Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 17 August 2016

:: National ::

Review petition filed by BCCI

The Board of Control for Cricket in India(BCCI) moved the SC for a re-look into its judgment upholding the recommendations of the former Chief Justice R.M. Lodha Committee, to overhaul functioning of the top cricketing body.
The review petition follows legal advice rendered by former Supreme Court judge Justice Markandey Katju in his interim report to the Board that the verdict smacked of judicial overreach and was thus unconstitutional.
Justice Katju had said that though the Supreme Court’s intentions in intervening with the BCCI’s working was “good”, it amounted to “judicial legislation” and violated the Tamil Nadu Societies Registration Act and the Indian Constitution.
The petition follows Justice Katju’s advice that the Supreme Court plainly ignored the law that any change in the rules of the BCCI should have been made through a special resolution initiated under the Tamil Nadu Societies Registration Act.

SC refused to pass interim direction in NEET case

The Supreme Court refused to pass an interim direction to the Medical Council of India (MCI) to publish separate merit lists for CBSE students and their counterparts who studied under the State syllabus in the NEET exam..
However, a Bench of Justices sought the Centre’s response on petitions filed by several medical and dental aspirants drawn largely from Tamil Nadu against the “dis- crimination” shown in the Centre’s new NEET ordinance.
The new Amending Ordinance in the Indian Medical Council Act, 1956, on the other hand, makes it mandatory for private colleges to provide admission onlythrough NEET. The court issued notice also to the MCI and the CBSE in this regard.
The petitions by the students, who largely hail from Tamil Nadu, pleaded with the court to issue an interim order that admission to private medical colleges this academic year.

Ganga act will give final authority to centre

A first-of-its-kind bill to regulate a river — the Ganga Act, will draw from the National Highways Act and allow the Centre final say over States during disputes over management of its water.
The National Highways Authority of India Act empowers the Central government to have complete power over roads designated as “national highways.”
It also gives them authority over bridges, culverts and associated land stretches near highways.
The Union Water Resources Ministry is the nodal agency in charge of implementing the Rs. 20,000-crore National Clean Ganga Mission by 2022, and has so far spent only around Rs. 320 crore, despite Rs. 2,000 crore being sanctioned.
Nearly 70% of the budget is to be apportioned for commissioning sewage treatment plants.
This was partly due to a lack of consensus between the Ganga States on how money allotted should be spent though.

:: International ::

Massive human rights violation in Balochistan for decades

Prime Minister Modi’s reference to Balochistan in his Independence Day speech signals an aggressive shift in India’s approach towards Pakistan.
Mr. Modi said: “The time has come for Pakistan to answer the world, on atrocities against people in Balochistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.”
The Indian strategy could be drawing global attention towards one of the oldest internal problems faced by Pakistan.
Balochistan, home to over 13 million people, mostly Balochis, is Pakistan’s largest but least developed province. Similar to Kashmir’s, the roots of the conflict go back to Independence.
When Pakistan was born in 1947, the rulers of the Khanate of Kalat, a princely state under the British and part of today’s Balochistan, refused to join the new nation. Pakistan sent troops in March 1948 to annex the territory.
After the 1948 rebellion was put down, crisis erupt- ed in 1958. In 1962-63 and1973-77, Baloch nationalists mounted violent campaigns for independence from Pakistan.
But tensions started building up after General Pervez Musharraf seized power in 1999. When the military started building new cantonments in Balochistan, radical nationalist factions saw it as a bid by the Army to tighten control over the region.
The fifth wave of insurgency that broke out in this context is still on. The province has several separatist groups, the strongest being the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), designated as a terrorist group by Pakistan.
Balochi nationalists accuse Islamabad of deliberately keeping the mineralrich province poor, while Pakistan’s rulers say it is the insurgency that has slowed down the pace of development.
But a bigger allegation Pakistan is facing, something which the Prime Minister tried to highlight in his speech, is the large-scale human rights violations, both by the Army and the militants.
Every time there is unrest in the region, the Army uses brute force to retain order. Even the Air Force was used against the civilian population many times. The Pakistani atrocities had attracted international condemnation.
The province now holds greater importance in Pakistan’s grand economic and geopolitical strategies.
It is one of the important locations in the economic corridor China has proposed to build at an investment of $46 billion linking the deepwater port of Gwadar with the city of Kashgar, a trading hub in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang.
The much publicised Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline is planned to run through Balochistan.

:: Business and Economy ::

Wholesale Price index rose to 3.6 percent

Wholesale price inflation accelerated to a 23-month high of 3.6 per cent in July, driven mainly by higher food prices, according to official data.
The pace of price gains as measured by the wholesale price index more than doubled in July from 1.62 per cent in June, leaving the Reserve Bank of India even less elbow room to cut benchmark interest rates at its next meeting.
Food inflation came in at a blistering 11.8 per cent, the fastest in 31 months and compared with June’s 8.2 per cent.
Within the food category, inflation in foodgrains accelerated to 13.6 per cent in July from 10.9 per cent in June.
The fruits and vegetables category saw a whopping 22 per cent increase in prices in July but this could be due to a low base effect because the category saw a contraction of 15 per cent in the year-earlier period.
The Consumer Price Index for July also saw inflation accelerating to above 6 per cent, with the food component reaching almost 8 per cent.
Overall, the primary articles segment saw inflation accelerate to 9.4 per cent in July from 5.5 per cent in June.
Within this, the non-food category also saw a drastic quickening in the pace of inflation, moving to 9.5 per cent in July from 5.7 per cent in June.
Prices in the fuel and power segment contracted 1 per cent in July, compared with a contraction of 3.6 per cent in June.
Inflation in the manufactured goods segment accelerated marginally to 1.8 per cent in July from 1.2 per cent in June. Manufactured food products inflation at 10.2 per cent, was the highest it has been since September 2012.

Rajan stressed on the need to improve governance at public sector

Raghuram Rajan has stressed the need to improve governance at public sector banks and said the task of appointing top executives and non-official directors in these entities should be left to the Bank Board Bureau (BBB).
At present, the Centre appoints the chief executive, executive directors and other board members.
Mr. Rajan’s suggestion is in line with the proposals of the P.J. Nayak committee set up by the RBI to look into the issue of governance in Indian banks.
The Centre set up the BBB in February this year under the chairmanship of former Comptroller and Auditor General of India Vinod Rai.
At present, BBB is involved in the short-listing and selection process of public sector bank executives. The final appointments are made by the government.
To fill the ranks in middle management that have been thinned out by retirements, banks should look for talent with expertise in project evaluation, risk management and IT, including cybersecurity, he said.
In this context, he said rewards like Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) that give all employees a stake in the future of the bank might be helpful. “None of these changes are easy, but they are also not impossible,” he emphasised.
The RBI governor opined that public sector undertaking employees at the lower levels were overpaid, while those at the top level were underpaid.
He also said the central bank and the government should, over the medium term, reduce the differences in regulatory treatment between public sector banks and private sector banks.
With several new niche banks set to begin operations over the next six to seven months, Mr. Rajan said the current times are interesting, profitable, and challenging for the financial sector.
The environment would also be challenging because competition and novelty constituted a particularly volatile mix in terms of risk, Mr. Rajan added.