Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 18 December 2016

Bipin Rawat to be next Army Chief

In a surprise move, the government announced that Lt. Gen. Bipin Rawat will be the next Chief of Army Staff.
The appointment goes against the long-held tradition of appointing the senior-most eligible officer to the post.
By this criterion, Lt. Gen. Praveen Bakshi, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief Eastern Command, should have been appointed.
Air Marshal B.S. Dhanoa, now the Vice-Chief of the Indian Air Force (IAF), has been appointed the next Air Chief.
Lt. Gen. Bakshi is widely respected as a highly competent and professional officer.
The last time the senior-most eligible officer was not appointed was in 1983 when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi chose to appoint Lt. Gen. A.S. Vaidya as the Chief, contrary to expectations that Lt. Gen. S.K. Sinha would take over.
Lt. Gen. Sinha, then Vice-Chief, chose to resign in June 1983 though he was due to retire in early 1984. With the appointment of Lt. Gen. Rawat, two senior-most officers have been superseded, which is unprecedented in the military.
Lt. Gen. Rawat is currently the Vice-Chief of the Army. He was commissioned in the Fifth Battalion of the Eleven Gorkha Rifles in December 1978.

Apex court says J&K has no sovereignty outside Indian Constitution

Jammu and Kashmir has “no vestige” of sovereignty outside the Indian Constitution, and citizens of the State are “first and fore-most” citizens of India, the Supreme Court has held.
The court made this observation while describing as “wholly incorrect” the conclusion arrived at by the J&K HC that the State has “absolute sovereign power” to legislate laws touching the rights regarding immovable properties.
The State of Jammu & Kashmir has no vestige of sovereignty outside the Constitution of India and its own Constitution, which is subordinate to the Constitution of India,” a Bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and R.F. Nariman said.
The Supreme Court said this while holding that provisions of the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest, are within the legislative competence of Parliament and can be en-forced in J&K.
The State Bank of India had appealed against the High Court ver-dict which held that the SAR-FAESI Act would collide with the Transfer of Property Act of Jammu & Kashmir, 1920.
The Bench set aside the verdict of the High Court that held that any law made by Parliament which affects the laws made by a State legislature cannot be extended to Jammu & Kashmir.
The Supreme Court said. “We may also add that permanent residents of Jammu & Kashmir are citizens of India, and there is no dual citizenship as is contemplated by some other federal Constitutions in other parts of the world.

:: Science and Tech ::

PSLC C37 will put into orbit 83 satellites

The next PSLV-C37, that will put into orbit a record number of 83 satellites, is being scheduled for launch on January 27, said PSLV Project Director B. Jayakumar.
The 100th nozzle would be used in the historic PSLV that would launch 83 satellites.
RAP would have to increase its production to meet the rising demand of the ISRO.
The 100th nozzle would be one among the six nozzles that would be used in the PSLV-C37

:: India and World ::

India and Tajikistan signed agreement against terror financing

Tajikistan and India signed an agreement against terror financing and money laundering.
Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon, who is on a five-day visit to India, said his government would continue to work to stabilise Afghanistan.
In his address to the media, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said both countries would deepen their engagement to deal with the threat of terrorism in the neighbourhood.
“We support India’s candidature for Shang-hai Cooperation Organisation and India's bid for permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council.”
Financial Intelligence Unit of India and the Central Asian country signed an agreement to pre-vent financing of terrorism and money laundering. Both sides also signed agreements on bilateral investment and avoidance of double taxation.
Tajikistan invited India to invest in four free economic zones that have come up in the country and thanked it for the modernisation of the Varzob-1 Hydropower Station.
Mr. Rahmon, appreciated the signing of the trilateral Chahbahar port agreement between India, Iran and Afghanistan as the project will provide connectivity to Tajikistan.

:: International ::

A new deal has been reached for Aleppo evacuation

A new deal has been reached to complete the evacuation of rebel-held areas of Syria's east Aleppo which ground to a halt over demands from pro-government forces that people also be moved out of two villages besieged by rebels.
A Syrian government official also said the stalled evacuation of Aleppo would resume, alongside some evacuations from the four besieged towns and villages.
The Shia villages of al-Foua and Kefraya in Idlib province are besieged by insurgents. The towns of Madaya and Zabadani are blockaded by pro-government forces.
The operation to evacuate fighters and civilians from the last opposition-held area of Aleppo was suspended for second day, after pro-government militias demanded that wounded people also be brought out of al-Foua and Kefraya, and protesters blocked the road out of Aleppo.
Rebel sources accused pro-government forces they identified as Shia militias of detaining and opening fire on a convoy carrying evacuees from east Aleppo.
The chaos surrounding the Aleppo evacuation reflects the complexity of Syria’s civil war, with an array of groups and foreign interests involved on each side.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war, said no buses or ambulances had yet entered al-Foua or Kefraya, but the operation was expected to begin soon.

After demonetisation Venezuela faces protests

Venezuela became a country mostly without cash, sparking scattered protests and looting around the country as people fumed at having their already limited purchasing power cut of almost entirely.
As the nation's most widely used banknote went out of circulation, the higher-denomination bills that were supposed to replace the 100—bolivar note had not yet arrived at banks or ATMs.
That forced people to rely on credit cards and bank transfers or to try to make purchases with bundles of hard-to-find smaller bills often worth less than a penny each.
Indignation at having to deal with an economy even more paralysed than usual sparked social unrest. Police put down looting near a bank building in the large western city of Maracaibo with several arrests.
Mobs looted several businesses in the remote eastern state of Bolivar.
In total, authorities said there were protests and looting in six cities, leading to 32 people being detained and one injured.
Mr. Maduro said the closure was needed to thwart “mafias” who hoard bolivars. Critics mocked the notion that gangsters would choose to keep their wealth in the world's fastest-devaluing currency.

:: Business and Economy ::

Finance Minister says Govt will finish Remonetisation soon

FM said the govt had taken a “somewhat courageous step” by with-drawing high value bank-notes and going in for a large scale currency swap, adding that the remonetisation of the economy with fresh currency notes was not going to take “a very long time.
The fact that India today has the capacity to take and enforce these decisions, and experiment boldly even at a time when the world is look-ing inwards, marks an exception as far as India is concerned,” Mr. Jaitley said.
Once the remonetisation process was complete, which the minister said had made substantial headway, it would mark the creation of a new normal for India.
It had become a way of life, not merely that you had a lot more cash currency as part of your GDP, but the adverse socio-economic consequences of that including aberrations such as not getting into banking system, escaping the tax net and using cash for collateral purposes including crimes.
There were more than 75 crore debit and credit cards, different types of e-wallets being experimented and in-creases in the range of 100 per cent to 1000 per cent in the use of each digital mode of payments, the minister pointed out.
Mr. Jaitley said, common taxation had to lead to a federal bureaucracy and the new indirect tax regime ought to begin in a new financial year, so April 1, 2017, was still a target.

Deposits of high-value currency still subject to IT act

The Ministry of Finance sought to clarify that deposits of de-monetised high-value currency notes into political parties' bank accounts could also be subjected to scrutiny under the Income Tax law.
There have been some newspaper reports which seem to wrongly suggest that there cannot be any scrutiny of Income-tax returns of political parties registered with the Election Commis-sion in the context of deposits of old currency notes.
This inference seems to have been drawn because of the fact that the income of the political parties is exempt from Income Tax under Section 13A.
Deposits of old Rs.500 and Rs.1000 currency notes in bank accounts of political parties would not be taxed.
Stressing that there are ‘enough provisions in the In-come Tax law to scrutinise political parties' accounts for which they are required to file a return.
The exemption from Income Tax is given to only registered political parties subject to conditions which includes keeping and maintaining books of ac-counts and other documents as would enable the Assess-ing Officer to deduce its in-come.
In respect of each voluntary contribution in excess of Rs.20,000, the political party will have to maintain a re-cord of such contributions along with the name and ad-dress of such person who has made such contribution.

:: Sports ::

Vijender Singh successfully defended his WBO Asia-Pacific super middleweight title

The Vijender Singh juggernaut rolled on as the Indian boxing star took less than 10 minutes to successfully defend his WBO Asia-Pacific su-per middleweight title with an emphatic Technical Knockout (TKO) win over Tanzania's Francis Cheka.
Vijender landed the winning blow in the third round of what was to be a 10-round contest to leave the former World champion Cheka dazed and a packed Thyagraj Stadium delirious.
When the bout finally started, Cheka having a go at the hard-hitting Haryana boxer who landed clean blows.
Cheka was also unsettled by the ‘reach' Vijender enjoyed. While Cheka struggled ow-ing to his shorter reach, Vijender put his long arms to good use.