there was no proposal to increase the retirement age of Supreme Court judges from 65 to 68 years. He, however, said that no final decision had been taken in the matter.
• MPs, MLAs exempted from paying toll on national highways.

COMMISSIONS & COMMITTEES:

• Manmohan Singh, who chaired the first meeting of National Committee for Commemoration of 150th Birth Anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, said the government will surely examine into the issue of bringing back the rare paintings of Rabindranath Tagore.
• National Commission for Scheduled Castes said that the cases of atrocities against dalits were highest in BSP-ruled Uttar Pradesh followed by Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.
• The National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission will now have two additional posts for the creation of an additional Bench to clear the backlog and for speedier disposal of fresh cases. The Cabinet cleared the proposal of the Department of Consumer Affairs for the creation of the posts — one from a judicial background and the other from a non-judicial background — for the new Bench, which would be set up for a period of five years. Now the commission has the president and nine members with five benches and a backlog of 8,000 cases that can be cleared, at the earliest, only in another four-and-a-half years going by the present rate of disposal and the existing strength. Under the Act of 1986, a three-tier redress machinery was set up, with the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission as the apex body at the national level, and State and district commissions.
• The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will support and endorse any action towards formulating umbrella legislation on protecting data, according to its chairman Nandan Nilekani. It was also decided to collect iris data for children between 5 and 15 years. For all those above 15, biometric data would include a picture of the face, all 10 fingerprints, and iris data. The data collection will be standardised so that all registrars – who will actually do the data collection – can use the same methods. The registrars include the Public Distribution System (PDS), the Rural Development departments which run the NREGA programme, the banks, LIC, oil marketing companies, the Registrar General of India which conducts the census, and the National Population Register.
• The UID project has a new name: Aadhaar, which means support. The scope of the UID project is immense. It seeks to give each Indian citizen a 16-digit unique number beginning February 2011, which should help people access state-sponsored welfare schemes more easily. Such schemes have helped countries like Brazil to reduce the number of poor people substantially and quickly.

STATE & UTs NEWS

• Central India: BJP, JMM finalize deal; Munda to be first CM. Shibu Soren will step down as Jharkhand chief minister on May 25. Both parties will share power on rotational basis for the remaining term of Jharkhand Assembly. BJP's Arjun Munda will be CM for the first 28 months.
• In a sudden flip-flop, Jharkhand chief minister Shibu Soren said he would not quit his post and the rotation of power with ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was "not acceptable".
• Eastern India: Madan Tamang, president of the Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League and prominent proponent of Gorkhaland, was fatally stabbed with "khukris" (traditional curved knives), allegedly by supporters of the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM) in Darjeeling.
• North-Eastern India: Two militants of anti-talk faction of Karbi Longri National Liberation Front (KLNLF) were killed in an encounter with the police in Assam's Karbi Anglong district.
• Northern India: As many as 12 districts in North-Eastern Bihar have been identified as major "hot spots" in food security in the State, according to the just-released Food Security Atlas on Rural Bihar. The report, prepared by the Institute for Human Development (IHD) in conjunction with the United Nations' World Food Programme (UNWFP), provides a comprehensive food security information system for the State while pinpointing the most vulnerable districts that are in dire need of targeted intervention. The atlas indicates the unevenness of food security spread across Bihar, with 13 districts which include Araria, Purnia, Katihar, Banka, Lakhisarai and Darbhanga ranked as "severely insecure" while Kishanganj and Jamui are ranked as "extremely insecure" on a food availability scale of 0-1.
• Huge cache of arms recovered from J&K's Kupwara forest.
• A two-member team from Amnesty International arrived on a rare visit to assess the human rights situation in J&K. The two members - both Indian - visited the house of jailed separatist Shabir Shah and held a two-hour meeting with his wife.
• Southern India: Adoption racket? Karnataka hospitals 'selling' babies. Couples waiting for adoption have now found an easier route to get their bundle of joy. They book their request with a hospital which, in turn, happily sells an abandoned child for a price. Adoption Coordination Agency (ACA) which is the official body for finally placing children for adoption has stopped getting children from hospitals. ACA has asked the government to book hospitals for trafficking if children are given away without following procedures and legalities as per the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, 1956.
• A prisoner DNA database: Tamil Nadu shows the way. Crime investigation will get a major boost with the Tamil Nadu assembly recently introducing a bill, probably the first of its kind in the country.
• Bowing to the pressure from self-financing engineering colleges, the Tamil Nadu State government lowered eligibility marks for admission into BE/BTech courses.
• Western India: The Gujarat government and State election commission have decided to introduce e-voting in the next local body elections becoming the first state in the country to enable citizens to cast their franchise online.
• UTs: In a first-of-its-kind, the Chandigarh administration's Registration and Licensing Authority (RLA) earned a whopping Rs 10 lakh for the auction of a vehicle number CH01AC. The proud buyer, Sector 33-C resident Narinder Singh Shergill, is an agriculturist.

MISCELLANEOUS

• An Air India Express plane IX-812 from Dubai overshot the table-top runway at the Mangalore airport and plunged over a cliff into a wooded valley, killing 158 persons.
• A proposal to allow IITs to start courses in medicine will be delayed with the law ministry sending back a Cabinet note of the HRD ministry with a recommendation that further discussions were needed on the issue. Law ministry has said further discussion should be conducted with the health ministry on the issue of IITs' plan to offer courses in medicine.
• All Central Universities and those deemed to be Universities will need to have at least one teacher for every 10 students for their post-graduate programmes in science and one for every 25 students at the undergraduate level, as per new regulations of the UGC.
• Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind demanded a sub-quota for Muslim women in the Women's Reservation Bill to ensure their representation in Parliament and State legislatures. Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind national president Syed Arshad Madani said both the Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee and the Justice Ranganath Misra Commission had highlighted the backward status of Muslims in all States and recommended special steps for them in social, economic and educational fields.
• The CBI claims to have detected large-scale misuse of Agmark certification by a company manufacturing milk product under the product names, "Krishna" and "Dholpur Fresh". The firm, M/s Bhole Baba Milk Food Industries, had taken Agmark licence from the Directorate of Inspection and Marketing but the licence was suspended for six months from November 20, 2009 after it was found that the quality norms were not kept. The misuse of the Agmark certification came to light during a surprise check on the premises of the company in RIICO Industrial Area at Dholpur in Rajasthan on May 17 and 18.

JUDICIAL PRONOUNCEMENTS

• The Delhi High Court acquitted three accused (Bhagat Singh, Mangal Sain and Brij Mohan Verma) in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case at Shastri Nagar in North Delhi, saying there were discrepancies galore in the evidence of prosecution witnesses. The riots broke out in the wake of the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984.
• The Calcutta HC has given 4-month time to CBI to carry out the investigations. Rizwanur was found dead near railway tracks in Dumdum area on Sept 21, 2007, just a month after his marriage to Priyanka Todi, daughter of industrialist Ashok Todi, owner of the Rs 200-crore Lux Cozi hosiery brand.
• The Chief Justice and all the other judges of Himachal High Court have declared their assets and properties which were also put up on the Court website later.
• In a major relief to LK Advani, the Lucknow bench of Allahabad HC upheld the order of Lucknow CBI court whereby it had dropped criminal proceedings against him.
• A special court in Bihar sentenced three men to life imprisonment for raping a 25-year-old Japanese woman near Bodh Gaya, just 26 days after it first started hearing the case.
• A trial court has transferred the alleged Rs 340-crore excise duty case, involving Ravi, a 1983 batch IAS officer of ministry of home affairs and others, to a special CBI court at Daman.
• The arrested police inspector, V. A. Rathod, is believed to have revealed before the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that the body of Kausarbi, the wife of Sohrabuddin, was cremated at Illol village in Sabarkantha district, the native village of the former deputy inspector general of Gujarat police, D. G. Vanzara, the principal accused in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case. This will help solve Kauserbi's "disappearance" in the case.

DEFENCE, SPACE, NUCLEAR, SCIENCE etc.

• Army places fresh order for 124 more Arjun tanks. The new order comes in the wake of reports that Arjun had outdone the Russian-made T-90 tanks during comparative trials in Rajasthan earlier this year.
• Nuclear-capable Agni-II missile, with a range of 2000 km, was successfully test-fired by the Army as part of user trial from the Wheelers Island off Orissa coast.
• ICGS Vishwast, the indigenously built, new class OPV (offshore patrol vessel), was inducted into the eastern command of the Coast Guard at a welcome ceremony at the Chennai Port Trust.
• Scientists and other staff of the Defence Food Research Laboratory (DFRL) here have expressed their anguish over the proposal to de-link it from the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and merge it with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). They say the DFRL is an exclusive food research laboratory that caters to the special requirements of the armed forces. The proposal is said to have been mooted in a report submitted by P. Rama Rao, former Secretary of the Department of Science and Technology. The department had called for restructuring the DRDO and focussing on critical technology areas of weaponry.