Current Affairs Quiz - January, 2020

Notes:
The 3rd installment of Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM- KISAN) scheme was released by the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi in Tumakuru, Karnataka. This latest installment is expected to benefit nearly six crore beneficiaries. The PM- KISAN scheme was launched by the Prime Minister on February 2019 to provide financial assistance of Rs.6000 per year to eligible farmers in three installments of Rs.2000 each. The payment of second installment began from April 2019.

Notes:
The Central Reserve Police Force organised the 4th edition of the All India Police Judo Cluster Championship in New Delhi. The event will be held from January 4 to January 7, 2020. More than thousand sportspersons across the country are participating in the tournament. The event was inaugurated by the Minister of State for Home Affairs, Nityanand Rai. The previous edition of the championship was organized by the Odisha Police.

Notes:
The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet recently approved the reappointment of Abhinav Kumar, IPS as the Inspector General (IG) of Border Security Force (BSF) and extended his tenure up to July 2021, following the proposal by the Home affairs ministry. The extension was made by relaxing the tenure policy of Indian Police Service. Border Security Force is the national border defence force and also the largest border defence force in the world.

Notes:
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is set to launch its new block-chain based platform, which is named as ‘Vajra’. The new payment platform will be based on ‘Distributed Ledger Technology’ (DLT).
The platform is expected to make the payments secure and the transactions would be stored in a decentralised database. The bank nodes after receiving the requests from the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) will process them on the Vajra platform.

Notes:
The National Traders Convention was recently inaugurated by the Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi. The three-day event is organised by the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) and it will highlight the issues faced by the traders.
On the second day, The Union Finance Minister participated in the event and addressed the traders. She assured that the Goods and Service Tax (GST) would be further simplified. Recently Government constituted a committee under the Revenue Secretary for rationalising the GST tax structure.

Notes:
Pravasi Bharatiya Divas is celebrated every year to mark the contribution of overseas Indian community in India’s development. It commemorates the return of Mahatma Gandhi from South Africa to India on 9 January 1915. The event is organized by Ministry of External Affairs every year on this day since 2003. 2020 marked 16th Pravasi Bhartiya Diwas.

Notes:
For the first time in the state, the Kerala State Youth Commission has announced that it would conduct a state-level Adalat for LGBT community. The programme would be held at the state capital, Thiruvananthapuram.
The main objective of the Adalat is to encourage the transgender community to come out with their grievances and to make arrangements for redressal of the issues. The Government of Kerala had introduced a Transgender policy in 2015 and it has a dedicated ‘Transgender Cell’ working under the state’s Social Justice Department.

Notes:
The Andhra Pradesh Government will receive Rs.711 Crores as loan for expansion of the Zero budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) project from the German Development Bank, KFW. A Memorandum of Understanding was recently signed in this regard at Amaravati.
The climate resilient ZBNF project of the state entails a cost Rs. 1015 Crores, of which Rs. 304 Crores would be contributed by the state Government and remaining 711 Crores is raised by way of loan from the German bank.

Notes:
The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently released the first in-depth review of India’s energy policies in collaboration with the Indian think tank NITI Aayog. The report was launched at the Head Quarters of NITI Aayog, New Delhi.
India was made as the association member of the Paris-based global energy organisation, International Energy Agency (IEA) on March 2017 and this is the first review after that. The report highlighted the growth of renewable energy sector in India, which is nearly 23% of the country’s total installed capacity now.

Notes:
HDFC and its subsidiary HDFC ERGO has got approvals the Competition Commission of India (CCI) , the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) for acquiring a majority stake in Apollo Munich. HDFC acquired 50.80 % stake of Apollo Hospitals Group in Apollo Munich for ₹1485 crore
It was also announced that after the acquisition, Apollo Munich Health Insurance Co Ltd has been renamed as HDFC ERGO Health Insurance Ltd and will operate as a subsidiary of HDFC.