Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 17 August 2014

DoT working on modalities of BSNL-MTNL merger

In a bid to revive BSNL and MTNL, Department of Telecom is working on modalities to merge the two state-run telecom companies and also undertake organisational restructuring.
Asked if there is a timeline for the merger, the source said there is no set timeframe but it might take one to two years.
Minister of Communications and IT Ravishankar Prasad had also met the senior management of BSNL and MTNL recently to discuss the blueprint for reviving the loss-making PSU telecom companies.
The total debt of the two firms has increased to Rs. 21,208 crore at the end of June 2014.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to scrap the Planning Commission has raised administrative and Constitutional questions that the Centre will have to address in the coming days.
The first of these is what happens to the ongoing 12th Five Year Plan? “The 12th Plan is an ideologically-neutral, NDC-approved, growth policy document with inclusion and sustainability as its pillars and technically the Centre cannot on its own decide to junk it,” a high-level source said.
Second, since indications are that the role of making plan allocations to States for development spending will be transferred to the Finance Ministry, there are likely to be implications of this for India’s federal system. Will the States, especially those governed by the Opposition parties, readily accept allocations from the Union Finance Ministry is the question, says Y.K. Alagh, who was Planning Minister in the Deve Gowda government.

The Union government, through a notification, on Saturday said the section on English Language Comprehension Skills would not count for gradation or merit in the Civil Services preliminary examination. The exam is scheduled for August 24.
Paper-II would contain a section on English Language Comprehension Skills. “Candidates must therefore note that they do not have to answer the questions in this section. These questions will not be evaluated,” said the Department of Personnel and Training notification.