• PM Modi has unveiled a 72-ft statue of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya in New Delhi on his 107^th birth anniversary.
• The statue has been erected on Deendayal Upadhyaya Marg in the national capital.

ABOUT PANDIT DEENDAYAL UPADHYAYA

• Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya was born in Mathura on 25 September 1916.
• He was a co-founder of BJP’s forerunner, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) and a thinker of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
• He pioneered the monthly magazine ‘Rashtra Dharma’, a weekly ‘Panchajanya’ and the daily called ‘Swadesh’.
• He became president of the Jana Sangh in December 1967.
• He is known for his principle of “integral humanism” which is defined as “a classless, casteless and conflict-free social order”.
• Upadhyaya is also known for his efforts to uplift the poor and less fortunate, and so his birth anniversary is celebrated on Antyodaya, which means ‘rising of the last’.
  • India celebrates Antyodaya Diwas annually on September 25^th to commemorate the birth anniversary of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya.

• The National Health Authority (NHA), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) organized ‘Arogya Manthan’ to celebrate five years of Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) and two years of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM).
• Both the flagship healthcare schemes aim to provide accessible, available, affordable and scalable healthcare to achieve the vision of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in India.

ABOUT AYUSHMAN BHARAT PM-JAY

• Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY was launched on 23rd September 2018.
• It is the world’s largest health insurance scheme.
• It offers a sum insured of Rs.5 lakh per family for secondary care and tertiary care across public and private empanelled hospitals.
  • There is no restriction on the family size, age or gender.
• The funding for the scheme is shared –
  • 60:40 for all states and UTs with their own legislature,
  • 90:10 in Northeast states and Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal and Uttarakhand and
  • 100% Central funding for UTs without legislature.
• Outcome
  • With 5 Cr free hospitalizations worth Rs. 69,000 Cr, scheme has not only ensured good health for crores of poor and downtrodden families but has also protected their families from catastrophic healthcare expenditure.

ABOUT AYUSHMAN BHARAT DIGITAL MISSION (ABDM)

• The ABDM, launched on 27th September 2021, is a very ambitious scheme of government aimed at creating a digital highway connecting different stakeholders of healthcare ecosystems.
• This will be achieved by creating a Digital Health ID for every citizen. This ID will then be linked to their health records. This will allow for seamless sharing of health records across different healthcare providers.
• The National Health Authority (NHA) is the implementing agency of ABDM.
• Outcome
  • Over last 2 years more than 45 Cr Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) have been created.
  • Further, more than 30 Cr health records have been linked to these ABHA accounts.
• Scheme aims at leveraging digital technologies to strengthen healthcare delivery.

• Himachal Pradesh Government announced the setting up of a special investigation team (SIT) headed by a top police officer to investigate the rising cases of cryptocurrency fraud in the state.
• The SIT would be headed by DIG (Northern Range) Abhishek Dullar.
• Fifty-six complaints have been received in cyber police stations over the last two years.
  • Three cyber police stations had been set up in Shimla, Mandi and Kangra to check cryptocurrency crimes.

• The Vidhan Sabha today passed the Himachal Pradesh Lokayukta (Amendment) Bill 2023 to enable the appointment of a judge of the High Court as Lokayukta.
• According to the Himachal Pradesh Lokayukta Act, earlier only the HC chief justice was eligible for appointment to the post.
• It is noteworthy that the state government had made a provision in the law to make other HC judges eligible for appointment to the post of Lokayukta way back in 2021.
  • Section 7 of the law had to be amended for the same.
• Going forward, in case a judge is appointed to the post of Lokayukta, they will be eligible to receive the salary and allowances corresponding to the post.

• The country’s first-ever lighthouse festival was observed in the state of Goa.
• It was organized by the Union Ministry of Ports, Shipping, and Waterways.
• It is part of a grand vision to transform 75 lighthouses across India into thriving tourist hubs.

• World Environmental Health Day is celebrated annually on September 26^th to highlight the intricate relationship between humans and their environment.
• The International Federation of Environmental Health, in 2011, announced World Environmental Health Day to be celebrated every year on September 26.
• The theme for this year’s World Environmental Health Day is – Global Environmental Public Health: Standing up to protect everyone’s Health each and every day.

• Like the earth’s oceans at their shores, the universe’s galaxies also experience tides, but on a much larger scale.
• Galactic tides are caused by gravitational forces within a galaxy, arising in the interactions between celestial objects like stars and gas clouds.
• These tidal forces influence various aspects of a galaxy’s evolution. They can reshape a galaxy structure by creating tidal tails and bridges, promoting star formation, and disrupting smaller star systems.
• Over aeons, galactic tides also disrupt the orbits of stars, leading to long-term changes in galactic structure.
• Galactic tides also have a say in the ways in which proximate galaxies do and don’t interact.

• Galactic tides also affect the supermassive black holes at galaxy centres, leading to events that change the ways in which these cosmic beasts interact with nearby stars.
  • In fact, researchers have found that the tidal streams near edges of Andromeda Galaxy could be signatures of dwarf galaxies that were later devoured.

• Tamil Nadu will collaborate with Kerala to jointly count the population of Nilgiri Tahr.
• Tamil Nadu had launched Project Nilgiri Tahr last year for the conservation of the State animal.

ABOUT NILGIRI TAHR

• It is southern India’s only mountain ungulate.
• The animal is only found in select habitats in the two states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
• It prefers montane grasslands, with steep and rocky terrains at an altitude between 300 and 2,600 metres above sea level.
• There are believed to be a little over 3,100 of the animals living in highly fragmented habitats in the Western Ghats in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, ranging between the Nilgiris in the north and the Kanniyakumari hills in the south.
• Eravikulam National Park in Kerala is the biggest habitat of the animal followed by Anamalai Tiger Reserve.
• Threats – habitat threats in the form of the spread of invasive plants such as wattles, pines, and eucalyptus; Hunting; lumpy skin disease has also been observed in the animal etc.
• Protection status
  • IUCN red list status– Endangered
  • WPA 1972– Schedule 1

• Madhya Pradesh, which is home to the most number of tigers in the country, has got a new protected area for the big cats named ‘Veerangana Durgavati Tiger Reserve’.
• It is the seventh tiger reserve in the state and 54^th in the country.
  • Other six tiger reserves in MP are– Kanha, Bandhavgarh, Satpura, Pench, Panna and Sanjay-Dubri.
• In compliance with the condition imposed by the Centre while giving approval to the Ken-Betwa River Link Project, the new tiger reserve, spread across Sagar, Damoh and Narsinghpur districts, has been notified.
• About 1,414 square kilometres in the tiger reserve has been included in the core area and 12 square kilometres in the buffer zone.
• The previously notified eco-sensitive zone of Nauradehi and Veerangana Durgavati sanctuaries and the surrounding forest areas have been included in the notified buffer area.
• Since no new revenue area has been included under this tiger reserve, no additional restrictions will be imposed on the local people living around it.

OTHER FACTS

• As per the report ‘Status of Tigers: Co-predators & Prey in India-2022’, released by the National Tiger Conservation Authority and Wildlife Institute of India, MP (785) has the highest number of tigers in the country, followed by Karnataka (563) and Uttarakhand (560).
• P. retained the “tiger state” status in the 2022 census  with the number of big cats in the state rising to 785 from 526 in 2018.

• The 575^th birth anniversary of medieval saint Srimanta Sankardeva was celebrated recently.

ABOUT SRIMANTA SANKARDEVA

• He was an Assamese saint-scholar, social-religious reformer, poet, playwright and a towering figure in the cultural and religious history of 15th-16th century in Assam.
• He was a Vasinav-saint and propagated a form of Bhakti called eka-sharana-naam-dhrama, and espoused a society based on equality and fraternity, free from caste differences, orthodox Brahmanical rituals and sacrifices.
  • It considered Lord Krishna to be one, eternal and absolute.
• He is widely credited with building on past cultural relics and devising new forms of
  • theatrical performance (Ankia Naat, Bhaona),
  • music (Borgeet),
  • literary language (Brajavali) and
  • dance (Sattriya).
• His teaching focused on prayer and chanting (naam) instead of idol worship.
• His dharma was based on the four components of deva (god), naam (prayers), bhakats (devotees), and guru (teacher).
• He even influenced two medieval kingdoms in Assam- Koch and the Ahom kingdoms
• The assembly of devotees he founded, evolved over time into monastic centers known as Sattras.