The Gist of Press Information Bureau (PIB): September 2015

The Gist of Press Information Bureau: September 2015

The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, today gave its approval to introduce a new Bureau of Indian Standards Bill, 2015. The new Bill will provide legislative framework for following new provisions other than the provisions in the existing Bureau of Indian Standards Act, 1986 which is proposed to be repealed:

The main objectives of the proposed legislation are:-

i. to establish the Bureau of Indian standards (BIS) as the National Standards Body of India;
ii. The Bureau to perform its functions through a Governing Council, which will consist of its President and other members;
iii. to include goods, services and systems, besides articles and processes under the standardization regime;
iv. To enable the Government to bring under the mandatory certification regime such article, process or service which it considers necessary from the point of view of health, safety, environment, prevention of deceptive practices, security etc;
v. to allow multiple types of simplified conformity assessment schemes including Self Declaration Of Conformity (SDOC) against any standard which will give multiple simplified options to manufacturers to adhere to standards and get a certificate of conformity, thus improving the “ease of doing business”;
vi. to enable the Central Government to appoint any authority, in addition to the Bureau of Indian Standards, to verify the conformity of products and services to a standard and issue certificate of conformity;
vii. to enable the Government to implement mandatory hallmarking of precious metal articles;
viii. to strengthen penal provisions for better and effective compliance and enable compounding of offences for violations;
ix. to provide recall, including product liability of products bearing the Standard Mark, but not conforming to relevant Indian Standards; and
x. Repeal of the BIS Act, 1986.

Consequential amendments will be made subsequently in the rules and regulations to ensure implementation of the new Bill. The proposed provisions in the new Bureau of Indian Standards Bill, 2015 will empower the Central Government and the Bureau of Indian Standards to promote a culture of quality of products and services through mandatory/voluntary compliance with Indian standards through the process of ‘product certification’ and ‘Certificate of Conformity’ with a broad objective of consumer’s welfare. It is also expected to improve enforcement of Indian standards. The proposed provisions will also promote harmonious development of the activities of standardization, marking and quality certification of goods and services, to provide for compulsory hallmarking of precious metal articles, widening the scope of conformity assessment, to enhance penalties, to make offences compoundable and to simplify certain provisions in the Act.

“Housing for All by 2022” Mission - National Mission for Urban Housing

The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, gave its approval for launch of “Housing for All by 2022” aimed for urban areas with following components/options to States/Union Territories and cities:-

a) Slum rehabilitation of Slum Dwellers with participation of private developers using land as a resource;
b) Promotion of affordable housing for weaker section through credit linked subsidy;
c) Affordable housing in partnership with Public & Private sectors and
d) Subsidy for beneficiary-led individual house construction or enhancement.

Central grant of Rs. one lakh per house, on an average, will be available under the slum rehabilitation programme. A State Government would have flexibility in deploying this slum rehabilitation grant to any slum rehabilitation project taken for development using land as a resource for providing houses to slum dwellers. Under the Credit Linked Interest Subsidy component, interest subsidy of 6.5 percent on housing loans availed upto a tenure of 15 years will be provided to EWS/LIG categories, wherein the subsidy pay-out on NPV basis would be about Rs.2.3 lakh per house for both the categories. Central assistance at the rate of Rs.1.5 lakh per house for EWS category will be provided under the Affordable Housing in Partnership and Beneficiary-led individual house construction or enhancement. State Government or their para statals like Housing Boards can take up project of affordable housing to avail the Central Government grant.

The scheme will be implemented as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme except the credit linked subsidy component, which will be implemented as a Central Sector Scheme. The Mission also prescribes certain mandatory reforms for easing up the urban land market for housing, to make adequate urban land available for affordable housing. Houses constructed under the mission would be allotted in the name of the female head of the households or in the joint name of the male head of the household and his wife. The scheme will cover the entire urban area consisting of 4041 statutory towns with initial focus on 500 Class I cities and it will be implemented in three phases as follows, viz. Phase-I (April 2015 - March 2017) to cover 100 Cities to be selected from States/UTs as per their willingness; Phase - II (April 2017 - March 2019) to cover additional 200 Cities and Phase-III (April 2019 - March 2022) to cover all other remaining Cities. However, there will be flexibility in covering number of cities in various phases and inclusion of additional cities may be considered by the Ministry of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation in case there is demand from States and cities and have capacity to include them in earlier phases. Credit linked subsidy component of the scheme would be implemented across the country in all statutory towns from the very beginning.

Dimension of the task at present is estimated at 2 crore. Exact number of houses, though, would depend on demand survey for which all States/Cities will undertake detailed demand assessment for assessing actual demand by integrating Aadhar number, Jan Dhan Yojana account numbers or any such identification of intended beneficiaries. A Technology Sub-mission under the Mission would be set up to facilitate adoption of modern, innovative and green technologies and building material for faster and quality construction of houses. The Technology Sub-Mission will also facilitate preparation and adoption of layout designs and building plans suitable for various geo-climatic zones. It will also assist States/Cities in deploying disaster resistant and environment friendly technologies. The Technology Sub-Mission will coordinate with various regulatory and administrative bodies for mainstreaming and up scaling deployment of modern construction technologies and material in place of conventional construction. The Technology Sub-Mission will also coordinate with other agencies working in green and energy efficient technologies, climate change etc.

The Technology Sub-Mission will also work on the following aspects: i) Design & Planning ii) Innovative technologies & materials iii) Green buildings using natural resources and iv) Earthquake and other disaster resistant technologies and designs. In the spirit of cooperative federalism, the Mission will provide flexibility to States for choosing best options amongst four verticals of the Mission to meet the demand of housing in their states. The process of project formulation and approval in accordance with Mission Guidelines would be left to the States, so that projects can be formulated, approved and implemented faster. The Mission will provide technical and financial support in accordance to the Guidelines to the States to meet the challenge of urban housing. The Mission will also compile best practices in terms of affordable housing policies of the States/UTs designs and technologies adopted by States and Cities with an objective to spread best practices across States and cities and foster cross learning. The Mission will also develop a virtual platform to obtain suggestions and inputs on house design, materials, technologies and other elements of urban housing.

Clean Ganga Mission will Utilize Geospatial and Crowd-Sourcing Technologies

To effectively plan and monitor the Government of India’s flagship Clean Ganga Mission, National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation and National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), Indian Space Research Organizations signed a Memorandum of Understanding MoU. The objective of the MoU is to utilize the geospatial and crowd-sourcing technologies for pollution monitoring in river Ganga. Bhuvan Ganga Portal is an exclusive web portal deployed in ISRO Bhuvan’s geoportal with all geospatial layers related to river Ganga. It will be used as a tool to support decision making and planning for the Clean Ganga Mission. Bhuvan Mobile App is a user-friendly android based application to enable public to collect and report information on various pollution sources that affects the water quality of river Ganga. This mobile app will provide a platform for crowd sourcing to monitor pollution in river Ganga and enable decision makers to prioritize interventions. The first version of the application is made available for download in the Bhuvan Ganga web portal (http://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in/ganga).

NMCG has identified the need of utilizing the space and other cutting-edge technologies for effective planning and monitoring the activities taken up for Clean Ganga Mission. NMCG and NRSC have found it mutually rewarding to partner for utilizing space technology in the Clean Ganga Mission and have agreed to have a long term partnership through this MoU. Both the parties would work together in the areas of applying geospatial technology in the various aspects of Clean Ganga initiative. The areas of mutual interest as identified include, use of geospatial technology for water quality monitoring, development of mobile application for enabling community participation in monitoring / up-linking of field data, customizing Bhuvan geoportal for visualizing, query and analysis of datasets related to Ganga basin and Co-ordinate and initiate necessary linkages with other agencies, with regard to geo-spatial database and web-based applications for river water quality monitoring.

This is Only Sample Material, To Get Full Materials Buy The Gist 1 Year Subscription - "Only PDF" Click Here


Click Here to Download More Free Sample Material 
 

<< Go Back To Main Page

The Gist- Hard & Soft Copy
Magazine
Civil Services EXAM
Civil Services Preliminary
Civil Services Mains
UPSC