Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 27 August 2016

:: National ::

Women be permitted to enter the sanctum sanctorum of the Haji Ali Dargah at par with men”, ruled the Bombay High Court in a landmark verdict allowing the entry of women up to the mazar in the revered Sufi dargah in south central Mumbai.
However, the Division Bench of Justices V.M. Kanade and Revati Mohite-Dere granted a six-week stay on the order on a request by the Haji Ali Dargah Trust to enable it to go on appeal before the Supreme Court.
Court said that the ban order by the Trust contravened Article 14, 15 and 25 of the Constitution.
The Bench said: “The Trust is always at liberty to take steps to prevent sexual harassment of women, by having separate queues for men and women, as was done earlier.”

Maharashtra government decided to withdraw the draft, posted on its official website, and evolve a political consensus before placing it for Cabinet approval.
The legislation proposes special security zones where movement of arms, explosives and inflow of unaccounted funds will be prohibited.
The draft Bill, if passed, will make Maharashtra the first state to implement such a law, and came under fire from the Opposition as well as Shiv Sena.
The draft has also come in for sharp criticism from Mumbai citizens’ pressure groups, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) and Police Reforms Watch (PRW), which question both the necessity and justification for a new internal security law.
The Bill tried to deal with challenges of ‘terrorism, insurgency, communalism, and caste violence’ , and does not differentiate between the nature of the threats from each.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the setting up of a task force which will help to plan for the “effective participation” of Indian sportspersons in the next three Olympics, to be held in 2020, 2024 and 2028.
He made the announcement at the monthly meeting of the Union Council of Ministers and said the structure of the task force would be in place in the next few days.
The task force will prepare an overall strategy for facilities, training, selection procedures and other related matters.
The government will look at in-house and outside experts for this task force.
India had to content itself with two medals in the Rio Olympics, although a larger number of sportspersons qualified for the 2016 Games than for the previous events.
The medal tally, however, came down from six in London Olympics of 2012 to just two.
Mr. Modi had asked for a report on the doping charges against wrestler Narsingh Yadav, and was disturbed by some of the controversies that came up in relation to the Indian contingent in Rio during the Games.

An assassination attempt on German Chancellor Angela Merkel has reportedly been foiled here as police in the Czech Republic detained an armed man who tried to join her motorcade.
The perpetrator has been detained,” the Mirror quoted police spokesman Josef Bocan as saying.
He is suspected of attempting to cause a crime: specifically an attempt to use violence against an official.

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) announced that bank applications for the Unified Payment Interface have officially become operational, which means that UPI apps of banks can now be downloaded and used for transactions:
UPI is a payment system that allows money transfer between any two bank accounts by using a smartphone.
UPI allows a customer to pay directly from a bank account to different merchants, both online and offline, without the hassle of typing credit card details, IFSC code, or net banking/wallet passwords.
The UPI app of 19 banks and it will be available on the Google Play Store of Android phones in the next few days for customers to download.
It is safe as the customers only share a virtual address and provide no other sensitive information.
Merchant payments, remittances, bill payments among others.The per transaction limit is Rs.1 lakh.
A user can make an in-app payment for goods or services purchased online.

With an aim to discourage cash transactions, the Finance Ministry has set up a high-level committee to suggest steps to promote card payments through incentives like tax rebates and cash back schemes.
The 11-member committee, headed by former Finance Secretary Ratan P Watal, will recommend various measures to “incentivise transactions through cards and digital means, e.g., through tax rebates/incentives, introduction of cash back/lottery,”.
The panel, which will review the payments system in the country and recommend measures for encouraging digital payments, has been set up following a decision taken by the Cabinet in February.
The panel will also study and recommend need for changes, if any, in the regulatory mechanism under various laws, relevant for the purpose of promotion of payments by digital modes.