Current Affairs 3rd October 2017

Current Affairs 3rd October 2017 0 - Important Points

• India to conduct first joint tiger count with - India
• Five more States declared Open Defecation Free on - 2nd October 2017
• First Sikh politician to lead Canada’s major New Democratic Party - Jagmeet Singh
• First Woman Chief Justice of Delhi HC to head panel on OBC Sub Categorisation - G Rohini
• Mukhya Mantri Kaushal Samvardhan and Kaushalya Yojana flagged off in the state of - Madhya Pradesh
• Bi-annual border talks on Rohingyas to be held between India and - Bangladesh
• President appoints Commission to examine sub-categorisation of OBCs on - 2nd October 2017

Current Affairs 3rd October 2017 - Details

India to conduct first joint tiger count with - India

Nepal and India for the first time will be commencing a joint tiger census in November month in their forests, national parks and protected areas neighbouring to both the countries using a globally-recognised method.

Conservation authorities and specialist would be installing cameras in various places in tiger habitation as well as in buffer zones to capture and track the activities of the big cat. This is the first time India-Nepal are counting tiger heads using the internationally recognised method. Both the countries had decided to use the camera tapping procedure for this joint. Through this technology, chances of repeated count will be avoided.

Parsa Wildlife Reserve of Nepal and the Chitwan National Park in Chitwan are next to each other to the Balmiki Tiger Reserve in Bihar. Similarly, India's Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary adjoins Nepals Bardiya National Park while the India's Dudhwa Tiger Reserve is next to Shuklaphant National Park in Nepal.

Five more States declared Open Defecation Free on - 2nd October 2017

The Union government declared 5 more states- Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand as ‘Open Defecation Free’ on 2nd  October 2017, the same day when Swacch Bharat Mission completed has completed its three years. Urban Affairs on the occasion of the 3rd anniversary of the mission declared the same by stating that all the five states have reached the milestone to make all its cities and towns open defecation free.

Important Highlights

• The target was to build about 66 lakh individual household toilets in urban areas, out of which 38 lakh toilets have already been built and building of another 14 lakh toilets is still in progress.
• More than 2-lakh community and public toilet seats have been constructed against the mission target of 5-lakh toilet seats.
• For Solid Waste Management, efforts are to produce more than 500 MW of electricity and above 50 lakh tons of compost from municipal solid waste to allow dispensing of the entire solid waste being generated in urban areas.

First Sikh politician to lead Canada’s major New Democratic Party - Jagmeet Singh

Jagmeet Singh, a Sikh lawyer was elected as the leader of New Democratic Party (NDP) of Canada, becomes the first non-white politician to lead a major political party in Canada.
Jagmeet Singh, Ontario provincial lawmaker, was voted on the first ballot to head the party into the 2019 election against the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals. He won the crucial first-ballot victory over three other candidates by receiving 53.6 percent of the total number of votes.

He is the first member of a minority community to lead a major Canadian federal political party. He now has the thorny task to reform the party that lost 59 seats in the 2015 election. The NDP-New  Democratic Party is currently ranked 3rd in Canada’s Parliament, with 44 out of 338 seats. It never held power. While speaking on the occasion, Singh stated that his main focus would be on issues such as climate change, reconciliation with indigenous people and electoral reform.

More about Jagmeet Singh

• Jagmeet Singh was born in 1979 in Scarborough, Ontario, to migrant parents from Punjab.
• He grew up in St John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador and Windsor, Ontario.
• In 2001, he acquired a Bachelor of Science (B.SC) degree in Biology from the University of Western Ontario and in 2005 , a Bachelor of Laws degree from York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School.
• Before entering politics, he worked as a criminal defence lawyer in the Greater Toronto Area.
• Sikhs account for roughly 1.4 percent of Canada’s population. The country’s defence minister is also from the same community.

First Woman Chief Justice of Delhi HC to head panel on OBC Sub Categorisation - G Rohini

Retired justice G Rohini would be heading the 5-member commission to examine the politically-sensitive issue of sub-categorisation of Other Backward Castes and give its report within 3-months.
The commission under the Justice G Rohini, who has the distinction of being first woman Chief Justice
of Delhi high court and is retired earlier this year has been appointed by President Ram Nath Kovind.
The decision to select the commission takes after the August 23rd Cabinet decision to analyze the degree of biased benefits dispersion of reservation among caste, communities, incorporated into the OBC general class.
At present, there is no sub-categorisation and 27% reservation of it is a gigantic entity. The sub-categorisation within OBC list would be meaning a more reasonable allocation of reservation as per statistical population.

The Commission composition:

1. Chairperson - Retired Justice G. Rohini,
2. Member -Dr. J.K. Bajaj
3. Ex-officio members -Director, Anthropological Survey of India, Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India
4. Secretary of the Commission-Joint Secretary, Department of SJ&E, and Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment

Commission Report

• The Commission will be presenting its report to the President within a period of 12-weeks of charge assumption by the Chairperson of the Commission.
• On receipt of the Commission Report, the Central Government will be considering ways and means for reasonable allocation of  the benefits of the reservation in Central Government employment and entrance in Central Government organization amongst all strata of the OBCs.

Mukhya Mantri Kaushal Samvardhan and Kaushalya Yojana flagged off in the state of - Madhya Pradesh

Madhya Pradesh Government has implemented the Chief Minister's Skill Promotion and Skills Scheme in order to provide jobs by providing employment oriented training to youth.
The Tribal Affairs Department of MP government will be training educated youths of Scheduled Tribe category for job in various employment-oriented professions and establish their own venture through MAPCET.
All the youth who are in the age group of 18-35 years are being benefitted through Mukhya Mantri Kaushalya Yojana and Mukhya Mantri Kaushal Samvardhan Yojana.  The Madhya Pradesh government has permitted Rs 30 crores for constant execution of the scheme between year 2017-18 and 2019-20.
This scheme is aimed to cover six thousand youth and around 2000 youth will be trained every year. Successful trainees from various training programs organized by Government of India or State government institutions, UGC recognized universities selected by MAPCET, NSDC partner institutions,
industries will be provided placements.

More about Mukhya Mantri Kaushalya Yojana

• The Chief Minister Kaushalya Yojana is being launched to train the women and make them self-reliant by the state government.
• The main objective of this scheme is to provide necessary skills to women to get employment and self employment,in order to ensure the participation of women by providing skill in non-conventional areas and to boost the women employment opportunities.
• The plan has been set to train two lakh women every year under this scheme.
• In this scheme, women will be provided healthcare, telecom,construction, retail, security, automotive, IT and ITES, banking and financial services, apparel med-ups and home furnishing, tourism & hospitality, electronics & hardware, beauty and wellness, capital goods, Domestic worker and food processing sector will be provided free training.
• The applicant's age must be above 15 years for the training and minimum qualification is required for the NSQF courses under the courses laid by the Indian Government.

More about Mukhya Mantri Kaushal Samvardhan

• The main focus of the Chief Minister Skill Promotion Scheme, being trained to train youth and self-help, is to bring uniformity in the skill development training programs being run by different departments, to boost the training quality and enhance the employment potential to bring uniformity according to the national standards.
• Under this scheme, the youth will be encouraged to provide retail, agriculture, automotive, furniture, security, construction and fittings, IT and ITES, banking & financial services and home furnishing, plumbing, apparel med-ups, telecom, green jobs, food processing, capital goods, domestic Free training for workers, tourism and hospitality and electronic and hardware will be given.

Bi-annual border talks on Rohingyas to be held between India and - Bangladesh

The Chiefs of the border guarding forces of India and Bangladesh would be holding bi-annual talks to discuss a host of issues including movement of Rohingya immigrants across the border at New Delhi on 3rd October 2017.
The Director General-level talks, the 45th between the two sides, will be held between a 24-member delegation of the BGB (Border Guard Bangladesh) led by Director General Maj General Abul Hossain and Border Security Force of India led by its chief KK Sharma. The talks will be held at a BSF camp for the duration of 4 days.

President appoints Commission to examine sub-categorisation of OBCs on - 2nd October 2017

• A five-member commission appointed by the president Ram Nath Kovind to examine the sub-categorisation of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) under Article 340 of the Constitution on 2nd October 2017.
• The members of the commission include the Director of Centre for Policy Studies,the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India and the Director of Anthropological Survey of India.
  
  Major aims of the Commission
• The decision has been taken to ensure that the more backward among the OBC communities can also be availed the benefits of reservation such as in case of educational institutions and government jobs.
• It is a part of the government’s efforts to achieve higher social justice and inclusions for all, members of the Other Backward Classes specifically.

Major Responsibilities of the Commission

• The commission would be examining the level of inequitable distribution of reservation benefits among the castes or communities included in the broad category of OBCs with reference to such classes included in the Central List.
• It would have to work out the mechanism, norms, criteria and parameters in a scientific approach for further sub-categorisation within such OBCs.
• It will also be taking up the exercise of identifying the respective castes or communities or sub-castes or synonyms in the Central List of OBCs and classifying them into their respective sub-categories.