Test: February 2020 Weekly Current Affair - 2 - UPSC MCQ

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in Parliament about the formation of a trust to oversee the construction of a Ram Temple in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. In this regard, 67.703 acres of land near the temple area has been allocated to the trust.

The Madhya Pradesh (MP) government, for the first time, will use drones for mapping villages. This will replace the land survey work, done either manually or with the help of satellite images. In this regard, state revenue department inked an agreement with Survey of India, the country’s national mapping agency under the Ministry of Science and Technology.

The Chief Minister (CM) of Andhra Pradesh (AP) Yeduguri Sandinti (YS) Jaganmohan Reddy has launched the 1st Disha Police Station in the State at Rajamahendravaram in East Godavari district with the aim to provide speedy justice to female victims of sexual assaults and other heinous crimes under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012. AP government has approved the A.P. Disha Bill, 2019 that makes it mandatory to settle cases of atrocities against women in 21 days and punishment including a death penalty for the offences of rape and gang-rape.

The State owned Bank of Baroda (BoB) has partnered with Credit Analysis and Research Limited (CARE) for assessing the credit qualities of Small and Medium Enterprises (SME). Loan value for SMEs will be identified through 8 –Point scale. Number 1 indicates the highest creditworthiness and 8 – poor creditworthiness.

In Madhya Pradesh (MP), Bhopal, 3-day Narmada Mahotsav was celebrated on 31st January to 2nd February 2020, on the plains of Amarkantak, MP, on the occasion of Narmada Jayanthi. Among 3 days of celebration one day will be reserved for all women activities under the theme of “Beti Bachao- Beti Padhao”

As on January 17, 2020 approximately 73.47 lakh candidates were provided skilling under Short Term Training (STT) courses and Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) across India from 2016-2020 under the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY). It is a flagship program under the Skill India Mission of the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MoSD&E). Post placement support of Rs. 1500 per month per trainee will be given for special groups & special areas for 2 or 3 month after the training.

The government of Karnataka launched the Janasevaka scheme in certain municipal corporation wards to provide home delivery of various government services like ration cards, senior citizen identity and health cards, etc. The scheme is launched by the chief minister of Karnataka Mr. B.S. Yediyurappa, and the scheme will contain 53 services from 11 departments.

The union cabinet Minister for the Ministry of Petroleum and natural Gas Shri Dharmendra Pradhan signed the 1st ever term contract with Mr. Igor Sechin, Chief Executive Officer (C.E.O) and Chairman of Rosneft (Russia’s largest oil producing Company). The term contract is between State-Owned Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) and Rosneft for Importing 2 Million Metric Tonnes of Urals grade crude oil to India for the year 2020.

The Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) administration renamed Public Health Engineering and Irrigation and Flood Control Department (PHE & IFC) as the ‘Jal Shakthi Department’. The Administrative Council meeting was met under the Chairmanship of Girish Chandra Murmu, Lieutenant Governor of J&K, sanctioned the implementation of the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) to achieve 100% coverage of piped water supply by December 2021.

Bodos are the single largest tribal community in Assam, making up over 5-6 per cent of the state’s population. They have controlled large parts of Assam in the past. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has attended the rally at Kokrajhar in Assam to celebrate the signing of the Tripartite Bodo Agreement, which was signed between the Centre, Assam Government and the banned Assam-based insurgent group National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) on 27th January 2020.

The National bank of Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has given approval for the loan worth of 140 Crore at lower interest rate to Punjab State Agricultural and Rural Development Bank (PSADB) to strengthen and supporting the PSADB financially. The decision to provide Rs 140 crore was taken during a meeting between Punjab Cooperation Minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa-led delegation with NABARD Chairman Harsh Kumar Banwala in Mumbai, Maharashtra.

The aim of the scheme Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY) is to provide incentives of Rs. 5,000 for the loss of wages of working women while ensuring proper rest and nutrition during pregnancy or after delivery of the first living child. The incentive will be sent to the bank account directly through Direct Benefit Transfer(DBT). The incentive of Rs 5000 is given in 3 installments – Rs. 1000 after early registration of pregnancy, Rs. 2000 after 6 month of pregnancy and Rs. 2000 after registration of child birth.

The Government of Somalia announced a National Emergency on Locusts (family- Acrididae) attack because these insects caused major damage to the food supply in one of the world’s poorest countries & and most vulnerable regions in the world. Somalia is the 1st country to make such a declaration & its declaration aims to intensify the national effort to combat these insects. The Prime Minister (PM) of Pakistan Imran Khan has also declared a national emergency due to the massive locust’s attack. These locusts have destroyed entire crops in the Punjab province of Pakistan, which now needs Rs 730 crore to overcome this crisis.

On February 5,2020 The Government of Bhutan, Thimphu decided to implement a daily fee of Rs.1200 ($17) for “regional tourists” from India, the Maldives, Bangladesh from July 2020. The fee is called SDF “Sustainable Development Fees” in order to regulate a new tourism policy (tourism facilities, better infrastructure).

Sports Authority of India (SAI) and Hockey India announced the establishment of the High Performance Centers in 7 places across the country, for the young hockey players (14 to 24 years of age) to participate in 2024 and 2028 Olympic games

The Uttar Pradesh (UP) state Government cabinet chaired by its Chief Minister (CM) Yogi Adityanath has approved the allotment of 5-acre land to the Sunni Waqf Board for the construction of a new mosque in Ayodhya district. The land was in Dhannipur village along the Lucknow-Ayodhya highway, about 18 kilometres from the Ayodhya’s Headquater, Faizabad.

According to the Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas, Shri.Dharmendra Debendra Pradhan, a total of about 27.5 crore LPG (Liquefied petroleum gas) or cooking gas connections in India & out of this, 8 crore connections have been provided under Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) scheme. Also the LPG coverage has reached 96.9 % as of January 1,2020.

According to recently released data by Government of India via Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity), State Bank of India (SBI) and Bank of Maharashtra (BoM) are the only Public Sector Banks where are rated as ‘Good’ in Digital Transactions with the score of 68 and 77 respectively. The Scores for an individual bank are given by MeitY. A total of 9 private banks and 2 payment banks received good ratings on digital transactions in December 2019.

The government of Punjab has banned the sale of all types of online lottery schemes under section 5 of the Lotteries (Regulation) Act 1998 in order to check for illegal sales. The act will not only check illegal lottery business but will also boost Punjab’s tax and non-tax revenue.

Fitch Ratings Inc., an American credit rating agency in its ‘India’s economic growth outlook’, has estimated India’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth to 5.6 % for the financial year-FY21. For the current fiscal 2019-20 (FY 20), GDP is projected at 4.6 %.

Paytm, India’s leading digital payments company,has launched an all-in-one QR (Quick Response), point-of-sale (POS) device for merchants across India & SDK (software development kit) for third-party integration. The PoS, launched by Infosys cofounder and UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) chairman Nandan Nilekani.

According to the government’s response to a Right to Information (RTI) query has revealed that for every 100 anganwadi (or day-care Centre) beneficiaries in India, only 7 belong to urban areas. This shows poor coverage by the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) in urban areas implemented by the Ministry of Women and Child Development (WCD). Anganwadi beneficiaries include children from 0-6 years of age, pregnant women and lactating mothers.

General Audrey Azoulay Directorate General of UNESCO visited Pink City or walled city Jaipur, which in June 2019 became 38th World Heritage site in India. She presented the World Heritage City certificate to Minister of Urban Development Shanti Dhariwal. In 2017, Ahmedabad became the first city of India to get the World Heritage City tag.

During the period of 2015-16 to 2019-20, the Centre has released a total of Rs 6,717.18 crore under the Amended Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (ATUFS). A total of 9,641 applications, covering employment of 2.86 lakh persons and investment of Rs. 40026.5 crore submitted by textile units, have been issued with UIDs (unique identification numbers) till January 2020. This information has been given by textiles minister Smriti Irani as a part of competitiveness of the textile industry.

The Government (Ministry of MeitY) has set a target of 40 Billion or 4000 Crore digital transactions for the current fiscal FY2020 (Financial year 2020)