1. VIGILANCE OFFICERS

Central Vigilance Commission officers will be transferred every 3 years from now onwards.

About:

• The Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) has modified the guidelines pertaining to the transfer and posting of officials in the vigilance units of government organisations, restricting their tenure to three years at one place.
• The tenure may be extended to three more years, albeit at a different place of posting.
• According to the CVC, undue long stay of an official in a vigilance department had the potential of developing vested interests, apart from giving rise to unnecessary complaints or allegations.
• In order to emphasis on the importance of the issue and to ensure transparency, objectivity and uniformity in approach, the Commission has decided to modify its earlier guidelines
• The first phase of transfer/posting has to be completed by May 31. The exercise of transferring all the personnel in question should be completed by June 30
• The order said after transfer from the vigilance unit, there would be a compulsory cooling off period of three years before anyone could be considered again for posting in the unit.

Source : The Hindu

2. JUSTICE NUTHALAPATI VENKATA RAMANA

In exercise of the powers conferred by clause (2) of Article 124 of the Constitution, President Ram Nath Kovind has appointed Justice N V Ramana as the 48th Chief Justice of India with effect from April 24, 2021, accepting the recommendation made by the outgoing CJI SA Bobde.

About:

• He was Additional Advocate General for Andhra Pradesh before being called to the State High Court Bench in 2001.
• Justice Ramana was the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, before his elevation to the Supreme Court on February 17th, 2014.
• As Executive Chairman of National Legal Services Authority, Justice Ramana was responsible for making India’s legal aid programme the largest in the world with aid provided on the basis of a ‘means test’ rather than on basis of fixed categories.
• As CJI, Justice Ramana will have a tenure of 16 months till August 26th next year.
• Justice Ramana has said one of his primary objectives would be to improve the judicial infrastructure through a special purpose vehicle called the ‘National Judicial Infrastructure Corporation’ to act as a nodal agency.

Source : The Hindu

3. NATIONAL SUPER COMPUTING MISSION (NSM)

India is fast emerging a leader in high power computing with the National Super Computing Mission (NSM).

About:

• The National Supercomputing Mission was launched to enhance the research capacities and capabilities in the country by connecting them to form a Supercomputing grid, with National Knowledge Network (NKN) as the backbone.
• The Mission is being jointly steered by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and implemented by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune, and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru.

Phases:

• Computing infrastructure has already been installed in four premier institutions and installation work is in rapid progress in 9 more.
• Completion in of Phase II of NSM in September 2021 will take the country’s computing power to 16 Petaflops (PF).
• Phase III, initiated this year, will take the computing speed to around 45 Petaflops. This will include three systems of 3 PF each and one system of 20PF as a national facility.

List of supercomputers:

• PARAM Shivay, the first supercomputer assembled indigenously, was installed in IIT (BHU), followed by PARAM Shakti, PARAM Brahma, PARAM Yukti, PARAM Sanganak at IIT-Kharagpur IISER, Pune, JNCASR, Bengaluru and IIT Kanpur respectively.
• PARAM Siddhi - AI, the high-performance computing-artificial intelligence (HPC-AI) supercomputer, has achieved global ranking of 62 in TOP 500 most powerful supercomputer systems in the world, released on 16th November 2020.

Source : PIB

4. WORLD HEALTH DAY

World Health Day being celebrated on April 07, 2021.

About:

• The World Health Day is a global health awareness day celebrated every year on 7 April, under the sponsorship of the World Health Organization (WHO).
• Since 1950, the World Health Day is held annually on April 7.
• The date of April 7 marks the anniversary of the founding of WHO in 1948.
• The theme of this year is Building a fairer, healthier world for everyone.

Source : All India Radio

5. CRAFT INSTRUCTOR TRAINING SCHEME (CITS)

The Directorate General of Training (DGT), under the aegis of Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE), announced results of the All India Trade Test (AITT) for CITS Academic session 2019-2020.

About:

• DGT offers Crafts Instructor Training programmes under Crafts Instructor Training Scheme (CITS) to ITI trainees who aspire to pursue a career in skill training.
• Comprehensive training both in skills and training methodology is imparted to the instructor trainees to make them conversant with techniques of transferring hands-on skills, to train skilled manpower.
• At the end of year-long CITS training, an All India Trade Test (AITT) for each of the 34 trades is conducted online by DGT.
• On successful completion of the training, trainees are awarded National Craft Instructor Certificate (NCIC).

Source : PIB

6. CHINTAN VAISHNAV

Noted socio-technologist Dr Chintan Vaishnav has been appointed the mission director of Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), the government’s flagship initiative under NITI Aayog.

About:

• Vaishnav will take over from Ramanathan Ramanan later this month. Ramanan has been leading AIM as its first mission director since June 2017.
• Vaishnav is currently at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), US. He holds a PhD in technology, management, and policy from MIT.
• Vaishnav is an engineer trained to understand and build large-scale systems, with both human as well as technological complexities.
• AIM’s mission is to create and promote a vibrant ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship across the country.
• So far, AIM has established 72,59 Atal Tinkering Labs in schools across 650 districts, providing over 3.5 million students access to emerging technologies.

Source : LiveMint

7. ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINE (EVM)

Last week, in Assembly elections in Assam, an Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) was found in a private vehicle belonging to a BJP candidate’s spouse.

About:

What is the Election Commissions protocol for the transportation of EVMs?

• The Commission’s transport protocol for polled and reserve EVMs dictates that the voting machines, under no circumstances, should be taken in private custody or a private place.
• And also, that all EVMs, after voting is complete, should be under cover of armed police at all times.
• So, the polling party’s decision to hitch a ride in a private vehicle amounted to taking the EVM (used in Polling Station 149 of Ratabari seat) and hence was a violation of the EC’s rules.
• While saying that the seal of the EVM was intact, the EC ordered repoll for polling station 149.

Source : Indian Express