1. AFSPA
A committee constituted by the Union Home Ministry in December to study the withdrawal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, or AFSPA, from Nagaland, slated to submit a report within 45 days as claimed by Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio, is yet to conclude its findings.
About:
- The panel was formed in the wake of growing civilian anger against the botched ambush by an elite unit of the Army that led to the killing of 13 civilians at Oting in Nagaland’s Mon district on December 4.
- The six-member committee, headed by Registrar-General of India Vivek Joshi, made a solitary visit to the State in January.
- The announcement of the constitution of the committee was made by the Nagaland Chief Minister in Kohima on December 26.
Important Info :
Do You know?
- Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) is a law that gives enormous discretionary powers to the armed forces over a civilian population.
- Currently, AFSPA is in effect in Jammu and Kashmir, Nagaland, Assam, Manipur (with the exception of the Imphal municipal area) and parts of Arunachal Pradesh.
- It has been retained in Arunachal for areas bordering Assam and Myanmar. In Arunachal Pradesh, the ‘disturbed area’ notification is confined to the districts of Tirap, Changlang and Longding, and the areas falling under Namsai and Mahadevpur police stations, bordering Assam.
2. UNLAWFUL ACTIVITIES PREVENTION ACT (UAPA)
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said it had blocked apps, website and social media accounts of Punjab Politics TV.
About:
- The Ministry said the channel had close links with the banned outfit Sikhs For Justice (SFJ), and it attempted to use the online media to disturb public order during the ongoing Punjab Assembly election.
- The SFJ was proscribed by the government under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in 2019. Members of the organisation have been accused of trying to revive terrorism in Punjab.
- It’s chief, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, has also been declared a terrorist. Pannun also has alleged links with key functionaries of other banned pro-Khalistan outfits, including Babbar Khalsa International, Khalistan Tiger Force and International Sikh Youth Federation.
Do you know?
- The Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) was enacted in 1967.
- The 2004 amendment was to ban organisations for terrorist activities, under which 34 outfits, including the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad, were banned.
- The 2019 amendment gave the Home Ministry the power to designate individuals as terrorists.
3. VANNIYAR QUOTA LAW
The Tamil Nadu government defended the Vanniyar quota law in the Supreme Court, saying the State is the front runner in social justice.
About:
- The State has challenged a Madras High Court decision to quash a State law that granted internal reservation at 10.5% to Vanniyakula Kshatriya and 7% and 2.5% to other communities within Most Backward Classes.
Arguments by Tamil Nadu
- Tamil Nadu has a “history of granting reservation traceable to the year 1854 onwards, including the caste census being taken in 1872”.
- The High Court’s decision to quash the law was based on the ground that the State has no legislative competence and the special reservation was provided with caste as basis and without quantifiable data.
- The Most Backward Classes within the Backward Classes were identified in Tamil Nadu as early as in 1957, when they were considered equivalent to Scheduled Castes but without the factor of untouchability. It said some of these communities were impacted by the criminal tribes’ laws of the British and enlisted as Most Backward Classes.
- The recommendation for 10.5% reservation to the Vanniyakula Kshatriya was made in commensuration with their population as enumerated in a survey held in 1983 by the Tamil Nadu Second Backward Classes Commission.
- The State had enacted the Act in 2021 only based on adequate authenticated data on population of the Most Backward Classes and Denotified Communities enumerated by the Tamil Nadu Second Backward Classes Commission in 1983.
4. CHAR CHINARI ISLAND
Two tall chinar trees were planted on the iconic island Char Chinari in the middle of the Dal Lake in Srinagar with the Zabarwan hills in the backdrop. The 2014 floods left two mighty chinars damaged.
About:
- Char Chinar, also sometimes called Char Chinari, Ropa Lank, or Rupa Lank, is an island in Dal Lake, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir.
- Dal Lake includes 3 islands, 2 of which are marked with beautiful Chinar trees.
- The island located on the Lakut Dal (small Dal) is known as Roph Lank (Silver Island), is marked with the presence of majestic Chinar trees at the four corners, thus known as Char-Chinari (Four Chinars).
- The second Chinar Island, known as Sone Lank (Gold Island), is located on the Bod Dal (Big Dal) and overlooks the holy shrine of Hazratbal.
- The island became famous in 1970s after the Bollywood song Accha To Hum Chalte Hai, starring Rajesh Khanna and Asha Parekh, was shot there for the movie Aan Milo Sajna.
Important Info :
Chinar trees
- Platanus orientalis, the Old World sycamore or Oriental plane, is a large, deciduous tree of the Platanaceae family, and known for its longevity and spreading crown.
- In autumn, its deep green leaves may change to blood red, amber, and yellow.
- It is called chinar or chenar in Asia.
5. INDIA-AFGHANISTAN RELATIONS
Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla flagged off a convoy of 50 trucks carrying 2500 tonnes of wheat as humanitarian aid for Afghanistan at the India-Pakistan integrated checkpost (ICP), the first of about 1,000 truckloads which will head for Jalalabad over the next few weeks.
About:
- The wheat assistance will be delivered in multiple consignments and will be handed over to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) in Jalalabad, Afghanistan to help people deal with the crisis caused by food shortage and an economic collapse after the Taliban takeover of Kabul.
- The assistance was made “in response to appeals made by the United Nations for humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan”.
- The wheat, procured by the Food Corporation of India (FCI), has been specially “double bagged” to protect it from contamination along the 500-km journey from Attari to Jalalabad, and then to other centres for distribution.
- The consignment had been originally offered to the Taliban leadership in October 2021, but was held up due to objections from Pakistan.
6. THE AI RESEARCH SUPERCLUSTER (RSC)
Meta announced in January 2022 that it is building an AI supercomputer, the AI Research SuperCluster (RSC).
About:
- Meta considers the RSC as a powerful supercomputer capable of quintillions of operations per second. It can perform tasks like translating text between languages and help identify potentially harmful content on Meta's platform.
- The RSC, compared with Meta’s legacy production and research infrastructure, can run computer vision workflows up to 20 times faster, and train large-scale natural language processing (NLP) models three times faster.
- Meta estimates that a model with billions of parameters can finish training in three weeks, compared to the nine weeks it was before.
- RSC today comprises a total of 760 NVIDIA DGX A100 systems as its compute nodes, for a total of 6,080 GPUs.
- RSC’s storage tier has 175 petabytes of Pure Storage FlashArray, 46 petabytes of cache storage in Penguin Computing Altus systems, and 10 petabytes of Pure Storage FlashBlade.
Supercomputers?
- A supercomputer can perform high-level processing at a faster rate when compared to a normal computer.
- Supercomputers are made up of hundreds or thousands of powerful machines which use better artificial intelligence (AI) models to improve operations that process huge amounts of data in less time than normal computers.
- Supercomputers require high-speed and specialised chip architectures. The chip performs 660 operations per cycle and thus run up to 230 gigaflops at 350 MHz.
- AI supercomputers are built by combining multiple graphic processing units (GPUs) into compute nodes, which are then connected by a high-performance network fabric to allow fast communication between those GPUs.
7. NATIONAL MEANS-CUM-MERIT SCHOLARSHIP (NMMSS)
Government has approved the continuation of Central Sector National Means-cum-Merit Scholarship (NMMSS) over the 15th Finance Commission cycle for a period of five years i.e. from 2021-22 to 2025-26 with financial outlay of Rs. 1827.00 crore.
About:
- The scheme has been approved with minor modifications in eligibility criteria such as increasing income ceiling from Rs.1.5 lakh per annum to Rs.3.5 lakh per annum and revising the renewal criteria under the scheme.
- The objective of the scheme, launched in 2008-09, is to award scholarships to meritorious students of economically weaker sections to arrest their drop-out at class VIII and encourage them to continue their education at secondary stage.
- One lakh fresh scholarships of Rs.12,000/- per annum (Rs.1000/- per month) per student are awarded to selected students of class IX every year and their continuation/renewal in classes X to XII for study in State Government, Government-aided and Local body schools under the scheme.
- Students are selected for award of scholarships through an examination conducted by the State/ UT Governments. 100% funds under the scheme are provided by Central Government.
- The scheme is boarded on the National Scholarship Portal (NSP). Scholarships are disbursed directly into the bank accounts of students by electronic transfer through Public Financial Management System (PFMS) following DBT mode.
8. DRAFT ‘INDIA DATA ACCESSIBILITY AND USE POLICY’
The IT ministry has come out with a draft policy that proposes a framework for government-to-government data sharing and moots that all data for every government department or organisation shall be open and shareable by default, with riders.
About:
- The draft ‘India Data Accessibility and Use Policy’ circulated for public consultation will be applicable to all data and information created, generated and collected by the government directly or through ministries, departments and authorised agencies.
- The policy aims to ‘radically transform’ India’s ability to harness public sector data.
9. PM CARES FOR CHILDREN
The Ministry of Women and Child Development said that the PM CARES scheme for children orphaned by the COVID-19 pandemic has been extended till February 28, 2022.
About:
- The scheme was earlier valid till December 31, 2021.
- The scheme covers all children who have lost both parents, the lone surviving parent or legal guardian or adoptive parent or parents, due to COVID-19 after March 11, 2020.
- To avail the scheme, a child should not have turned 18 on the date of death of his or her parents.
- The scheme announced on May 29, 2021, provides gap funding for education and health and a monthly stipend from the age of 18 years, apart from a lump sum amount of ₹10 lakh when a beneficiary turns 23 years old.
- Till January 31, 2022, the government had received 6,624 applications, out of which 3,855 had been approved.
Source : The Hindu
10. J&K DELIMITATION COMMISSION
The Delimitation Commission, set up to redraw the Assembly constituencies of Jammu and Kashmir, has been given two more months to complete the exercise, a notification from the Union Law Ministry said.
About:
- The extension will further delay an announcement to hold elections in J&K that is now a Union Territory but with a provision for a legislature.
- The commission came into being by virtue of Section 3 of the Delimitation Act 2002, an Act of Parliament, under the provisions of Part V of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019. It is redrawing boundaries of seven additional seats for the 83-member Assembly.
Members
- The term of the panel, headed by former Supreme Court judge, Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai (retired), was coming to end on March 6.
- While Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra and the Election Commissioner of J&K are ex-officio members of the Commission, all the five Lok Sabha members from the Union Territory are its associate members.
Source : The Hindu