PUNJAB

Punjab allows maternity leave to surrogate as well as commissioning mothers

Punjab government has decided to provide maternity leave with full pay upto 180 days or 26 weeks to female employees who want to have child through surrogacy as well as to those female employees who would bear the child of another woman. The decision has been taken considering the fact that with the advancement of technology, some female employees are taking the surrogacy route to procreate child.

Punjab government’s finance department has circulated these guidelines to all the department heads, deputy commissioners, Punjab and Haryana high court as well as all the district and sessions judges across the state.

Punjab government has made it clear that the head of the department would ordinarily grant maternity leave during the pre-natal stage and post-natal period, except where there are substantial reasons for declining a request by passing a reasoned order.

The guidelines further state in a situation where both the commissioning mother and the surrogate mother are employees, who are otherwise eligible for maternity leave (one on the ground that she is a commissioning mother and the another on the ground that she is the pregnant woman), a suitable adjustment regarding grant of maternity leave at the same time or otherwise would be made by the head of the department.

INTERNATIONAL

Iran fully withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal

Iran has announced its total withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which is commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal. The exit of Iran comes after the U.S. targeted strike that killed Iran’s Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani in Iraq on 3 January 2020.

Iran announced that it will no longer commit to any limits on the level of uranium enrichment, a stockpile of nuclear fuel and also nuclear research and development.

Iran agreed to a long-term deal on its nuclear programme with the P5+1 group of world powers in 2015. The P5+1 countries are the US, UK, France, China, Russia, and Germany. Under the deal, Iran acceded to a 10-year restriction on nuclear production. As of May 2018, there was a broad consensus that Iran has abided by the agreement.

The United States President Donald Trump announced the United States was withdrawing from the deal on 8 May 2018. Even after the US’s withdrawal, the European Union, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, and China attempted to maintain the nuclear deal.

NATIONAL

India’s GDP growth rate for 2019-20 estimated at 5%, says NSO

The Indian economy is estimated to grow at 5 per cent in 2019-20 as against 6.8 per cent in the previous fiscal.

According to the first advance estimates of national income released by the National Statistical Office (NSO), the decline has been mainly on account of deceleration in manufacturing sector growth, which is expected to come down to 2 per cent in 2019-20 from 6.2 per cent in the year-ago fiscal.

The deceleration was also witnessed in sectors like agriculture, construction and electricity, gas and water supply.

Whereas, some sectors, including mining, public administration, and defence, showed minor improvement.

Over 36 lakh women farmers have benefited from govt scheme

Over 36 lakh women farmers have benefited from the government’s flagship scheme to empower women engaged in agricultural activities with the Centre allocating Rs 847 crore for 84 projects to benefit female tillers across 24 states and Union Territories.

Under MKSP, 36.06 lakh mahila kisans have been benefited through 84 projects in 24 states/UTs in the country, out of which 1.81 lakh women have been benefited in Maharashtra. A total central allocation of Rs 847.5 crore has been made towards implementation of the approved projects.

According to the MSKP website, women farmers from MP have been the biggest beneficiaries with 6.46 lakh availing of the central scheme. Government data showed that Maharashtra had the second highest beneficiaries (5.18 lakh) followed by Odisha (4.61 lakh).

MSKP is a sub-component of the National Rural Livelihood Mission, which aims to improve the status of women in agriculture. In most cases, farmers have benefited by forming self-help groups to avail of government help and go for systematic farming.

Nearly 90% of Nirbhaya Fund lying unused: Govt data

An analysis of data shared by the government on Nirbhaya Fund for projects for women safety shows that of the Rs 2,264 crore (63% of the corpus of Rs 3,600 crore) allocated to states and UTs, around 89% of the sanctioned funds was not used.

No state has reported utilisation of over 50% of the fund, and Uttarakhand & Mizoram top the list with 50% utilisation, followed by Chhattisgarh (43%), Nagaland (39%) and Haryana (32%). Further, out of the 36 states and UTs for which data is available, utilisation in 18 states and UTs is less than 15%. NCT of Delhi has a poor 5% utilisation, as per the analysis that looked at data of all ministries that allocated funds.

Almost three-fourths (74%) of the Nirbhaya Fund have been allocated for projects under the ministry of home affairs, followed by the ministry of women & child development (17%).
The Nirbhaya Fund was created to be utilised for projects specifically designed to improve the safety and security of women in public places. Over the past six years, the corpus has increased to Rs 3,600 crore. Though the fund was instituted in 2013, its disbursement gathered pace only from 2015.

The key schemes under which the states have been allocated money include emergency response support system, central victim compensation fund, cybercrime prevention against women and children, one-stop centre scheme, mahila police volunteers and universalisation of women helpline scheme.

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