Appointment of Lokpal
- Recently, the Prime Minister-led panel cleared names for chairperson of Lokpal.
- Lokpal and Lokayukt ACt,2013 provide for establishment of Lokpal for Union and Lokayukta for States to inquire into allegations of corruption against certain public functionaries.
- Jurisdiction of Lokpal includes Prime Minister, Ministers, members of Parliament, Groups A, B, C and D officers and officials of Central Government.
- Other members in selection committee of Lokpal (for chairperson and members) include:
- Speaker of Lok Sabha
- Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha
- CJI or a Judge of the Supreme Court nominated by him.
- Eminent jurist (nominated by the President)
- Such appointment remains valid despite any vacancy in Selection Committee.
- Tags :
- LOKPAL
Open Network Digital Commerce (ONDC)
- Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution launched a pilot to on-board the Fair Price Shops (FPSs) on the Open Network Digital Commerce (ONDC).
- FPSs have been licensed to distribute essential commodities to the ration card holders under the Targeted Public Distribution System.
- ONDC is an open network that enables location-aware, local digital commerce stores across industries to be discovered and engaged by any network-enabled applications.
- It enables large-scale democratization of digital commerce in India by providing a level playing field for large and small digital commerce platforms.
- Tags :
- ONDC
- FAIR PRICE SHOPS
Payment Aggregators
- Juspay, Zoho, and Decentro have received final authorisation from Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for Payment Aggregator (PA) licences.
- PAs are entities that facilitate e-commerce sites and merchants to accept various payment instruments from the customers without the need for merchants to create a separate payment integration system of their own.
- In the process, they receive payments from customers, pool and transfer them on to the merchants.
- PAs are different from Payment Gateways as latter only provide technology infrastructure to facilitate payment transaction without any involvement in fund handling.
- Tags :
- payment aggregators
Dachigam National Park
- Due to heavy snowfall, Himalayan Black Bears are provided a special diet to aid them during hibernation period at rehabilitation centre of DNP.
- About DNP
- Located in Jammu and Kashmir and spread in Zabarwan mountain ranges of great Himalayas.
- Occupies almost half of catchment zone of world famous Dal Lake.
- Dagwan is the major river in the park
- Holds the last viable population of Hangul or Kashmir stag (IUCN status: critically endangered) in world.
- Poaching by Gujjars, Bakarwals is the main cause for Hangul decline.
- Also, inhabits largest population of Asiatic black bear in Asia.
- Tags :
- Dachigam
- national park
- himalayan black bear
Safe City Project
- UN Women will provide technical assistance to Kerala for the Safe City project and gender data hub.
- Established in 2010, UN Women is the UN organization dedicated to gender equality and empowerment of women.
- Safe City Projects
- It is an initiative of Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) under Nirbhaya Funds Scheme.
- It aims to create a safe, secure and empowering environment for women in public places.
- MHA has approved Safe City projects in 8 selected cities - Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Lucknow.
- Tags :
- Society
- SAFE CITY PROJECT
- WOMEN
Hypervelocity Expansion Tunnel Test Facility (HETTF)
- IIT-Kanpur has successfully built and tested India’s first HETTF (named as S2 as well as Jigarthand).
- It puts India amongst only a handful of countries with this advanced hypersonic testing capability.
- This project was supported by Fund for Improvement in S&T Infrastructure (FIST) of Department of Science & Technology.
- It is capable of generating flight speeds between 3-10 km/s, simulating the