Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 10 September 2016

:: National ::

The Maharashtra government is facing criticism from the Centre for failing to use funds meant to create smart cities under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship Smart Cities Mission (SCM).
The Union Urban Development Department (UDD) has rapped the State government for failing to spend a single rupee three months after the first instalment of Rs. 436 crore was released for the projects at Pune and Solapur.
The UDD has demanded immediate corrective measures and an action taken report (ATR) in the next seven days.
The UDD had shortlisted 20 cities from Maharashtra for the Smart Cities Mission in January. Following this, Pune and Solapur, were the first to prepare a project plan after receiving Rs. 150 crore and Rs. 286 crore each respectively.
The Pune plan also aims to monitor movement of buses with the help of vehicle tracking system, making transport safer by installing panic buttons and CCTV surveillance in buses, and Wi-Fi in 510 buses.
The Solapur draft plan talks mostly of improving infrastructure by installing electronic water meters, recycling of waste, identifying water leakages, and use of renewable resources of energy.
The Centre has proposed to construct smart cities on certain parameters, including water supply, sanitation, and digital connectivity, among others.

Supreme Court gave relief to numerous students who were admitted under the Gujarat government’s 10 per cent reservation policy for underprivileged upper castes.
However, the Bench clarified the State shall not make any attempts to revive the quota law by implementing it in the future.
The Gujarat High Court quashed the Gujarat Unreserved Economically Weaker Sections Ordinance, 2016, meant to quell the powerful Patidar community agitations for quota in the State, after declaring it as “unconstitutional”.
Issuing notice on the appeal filed by the Gujarat government against the HC judgment, the Bench agreed to list the case, which would eventually take a decision on further referring it to a five-judge Constitution Bench.
The Gujarat government has contended that the High Court did not consider that the 10 per cent quota was based on “reasonable classification” and not reservation per se.
The State argued that though the term “reservation” was used in the ordinance, the leeway allowed to the poor among the upper castes should be included as a classification within the 50 per cent ceiling on quotas.

North Korea claimed it had successfully tested a nuclear warhead that could be mounted on a missile, drawing condemnation from the South over the “maniacal recklessness” of young ruler Kim Jong-un.
The blast at the Punggye-ri nuclear site was the North’s fifth and most powerful yet at 10 kilotons — approaching the might of the bomb that devastated Hiroshima in 1945.
The news drew swift condemnation from U.S. President Barack Obama who warned of “serious consequences” and said he had called the leaders of South Korea and Japan to confer over the crisis.
The South’s President Park Geun-Hye spoke out against the “maniacal recklessness” of Mr. Kim, who since taking control after the death of his father in 2011 has carried out a series of purges and weapons tests. “
News of the test emerged when seismic monitors detected a 5.3-magnitude “artificial earthquake” near the Punggye-ri nuclear site.
North Korea has been hit by five sets of UN sanctions since it first tested a nuclear device in 2006, but has insisted it will continue, come what may.
President Barack Obama vowed on Friday to push for new international sanctions in retaliation for the “grave threat” posed by the test.

The space road to Chandrayaan-2 is now clear.
The significance of the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-F05) mission’s success is that the rocket is now more than qualified to put Chandrayaan-2 into orbit.
The interfaces between GSLV-Mk II and Chandrayaan-2 have already been finalised, according to officials in the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).\
A GSLV-Mk II vehicle will put Chandrayaan-2 with a lander and a rover into orbit in the first quarter of 2018. It will be a totally indigenous mission — the vehicle, the spacecraft, the lander and the rover are all made in India.
The lander will have a throttleable engine for performing a soft landing and four sites have been short-listed for this. After it touches down on a flat surface on the moon, the 25-kg rover — which is a kind of a toy car — will emerge from it.
It will have six wheels, made of aluminium, to move about on the lunar soil. The wheels will interact in such a way that the rover does not sink.
The rover will move at a speed of two cm a second. Its lifetime on the moon is 14 earth days; it will have two payloads for analysing the soil’s chemical properties.

Lower food prices likely cooled India's inflation rate in August, a Reuters poll showed, but probably not by enough to give the central bank scope to ease monetary policy again anytime soon.
Official data on the consumer price index is due to be released at on Monday.
The median forecast from the Reuters poll of 27 economists pegs it at 5.50 percent for August, down from 6.07 percent in July.
The lower number is still above the Reserve Bank of India's March 2017 inflation target of 5 percent and, if realised, would be the fifth straight month that annual price rises stayed above that mark.
The Reserve Bank of India has chopped 150 basis points off its benchmark interest rate since January 2015.

The Indian Railways' decision to experiment with surge pricing for passengers on its premium Rajdhani, Duronto and Shatabdi trains could have been triggered by its financial performance in the first half of this financial year.
The Railways' revenues were 12.65 per cent lower than its Budget target of Rs.73,713 crore for April-August this year, official documents showed.
The total number of passengers carried by the Indian Railways in this period remained almost stagnant at 343 crore — a 0.34 per cent rise from year ago period.
However, the primary reason behind a fall in gross earnings is attributed to its freight that accounts for almost 65 per cent of Railways’ revenues.
The freight earnings dropped 9.68 per cent from Rs.45,370 crore in April-August 2015 to Rs.40,980 crore over the same period this year.
The Indian Railways runs around 12,000 trains with 22 million passengers and operates 8,000 trains to ferry around 3 million tonnes of freight per day.
The Railways has introduced surge pricing, whereby fares will increase with every 10 per cent of the tickets sold in Rajdhani, Duronto and Shatabdi trains.
It will translate into a 30-40 per cent fare hike in such premium trains and may fetch Indian Railways Rs.1,000 crore every year.