Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 02 October 2016

National ::

Defence Minister says Pakistan still unaware that surgery has been done

• Pakistan is like a patient who has been given anaesthesia and doesn’t know that surgery has already been done on him, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said.
• The Minister’s remarks are first comments from a member of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) following the “surgical strikes” on terrorist launch pads along the Line of Control.
• Mr. Parrikar’s comments came even as Army chief Gen. Dalbir Singh visited the Northern and Western Commands and reviewed the Army’s operational preparedness in these two crucial commands.
• Addressing a gathering in Peethsain in Pauri district of Uttarakhand, the Minister warned that India would not hesitate to carry out more such operations in the future if its interests were harmed.
• “If Pakistan continues with such conspiracies, we will give them a befitting reply again,” the Minister said.
• Army chief interacted with top commanders and got a first hand assessment of the security situation amid heightened tensions along the LoC and the international border.

CBDT received disclosures of more than 65000 crores under IDS

• Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced that the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) had received total disclosures of Rs. 65,250 crore under the Income Disclosure Scheme, 2016 in the form of cash and other assets.
• The Minister added that since some disclosures that were received manually were yet to be tabulated and verified, the figure could be revised upward.
• The four-month window under the scheme for declaring undisclosed income or black money that had escaped assessment closed.
• Mr. Jaitley refused to draw comparisons of the current Income Declaration Scheme (IDS), 2016 with the Voluntary Disclosure Scheme of 1997.
• Then government had mopped up Rs. 9,760 crore in taxes at an average of about Rs. 7 lakh per declarant.
• Unlike the IDS, Mr. Jaitley said, the earlier scheme had not penalised the declarents and allowed them to value the assets declared at the market prices of 1987 rather than current rates.

International ::

US warns Pakistan about Nuclear posturing

• The United States has conveyed to Pakistan that nuclear threats are not acceptable, a senior State Department official, who did not want to be named, said.
• The message was conveyed after Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said twice in the span of a week that his country could use tactical nuclear weapons against India.
• The U.S is concerned about the safety of Pakistani nuclear weapons otherwise also, the official said “The safety of these weapons is always a concern for us. So we are always monitoring it, regardless of what they said on this particular occasion,”.
• Meanwhile, State Department spokesperson Mark Toner said the U.S Secretary of State John Kerry is talking to the Indian leadership to ensure that the situation does not escalate.
• “we’re very concerned about the situation there. We don’t want to see it escalate any further. And as part of that concern, the Secretary is certainly engaged and talking to Indian leadership – senior Indian leadership,” Mr. Toner said.
• Mr. Toner said: “I would just say nuclear-capable states have a very clear responsibility to exercise restraint regarding nuclear weapons and missile capabilities. And that’s my message publicly and that’s certainly our message directly to the Pakistani authorities.”

:: India and World ::

India would stresson trying to operationalise the Green Climate Fund

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in Kozhikode on September 25 that India would ratify the Paris climate deal.
• The ratification document will be submitted at the offices of the UN Secretary-General by Syed Akbaruddin, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, or his representative, said Environment Ministry officials.
• It is still unclear what led India to alter its position dramatically from mere weeks ago.
• At the G20 summit in China last month, NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya said India “wasn’t ready” in terms of the domestic actions required to ratify, or at least commit to ratify, the Paris deal within 2016.
• After India’s bid to enter the NSG was rebuffed by China in Seoul in June, the External Affairs Ministry said, “An early positive decision by the NSG would have allowed us to move forward on the Paris agreement.”
• Mr. Dave said that at the climate talks in Morocco in November, India would stress most on trying to operationalise the $100 billion corpus — called the Green Climate Fund — committed by developed countries.
• Fund will aid policy, projects and technology transfer as a buffer against the impact of climate change. Only a fraction of it has been pledged so far.
• The funds will help nations work on fulfilling their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) which aim to reduce carbon emissions through a host of solutions.
• Mr. Dave said that India has already completed 12 per cent of all pre-2020 Intended National Determined Contributions (INDC), or the road map by which it will make good on its commitments to reduce carbon emissions.
• As part of its INDC plans, India had promised to bring down its emissions intensity, or emissions per unit of the GDP, by at least 33 per cent by the year 2030 as compared to 2005 levels.

:: Business and Economy ::

The centre is reconsidering a plan to widen the social security net

• The centre is reconsidering a plan to widen the social security net for workers by bringing more factories under the provident fund coverage.
• The Cabinet Secretariat has pointed out a few contradictions in the Labour Ministry’s proposal to amend the Employees’ Provident Fund and Miscellaneous Provisions Act of 1952.
• The Labour Ministry had proposed to bring down the threshold limit for coverage of firms under the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) to factories with at least 10 workers. At present, the EPF Act is applicable to factories with minimum 20 workers.
• The proposal to decrease the threshold limit was found to be contradictory with another proposal in the Act to give an option to workers to switch to the NPS, managed by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority.
• In his Union Budget 2015-16 speech, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had proposed allowing EPF subscribers to opt for NPS and to make EPF contributions optional for workers below a certain income threshold.
• In June this year, Centre proposed making EPF optional for textile workers earning less than Rs 15,000 a month as a part of a special package for the garments sector.
• The government’s proposal to bring factories with at least 10 workers under the EPF fold can bring 50 lakh additional workers under the social security coverage.
• At present, 8.7 crore workers are subscribing to the EPFO out of which around 3.77 crore workers have been making active contributions to their provident fund account till 2015-16, data showed.
• The proposal to cover factories with at least tenworkers under the Employee Provident Fund Act was one of the recommendations of the 44th Indian Labour Conference Session which was held in February 2012.