Budget Session of Parliament adjourned sine die
Context :
The Budget Session of Parliament concluded on 23 March. The session was scheduled to conclude on 3 April 3. But it has now be adjourned sine die in the wake of deadly COVID-19 and lockdowns announced by many states for varied periods.
Session of Indian Parliament :
- A session of the Parliament of India is the time period during which a House, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, meets almost every day continuously to transact business.
- Generally, there are three sessions in a year, namely Budget Session, Monsoon Session, and the Winter Session.
- 1) Budget Session is held from February to May
- 2) Monsoon Session is held from July to September
- 3) Winter Session is held from November to December
- Many meetings will be held in a session of the Parliament. Each meeting will have two sittings, that is, morning sitting from 11 am to 1 pm and post-lunch sitting from 2 pm to 6 pm. A sitting of Parliament can be terminated by adjournment, adjournment sine die, prorogation or dissolution.
Note :
Adjournment sine die means terminating a Parliament sitting for an indefinite period. The power of adjournment sine die lies with the presiding officer of the House. Only the presiding officer of a House can call a sitting of the House before the date or time to which it has been adjourned or at any time after the House has been adjourned sine die.
RS passed 2020 JK Appropriation Bills
Context :
The Rajya Sabha approved the Jammu and Kashmir Appropriation Bills 2020 for the budget of Rs. 1 lakh crore for the Union Territory (UT) of Jammu and Kashmir for 2020-21. The bill was passed by the Lok Sabha on 19 March.
Bill :
- As per the Jammu & Kashmir Appropriation Bills 2020, only 10% of the funds should be spent for security purposes in the UT, and the remaining should be spent for developmental objectives.
- The J&K government has made a provision of over Rs.1 lakh crore towards the J&K’s budget in 2020-21, as against Rs.88,911 crore in the previous financial year.
- The budget aims to cover the entire UT of J&K under the Centre’s flagship health scheme Ayushman Bharat.
Finance Bill, 2020
Context :
The Lok Sabha passed the Finance Bill, by voice vote without discussion, amid ruckus in the House with opposition parties seeking a fiscal stimulus package in the wake of the Coronavirus outbreak.
Finance Bill :
- A Finance Bill is a Bill that, as the name suggests, concerns the country’s finances — it could be about taxes, government expenditures, government borrowings, revenues, etc. Since the Union Budget deals with these things, it is passed as a Finance Bill.
- Rule 219 of the Rules of Procedure of Lok Sabha states: ‘Finance Bill’ means the Bill ordinarily introduced in each year to give effect to the financial proposals of the Government of India for the following financial year and includes a Bill to give effect to supplementary financial proposals for any period.
- It is introduced in Lok Sabha after the presentation of the annual Budget is passed by the House. It is also certified as a Money Bill.
- The Constitution defines financial legislation into two categories: Money Bills and Financial Bills.
- Money Bills –Article 110
- Financial Bills (I)– Article 117 (1)
- Financial Bills (II)– Article 117 (3)
- All Money bills are Financial bills but all Financial bills are not Money bills.
- Only those financial bills are Money bills which contain exclusively those matters which are mentioned in Article 110 of the Constitution.
- Money bills are certified by the Speaker of Lok Sabha.
Highlights of the bill :
- In the Union Budget 2020-2021, the government proposed to spend Rs 30,42,230 crore in the next financial year, 12.7% higher than the revised estimate of 2019-20.
- The government has assumed a nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate of 10% in 2020-21, versus the nominal growth estimate at 12% for 2019-20. It expects that receipts will increase by 16.3% to Rs 22,45,893 crore, owing to higher estimated revenue from divestment.
- NRIs having income above Rs 15 lakh from business in India will fall under the tax net, but their global income will not be taxed in India.
World Tuberculosis Day 2020
Context :
World Tuberculosis (TB) Day is observed on March 24 to raise public awareness about the devastating health, social and economic consequences of TB, and to step up efforts to end the global TB epidemic.
The date marks the day in 1882 when Dr Robert Koch announced that he had discovered the bacterium that causes TB, which opened the way towards diagnosing and curing this disease.
The theme of World TB Day 2020 is “It’s TIME”.
What is TB :
- TB is an infectious disease caused by the bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
- It typically affects the lungs (pulmonary TB) but can also affect other sites.
- The disease is spread when people who are sick with pulmonary TB expel bacteria into the air, for example by coughing.
- Diagnostic tests for TB disease include – Rapid molecular test, Sputum smear microscopy, Culture-based methods
- Without treatment, the mortality rate from TB is high.
Some facts on TB :
- TB remains the world’s deadliest infectious killer. Each day, over 4000 people lose their lives to TB and close to 30,000 people fall ill with this preventable and curable disease.
- The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched a joint initiative “Find. Treat. All. #EndTB”with the Global Fund and Stop TB Partnership, with the aim of accelerating the TB response and ensuring access to care, in line with WHO’s overall drive towards Universal Health Coverage.
- WHO has published a global TB report every year since 1997.
Initiatives in India :
- TB treatment is free in India.
- India aims to eliminate TB by 2025. UN aims to eliminate TB by 2030.
- Mass BCG vaccination to prevent TB.
- In 1993, the Revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP) was launched, offering free diagnosis and treatment for patients, rescuing them from otherwise sure death.
- Rs 12,000 cr fund to fight TB over the next 3 years.
- TB Harega Desh Jeetega campaign.
Source : pib
National Supercomputing Mission to boost supercomputing infrastructure
Context :
India’s National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) aims to set up to provide the country with supercomputing infrastructure.
Aim :
The aim of the mission is to meet the increased computational demands of academia, researchers, Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), and startups by creating the capability design, manufacturing, of supercomputers indigenously in India.
Organized by :
The National Super Computing Mission is jointly led by the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) and Department of Science and Technology (DST) and implemented by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru.
National Supercomputing Mission :
- NSM was established to set up a network of supercomputers ranging from a few Tera Flops (TF) to Hundreds of Tera Flops (TF) and three systems with greater than or equal to 3 Peta Flops (PF) in academic and research institutions of National importance across the country by 2022.
- A total of 15-20 PF was approved in 2015 and was later revised to a total of 45 PF (45000 TFs).
- Also, an increase of 6 times more compute power within the same cost and capable of solving large and complex computational problems.
- Plans to install three more supercomputers by April 2020 has begun. Among three supercomputers, one will be implemented at IIT-Kanpur, second in JN Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bengaluru, and 3rd in IIT-Hyderabad. This will ramp up the supercomputing facility to 6 PF.
- Also, 11 new systems will be set up in different IITs, NITs, National Labs, and IISERs across India by December 2020. It will have many sub-systems manufactured and microprocessors designed in India, which will bring in a cumulative capacity of 10.4 petaflops.
- Param Shivay- First supercomputer:
- As per the revised plan, the first supercomputer assembled indigenously, called Param Shivay, was installed in the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU). It was inaugurated by the Prime Minister. Similarly, Param Shakti and Param Brahma were installed at IIT-Kharagpur and Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune. They are equipped with applications from domains like Weather and Climate, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Bioinformatics, and Material science.