National Current Affairs October 2015 (Part 1)

Commemorative Stamp on Dr. BR Ambedkar Released

• As a part of 125th Birth Anniversary year long celebrations of Dr. BR Ambedkar, a commemorative stamp was released jointly by the Minister Social Justice & Empowerment Thaawar Chand Gehlot and Union Minister for Communication & Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad on September 30, 2015.
• On the July 23, 2015, Prime Minister chaired the first meeting of the National Committee on nationwide celebration of 125th Birth Anniversary of Dr. BR Ambedkar.

• The objective of year long celebrations is to make the world aware about the life and the work of Dr. Babasaheb Ambekdar as a champion of the underprivileged.
• Union government is going to organise number of programmes and various activities to mark the yearlong celebrations. .

Mid-day Meals 2015 Ruled Out, Stress on Quality and Regularity

• The Centre notified the Mid-Day Meal Rules, 2015 on September 1, 2015 making running quality tests and sticking to nutritional standards mandatory. The Rules also seeks to fix responsibility on persons for non-supply of food for three consecutive school days or five days in a month.
• Under the rules, children in the six-14 age group, studying from classes I to VIII, will be provided hot cooked meal on all working days. It will be the mandate of the schools to provide hygienic facilities for cooking meals.

• School management committees will monitor the implementation of the meal scheme, oversee the quality of the food served and ensure cleanliness of the cooking place.
• The heads of schools have been empowered to utilise any available fund for the continuation of the scheme. The amount will be reimbursed to the school account.
• The State governments will be held accountable for non-delivery of service and will have to pay a ‘food security allowance’ as compensation.
• The exhaustive guidelines to be followed by the States come days after 80 children fell ill after being served milk in a school in Agra.

Read Also – State Level Current Affairs for September 2015 (Part 2).

Green Highways Policy 2015 Unveiled

• Union government unveiled its Green Highways policy on September 29, 2015. Under it, bushes and trees will be grown along all the highways in a phased manner.
• The purpose of this policy is to promote the greening of highway corridors with the participation of the local community, including local contractors and the local Forest Department.
• Thus, the manifest objective of this policy is plantation and the latent objective was to generate employment. The investment in the project would be ? 1000 crore this year, calculated as 1% of the ? 100000 crore investment in national highway projects in the year.
• The policy aims at planting trees along all highways. Private and government companies along with Non-governmental organisations are participated. The project will be awarded to contractors in small stretches of 8 to 10 km as pilot scheme.

Centre Formed Panel to Review Civil Services Exam Pattern

• The Centre has formed an expert committee consisting of leading academicians, technocrats and senior bureaucrats of national repute to revisit the entire pattern, syllabus and eligibility criteria for IAS/civil services examination.
• The committee panel would be headed by the former IAS officer from Chhattisgarh cadre BS Baswan. Union Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions Jitendra Singh said it on September 27, 2015.
• Soon after the present NDA government took over on May 26, 2014, it was confronted with a demand for revisiting the pattern and syllabus of civil services examination.

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