Information given by Minister in Parliament
Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana campaign
 

What's the NEWS

• 19,535 villages declared as "Sampoorna Sukanya Gram" under Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana campaign
• The Government has taken many effective steps taken for successful implementation of 'Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana' to ensure maximum benefits to girls.

• The Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana scheme is aimed at betterment of girl child in the country.
• Sukanya Samriddhi scheme has been launched to offer a means of saving to the girl child in every family.
• Tenure of SSY is 21 years from the date of opening of the account or till the marriage of the girl after she attains the age of 18 years
• Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana (SSY) scheme was launched by the Prime Minister under the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao campaign with the main aim of securing the future of a girl child.
• Currently, the interest rate of SSY scheme was reduced from 8.4% to 7.6% and it is compounded on a yearly basis.
• Interest is not payable once the duration of the scheme is completed or if the girl becomes a Non-resident Indian (NRI) or a non-citizen.
• The rate of interest is decided by the government and is determined on a quarterly basis.

• Under the Scheme for Promotion of Culture of Science (SPoCS), National Council of Science Museums (NCSM), an autonomous organization under the Ministry of Culture, Govt. of India, has developed a chain of Science Cities/ Science Centres/ Innovation Hubs throughout the Country.
• As per the scheme guidelines, the projects are taken up on receipt of the proposal from State-Govt /UTs with commitments of encumbrance free land, cost of the project (capital & corpus), operation, manpower and management of the project etc.

• There six Public Libraries functioning under Ministry of Culture namely National Library, Kolkata, Central Reference Library, Kolkata, Central Secretariat Library, New Delhi, Delhi Public Library, Delhi, Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library, Patna and Rampur Raza Library, Rampur.
• Library is a State subject and public Libraries in States/Union Territories function under the administrative control of the respective State/Union Territory authority.
• However, Raja Rammohun Roy Library Foundation, Kolkata, an autonomous organization under Ministry of Culture provides financial assistance to public libraries under its ‘Matching Schemes of Assistance to Public Libraries' towards increasing Accommodation on the basis of applications recommended by the respective State Library Authorities.
• This Ministry operates National Mission on Libraries Scheme. Under the subcomponent of "Up-gradation of Infrastructure", financial assistance is provided for infrastructural development in one (1) State Central Library and one (1) District Library in participating States/UTs.

What's the NEWS

• The GIS Based ‘Automatic Water Supply System' for citizens of Cantonment Boards has been launched recently by the Defence Minister

• The module of GIS based Water Supply system for Cantonment Boards has been developed by Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Applications and Geo informatics (BISAG) under the guidance of Defence Secretary and Director General of Defence Estates, Delhi.
• It is easy and fast application to provide water connection to the citizens of Cantonment.

• This GIS System is first of its kind in the country. It is based on "minimum government and supports the concept of "maximum governance" as there is no manual intervention for clearance/sanction of the water connection.
• In conventional Water Supply System, citizens apply to the local bodies and the application is processed which takes time.
• The charges are required to be deposited offline and no time period is defined for grant of water connection.
• BISAG has successfully implemented the GIS module and its integration with the e-Chhawani portal is done by Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL).

• eChhawani is an unified portal for 62 Cantonment Boards using which citizens have ready access to information regarding their cantonment board and are aware of the day to day activities of their cantonment board.
• Using eChhawani portal citizens can avail all civic services offered by respective Cantonment Board.
• eChhawani aims to improve citizen interaction with Cantonment Boards while making Cantonment Board employees better equipped, informed and responsive to public needs with transparency and in an effective manner.

• A cantonment board is a civic administration body in India under control of the Ministry of Defence.
• The board comprises elected members besides ex-officio and nominated members as per the Cantonments Act, 2006. The term of office of a member of a board is five years.
• A cantonment board consists of eight elected members, three nominated military members, three ex-officio members (station commander, garrison engineer and senior executive medical officer), and one representative of the district magistrate.
• The cantonment board takes care of mandatory duties such as provision of public health, water supply, sanitation, primary education, and street lighting etc.
• As the resources are owned by government of India, it can't levy any tax. Government of India provides the financial assistance.

• The Centre is likely to introduce 'The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2021' that seeks to link Aadhaar with electoral roll in the Lok Sabha.
• Union Law Minister will introduce the Bill further to amend the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the Representation of the People Act, 1951.

• Various Sections of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and 1951 will be amended.
• The Election Laws (Amendment) Bill 2021, allows linking of electoral roll data with the Aadhaar and it also proposes for substitution of the word 'wife' with the word 'spouse' making the statutes gender neutral in the Representation of the People Act 1951.
• It allows electoral registration officers to seek the Aadhaar number of people who want to register as voters for the purpose of establishing the identity.
• The Bill allows electoral registration officers to ask for Aadhaar numbers of applicants wanting to register as voters to establish the identity of the applicant.
• It also seeks to allow the officers to ask for the number from "persons already included in the electoral roll for the purposes of authentication of entries in electoral roll, and to identify registration of name of the same person in the electoral roll of more than one constituency or more than once in the same constituency".
• People who cannot furnish their Aadhaar numbers will be allowed to present other documents to establish identity.

• The Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India (BPNI), in collaboration with the Association of Healthcare Providers of India (AHPI), which comprises more than 12,000 private hospitals, has launched an accreditation programme that will enable hospitals to get a "breastfeeding-friendly" tag.
• This programme is called "Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI)".

• A new initiative will now help mothers identify "breastfeeding-friendly" hospitals before they give birth.
• The certification process involves two stages - the first stage includes self-assessment by a hospital, followed by an external assessment by an authorised appraiser who interviews doctors, nurses and patients as well as reviews different practices and training of staff. The accreditation process costs ₹17,000 per hospital.
• The initiative is only for private hospitals and is based on the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare's MAA programme for government hospitals launched in 2016.
• The BFHI programme is a worldwide programme of the WHO and UNICEF. Though India adopted it in 1993, it fizzled out by 1998 and is now being revived after more than two decades.
• Chennai's Bloom Healthcare has become the first hospital to be recognised as "breastfeeding-friendly" under this programme.
• According to the National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-2021), while there were 88.6% institutional births, only 41.8% of infants were breastfed within the first one hour, which has improved only marginally from 41.6% during NFHS-4 (2015-2016).
• Many States such as Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh have shown a decline in the proportion of children breastfed within the first hour.

Polity and Governance/GSII
Mediation Bill, 2021

What's the NEWS

• The Centre will table the much awaited Mediation Bill in Parliament
• Union Law Minister will introduce the Bill in the Rajya Sabha.

• The Bill provides for establishment of the Mediation Council of India and for community mediation.
• The Bill intends to institutionalise the process of mediation by strengthening the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanisms.
• The draft Bill proposed for pre-litigation mediation.
• The Bill safeguards the interest of the litigants to approach the competent adjudicatory forums/ courts in case urgent relief is sought.
• The successful outcome of mediation in the form of a Mediation Settlement Agreement (MSA) has been made enforceable by law.
• Since the Mediation Settlement Agreement is out of the consensual agreement between the parties, the challenge to the same has been permitted on limited grounds
• The Bill, the mediation process protects the confidentiality of the mediation undertaken and provides for immunity in certain cases against its disclosure.
• The registration of Mediation Settlement Agreement has also been provided for with State/ District/ Taluk Legal Authorities within 90 days to ensure maintenance of authenticated records of the settlement so arrived

• The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has directed all engineering and technical colleges to ensure their faculty members do not participate in conferences organised by countries that are not recognised by the Indian government.
• The stern directive by the technical education regulator came following an objection raised by the Cyprus government to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) after some Indian academics participated in a conference organised in the occupied part of the Republic of Cyprus.

• Cyprus , officially called the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
• It is the third largest and third most populous island in the Mediterranean and is located south of Turkey; west of Syria; northwest of the Gaza Strip, Israel, and Lebanon; north of Egypt; and southeast of Greece.

The country's capital and largest city is Nicosia.

The Republic of Cyprus is de facto partitioned into two main parts:

1. the area under the effective control of the Republic, located in the south and west and comprising about 59% of the island's area, and
2. the north, administered by the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, covering about 36% of the island's area.

• Another nearly 4% of the island's area is covered by the UN buffer zone.

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