Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 01 March 2016

:: NATIONAL :: (BUDGET SPECIAL)

Dispelling all notions about the NDA government being a ‘Suit boot ki Sarkar’ in his third Budget, government dedicated it to farmers, the poor and vulnerable sections of society.
Union budget also raised taxes on the incomes of the super-rich and introducing new cesses on services and cars to fund farmer welfare projects and infrastructure, respectively.
Mr. Jaitley’s budget for 2016-17 attempted to address the distress in the rural economy that has hit demand creation and new investments, with enhanced outlays of nearly Rs. 2.75 lakh crore for programmes in the social sector, farmer welfare and the rural sector.
FM said “Our initiatives in the last 21 months have not only placed the economy on a faster growth trajectory but have bridged the trust deficit, created by the previous Government.”
He also said government had to work in an unsupportive global environment, adverse weather conditions and an obstructive political atmosphere.
Despite higher expenditure owing to the 7th Central Pay Commission and the one rank one pension norm for defence forces, the Finance Minister chose to stick to the fiscal consolidation road map he outlined last year and set a 3.5 per cent of GDP target for 2016-17.
The government will infuse a capital of Rs.25,000 crore this financial year into state- owned banks, which are reeling under the burden of bad loans.

The government has decided to open a one-time, four-month compliance window for domestic black money-holders.
This gesture is intended to help them come clean by paying tax and penalty of 45 percent.
Capability of the tax department to detectevasion had improved be- cause of increased access to information and the availability of technology-driven analytical tools to process such information.
The compliance window will enable one to declare undisclosed income or income represented in the form ofany asset, and clear up past tax transgressions by paying tax at 30 per cent, a surcharge of 7.5 per cent and a penalty of 7.5 per cent.
The surcharge at 7.5 per cent will be called Krishi Kalyan surcharge, and the money thus raised will be used for agriculture and rural economy.
There will be no scrutiny of money declared, either under the Income-Tax Act or the Wealth Tax Act.
And the declarants will have immunity from prosecution. They will also get immunity from the Benami Transaction (Prohibition) Act, 1988, subject tocertain terms.
The compliance window, named Income Disclosure Scheme, will open on June 1. It will be open till September 30.

The Ministry of Home Afairs (MHA) has decided to re-examine the Ishrat Jahan files, amid allegations by the former Home Secretary G.K. Pillai that the affidavit citing the Mumbra woman’s allegiance to terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) was changed at the political level.
Mr. Chidambaram said on Monday that he “accepted responsibility for the affidavit” and “it is disappointing that the Home Secretary who was equally responsible wanted to distance himself today.”
The then UPA government had submitted two affidavits — one claiming that the four who were killed in an alleged fake encounter were terrorists and the second saying there was no conclusive evidence to prove they were — within two months in 2009.

The Supreme Court on Monday admitted a petition filed by a woman to declare the practice of triple talaq, nikah halala and polygamy under Muslim personal laws as illegal, unconstitutional, and violative of the rights to equality, dignity, life and freedom of religion under the Constitution.
The petitioner said “Practice of polygamy is not an integral part of Islam, and polygamy has been recognised as injurious to pub- lic morals.”
The practices under challenge, which practically treat women like chattel belonging to men, are neither harmonious with the modern principles of human rights and gender equality nor an integral part of Islamic faith.
Ms. Bano said many Islamic nations, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iraq, have banned or restricted such practices, while they continue to vex not only Indian Muslim women but also the society at large, not- withstanding that the Muslim community of India has itself been clamouring for reform and ban of oppressive practices that have no basis in Islam or the Holy Quran.

Chief Minister of Sri Lanka’s Northern Province C.V. Wigneswaran called upon India to ensure that the spirit behind the 13th Constitutional Amendment be retained in the new Constitution.
The 13th Amendment, an outcome of the 1987 India-Sri Lanka accord, is the “only document” through which India could function as the “guarantor” of interests and rights of Tamils in Sri Lanka.
Mr. Wigneswaran had said India alone could get “defect-free federal system.”

Messaging service provider WhatsApp will end its support by the end of this year to BlackBerry phones and those powered by Nokia’s Symbian operating system.
The Facebook-owned company has over a billion users globally. A major chunk of these users are from emerging markets like India.
Mobile operating systems offered by Google, Apple and Microsoft, account for 99.5 per cent of sales today.