Appointment of Lokpal | Current Affairs | Vision IAS
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Posted 08 Feb 2024

Updated 16 Mar 2024

9 min read

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