PUNJAB

Punjab to do away with no detention policy

Punjab has agreed to implement the amendment to the RTE Act under the “no detention policy”. As a result, the state will now detain weak students who fail in Classes V and VIII from the present session itself.

The Parliament on January 3 had passed an amendment to Section 16 of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, to do away with the no-detention policy. They had left it to the states to decide whether they would allow schools to hold back students who fail annual examinations in Classes V and VIII from the next academic session, which will begin from April 2019.

Section 16 stipulates that ‘no child admitted in a school shall be held back in any class or expelled from school till the completion of elementary education’. As per the amended act, Section 16(1) states that, “There shall be regular examination in Classes V and VIII at the end of an academic year. If a child fails in the examination, he/she shall be given additional instructions and granted opportunity for re-examination within two months from the date of declaration of the result.

INTERNATIONAL

· World’s fastest 1TB microSD card revealed at MWC

Two 1 terabyte microSDcards were revealed by companies Western Digital-owned SanDisk and Micron during Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.
The 1TB SanDisk Extreme UHS-I microSD card, which the company claims to be the world’s fastest, reaches speeds of up to 160 Mbps.
While Micron’s card, claimed to be the world’s first, reaches speeds of up to 100 Mbps.

NATIONAL

India-Bangladesh Joint Military Exercise Sampriti – 2019

As part of the ongoing India Bangladesh defence cooperation, a joint military exercise Sampriti-2019 will be conducted at Tangail, Bangladesh from 02 March to 15 March 2019.

Exercise Sampriti-2019 is important bilateral defence cooperation between India and Bangladesh.

This will be the eighth edition of the exercise which is hosted alternately by both countries.

The exercise is aimed to strengthen and broaden the aspects of interoperability and cooperation between the Indian and Bangladesh Armies.

· PM Modi unveils world’s largest Bhagavad Gita weighing 800 kg

The world’s largest Bhagavad Gitaat ISKCON temple in south Delhi’s East of Kailash, has 670 pages, weighs 800 kgand is 2.8 metre tall and 2 metre wide (when closed).
The book is dubbed as the ‘Astounding Bhagavad Gita’.
Bhagavad Gita, often referred to as the Gita, is a sacred text, revered by the Hindus, and is part of the epic Mahabharata, containing the teachings of Lord Krishna to Arjuna on the battlefield.
ISKCON – International Society for Krishna Consciousness

· April-January fiscal deficit hits 121.5 per cent of full-year target

India’s fiscal deficit during April-January stood at ₹7.7 lakh crore or 121.5% of budgeted target for the current financial year.
Revenue deficit in April-January of FY19 was at Rs 5.9 lakh crore or 143.4% of the annual target.
The gap between the government’s revenue and expenditure had stood at 113.7% in January 2018.

· Himachal Pradesh Government declared Monkeys as vermin

Monkey’s are declared as vermin by the Himachal Pradesh government.
Around 11 districts,91 tehsils and sub-tehsils.

Vermin are pests or wild animals that are believed to be harmful to crops, farm animals, or game, or which carry disease.

· IRCTC Rail Connect mobile app win National e-Governance Award 2019

Railway’s ticket booking mobile application – IRCTC Rail Connect mobile app and the Chhattisgarh government’s ‘Khanij online‘ and 14other such IT projects have been chosen for National e-Governance Awards 2019.
Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation(IRCTC) Rail Connect mobile app, launched in January 2017, has been chosen for the special jury award for excellence in government process re-engineering for digital transformation.
Railways collected revenue of over Rs 5,800 crorein 2018-19 (till December) through the App.

Andhra Pradesh to get a new Railway zone’

Southern Coast Railway will be a new zone of the Indian Railways.

This new 18th railway zone of the country and will be headquartered at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh.

The new zone will comprise the existing Guntakal, Guntur and Vijayawada divisions that currently fall under the South Central Railway.

The Indian Railways’ operations are currently divided into 17 zones, which are further sub-divided into divisions, each having a divisional headquarter.

There are a total of 73 divisions at present.

Assam launches PRANAM Commission

Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal had launched the PRANAM Commission for the protection of parents of state government employees.

PRANAM stands for Parents Responsibility and Norms for Accountability and Monitoring.

It is the first of its kind Bill in the country.

It is an effort to protect elderly parents of government employees in their times of need.

The bill makes it mandatory for state government employees to look after their parents and unmarried differently abled siblings who do not have their own sources of income.

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