Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 03 August 2020

SSC CGL Current Affairs

Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 03 AUGUST 2020

The Home Ministry has sought an extension of three months to frame the rules of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, a contentious legislation that was passed by Parliament more than six months ago.
The Ministry informed a parliamentary committee on subordinate legislation about the delay, after the former wrote to it seeking the status of the CAA rules. Without rules being notified, the CAA cannot be implemented or come into force. A senior government official confirmed that the Ministry has sought more time but did not specify the reasons for the delay.
The Hindu reported on July 20 that the Home Ministry had neither notified the CAA rules nor informed Parliament about the delay.
The CAA provides citizenship on the basis of religion to immigrants from six non-Muslim communities from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh who entered India on or before December 31, 2014. It was passed by Parliament on December 11 last year, and the President gave his assent on December 12. A month later, the Home Ministry issued a notification that the provisions of the Act would come into force on January 10.
Around 70 people were killed in various incidents after the CAA was passed. The protests stopped in March with the country-wide lockdown in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As per the Manual on Parliamentary Work, “statutory rules, regulations and bylaws will be framed within a period of six months from the date on which the relevant statute came into force.”

In the run up to 74th Independence day, we bring you a special story about Swachh Bharat. The Swachh Bharat mission has focused on rural and urban areas separately and played a crucial role in ensuring sanitation in the country.
AIR Correspondent reports, to ensure that the open defecation free behaviours are sustained, no one is left behind, and that solid and liquid waste management facilities are accessible, the Swachh Bharat Mission (Rural) has moved towards its second phase which is also called ODF-Plus.
This phase will continue till 2024-25. The Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban) has also made remarkable progress in the area of both sanitation and solid waste management. Over 4,324 Urban Local Bodies have been declared ODF in the country so far.
More than 66 lakh individual household toilets and over 6 lakh community and public toilets have also been constructed or are under construction.

Former RBI Governor D Subbarao on Friday said India is not close to the situation where the central bank has to go for debt monetisation amid rising government spending and falling revenue collection due to the COVID-19 crisis. The case for direct financing is made on the argument that government borrowing this year has ballooned way beyond normal, Subbaro said.
Subbarao was speaking at a virtual event to release a book titled 'Quest for Restoring Financial Stability in India' by former RBI Deputy Governor Viral V Acharya.
Earlier this month, Economic Affairs Secretary Tarun Bajaj said that monetisation of debt is not on the government''s agenda at the moment as there are some positive signs on the revenue collection front.
"In contrast, monetisation is and is seen, as a way of financing the fiscal deficit with the quantum and timing of money supply determined by the government's borrowing rather than the RBI's monetary policy," he said.
"In addition, the spread of virus has imparted more complications and greater urgency to address the problem of financial stability in the face of unprecedented fiscal challenges. In this background, the book is of special and urgent contemporary interest," Reddy said.

The Central Government will spend nearly twelve crore rupees for funding 112 startups to promote agri firms in the current financial year.
Minister of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Narendra Singh Tomar said the funds will be given to the start-ups selected by different knowledge partners and agribusiness incubators in the area of agro-processing, food technology and value addition.
He said, the funds will be provided under the Innovation and Agri-entrepreneurship Development Programme launched under the revamped RashtriyaKrishiVikasYojana. These start-ups were trained for two months at 29 agri-business incubation centres spread across the country.

Bangladesh will be constructing five more modern food storage systems in the country in addition to the three already under construction with financing support from the World Bank to enhance the storage capacity and improve the efficiency of grain storage.
The World Bank has approved a dollar 202 million additional financing for the modern food storage facilities project in Bangladesh. The financing will help increase the storage capacity of Bangladesh’s grain reserves by 5.35 lakh tons for 4.5 million households, said a World Bank Press release.
The project will support construction of eight modern grain storage steel silo complexes for rice and wheat in eight districts. It is in addition to the current construction work taking place in three districts of Bangladesh Ashuganj, Madhupur and Mymensingh.
The acting World Bank Country Director for Bangladesh and Bhutan Mohammad Anis said that this modern food storage system, combined with an effective distribution system, will help ensure food security after a natural disaster or during a crisis such as the current COVID-19 pandemic.
The funding is from the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA). It provides concessional financing with a 30-year term, including a five-year grace period.

Space enthusiast Shanmuga Subramanian, who found the debris of India's moonlanderVikram, said on Saturday that Chandrayaan-2's rover Pragyan seems to be intact on the moon's surface and had rolled out a few metres from the lander.
In a series of tweets along with the pictures of the moon surface, Subramanian said: "Chandrayaan-2's Pragyan "ROVER" intact on Moon's surface & has rolled out few metres from the skeleton Vikram lander whose payloads got disintegrated due to rough landing."
Tweeting a picture taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbital (LRO), Shanmugam said the white dot might be the skeleton lander devoid of other payloads and the black dot might be the rover.
According to him, the rover may be still intact on the moon's surface. Latest pictures from LRO (Jan 4, 2020) showed rover tracks on the moon from the lander.
He said the debris he had found earlier might be from one of the payloads. The debris found by NASA might be of other payloads, transmitting antenna and thrusters.
Vikram lost contact with ISRO following its launch from Chandrayaan-2 moon orbiter on September 6 last year when it tried to make softlanding near the moon's south pole.
It was on July 22, 2019, when the GSLV rocket, nicknamed 'Bahubali', blasted off from the second launch pad at India's rocket port in Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh carrying Chandrayaan-2 OrbiterVikram (lander) and Pragyan (rover).