- The Department of Pharmaceuticals was created on the 1st of July in the year 2008 in the Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers with the objective to give greater focus and thrust on the development of pharmaceutical sector in the country and to regulate various complex issues related to pricing and availability of medicines at affordable prices, research & development, protection of intellectual property rights and international commitments related to pharmaceutical sector which required integration of work with other Ministries.
- In terms of the Regulation No. 10 of Statutes and Rules relating to Padma Awards, the President may cancel and annul the award of the decoration to any person. The notice of the cancellation is required to be published in the Gazette of India. No specific circumstances under which the award can be withdrawn have been spelt out in the regulations. Awards announced have been cancelled in three cases, two in the state of Punjab in 1958 and one in state of Gujarat in 1974.
- The Kabini, also called Kapila, is one of the major tributaries of the river Cauvery in southern India. It originates in the Wayanad District of Kerala state by the confluence of the Panamaram River and the Mananthavady River. It flows eastward to join the Kaveri River at Tirumakudalu Narasipura in Karnataka.
- Reang (known in Mizoram as Brus) are one of the 21 scheduled tribes of Tripura. The Bru can be found all over the Tripura state in India. However, they may also be found in Mizoram, Assam, Manipur. They speak the Reang dialect of Bru Language which is of Tibeto-Burmese origin and is locally referred to as Kau Bru. As many as 32,876 people of the Reang tribe are set to be repatriated to Mizoram after a tripartite agreement was signed between the Centre, Tripura and Mizoram. In 2018, following the Union Home Ministry’s decision to give voting rights to around 30,000 people who had fled from Mizoram to Tripura in 1997 in the wake of inter-community violence, The Election Commission has asked the State of Mizoram to revise its rolls for the poll this year and include the members of the internally-displaced community. Traditionally, jhum(shifting) cultivation has been one of the primary agricultural activities of the Reang tribe. However, with land rights being granted, many members of the community have taken to ploughing or settled cultivation.
- Using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in Pune, astronomers have discovered the most distant radio galaxy ever known, located at a distance of 12 billion light-years. GMRT is an array of thirty fully steerable parabolic radio telescopes of 45-metre diameter. It is operated by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics. Radio galaxies are very rare objects in the universe. They are colossal galaxies with a supermassive black hole in their centre that actively accretes gas and dust from its surroundings. This activity initiates the launch of high-energy jet streams, which are capable of accelerating charged particles around the supermassive black hole to almost the speed of light.
- The Khangchendzonga National Park (KNP), which comprises the core area of the Khangchendzonga Biosphere Reserve (KBR), was inscribed as India’s first “Mixed World Heritage Site” on July 17, 2016. Eighty six per cent of the core lies in the Alpine zone and the remaining portions are located in the Himalayan wet temperate and sub tropical moist deciduous forest. The Khangchendzonga Biosphere Reserve is one of the world’s 34 biodiversity hotspots that has good species diversity with high levels of endemism, with many mountains, peaks, lakes, caves, rocks, stupas (shrines) and hot springs. many species protected under the Wildlife Protection Act have their home in the KBR. This includes the Red Panda, Snow Leopard, Himalayan Black Beer and herbivores species of Musk deer, Great Tibetan Sheep, Blue Sheep, Boral and Barking Deer. Over 500 species and sub-species of birds, including high-altitude pheasants — Monal Pheasants, Tragopan Pheasants and Blood Pheasants (the State Bird) — are also found in the reserve.
- Reserve Bank of India commenced its operations in 1935. Sir Osborne Smith was the first Governor of the Bank. The Bank was constituted as a shareholders’ bank. Reserve Bank of India was nationalised in 1949. RBI follows a july-june financial year.
- RuPay is a product of NPCI, the umbrella organisation that powers retail payments in the country. The provision under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007, empowered the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) to create a secure electronic payment and settlement system in India.
The nature of NPCI’s initiatives and objectives includes it under the “Not for Profit Company” under the provisions of Section 25 of the Companies Act 1956 and more recently under the Section 8 of the Companies Act 2013. - NPCI is an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India, it is an initiative of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) under the provisions of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007, for creating a robust Payment and Settlement Infrastructure in India. Considering the utility nature of the objects of NPCI, it has been incorporated as a “Not for Profit Company under the provisions of Section 25 of Companies Act 1956 (now Section 8 of Companies Act 2013), with an intention to provide infrastructure to entire banking system in India for physical as well as electronic payment and settlement systems. The Company is focused on bringing innovations in the retail payment systems through the use of technology for achieving greater efficiency in operations and widening the reach of payment systems. NPCI’s ten core promoter banks are State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Citibank N. A. and HSBC.
- Directorate General of Civil Aviation is an attached office of the Ministry of Civil Aviation. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation is the regulatory body in the field of Civil Aviation primarily dealing with safety issues. It is responsible for regulation of air transport services to/from/within India and for enforcement of civil air regulations, air safety and airworthiness standards. It also co-ordinates all regulatory functions with International Civil Aviation Organisation.
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