National:
Rs.
580-cr. loss as Modi govt. favoured corporates: CAG
The Comptroller
and Auditor-General of India has come down heavily on the Gujarat government
and State
public sector
undertakings for causing a loss of nearly Rs. 580 crore to the exchequer by
bestowing “undue”
favours on large
corporate entities. Major industrial houses to which the Narendra Modi
government played
benefactor
included Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), Essar Steel and Adani Power Ltd (APL),
said the CAG
report for the
year ended March 31, 2012.
AAP
is now a registered party
The Election
Commission has formally registered social activist Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi
Party (AAP) as
a political party.
This will pave the way for it to contest elections to the 70-member Delhi
Assembly whose
term ends on
December 17. During the Delhi polls, it may get a one-time concession of
choosing a common
symbol from among
the free symbols. Mr. Kejriwal, a former member of the India Against Corruption
movement, founded
by social activist Anna Hazare, launched the AAP on November 26, 2012, after he
fell
out with the
latter. The AAP has a 23-member national executive and Mr. Kejriwal is its
convener.
Stringent
anti-rape laws get President’s nod
President Pranab
Mukherjee has given his assent to stricter laws to check crime against women,
particularly
cases of sexual
assault. The Criminal Law [Amendment] Bill, 2013 was passed by the Lok Sabha on
19th
March, 2013, and
by the Rajya Sabha on 21st March, 2013. The President of India has accorded his
assent
to the Bill on 2nd
April, 2013 and it will now be called the Criminal Law [Amendment] Act, 2013.
The new
laws have
provisions for increased sentence for rape convicts, including life-term and
death sentence,
besides providing
for stringent punishment for offences such as acid attacks, stalking and
voyeurism.
Through the
revised Bill, the government has amended various sections of the Indian Penal
Code, the Code
of Criminal
Procedure, the Indian Evidence Act and the Protection of Children from Sexual
Offences Act. As
per the amended
law, a rape convict can be sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for a term not
less than 20
years, which may
extend to remainder of the convict’s natural life. It also provides for the
death sentence to
repeat offenders.
And for the first time, stalking and voyeurism have been defined as
non-bailable offences if
repeated for a
second time, while acid attack convicts can get a 10-year jail sentence.
Nod
for changes to Civil Services Examination
The government has
approved modifications to the Civil Services Examination, 2013. According to a
notification a
candidate can use any one regional language from the 8th Schedule of the
Constitution or
English as the
medium of writing the examination. The conditionality that there should be a
minimum of 25
candidates opting
for a medium and the requirement that the language should have been the medium
of
examination at the
graduation level have been dropped. Further, a candidate will be allowed to
take up
literature as an
optional subject (from 22 of the languages in the 8th Schedule and English)
without the
conditionality of
his/her graduation in the literature of that language. Similarly, the English
component (of 100
marks) from the
Essay Paper has been dropped and two qualifying papers of 300 marks each in any
Modern
Indian Language
(MIL) and in English have been restored. The Essay Paper will now be of 250
marks to be
written in the
language of candidate’s choice. Papers I and II will be only of a qualifying
nature — one in any
MIL and another in
English — of 300 marks each, while Paper III will be the compulsory Essay
Paper, with
no English
Comprehension test, to be written in the medium of the candidate’s choice. This
paper will carry
250 marks. There
will be four compulsory papers of General Studies of 250 marks each — Paper-IV
(Indian
Heritage &
Culture, History and Geography of the World and Society), Paper-V (Governance,
Constitution,
Polity, Social
Justice and International relations), Paper-VI (Technology, Economic
Development, Bio
Diversity,
Environment, Security and Disaster Management) and Paper-VII (Ethics, Integrity
and Aptitude).
U.S.
Navy Commander leaves for New Delhi
Vice-Admiral Scott
H. Swift, Commander of the United States Navy’s potent 7th
Fleet operating as part of its
Pacific Fleet,
concluded his two-day visit of India’s Southern Naval Command and left for New
Delhi. In India
to co-chair the
Indo-U.S. Navy Executive Steering Group, the Commander of the largest fleet of
the U.S.
Navy,
forward-deployed in Japan and South Korea, called on Vice-Admiral Satish Soni,
Flag Officer
Commanding-in-Chief
of the Southern Naval Command.
Maharashtra
drought man-made, says study
With 3,712 major,
minor and medium projects, Maharashtra has the highest number of dams in the
country;
yet its irrigation
coverage was 17.9 per cent in 2009-10. Its projects are plagued with delays and
cost
overruns. The
Maharashtra Economic Survey 2012-13, does not give any figure for irrigated
area, saying it is
not available.
Last year, this same figure had created a furore, since it had increased by a
mere 0.1 per cent
from 2000-01 when
it was 17.8 per cent, after a decade-long expenditure of nearly Rs 70,000
crore.
Questioning the
severity of the drought and the government’s claims, South Asia Network on
Dams, Rivers
and People
(SANDRP), in its analysis, says that while the 1972 drought could be called a
natural calamity,
the 2012-13
drought is a disaster of water management, accompanied by corruption, water-intensive
cropping patterns
and absence of a long-term view to manage water and drought.
Ibobi
assures Myanmar of help in health sector
A Myanmar
government team led by Power Minister U Kyaw Win called on Manipur Chief
Minister Okram
Ibobi Singh to
seek help in power, healthcare and improvement of trade. Soon after their
arrival the
delegates visited
the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences, a Union government undertaking, a
private
hospital and a
diagnostic centre in Imphal. Mr. Singh had assured the team, consisting of 11
members, of all
assistance to the
Myanmarese nationals in the health sector.
GRI
students bag national award
Two students of
Gandhigram Rural Institute have won the first prize with a cash award of
Rs.40,000 under
health science and
allied sciences category at the National Student Research Convention held in
Mumbai
recently. Ph. D.
student S. Karthigai Selvi and MCA student M. Raj Kumar said that their project
titled
‘radiological
support system of brain abnormality detection from MRI Scans’ was selected
under health
science category.
The Indian
Institute of Materials Management (IIMM) has to host APCON 2013 (Asia-Pacific
conference), the
flagship event of
the International Federation of Purchasing and Supply Management (IFPSM), on
May 16
and 17 in
Bangalore. This event has to bring together top management executives and
supply chain
management (SCM)
professionals from around the world. The conference is back in India after 11
years.
Rashtrapati
Bhavan decks up to receive guests
Noted classical
singer of the Benaras Gharana Girija Devi, who was invited to perform at
Rashtrapati
Bhavan recently,
became the first guest to be hosted at the newly-refurbished Vivekananda Suite
in the
guest wing of the
President’s House.
Army
mountaineering expedition flagged off
Army Chief General
Bikram Singh flagged off a joint Indo-Nepal Army mountaineering expedition to
the
Mount Everest.
Katju
to set up ‘Court of Last Resort’
Asserting that a
large number of people, particularly minorities, languish in prisons as
undertrials for years, or
remain ‘unjustly
incarcerated’, Press Council of India (PCI) chairperson Justice Markandey Katju
has decided
to set up a ‘Court
of Last Resort’ to examine such cases. He noted that many such people were from
the
minority community
because of ‘suspicions and preconceived notions that all persons of that
community are
terrorists’.
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