22-23-05-21 Daily-Punjab-PPSC Current Affairs

Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Badal called upon the Centre to have GST with a heart as he sought a much lower tax regime on goods required to battle Covid ahead of the meeting of the GST Council.

The Fitment Committee of the GST Council has recommended against granting full exemption as that would result in increased cost of production of these goods. In this scenario, the opposition finance ministers may press for a token GST of 0.1 % on such items.

Even though the government adoptedgender budgetingin 2005-06 as a strategy to advance gender mainstreaming, nine states andUnion Territories Goa, , Haryana, Chandigarh, Meghalaya, Ladakh, Mizoram, Puducherry and Sikkim are yet to adopt it. So far, 27 states UTs and 37 central ministries and departments have adopted <a href="https://exam.pscnotes.com/gender-BUDGETING“>Gender Budgeting.

The Gender Budget Statement (GBS) is a reporting mechanism to assess budgets which are being allocated for Women and girls by different ministries and departments. Data shared by women and child development minister Smriti Irani in a written response to a question in Lok Sabha showed that for 2021-22, Rs 1,53,326 crore has been allocated for women and girls by 43 ministries, departments and UTs.

The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports has approved a grant of Rs 200,000 for V Tejaswini Bai of Karnataka, who won the Arjuna Award in 2011 and was a member of the womens Kabaddi team, that won gold medal games at the Asian Olympic Games in 2014 and 2014 respectively. The Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay National Welfare Fund for Sportspersons (PDUNWFS) has approved financial assistance.

As the Centres flagship programme to provide tap water connections to all rural households in the country has entered its third year of implementation, states and Union Territories (UTs) have started rolling out their annual planning exercise with objective to meet their respective targets ahead of the national goal of 2024.

Funds will be released by the Jal Shakti ministry to the states/UTs as per their approved plans under the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) that aims to provide tap connections to all rural households in the country by 2024.

In addition to Rs 50,000 crore budgetary allocation for the JJM, there is also assured fund of Rs 26,940 crore available under the 15th grant for water and sanitation.