2 MAY 2016

Ø  Sledging — or verbally bullying the opposition to obtain an advantage — happens not just in cricket but also in negotiations on Free Trade Agreements (FTA), Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said. She was referring to the alleged attempts by certain countries to portray India as “obstructionist” in the FTA talks.

Ø  Gujarat government on Sunday issued the ordinance providing 10 per cent reservation for the economically backward among upper castes, two days after it announced the politically-sensitive measure. The Gujarat Unreserved Economically Weaker Sections (Reservation of Seats in Educational Institutions in the State and of Appointments and Posts in Services under the State) Ordinance, 2016, issued on the occasion of State Foundation Day, grants 10 per cent reservation to economically weaker people from unreserved category whose annual family income does not exceed Rs. 6 lakh. The ordinance clarified that reservation to the economically weaker sections (EWS) was apart from the policy for reservation for the SC, ST and SEBC, which was being followed by the State government.

Ø  Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday launched the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, which aims to provide five crore LPG connections to women in Below Poverty Line (BPL) households over the next three financial years, at a cost of Rs. 8,000 crore. The scheme, launched at Ballia in Uttar Pradesh, is to be partially funded from the savings accruing to the government from LPG users who gave up their subsidy as part of the Give It Up programme. “Over one crore consumers have given up their subsidy, leading to savings of nearly Rs. 2,000 crore per year. This money would be utilised to provide LPG connections to BPL families,” The new users who receive LPG connections under the scheme will not have to pay the security deposit, while the Rs. 1,600 administrative costs, cost of pressure regulator booklet and safety hose will be borne by the government. Consumers will have the option to purchase gas stove and refills on EMI.

Ø  Satellite images show that there’s been a decline in the number of forest fires in Uttarakhand since April 28. Though fires in the region are still intense, images that have been sourced from two U.S. satellites Aqua and Terra and available on ISRO’s Bhuvan platform show an uptick between April 27-April 29 and then a fall, a fact that’s also been confirmed by ground reports from Uttarakhand. An official at ISRO’s National Remote Sensing Agency in Hyderabad said that they hadn’t updated the latest figures for May 1 but confirmed that fire reports, reflected on the satellite maps, were a combination of satellite as well as ground reports. Meanwhile, the Environment Ministry said that last month alone, fire ravaged nearly 1900 hectares of forest in about 1200 locations. In 2012, fire had broken out in over 1300 places and more than 2,000 hectares was affected. Over 6000 labourers have been deployed for fire-fighting and Rs. 5 crore has been sanctioned for containment efforts. Since last year, the National Remote Sensing Agency, has been coordinating with State forest officials, to warn of possible fires through analysing satellite images.