ANSWER: D

• National Legal Services Authority Chairman Uday Umesh Lalit launched the country’s first AI-powered digital Lok Adalat during the 18th All India Legal Services Authorities’ meet.
• The digital Lok Adalat by Rajasthan State Legal Services Authority (RSLSA) was designed and developed by its technology partner Jupitice Justice Technologies.
• The two-day event was inaugurated by N V Ramana, the Chief Justice of India, in the presence of Union Minister of Law & Justice Kiren Rijiju and Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot.
• Recently, a district court in Bihar gave a verdict in a land dispute case after 108 years, making it one of the oldest pending cases in the country.
• A NITI Aayog report also suggested it would take approximately 324 years to dispose all cases pending in India.
• According to the reports, that 75-97 per cent of legal problems never reach the courts — that means about 5 million to 40 million legal tangles arising in a month never reach the Court.
• This Technology will enable RSLSA to provide online services to all the stakeholders ensuring efficiency, convenience, and transparency.
• The Digital Lok Adalat will be used to dispose of pending disputes or disputes that are at the pre-litigation stage.

How this platform helps?

• The platform helps one perform end-to-end dispute resolution with easy drafting and filing of applications, one-click generation of e-notices, smart templates to draft settlement agreements, digital hearings powered by tailor-made video conferencing tools, etc.
• Additionally, it offers an AI-powered voice-based interactive chatbot and advanced data analytics tools to help gain deeper insights into the functioning of Lok Adalat through custom reports and BI Dashboards for data-driven decision making.

ANSWER: D

• As part of its mission to train its troops in high-altitude combat and survival techniques, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), which is tasked with securing the Line of Actual Control with China, has established its first mountain warfare training facility in northeast India and its second overall.
• The facility was built nearly 50 years after the founding of the first institution of its kind, the Mountaineering and Skiing Institute (M&SI), which opened in Auli, near Joshimath, in 1973–74.
• The M&SI, which is situated in the Himalayan hills of Uttarakhand at a height of over 9,000 feet, has taught hundreds of members of the ITBP, army, air force, and other security professionals in this field as well as that of adventure sports.
• The new centre is situated in Sikkim, which shares a frontage of 220 kilometres with the India-China LAC, at a height of 10,040 feet with distant Dombang, which borders the LAC.

ANSWER: D

What are NFTs?

• Anything that can be converted into a digital form can be an NFT. Everything from your drawings, photos, videos, GIF, music, in-game items, selfies, and even a tweet can be turned into an NFT, which can then be traded online using cryptocurrency.

KEY POINTS:

• The Dapper Cheetah Club, India’s first community-driven Non-Fungible Token (NFT), has launched the first phase of its collection – the issuance of limited 200 NFTs.
• Dapper Cheetah Club has a one-of-its-kind collection of 10,000 Cheetah NFTs on the Metaverse or the digital space.
• The highly anticipated tokens were launched and were fully indulged by enthusiasts, investors and traders alike.
• Dapper Cheetah Club proposes a new digital world that’s user-friendly and welcoming for every user.
• First revealed in June, the Dapper Cheetah Club has gained a lot of public interest. To reward its community investors, the brand will soon launch Phase 2, which will be a part of the broader collection.
• While the first set of NFT collections was opened for the private mint with only 200 NFTs, the Club said that the future phases will be available for the public mint with the remaining 9800 NFTs.
• The launch of the collection will be done in 5 phases. The Phase 1 collection went for bidding on 29th June on OpenSea and has been sold at the price of 0.03 Ethereum.

ANSWER: A

• Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai informed the Lok Sabha that a proposal has also been received from the West Bengal government for renaming the state as ‘Bangla’ in all three languages – Bengali, English and Hindi.
• The Centre has given its nod for renaming seven cities and towns, including Allahabad to Prayagraj, in the last five years.
• While the No Objection Certificate (NOC) to change the name of Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh to Prayagraj was given on December 15, 2018, the NOC for changing the name of Rajahmundry city in Andhra Pradeshto Rajamahendravaram was given on August 3, 2017.
• Approval for changing the name of Nagar Untari in Jharkhand to Shri Banshidhar Nagar was given in August 2018.
• Clearance was also given to change names of Birshingpur Pali, Hoshangabad Nagar and Babai city – all three in Madhya Pradesh – to Maa Birasini Dham (2018), Narmadapuram (2021) and Makhan Nagar (2021), respectively.
• Approval to change name of Punjab’s Shri Hargobindpur city to Shri Hargobindpur Sahib was given in March 2022.

ANSWER: D

• Google celebrated acclaimed Indian poet Balamani Amma’s 113th birth anniversary with a special doodle dedicated to her. She continues to be known as the ‘amma’ (mother) and ‘muthassi’ (grandmother), of Malayalam poetry.
• Amma was the recipient of various awards and honours like the Padma Bhushan, India’s third highest civilian honour, in 1987; the Sahitya Akademi Award for Muthassi in 1965; the Saraswati Samman for Nivedyam in 1995, among others.
• Her other well-known works were Amma, Mazhuvinte Katha (The Story of the Axe), and Sandhya. Amma had no formal education and was greatly influenced by her maternal uncle and his library.
• She published more than 20 anthologies of poems, along with other works including translations.
• Amma’s other influences include Vallathol Narayana Menon, one of the triumvirate poets of modern Malayalam, and Nalapat Narayana Menon. She wrote an elegy for the latter, Lokantharangalil.
• Amma has in turn served as an inspiration to later generations of Malayalam poets, a prominent example being Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri.
• The Kochi International Book Fair gives a cash prize for writers in her name, the Balamani Amma Award.

ANSWER: D

• Mission Buniyaad was started during the summer holidays to help bridge the learning gaps caused by COVID ¬induced lockdowns.
• According to the Delhi government, that under Mission Buniyaad, held between April and June, students of government and Municipal Corporation of Delhi schools have shown 20%¬-30% improvement in literacy and numeracy skills.
• The government plans to extend the scheme.
• The State Council of Educational Research and Training, Delhi, held a joint orientation programme on Mission Buniyaad for 2,700 heads of government schools under the Directorate of Education and the MCD to discuss the achievements and learnings from the previous phase of Mission Buniyaad.
• Foundational skills It also focused on drawing a road map to further strengthen the foundational learning skills of students.
• The programme of the Delhi government concentrates on building the foundational skills of students in Hindi and English literacy as well as mathematics.

ANSWER: C

• India has categorically stated that no variety of Genetically Modified (GM) rice has been approved for commercial cultivation in India, and it has not exported any GM rice, Narendra Singh Tomar, Union Minister for Agriculture, said in a written reply in Lok Sabha while replying to a query on whether GM rice was discovered in a consignment exported to EU in 2021.

HISTORY

• The discovery of 500 tonnes of genetically modified (GM) rice in a consignment that India exported to the European Union countries in June 2021.
• Several batches of rice flour were marketed in several European countries, as well as in the United States, Iraq, Mauritius, Qatar, Dubai (United Arab Emirates), Lebanon, Senegal and Turkey.
• They were recalled for use in the EU after European Commission Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) identified illegalities in food products upon a check.

 PRESENT STATUS

• India is yet to approve commercial cultivation of a genetically modified food crop. It has, however, cultivated multiple GM rice varieties at various stages of confined field trials.
• The Coalition for GM Free India, in its letter, warned that such trials have led to “contamination and leaks” that have made their way to the food chain.
• The letter, written by a paddy farmer from Kerala, demanded that an inter-ministerial, inter-agency body be set up with the GEAC to facilitate creation of a body to look into illegal GM imports.
• It also suggested that field trials should be banned to avoid any contamination of food and seed supply chains.
• India has approved commercial cultivation of only one GM crop, Bt Cotton.

ANSWER: D

• The Durand Cup football tournament will be embracing a multi-city format and a bigger selection of teams in its 131st edition, which will be kicking off from August 16 with the most popular contest of Indian football – the Kolkata derby.
• The tournament, jointly organised by Indian Army and Government of West Bengal, started a month­long promotion campaign  with a colourful ‘Trophy Tour’ initiative.
• As the participation list stands now, there will be 20 teams playing this time with all the 11 teams from the Indian Super League joining the contest.
• The three trophies presented to the winners of the tournament — the original Durand Cup, the President’s Cup and the Shimla Trophy — will travel from Kolkata to Guwahati on July 21 before moving to Imphal on July 24.

ANSWER: A

• The Central Government will provide a financial assistance of Rs 1,600 crore through the World Bank (WB) for the Himachal Pradesh Power Sector Development Programme.
• According to the spokesperson for the Directorate of Energy of Himachal, that after including the state equity, the total programme would cost around Rs 2,000 crore.
• The WB funding under the programme is expected to be available by early next year, and its duration will be five years, starting from 2023 to 2028.
• The objective of the programme is to undertake holistic power sector reforms and pave the way for improvements in renewable energy integration in the state.
• Efforts will be made for the promotion of integrated resource planning to allow comprehensive planning of the power sector, piloting demand response management, improving technical utilisation of the existing hydropower assets to facilitate increased integration with other sources of renewable energy and establishing a single desk for efficient trading of power.
• These interventions would allow the state to maximise the revenue earned from the sale of energy through renewable balancing capacity.
• The programme also aims to install new capacities in solar generation of about 200 MW, through the HPPCL and HIMURJA.
• The programme will also focus on strengthening the power network within the state – at transmission by the HPPTCL and in 13 towns at the distribution level by the HPSEBL.
• An upgrade of the systems of the State Load Dispatch Centre will further allow better management of power demand and supply.
• Collectively, these interventions will ensure improved transfer of power within the state by improving reliability and quality of supply.

Target areas

• The key result areas that will be targeted are improvements in utilisation of the state’s power sector resources (hydro and solar), improvements in reliability of the state’s grid at transmission and distribution levels.

ANSWER: A

• Chief Minister inaugurated vehicle location tracking device, emergency panic button system and Command Control Centre of the Transport Department for the public from Peterhoff, Shimla
• It will provide prompt and accurate information regarding the vehicle equipped with this device at the time of any emergency.
• As many as 9,423 vehicles have been connected to this system. Complete details of vehicles and their movement in the last one year would be available at the monitoring centre.
• When the panic button is pressed, a signal would be received through satellite to 112 (emergency support) and the person in distress would be connected. An alert to the police would also be sent.
• Cent per cent concession was given on token tax, special road tax and passengers goods tax to stage carriage, contract carriage and buses to educational institutions from April 1, 2020, till September 30, 2021, besides other concessions to the tune of Rs 164 crore.
• HP has connected 9,423 vehicles to this system. Vehicles’ one-year movement record will be there at monitoring centre.